an: and we are back in business! boy has this been a long time coming. so sit back, relax, and enjoy the show - besides, if you know me, you'll know i'm not the fastest updater in the west.

disclaimer: aren't you forgetting something? For ffn, specifically?

an: oh? oh yeah yeah, right – the thing. go on, do it.

disclaimer: rwby is owned by rooster teeth, and persona is owned by atlus. the author owns neither.

Hiding the truth is as much a part of raising children as it is of raising warriors.

Patch Forest
13th January 80 P.W.
2:30 AM

Ruby Rose felt her scroll vibrate before she heard it, even through two inches of memory foam. Her hand snaked under her pillow to silence it, fast as she dared and as quiet as she could manage. This late at night there wasn't much risk – that's why she picked this hour – but it was best to be careful.

With long-practiced motions, she slipped out of bed without the frame creaking, and slid her feet into a pair of slippers next to it.

Dressing came next. Clothes, laid out the night before and hidden in the space between the bed and the wall opposite the door, were put on, and pockets filled. Her scroll had built-in tracking, so it had to stay under the pillow. No matter, she had a Soundwalker audio player that she had gotten for her last birthday, and that had Aura monitoring. It went into a skirt pocket, along with wireless earbuds, charged overnight. No sense getting tangled in cords, and their ability to block out noise was trash, which was a good thing tonight.

Ruby froze like a startled deer as she heard Yang's snoring intensify. Moving as few muscles as possible, she turned her head towards the bed nearest the door, where Yang slept on her back, half-sprawled on the mattress. Silently she watched, waiting for her elder sister's breathing to steady. When she made one last chainsaw impression before returning to her usual rhythmic snore, Ruby didn't let out a breath. She stayed stock still and counted down from sixty before moving again, careful not to disturb Zwei. Many a mission had been scrubbed that way, and she wasn't about to let it happen now with Signal's first year combat finals two days away. There would be other finals of course, and there would be later combat classes as well. The school year did not end until May after all, but it was her first combat final in a combat school! Everything had to be done perfectly, especially with a weapon like her precious Crescent Rose! And that's why she needed the practice, whenever she had the free time and energy to do it. Even at night.

Speaking of Crescent Rose, now came the hard part: getting to the lockers where they kept their weapons on the weekends, when they weren't at Signal. They were in the basement, down the stairs. A Huntsman and two Huntresses(-in-training) meant that the door was not an issue, and it slid open silently on oiled hinges, and shut just as silently. The stairs, though, were not going to be silent. From the second floor to the first landing they were fully cantilevered, and technically so all the way to the first floor – the wall beneath it was not structural except for the door frame to the basement. And those stairs had no risers or structural supports at all, being held up only by the strength of the boards embedded into the stringers. And then there was the fact that she'd have to cross the length of the living room to get to her shoes, by the main door.

But she'd been coming up and down these stairs since she was born, and she was sneaking out of her bedroom for years. She gripped the brass handrail of the stairs on the side facing the outer wall with her back to it, and pressed herself as much as she could against said wall. Testing the step beneath her, always careful, never trusting her memory for this, she more lowered herself down than took a step, continuing for the next stair, and the one after that, always careful to place her feet on the sturdiest, quietest part of the stair she could, never mind that it was hard wood beneath her slippers and not carpeted floor. That's what the slippers were for.

As usual, she paused at the landing. With one step, she crossed it to look down in the living room. If she was caught now, she could just pass it off as wanting to get a late night snack or a drink of water.

No one there. Ruby nodded to herself, and continued down the stairs. Pausing at every slight noise her movement produced, she finally made it onto the basement floor.

Here she could relax a little. Swapping out her slippers for combat boots, she walked across the concrete door to the safe where the Xiao Longs kept their weapons. It was half the size of the family car and made of steel, thus explaining all the magnets attached to the surface; the stickers were simply because her father didn't allow either of them to put any on the fridge. The upside of the safe was that it used a thumbprint ID to open, but Ruby had to grab the door the moment it began to swing because those mighty hinges did make noise, and a lot of it if you didn't open it slowly. Slowly she did open it, letting moonlight from the windows to the rear of the house illuminate her prize.

Crescent Rose hung on a pair of metal hooks, in a place of honor (on the same wall as Ember Cecilia and Tai's weapons). She smiled, as she always did when she saw her baby. An anti material, .50 BMG sniper scythe, she had built it herself, with only minimal input from her uncle, another scythe wielder. His turned into a shotgun though. And a sword. It was also mostly gray instead of the lovely red that gave Crescent Rose its name.

Really the only downside was that no matter how good she was with it, a scythe was just too unwieldy to serve as an Evoker. But that was fine, those were stored in a rack to her left. She was so used to grabbing 'hers' in fact that she could do it without looking and did. Checking first the barrel for a red sticker to ensure she actually had grabbed the right one, and then checking the Dust chamber to ensure it was filled, she holstered the 'weapon' and hung Crescent Rose on the back of her belt using a built-in magnetic strip.

And now she was finally ready. Closing and locking the safe with the same care with which she opened it, Ruby turned towards the sliding glass door that led to the back porch.

Turned, and her eyes drifted across the window, past the grill half-buried under four inches of snow, and glanced at the illuminated analog weather station on the wall. Glanced and frowned. She knew it had snowed overnight and would continue until morning, but it was snowing even now, thicker than she had expected, and the weather station was saying it wouldn't stop until well after daybreak. With a sigh, she pulled her hood over her head, the motion cutting off her vision and forcing her to look lower, at the flower vase below it.

The flower vase full of roses.

Well, she thought to herself, it IS along the way to where I usually go.

.-. . -.. / .-.. .. -.- . / .-. - ... . ...

[ [ Persona X Remnant Official Sound Track Disc 01 Track 01 – Red Like Roses (Red Prologue Version) ] ]

Ruby stood in the moonlit forest of Patch, the breeze already having covered up most of the boot-prints behind her in powdery snow. Apart from her cloak, the only movement was the swaying of the branches in the breeze, and apart from her, there was virtually no color at all – the leafless black birches and ironbark poplars around her living up to their names this snowy night. Before her was the edge of a cliff, and between her and the cliff's edge was a simple, angled tombstone. Upon it was an engraving of a rose, a name - 'Summer Rose', aptly enough - and the words "Thus Kindly I Scatter".

After a minute, she placed a single white rose on the tombstone and turned away towards the forest. Gripping her belt, she hitched it up to adjust the position of Crescent Rose, shifting her weight a few times before deciding it was secure enough to keep walking through the thick snow.

The red-hooded girl wandered through the black-and-white forest for several minutes before she pauses, sensing movement. Dark, beastly shapes in imitation of man darted through the forest in parallel to her. But they keep their distance, and the terrain here wasn't exactly to her benefit, so she went on. Perhaps they, too, did not consider a winding snow-covered path an ideal battleground, because they waited until she entered a clearing about the size of a baseball infield. In walked about a dozen or so Grimm led by couple Beowolves, with a bone-white mask with the Reman numeral XVIII and a 'face' consisting of a T-shaped hole located on the back of their necks, just behind the skull.

If there had been more than two, that would have been a problem. But they were only two, and they were mostly surrounded by Barghests, fully quadrupedal Grimm with less bone on them, and a double-spiraled green mask with a single X.

Three charged forward, utterly confident that they could take on a fifteen-year-old human, only for her to vanish in a cloud of red rose petals. The three Barghests crashed into each other and looked up as much as their doggy necks can let them in confusion.

Silhouetted by the moon, Ruby's movements are invisible, and they didn't realize she has drawn Crescent Rose in its rifle configuration until it was too late.

One, two, three, four of the Barghests fell to her gun, the kickback sending her rolling about each time, before she saw fit to shift its form to that of a scythe as big as she was. The Beowolves snarl at her, but only one is brave (or foolish) enough to charge. For its effort, she hooks the scythe around it. She grins sheepishly at it as it snarls, not out of smug superiority but because she's still unused to it and forgot it had a squeeze trigger in this form. Doing so, her smirk turns genuine, and the squeeze of the trigger launches the blade through its torso with enough force to cut the Beowolf in half.

The next several minutes passed this way, a blur of slicing, dismembering, hooking, and shooting, and the Barghests pile up only to dissipate into smoky mist, like all Grimm. Like most Patch Grimm, the sound of battle only drew more of the smaller, weaker types, though that was a relative term. Barghests and Beowolves filled the night, and even a handful of Freybugs, bigger than Barghests but dumber than Beowolves. The thick hides of their flanks and bony necks forced her to get close and under them with Crescent Rose to finish them off. Even a lone Boarbatusk and Colepixy came to join in on the fun, and went down just like the others.

During a brief pause, Ruby pulled the Soundwalker from her pocket, her breath having grown heavy and her skin sweaty despite the cold. Three-fifteen. She winced, then pocketed the Soundwalker and drew her Evoker, pointing it at her temple.

"I really didn't want to have to do this..."

A blast of blue flame exploded from the opposite temple, and behind her appeared a doll, easily as tall in meters as she was in feet.

The doll had black-red hair, silver eyes, and a hooded cape yellowed with age, but from there the similarity between the halves it was split into ended. The left half resembled an old cloth doll, with a button eye and 'hair' in a single felt sheet, its edges worn by time and scissors. The black dress and the white cape, like the hair, was hewn from a single chunk of felt, and likewise frayed at the edges. The leg was a simple, unjointed thing ending in a black combat boot with a spiked sole, and the 'arm' ended with the sleeve of the dress in a round stump. Instead of stuffing, organs composed of stuffed gingham and seersucker stitched together were held in place with golden string, though the heart was conspicuously absent. The right half was a much more modern doll, made of metal, plastics, ceramics, Kevlar, and glass - all weapons-grade, and apart from the eye all a dark gray, though the dress itself on this half was white. The cape, likewise in reverse of the fabric half of the doll, was gray-black. The limbs of this half were connected to the torso by golden string, and the two halves themselves were too connected by identical golden strands, mounted to the edges of the half by tiny winches that creaked and groaned as the doll moved, hovering in midair. In the doll's hand was an enormous bardiche with the straight fabric-and-wood blade of an old windmill, and a musket for a shaft.

As Ruby moved, so did the doll, and after 'testing the weight' of the enormous axe, the blade swung out and up to form a scythe of sorts. She smiled in pride at it – her Persona. Her Persona, that she summoned herself with her own will, not some lame, Schnee Dust Company or military 'mass produced' Persona that you had to be hypnotized into being able to summon.

Winding her arm up like a pitcher she pointed at her foe, and the Persona responded.

"Persephone! Cut 'em apart!"

Persephone did so, swinging its enormous scythe low to the ground, and back again. Each swing sent large Grimm flying and small Grimm to the afterlife. Those that managed to dodge or survive the attack charged Ruby with such mindless abandon that she could just swing her scythe in a figure-eight and cleave them apart. She had to slowly back up to do it, sure, but with her Persona out it made taking out Grimm like this easy. And this was winter, when Grimm in Patch were at their worst!

Ruby fired into the chest of a Beowolf to put some distance between herself and the horde so she could reload, this time with a magazine of high-impact rounds. Slower than before, now; throwing Cleave left and right took a fair amount of stamina. Looking out at the remaining Grimm, she nodded. Best to switch it up for one last attack, if she was going to have to use her Persona to get rid of her own training mess.

"Blast 'em into the air! Garu!"

The scythe-axe shifted yet again, the windmill blades sliding a quarter of the way down the length of the haft and 'unfolding' over each other, over and over, until it resembled a fan more than anything else. Persephone raised the fan in a golfer's swing and followed through, sending snow, spent cartridges, and Grimm alike into the air. Ruby got down on one knee and started firing, taking out a Beowolf or a Freybug with every strike, each already writing in pain from the blast of soul-infused wind.

From summoning her Persona to eliminating the last Grimm took less than ninety seconds. Persephone faded in a shattering of blue sparkles, and Ruby closed her eyes, planting Crescent Rose into the snow to balance herself. Using a Persona like that, even for a few seconds, was draining enough when she was bright-eyed and bushy tailed. Deep breaths, calm your heart rate, center yourself… and she was back to normal.

She pulled her Soundwalker out and checked her Aura reserves. They were low, as she expected, but not so low that they wouldn't recover fully by morning. And with a yawn, she realized that she would get in bed still early enough to feel well-rested. Perfect!

Smiling, she returned Crescent Rose to her back and turned around with a spring in her step.

Ten minutes later, she arrived back at the cabin she called home. The porch light was out, as was the basement light. Good. Creaking open the yard's gate, she snuck back in, taking the same route (and the same caution) as she had leaving. Getting caught on the way out was bad, but getting caught on the way in was bad and embarrassing. Still, she hadn't seen any sign that Tai or Yang were up, so it was with closed eyes and a smile that she reached the top floor.

And it was with open eyes and a smile frozen in horror that she saw the light under her bedroom door.

"Ruby Susanna Xiao Long-Rose," said a feminine voice on the other side, "do you know what time it is?"

She swallowed thickly. Maybe it was going to be a longer night than she thought…

an: It's been a long time since I've written a fic. And I do mean a long time. So a few notes in terms of what I'll be doing here on FFN:

Firstly, A Canopy of Stars isn't dead. Far from it! But I wanted to get this fic out before RWBY Volume 9 ended, and the next chapter of A Canopy of Stars out before this, and at the rate I was typing that just wasn't possible.

Second, all my other fics except this one, A Canopy of Stars, and possibly Psychic Justice and/or Magical Properties of the Rose may be considered deadfics up for adoption, and you probably shouldn't count too highly on the latter two updating anytime soon. As usual, message me if you want what notes I may have for them.

Third, from now on, I'll also be uploading my current fics to SV, SB, and AO3. This one should've uploaded to all three by now, with FFN getting it last.

Fourth… from now on I'll be trying to aim for at least 100 words for at least one fic per day. I will continue to aim for my usual minimum of 2-3k words per chapter, more if I feel I'm going on something that I don't want to break up.