Hey all, welcome back

Few things first, the setting starts at vol.2 and moves on from there. That being said, Ruby will be the main focus within the canon but some non canon stuff is in here too. Most of the major fightsshe will play a part in, that includes afew extras.

As for her semblance, it will play a big role in the story for her as well.

Enjoy~

[12:30am Beacon Academy, Headmasters Office]

-Ozpins POV-

As a headmaster of an academy solely focused on training budding adults to effectively kill monsters, it's usually my job to make sure that my students are in an optimal environment that will produce capable huntsmen and huntresses. To accomplish such a tall task requires certain... rules for all of my students to follow. These very rules serve to not only keep order within the academy, but to also ensure the safety and well-being of the students attending.

Rules such as curfews...

After all, how can anyone hope to be productive enough to handle a full days work without having the necessary rest beforehand? They wouldn't, they would be a complete wreck and if their restlessness was more severe, they could also be a potential danger to themselves and those around them. Fortunately, this incident of curfew breaking won't become anything more than a slap on the wrist seeing as how the perpetrator more than likely... hopefully had a good reason as to why they were currently in one of Beacons many training rooms past curfew.

Said student being none other than Ruby Rose... the very same girl I'd given exception to once before. I expect a stunt like this from Mr. Arc or Miss Nikos honestly, but not from Miss Rose.

When she was saving a dust shop from being robbed, I'd pardoned her and offered her a position at this school. Even though she is still two years below the age limit, she was and is clearly a prodigy so I was willing to bend a bit to accommodate. Though, with all of this beforehand knowledge, I still have no idea what to do about the footage I'm seeing. Roses becoming blades in the winds, Ruby turning into the petals themselves. I haven't seen a semblance that acted as hers in quite some time.

"How interesting..."

After successfully sneaking back into her dorm and bed, she'd fallen asleep quite easily. Having spent well over an hour reworking and rethinking everything she thought she knew about her semblance, sleep was well earned in her opinion. Drifting off into her dreams, she saw nothing but roses that night.

That being said, waking up late and causing your team to be late for the first class of the morning definitely sucked. Professor Port hadn't really minded of course but it still would've been nice to get there on time.

Ruby was still excited about her new tricks of the trade and was very eager to practice again. The desire to master her semblance had ignited something in her, a drive to succeed that she didn't know she had in her. Once again she found herself quite antsy and active, ready to hit the training rooms as soon as the class ends.

That is, until her partner Weiss stopped her dead in her tracks. Ever the worry wart, she grabbed a hold of Ruby by her cloak and started walking back to their dorm room. "And just where are you going, Ruby? I hope you didn't forget all the homework we've been assigned, because Im not letting you cheat off of me tonight!"

Clearly she was in no mood to let Ruby go galavanting across the campus without taking care of business first. "B-but Weiss I gotta-!"

"No butts Ruby, lets go! You're nearly failing your dust studies as is." The finality in her tone was scaring the little rose quite a bit.

And so, Ruby was dragged, kicking and screaming back to her room to finish her assigned homework for the day.

After two hours of the heiress's lectures and rants about the various uses of dust and Ruby's lack of knowledge on the subject, Ruby was finally free to leave. Bursting into petals before anyone in her room could even try to tell her otherwise, she flew down the halls as she set a course to the training rooms.

Once she'd made it there, she made a point to make sure that none of her immediate friends had seen her or were in the training room with her at the time. She wanted to be completely alone for this, her personal time to practice.

She quickly set about releasing her petals into the air and simply basked within them for a moment. She took the time to admire every one of them, each and every petal was throughly examined by her eyes. She took a note on how they swished and swayed softly as she would openly awe at their beauty. It was almost as if they knew what she was saying with her compliments, the thought of it made her smile.

Feeling the petals movement around her, she felt ready to train and pulled out her scroll to access the rooms facilities.

"Hmm... ah-ha! There!" She loudly exclaimed, pulling up a menu for training bots. Beacon had them installed just in time for this year's semester. When accessed via scroll, any student can call up a set amount of bots to fight and practice with. The student is also able to control their skill and technique by level. One being the weakest level, two being the beginner level. Three being intermediate, four the expert and five, master level.

"How about... three at level... four!" The wall in front of her opened up as soon as she finished tapping in the desired settings.

Three menacing looking bots walked out and assumed formation, hoplite shaped helmets adorned each of their heads. Their bodies were far more skeletal in design with no wires visible and covered in plating, everything plated was sleek and shiny. All of them held a sword and pistol, the latter aimed directly at the little reaper with glowing, red eyes.

Ruby's grin grew wide as she began releasing more petals around her, soon enough the entire room was filled by a cloud of red. In an instant, the bots were prepared to fire a swath of bullets were closing in on her, wasting no time in initiating the fight. Unfortunately for them, she was waiting for an opportunity like this to try something new with her speed.

During her earlier classes, while not paying attention to Professor Oobleck's speedy speeches, she had an amazing idea pop into her head. The classroom itself being the catalyst. She had wanted to leave so badly, she'd wished she could teleport away from his incessant, incoherent ramblings and it hit her like a brick to the forehead.

Maybe she could...

Back to her practice, she had to focus. She knew how her semblance worked before she discovered her newer features and the same held true now.

When she would use her speed, her body breaks down at the molecular level and would reassemble where she chose to do so. Now with the rose petals occupying the empty space of the room, maybe she could do it instantaneously.

"Ok tin cans, lets do this." She confidently said to herself, having long since been ready to put theory into practice. Time had slowed to a crawl for her and everything was clear, she picked a cluster of petals directly above the mecha trio and reached out to them with her aura. It took a lot of willpower for her to resist the urge to do what came natural to her, then she felt it.

A sensation of sorts from the petals. It felt like a pull from a guiding hand or a dear friend. She gave into the feeling and a massive shift was felt all over her body, but as quickly as it came, it left. To her complete surprise however, she was no longer standing in front of the robots. The feeling of weightlessness was what shook her back into reality of what happened.

She wasn't in front of the bots because she was now high above them.

She was above them... and she hasn't fell to the floor yet, just hovering and very slowly coming down.

Looking down, even the machines were slightly confused as they silently marched around and scanned the area. She knew she had the upper hand but still wanted to indulge her curiosity a bit, so she found another cluster of roses just behind the metal group.

Before she would jump again, she checked her aura. 'Hmm... sixty-eight percent? Well I have been throwing my semblance around...' spewing her petals everywhere had been a bit costly. She would need to find a better way to teleport in the near future, but for now this was fine, she had accomplished another milestone.

Focusing on that pulling sensation this time was much easier, almost natural now. Shifting again was much less of a jarring experience and as she appeared behind the bot gang, she was already drawing Crescent Rose and taking aim. One well placed shot slammed into the skull of the middle bot and completely dented the side of its head. While that wasn't enough to stop it, her hailstorm of sharp rose petals pelting into all of them certainly did some damage.

Seeing as how her opponents were preoccupied with trying to withstand her attack and turn around, she went on the offensive completely. She dashed at them quickly, but at the very last second and just before the closest bot could swing its sword, she fell into a slide. Slipping right between them, she sprung up from the floor and unleashed a devastating whirlwind assault on the hopeless machine.

Bisecting it right up the middle as her petals made short work of the rest of it, dicing up its plating and tearing through its exposed wiring. The other two machines started working in tandem and trying to make controlled swipes and stabs at her, but stopped when they realized she was gone yet again.

Before they could even turn around, Ruby decided to draw the curtains on this fight. One good swing from her Crescent Rose silenced the entire arena as two hoplite heads hit the floor.

"...Yyyyeeeeessss!! I can teleport! This is so cool!~ Oohhh~."

She squealed and jumped around the room with all the happiness she could muster. Once she calmed down a bit, she set about checking her aura once more, it sat at an understandable thirty-two percent. She figured that using her petals and teleportation alone wouldn't dampen her aura that much. Using them excessively together, that could and did take a chew chunks of her aura out of her.

She was going to have to find a way to be more efficient with her use of semblance, but luckily she had an idea how to do so now.

In the days that followed, she'd made a point to keep her semblance active throughout the day. It wasn't in use per say but she kept a fair amount of rose petals flowing nearby her. It was a manageable amount of aura loss for her so it wasn't much of a strain. Overtime, she would take note of how her natural speed would increase the longer her semblance was live.

The petals themselves seemed to react to her thoughts and feelings far more then she remembered, fluttering excitedly when she was happy or eating sweets. They would slowly swish and sway when she was deep in thought, and when she was upset they would stutter and shake in their position. Ruby liked it personally, it made her feel like she was communicating with her semblance in a way, as it would react to her words at times as well.

In fact, her own teammates at times would catch her quietly speaking to someone during the late hours of the night. It woke Yang up from her sleep one night, when she questioned Ruby about it, she would just pass it off as her praying aloud or something of that nature. It kept her team mostly placated, but they certainly had more questions. Even Weiss had commented on her excessive use of her semblance more than a few times. Ruby usually just shrugged her off, knowing how Weiss was, she'd probably just be grumpy or upset about whatever Ruby decided to tell her.

Quite honestly, Ruby liked having this secret to herself. It was like her little secret weapon that no one really knew about.

Most of the other students were still mildly shocked by her performance days ago and really didn't know what to make of her semblance now. She saw no reason to reveal anything else until she felt ready to do so. Besides most students have their own secret moves or something to give them an edge right? Why couldn't she?

Which brings us to another combat class.

Sitting by her teammates as usual, Ruby admittedly isn't very focused on the fight at the moment. Paying more attention to her petals while a fairly average student is trying and failing to withstand a barrage of kicks. Said kicks coming from one of the newer students, a transfer student if she remembered correctly. He was doing very well at keeping the other student from being able to initiate any counter attack of their own.

Another quick flurry of kicks and a roundhouse kick made short work of his opponent. The roundhouse having connected with their face causing them to fly backwards and out of bounds. The loud buzzer sounded the end of another round and the beaten student was helped away by his team, limping as he walked away.

The resident assistant Headmistress stepped into the spotlight once more, preparing to speak.

"And the victor is Mr. Mercury Black. Well done sir. Now with that we still have time for one more match-up, do we have any Volunteers-," Miss Goodwitch didn't get the chance to finish her question before Mercury himself cut her off.

"I can still fight ma'am and if it's fine with you, I'd like to choose my next opponent. I did win the last fight, after all."

He spoke with an arrogant, smug expression on his face. Clearly, he must think he's all that if he can just fearlessly interrupt Miss Goodwitch. Though she didn't seem visibly upset by it, nobody could tell if she was. She simply fixed her glasses and spoke evenly as she carried on.

"Hmm... very well Mr. Black, who will be your next opponent?"

"I want her."

Lifting his arm, his choice was made clear. His finger pointed to the one and only, Ruby Rose. She herself wasn't paying much attention to him until...

"Hey, you dolt! You're up next, pay attention!" Followed by a slap to the back of her head, Weiss would not put up with laziness or complacency.

"Ow! Ok, ok Weiss Im going... you big meanie," Ruby grumbled as she begrudgingly got up from her seat.

It wasn't like she was against the fight, she had just gotten so caught up in playing with her semblance that she wasn't all there. It wasn't until she got to the ring, that she realized that this could be another training session for her. She smiled at the thought of getting even better with her petals as she met Mercury in the center of the arena.

As the countdown started, her petals already filled the air though she made sure to keep them concentrated around her.

"Three... Two... One... Begin!"

Kicking himself off from his position, Mercury launched himself at her at top speed. His first kick just narrowly missing her head by a few slight inches. To his surprise however, she was no longer in front of him. Looking around in confusion, he didn't notice her scythe coming from directly behind him. He turned around just in time to escape being nearly beheaded but took the hit to his upper chest.

"There, she did again. How can she just disappear like that?" Blake asked with more than a little bit of curiosity. She was genuinely interested in knowing how her team leader just teleported at this point, and the match just started.

Her teammates didn't fair much better when it came to answering her question.

"Im drawing blanks here," said Yang as she shrugged.

"I have to agree with Yang on this one. Im at a loss with this," said Weiss as she intently stared at the two dualists.

Back to the fight, Mercury found himself backpedaling from the red reaper as her spinning scythe attacks were smothering him. Left, down, right, up, the blade of her scythe came from every direction and angle. He wasn't sure how long he could hold out as his aura was being chipped away, so he as soon as the opening presented itself, he leapt into action.

Unleashing a powerful kick to her stomach just at the end of her last swing. She definitely felt that, his foot was so heavy when she it felt it connect to her. He quickly started firing rounds from Talaria, his kicks releasing a dozen of his aura enhanced, dust rounds that were closing in on her. She wasn't bothered in the slightest by this however, she flicked her left hand to the side and stream of roses sliced through the barrage with relative ease.

She as she was about to make another teleporting shift, he did something that surprised everyone a great deal. As he stood up, he placed one had in the air and turned his head to face Miss Goodwitch.

"I forfeit."

Well... she didn't expect that. She was so confused, she never expected anyone to even want to give up.

Before Ruby could get a word in edge wise, he simply walked back to his team in the stands. Clearing her throat, Miss Goodwitch quickly took charge of the situation.

"Well then... It seems that Ruby Rose is the victor. Next time, you may want to think a little harder before choosing your opponents Mr. Black." He just nodded and went back to lounging in his desk.

Ruby gave the man one last look-over before shifting back to her seat, scaring the daylights out of her sister and team when she was right behind them before she sat down.

What an odd class today...

Words from the Author

Soooo, what did you think? Did I do good so far?

Next chapter will have more interactions with her team and jnpr, and more of her semblancebecoming... more.

Later~