Beacon Academy dorms, Kingdom of Vale, Remnant (Antaria IV), 10:36 pm local time

Ruby Rose lazily gazed outside her window in her team's dorms, looking at the night sky with its uncountable number of stars. Her sister, Yang Xiao Long, is lounging on her bed, staring absentmindedly at the ceiling and floor. Being a huntress-in-training requires a lot of time spent practising one's skills, and as a result, one does not get much downtime except for the evenings or very early mornings. Ruby, as of late, has become fascinated with the stars, space, and what lies beyond the atmosphere of Remnant. Although she read many books on the matter, most were just fictional stories of alien invaders coming to abduct the population, ultimately ending with either the people fighting to victory or dragging on the conflict to last much longer against a technologically superior species, and she found them not particularly helpful in answering her questions. She wondered what an actual alien would look like and what their level of technology would be. After a while of watching her sister staring out of the window, Yang speaks up.

"What's on your mind, Ruby?" She asks her sister.

"Hm? Oh, uh, nothing much," Ruby says back. "I've been thinking about space and the stars recently. With all of those stars in the night sky, someone must be looking back out there, right?"

"I agree there must be life somewhere, but I doubt that intelligent life could exist anywhere besides here."

"Yeah, but what are the chances that sometime in the future some alien race could have a chance to visit us?"

"Actually," Blake said from the desk where she was sitting and reading. "If an alien race had a ship flying around our local system, it would pick up the signals from our daily communications rather clearly and know that an advanced race existed on the surface."

Ruby turned sharply around. "You're fascinated by the stars too?"

"I would say so," Blake agrees. "And even if there wasn't a ship flying around in our vicinity, any civilization with advanced enough technology could detect our signals from their planet."

"But what are the chances that an alien race decides to visit?"

Yang interrupted the conversation with a yawn. "It's getting late; could we have this conversation in the morning?"

As the rest of her team went to their respective beds, Ruby turned to face the window once more, staring wistfully at the night sky and wondering if they were truly alone on Remnant before she too fell asleep.

The next day, Beacon Academy cafeteria, 11:46 am local time

After their morning courses have finished, Team RWBY meets up in the cafeteria. Everyone is there except for Ruby, though. Yang is the first to notice.

"Hey, has anyone seen Ruby since we left class?" She asks.

"Not me," Weiss replies. "She kept talking about space and stars a lot, though."

"Maybe the library?" Blake suggested, "We'll head there after lunch; she probably wanted to read more about space and celestial bodies."

"What's gotten into her anyway?" Weiss asked, confused about Ruby's recent behaviour: "Ever since yesterday, she kept obsessing over wanting to know what's out there and the possibility of alien life."

"I don't know," Yang responded. "It's nice to have an interest in other subjects besides combat and weapons, though. But seriously, do any of you believe that some advanced alien civilization could be watching us right now?"

"Maybe they are, maybe not," Blake responded. "Maybe they're planning an invasion of Remnant as we speak." She said it half-jokingly.

Yang chuckled, while Weiss just rolled her eyes in semi-annoyance.

"But as I said last night, the likelihood of an advanced alien civilization both detecting and finding Remnant is too low to consider."

"Besides," Weiss said in semi-annoyance. "We already have enough problems to deal with the Grimm attacks and the recent dust heists."

The team spent the next thirty-five minutes discussing extraterrestrial life and the possibility of first contact before Yang got up to find her sister.

Beacon Academy library, 12:47 pm local time

Ruby was flipping through the fourth book on alien life that she could find within Beacon's library, which was surprisingly few. One would imagine that the four kingdoms might have at least a little bit of interest in what lies beyond the skies of Remnant, or at the very least Atlas, since they have the technology or at the very least the capabilities to develop such technology. Nonetheless, Ruby could only find six books that could provide an actual scientific viewpoint on alien life instead of a cheap fictional one. The book she is currently reading details the theoretical appearance of the various planets of Remnant's solar system, and although it was cool to know about the star system that Remnant was a part of, none of the books Ruby was reading gave a convincing description of aliens besides a section in the last book she read theorizing that the two brothers in Remnant's creation myth were two members of an advanced alien civilization that visited Remnant some millennia ago.

Frustrated beyond belief, she threw the book away, almost hitting Yang, who was rounding the corner.

"Whoa, Rubes!" Yang said in surprise. "What's going on?"

"None of these books answer my questions on aliens," Ruby said with a sigh.

"To tell you the truth, Ruby, I don't think anyone on Remnant has an answer to the question of whether alien life exists."

"I know Yang, but it's just so frustrating to just gaze up at the night sky and look at all of those stars without knowing if someone or something is watching back."

"It kind of irks me too, but it's not worth us losing sleep over."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Ruby said so in disappointment. "I just wish that maybe we aren't alone in this universe."

The two sisters sat and talked for a while before ultimately deciding to get to class and promising to continue once their classes were over. Ruby, nor her entire team, could possibly have known that just in the debris field of Remnant's moon, someone was indeed watching them and may or may not start doing more than just observing.

Information Data Logs:

Antaria System: The Antaria system is the 112th system to be surveyed and claimed by the Interstellar Solar Technocracy. At the time, the allure and wonder of discovering new systems were starting to fade and the Technocracy primarily looking for mining systems, systems that had tactical value or systems with colonizable planets. At the time of discovery, the Antaria system was originally going to be dismissed as just another mining system due to its rich resources until Antaria IV, AKA Remnant, was surveyed. The discovery of a planet home to a technologically advanced pre-FTL society nearly single-handedly reinvigorated the sociology, biology and anthropology branches of the Imperial Science Department, and obviously led to an observation post being constructed in the debris field of Antaria IVa.

星际太阳技术专家 (Interstellar Solar Technocracy): The Interstellar Solar Technocracy is the largest empire in the galaxy in terms of fleet and troop power, economic output, research output and sheer size. Despite other empires being near equal in an individual aspect, none can compare to the strength and size of the Technocracy's fleets and the power and discipline of the Technocracy's troops. Established in the year 2122 from the Imperial Asiatic Technocracy on Earth, humanity waged a long and bloody war now called the "War for Societal Unification" with the goal of unifying the human race and eliminating the borders that held humanity in "bondage" and "shackles." It is an autocracy, with the Imperator holding absolute power although he very rarely uses it. The Technocracy is divided into sectors, each of which is under control by various governors who the populace elects into power, although the candidates are selected by the imperial government. It is shockingly free for an autocracy with very little propaganda present (one poster or billboard per 12 city blocks), as the populace genuinely enjoys living and serving the Technocracy. While not xenophobic per se, the Technocracy is very protective of its traditions and way of life, taken from an amalgamation of various East Asian cultures, and its reliance on slave labour for a decent portion of its economy is one of the main critiques for oppositionists

社会统一战争 (War for Societal Unification): The War for Societal Unification was the event that turned humanity from a quarrelsome, belligerent species into one that had no borders, where true cooperation was something more than just a pipe dream, although it wasn't peaceful. The war involved three belligerent entities; the Coalition of Democratic Nations, the League of Neutral Nations and the Asiatic Sovereign Technocracy, and lasted for over two decades. The war began by the League considered joining the Technocracy, which caused the Coalition to launch a "preemptive strike" on the League which in turn caused the Technocracy to declare war on the Coalition. The Coalition performed well during the war initially, but gradually declined as the war progressed and became more authoritarian by forbidding citizens to leave Coalition territory. The war resulted in a Technocracy victory and marked a new era for humanity's prosperity, unity and scientific advancement under the name the Imperial Asiatic Technocracy. This unity and advancement helped create the first hyperdrive in the year 2198.