"Come on! Do the thing already!"

"I would, if you stayed still for at least ten seconds!"

Ruby wondered how Yang's birthday party spiraled down to a screaming match she was hearing through the door. Oh right… Yang was getting her aura unlocked. Yang was getting her aura unlocked! Oh brothers, that's so cool! Will she get a semblance immidiatly? Will dad finally start training them? Oh it's so cool! But right now Ruby had another problem. An enemy stood in her way, preventing her from learning the secrets of the craft and advancing further.

"Uncle Qrow! Let me in!" Ruby demanded one more time, still determined to get a look at the process.

"No can do" Qrow grinned back "don't worry kiddo, you will get yours unlocked soon enough!"

"I don't want to wait two more years! Yang will get too much ahead!"

-BBW-

Yang stood in the middle of the room with her arms crossed while waiting for her father to finally stop talking and unlock her aura. She was asking for it for about three years already and in the end she was told that she would get it at her tenth birthday. Now, the promised day came and instead of getting it done she was listening to an endless tirade about new power, growing up, responsibility, accidental aura flaring and unruly semblances.. Wait what?
"... and promise me not to unlock Ruby's aura. She will get hers unlocked when she is a bit older. I will be training you how to use it but you should experiment on your own, it's a part of you, i'm sure you'll figure it out, just be careful, please." Tai finished with a pointed look and a small smile.

"Fine, let's get going before Ruby decides that the cake is hers for the taking." Yang answered, rolling her eyes.

"Okay, now stand still, I haven't done this in quite some time."

-BBW-

Ruby kept running circles around Yang as they entered the backyard. "Did you get superpowers?! Will you breathe fire now? Please do me now! Dad and uncle Qrow won't know! Please pleaseplease…" She came to a stop in an awkward stumble as Yang stuck out a leg. "We were over this sis, I'm not doing it, dad said that it can be a dangerous process and I don't want to botch up your aura by accident."

Confusion spread across silver orbs as Ruby looked up at Yang. "Are you sure about that? It should be only about one person pushing a bit of their aure inside another, getting the inactive aura agitated and making the dormant aura to start up and work properly. It shouldn't be dangerous at all, dad probably just said it to scare you."

Now it was Yang's time to be confused by a sudden information dump that her sister for some reason already knew. In a hindsight neither she nor their father really bothered to check what she was reading. She stared wide eyed at her sister for several seconds when the confusion changed to anger.

"Wait a sec1 If you knew all that, why did I had to wait for my tenth birthday?!"

"It's not like I could unlock my aura myself! Dad and uncle Qrow are pretty much the only people with unlocked aura!" Ruby replied with exaggerated hand gestures. "Ah, forget it, let's spar, let's see the difference!" She then settled in a very bad rendition of a boxer stance. The response from her opponent ended at an unimpressed raised eyebrow. "I think we already figured out that unarmed is just not your thing. Don't you have that wooden scythe somewhere?"

Ruby looked down at her feed and poked her fingers together. "Yeah… but uncle Qrow still didn't show me how to use it properly" she then suddenly perked up " oh I know, be right back" and ran off. When she wasn't back in two minutes, Yang started to worry because knowing some of Ruby's projects, she might as well receive an artillery strike of glitter, and whatever leftover dust Ruby could find, on her head.

"I'm back, sorry, couldn't find it." Ruby finally rounded a corner while carrying a wooden longsword.

-BBW-

"Ouch ouch" Ruby whimpered as Yang cleaned a small scratch on her forearm. "Come on Ruby, you had worse, besides, we both knew it would end like this." Yang admonished her with a small grin still present on her face.

"Well, duh! You cheated!"

"I thought you wanted me to use my aura to see the difference." Yang laughed back. Ruby just huffed and let Yang finish applying the bandaids.

"I actually wanted to ask you about something, Rubes."

"Huh?" Ruby looked up curiously.

"How do you know so much about aura?"

"I read about it."

"Okay… but why?"

Now Ruby nervously shifted and looked away from Yang. "Well… I've been having this weird dream for almost two years now and it didn't go away sooo I kinda started to look for anything about it and read through a lot of books on anything related."

"Wait, how do you go from nightmares to in-depth aura stuff?"

"It wasn't a nightmare! It was just… weird. I was like, aware all the time and… it was always mom's grave but… the place was way too dark and foggy? I don't know. I would just go to sleep and then I'm there again." Ruby tried to explain, still uncertain about the whole experience. Yang grew quite worried and decided to give Ruby a hug.

"Ruby… is everything okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I was a bit weirded out at first but I kinda got used to it."

"If you say so…" Yang squeezed Ruby one last time and stepped away. "Welp, I think I had enough of a warm up. Gotta see what old man has in store." She said with a smile.

"Good luck sis!" Ruby called out as Yang left the room.

The sisters continued to spar from time to time, despite one of them having a clear advantage. At least Ruby got really good at dodging. And it always felt good to smack Yang with a wooden sword over her big head. Who needs aura when you're faster. Their father would always scold them for going overboard but after two weeks of being ignored and seeing that aside from some light bruising and occasional scratch they were both fine he stopped bothering. School was as boring as it could possibly be and Ruby had still 4 years of this monotonous torture ahead of her before she could finally go to Signal academy.

-BBW-

Ruby had a happy spring in her step as she exited the school building. Today her and Yang's schedule would always align, they would go home together and train a bit afterwards. She waited for her sister to show up for four minutes but could see her golden mane anywhere. Probably got held up by a teacher, I swear if she gets detention and ruins our training schedule I'm going to add pink paint to her shampoo. There was still some time to spare so Ruby decided to sit down on the bench near the pavement and read a weapon magazine. Let's see if the Atlesians figured out how to make hand held railguns!

"Hey! Let go of my tail!"

"Didn't you read the sign, all animals have to be collared!"

It was a boy from her class, Mark? Martin?, getting harassed by three older boys. They formed a triangle around him and kept pulling on his canine tail. Ruby never asked him what kind of faunus he was, mostly because she didn't know whether or not it is considered offensive. She quickly looked around to see if there were any teachers around to break it up. The only one she daw, was her math teacher, an old man who just scowled at the altercation and continued to walk along. Seeing that nobody would intervene, Ruby decided that she would do what a proper huntress should and went to stop it herself.

"That's enough! Let him be!" There she stood, her cloak floating in the wind. Back straight and eyes set on her adversary.

The bullies did stop. They simply were a bit confused when a little girl draped in an oversized red piece of cloth jumped in between them and the little mut they were using for entertainment. "What do you want, brat? Go bother someone else." The lead boy, a head taller than Ruby, dismissed her without a care. When Ruby continued to stand in front of him he grabbed her by the shoulder and tried to shove her away. Unfortunately for him, Yang has stronger arms. Ruby smoothly swerved to the side and used his own momentum to make him stumble and fall to the ground.

A tense silence settled over the group. The bullies not understanding how one of them got bested by a little girl, Ruby trying to figure out whether she should be proud of her victory or feel ashamed for being violent, and the former? victim not knowing what is going on and hoping his mom would show up.

"Think yourself so good, you stupid brat?!" The leader picked himself up from the ground and is getting ready to try to earn some of his lost pride back. His buddies also seemed to unfreeze and got ready to jump into the frey. "Get her! Nobody messes with us and gets away with it!

"Oh really?"

Hard glare, condescending smirk, fluffy hair and confident strides. "Hey sis, you finally making new friends? I thought better of your taste."

Ruby started sputtering while the boys started to get tired of random people showing up. In a stroke of genius their leader decided that this time instead of shoving them aside he might as well punch her.

Crack

Predictably, when punching a person with active aura, the civilian will always lose. This time, the unfortunate fool lost a healthy wrist. Yang barely noticed, after being smacked with a stick by Ruby she really couldn't care less. "So… is this over or someone else wants to be an idiot?" The air dried up, it got hotter. Hair glowing and eyes blazing red Yang waited for a reply. "Let's go home, Rubes."

-BBW-

"What were you thinking?! Didn't we talk about it? I thought you… gah, i need a drink! And you young lady are grounded until I say otherwise!" Tai slammed the door and left the house.

"Wait what?! That's it?! You won't even listen to me?!" Yang fumed while looking at the door, as if expecting it to open. Yeah, sure, like that would happen. She then heard some shuffling from behind and was ready to snap until she saw Ruby uncertainly walk up to her. She immediately bottled up her emotions. Wrong target.

"I just… wanted to say thanks." Ruby shyly spoke up.

Yang smiled a bit at that, brave when standing up to bullies but can't speak up in any other situation. She ruffled her hair a bit and put her hand on her shoulder. "Why did you do that anyway? Jumping into fights was supposed to be my thing."

"But they were mean to my classmate! And they started it!"

Yang rolled her eyes a bit. "Yeah, and guess who had to finish it."

"I'm sorry…"

"Don't sweat it, not the first time, not the last time"

"Okay… about more important stuff. What was that thing with glowing hair and red eyes?" Ruby changed the subject, with no grace and subtlety.

"WHAT?"

"You didn't notice? It was so cool! We have to figure it out! Maybe you used your semblance!"

"We can't, I'm grounded…"

"The backyard is still part of the house." Ruby quipped with mischievous glint in her eyes, which shortly after was mirrored by her sister. "Meet you in the back in quarter hour, go change into work out clothes."

-BBW-

"So… are you going to do it?" Ruby asked her sister after stretching, warming up and a minute of waiting for something to happen.

"I'm trying!" Yang yelled out as she pulled on her hair in frustration.

"Well… I read that semblances activate under stress so… focus on what was causing you stress back then and we'll see if it works! Remember what you felt!"

"Then stay quiet and let me focus!"

Ruby shrinked back and pulled out a notepad to record Yang's semblance.

Okay, focus. What made me stressed? I wasn't. Those were some idiots picking on Rubes, it's not like they could do anything to me anyway. I felt… warm and angry and worried? Scared? Why? Ruby was fine. I was fine. We were okay and she wasn't going anywhere. They wouldn't make me leave her. No . Never. Again.

The air grew hotter, the dry winds picked up as blazing red eyes stared into amazed silver.

"So coooool… what does it do?"

"Huh?"