"Colonel we're on final aproach to Beacon academy right now." Annette, Ruby's pilot, called back to her, "think you can act like you're not completely screwed up while you're there?" Ruby smiled at the flippant attitude that she would always get from the silver haired faunus girl.

"I don't know, I think I would have recovered by now were it not for this one cat faunus constantly making fun of me" Ruby replied in jest.

"You know I'm your ride out of here right?" Annette answered back. While their first meeting had been rather rocky, Annette and Ruby had grown to be good friends, in their own wierd way. "You want to land normally or just jump to your doom again?"

"Go ahead and take us in," Ruby answered completely serious this time, "I want to keep a relatively low profile this time." Annette turned and looked at Ruby with feigned surprise.

"The great Colonel Summers keeping a low profile?!" Annette said, "Now I've seen everything!"

"Shut up and take us in," Ruby said sternly, even though she was still smiling "let's get this over with"

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Ruby stepped off the ramp coming from the airship and looked around at the area around her. Annette had landed, probably by coincidence, at the same dock where Ruby had set foot into Beacon for the first time. It brought back many happy memories, and many painful ones. Ruby also noticed a few things about the area, the pavement was new, and the trees were all shorter. These were likely because of the attack on Beacon a few years ago. Once again Ruby breifely wondered how things would have been different had she stayed.

She quickly shook herself out of that line of thinking, reminding herself that she had a job to do. She made her way accross the courtyard and into Beacon's main building. She then took an elevator up to the top to report to her old mentor, proffesor Ozpin. Ruby looked over herself one more time. she had gone to great lengths to ensure she would not be recognized, even forgoing any red on her entire outfit. Instead she wore black combat boots, grey cargo pants, a black baseball cap, a dark blue hoodie and of course Penny's backpack form. Her actual looks were different too, she had died her hair blue and left in a ponytail over her left shoulder, and had used a colored contact to cause her remaining eye to be a slightly lighter blue. Once Ruby was done checking herself she waited for the elevator reach Ozpin's office. The wait was not a long one and soon Ruby found herself walking into the headmasters office. Ozpin was sitting behind his desk working on a stack of paperwork when Ruby entered. As he looked up at Ruby she noticed that he looked older, more tired.

"Can I he-can I help you?" Ozpin said taking a double take after looking at Ruby's face.

"General Ironwood sends his regards proffessor." Ruby said in thick perfect Atlesian accent, being careful to avoid saying or doing anything that she would have done a few years ago.

"Ah," Ozpin nodded in understanding, "I thought James was sending me one of his soldiers, not a student."

"I am a soldier," Ruby began not breaking her act for a moment, "Lieutenant Colonel Scarlette Summers, Atlesian InOps at your service."

"InOps?" Ozpin questioned.

"Intelligence Operations," Ruby explained "we're like Military Intelligence had a baby with Special Operations Command and put it on steroids, we handle everything from infiltrations to hunting down enemy spies," Ruby paused for effect "which I believe is what you need here, correct?"

"Yes," Ozpin said while shifting so he could hand Ruby a black scroll with several incident reports on it. "Over the last few months several diffent security systems have been breached and tampered with. Now a few years ago I would have written this off as some students misbehaving and let my assistant Glynda deal with it, but…" he trailed off.

"I understand, don't worry I'll find the culprit" Ruby said, "do you have any exchange students right now?"

"Yes, a few from shade and haven, why?" Opzin asked.

"Exchange students are the easiest way to inflitrate a school," Ruby replied, "I'll be posing as one during my investigation, Name is Shade Azure, if you could do the paperwork for that and get me a list of the other exhange students it will help tremendously." Ruby finished as she started walking out the office.

"Of course, and Ms. Summers?" Ozpin called out, Ruby paused to see what he had to say, "thank you, my students mean the world to me." Ruby remembered all he had done to help her, getting into Beacon, giving her advice, and even during her trial. For once she was actually happy with the task set before her if it meant she could return one of those favors.

"It's my pleasure Professor," Ruby said before stepping into the elevator, "I'll see you around."

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Ruby spent the rest of the day making arangements for what would likely be her next extended mission. She made sure Annette would be on station nearby in vale, and that she had a place there to stay. Ruby then set to work making shure Ironwood had sent some ficticous transcripts for Azure to Proffesor Goodwitch. After ensuring everything was in place Ruby went to her accomodations for this mission. They had decided to give Ruby a dorm room entirely to herself, for which Ruby was immensly greatful. While her night terrors had calmed somewhat over the years, they were still rather frequent and she didn't want to have to deal with questions she couldn't answer.

Ruby looked at the clock and found she still had quite a bit of time before she would need to get to sleep. After taking a moment to decide what to do, Ruby set Penny down in the middle of the floor and set to work. While Penny was an immensly powerful weapon already, old habits died hard and Ruby had made several 'advancements' to the original design. She had stramlined the blades giving them a straiter edge, improving the transformation time as well, she also added a rotating dust chamber to each blade, and finally modified the blades to expand into a shield much like Jaune's sheath had done. The result was that, while the fighting style was unique, the weapon itself couldn't be recognized as the same one Penny used during the Vytal Festival years ago. Ruby took a small earpiece out of her pocket and put it on.

"Penny? Are you there?" Ruby asked quietly

"Salutations friend Ruby!" The always chipper voice quickly answered her, nearly making Ruby pull out the earpiece because of how loud she was being.

"Not so loud Penny," Ruby said, "remember you're right in my ear."

"My apologies, it was not my intention to hurt your ear." Penny said a little more subdued.

"It's fine," Ruby said, "how are you doing with being back here, since you know, you kinda died the last time you were here?" Ruby asked the AI girl.

"I am doing well, it is absolutely wonderful to be back!" Penny said, regaining her chipperness again.

"How can you say that Penny, this is where you died." Ruby reminded the girl again. Penny paused for a moment as if in contemplation.

"Well I have so many happy memories of this place, the few bad ones do not outweigh them." Penny replied. Ruby sagged a bit believing that now there was truly no one who could relate to what she was feeling at the moment. "And the bad memories aren't even that bad anymore." Penny finished.

"Why's that?" Ruby asked, genuinely confused at what the AI girl said.

"Someone tried to kill me here, but I am here, changed but alive," Penny said, "It shows that they failed and I am stronger than them." Ruby could now see where Penny was coming from on her last statement. "Ruby, they tried to kick you out of Beacon and keep you from ever being a huntress," Penny said pulling Ruby's attention back to the AI girl, "But here you are attending Beacon once again, and you are already an accomplished huntress, you won, take joy in that."

"For someone who once struggled to understand human interactions you have become frustratingly observant." Ruby said, almost growling.

"I'm also right," Penny said in response, "Think about it." Ruby sighed and checked the clock.

"Later, I'm going to sleep for now." Ruby said as she packed up what she was doing and set the earpiece on one of the desks in the room. She then picked a bed and settled down for a restless night of sleep.