Blake sat in the Liset's compartment again, Umbra next to her as they flew down towards Patch. The silent Warframe had Ruby's communicator pinned to its scarf, letting the girl hum a little song as they descended. Blake would be lying, heavily, if she didn't say she wasn't curious about what had happened in the "Void" that Ruby didn't want to talk about, but also understood pushing the matter would likely just make the girl angry. And she didn't want to know what would happen when you made someone angry on a spaceship.

That, honestly, sounded like a good way to get vented into space.

Finally, after a minute, they flipped around and the magnetic locks holding them in place disengaged, dropping Blake and Umbra down on the outskirts of the town and flying off. Already, several Huntsmen students had gathered, weapons drawn as they stared at Umbra. Yeah, that was an appropriate response to an apparent alien dropping from the sky.

"Alright," a voice said, pushing through the crowd. He was a blond man with a scruff of beard and blue eyes, a heart tattoo on his bicep, "What the hell is going on-?"

"Dad?" Ruby's voice came from the communicator, just for a second, before energy seemed to explode out of Umbra and form into Ruby. Blake blinked as Umbra took a step back, hand going to his sword as he did. Ruby could just… Teleport from the Orbiter to Remnant? That was a thing she could do? "Dad?"

The man stared for a long second, eyes widening, before he said, strangled and disbelieving, "Rosebud? Is… Is that… This… What…?"

Ruby suddenly teleported forwards in a flash of red light, slamming into the man's gut and wrapping her arms around his midsection. The man slowly, haltingly lowered himself so he was even with Ruby, pushing her back slightly so he could look her over and then say, "It's really you… This is… This is real?"

"Uh huh," Ruby nodded, and the man pulled her into a hug.

"You're… What happened?" He said in a voice choked with emotions, "We went to unlock your Aura and you just… Disappeared. We thought you were… We thought you joined Summer."

"I don't want to talk about it," Ruby said.

"What- Ruby, you, we're not just gonna avoid-"

"Yes, we are," Ruby said, "That's non negotiable. We are not talking about where I went, what I've been doing or anything like that. It's in the past, I'm not talking about it, and you can't make me!"

Blake realized that as Ruby got more agitated, so did Umbra. The Warframe gripped the gold pommeled sword at his side, slowly drawing it and, Blake realized suddenly, making the first noise Blake had heard from him. A muffled growl.

"Rosebud-" the man said.

"What do you think you're doing?" another scruffy man with black hair and a red cape said, walking forwards with a giant sword on his shoulder until he was chest to chest with Umbra. It said something that the Warframe still was a good head taller than the admittedly tall man. "Can't you see they're having a moment here, uh?"

Ruby pulled away from the blond man, walking towards Umbra and the dark haired one. The blond caught her arm, " Rosebud-"

"I'm just walking over there, Dad," Ruby said.

"Then I'm walking with you," he said, like he was afraid Ruby would disappear again. Which, Blake supposed, was a valid concern.

— X Qrow X—

Qrow would be lying if he said his relationship with Tai hadn't decayed over the past half decade. It was his fault, not Tai's, Tai made it clear he didn't blame Qrow for Ruby's disappearance but Qrow absolutely did. It was the ultimate, final evidence he couldn't be close to his loved ones without them getting hurt by Misfortune.

So when Ruby reappeared suddenly with a weird ship and a weirder man she had seemingly burst from, his heart had soared. He had watched the reunion to the side, wanting to rush forwards and pull Ruby into a hug but knowing Tai deserved that right infinitely more. And when the strange, alien man started to get uppity, he stepped in even as the sword started to raise.

Before anything could happen, Ruby pulled from the hug and walked over, looking at him and saying, "Uncle Qrow?"

"Heya, Pipsqueak," Qrow said, mouth dry.

"Give me a second," Ruby said, before planting a hand on the alien man's chest and closing her eyes. Her breathing came out slow and long, and slowly, the man and Ruby both lowered themselves to the ground, clearly meditating.

"I'm sorry about Umbra," she said, voice calm and level, "the man who made him… Hurt him, a lot and badly. So he's protective of me, because I can understand the pain and take it away. Me getting upset made him upset. It's alright, I'm fine, there's no need to fight here, we're safe."

The last sentence was clearly directed at Umbra, quietly. The man made a quiet rumbling noise, and Ruby stood up, Umbra staying in meditation behind her. She then tackled Qrow into a surprisingly strong hug given her frame, knocking Harbinger out of his hand and into the ground. She squeezed him around the midsection, a bracer on her left arm digging into his back.

"I missed you," she said.

"I missed you too, Pipsqueak," Qrow said, returning the hug, "Who are your, uh, your friends?"

"Umbra is Umbra," Ruby said like that explained everything, and maybe it did to her, "He's a Warframe. I can control him to fight. And Blake is someone I met trying to get back to Patch. She's along for the ride but gonna head into Vale."

"I might stick around for a bit, actually," Blake said, "Patch looks nice and calm."

"Ok?" Ruby said, "Where's Yang?"

"Back at the house," Tai said, "You want to go see her, Rosebud?"

"Of course," Ruby said, and disintegrated into energy, Umbra standing up.

"Ruby!" Both Tai and Qrow called.

"I'm here," a small device on Umbra's scarf said, "I just went back to piloting Umbra. I'll Transfer back when we get home."

"You scared me," Tai said, "I thought-"

"I wasn't really there," Ruby explained, "I'm in a safe place, I'll bring you when there are less people around. I can just make a copy of my body to do stuff away from myself. You could kill it and I'd be fine."

Qrow shared a look with Tai, the burning question they knew they weren't going to easily get the answer to was "what had happened to Ruby?"

— X Ruby X—

Ruby, through Umbra, sat in the back of her dad's pick up truck, Blake across from her and Qrow and her dad in the cab. If she closed her eyes, ignored the slightly labored breathing and flashes of Ballas and Issah through the link, she could almost imagine she was in the truck herself, riding home after a day of school.

…She missed school. Missed when her biggest worries were getting overloaded during a test and failing it and trying to explain to dad that sometimes the world was just too much. Maybe she could find a way to go back to school, Margulis had tried to teach them, even despite the lack of control they had over their void powers after being rescued, if you could call it that, from the Zariman Ten-Zero, but that had ended with her execution.

After that, there had only been lessons on how to kill. With blade and gun and bow and even their bare hands and every way imaginable against every target imaginable. Well, except Orokin, couldn't have your perfect warriors turning traitor and killing you, could you?

In the Somatic Link, Ruby's lips twitched upwards into a grim smile. That hadn't stopped the bloody end that had come to the Orokin in the end. It wasn't right to take pleasure in something like what they had done, but the Orokin had had it coming.

"So what's it like?" Blake asked.

"What?" Ruby broke from her recollections.

"To come home after being away for so long?"

Ruby thought back to the hugs she had gotten in town, of seeing her dad and Uncle Qrow again for the first time in centuries. Of the excitement bubbling in her gut at the idea of seeing Yang again in equally long, and said, "Good. Do you have family, Blake? I mean, you're staying with us-"

"Staying with you?" Blake blinked, "Where'd you get that idea?"

"You helped me get home didn't you? Letting you stay with us is the least we can do. It's not like I need a bedroom, just somewhere for Umbra to meditate while I rest up on the Orbiter."

Blake briefly looked touched, before saying, "I have family but… We haven't been in touch in years. My fault, not theirs. They live in Menagerie."

"Isn't that, like, the Faunus kingdom?" Ruby asked.

"...Yeah, I… I guess I'm being stupid hiding it, you trusted me with the Liset and Orbiter. I'm a Faunus."

"I kinda knew already," Ruby admitted in turn, "I saw your bow move like ears."

"We're here," Dad called, and they stopped outside the wooden house. Ruby slung Umbra over the edge of the truck's metal walls, Blake hopping out the back. Activating Transference, Ruby used Void energy to form a replica of her body. Umbra began to follow behind her, her dad unlocking the door and opening it, "Yang! Can you come here? We have someone who wants to see you."

"Who-?" Yang started, before stopping as she saw Ruby.