Chapter One
Present Day, 80 years after the Great War.
The brightness of the moon of Remnant shone down onto the City of Vale, from which a number of shards could be seen hanging from it. Without any cloud coverage to obscure it, the streets were relatively well-lit even when they didn't have any lightposts set on either side, while the citizens walked to and fro to their personal business. It was here that one Ruby Rose walked down the street to a Dust shop named From Dust Till Dawn. Upon walking inside, she immediately walked up to the Shopkeep.
When the Shopkeep looked up, it was to see the girl in her signature red hood and cape, paired with a black dress. The man chuckled lightly, already predicting what she was here for as a regular customer.
"Do you have any copies of Schnee Weapons or Helian Arsenal?" she asked, her voice light and airy. The Shopkeep pointed to the magazine section, and Ruby walked away to see what she can find. As she looked around the magazine section, she paused and examined an issue from Helian Arsenal, specifically the title and promised coverage:
Helian Arsenal 75th Anniversary Edition:
A brief look into the origens of Remnants' most widespread firearms manufacturer;
How it started: Pg. 5
Mistral-Atlas Conflict: Pg. 7
There were other things the magazine mentioned of course, but Ruby had a History project to write up, which just happened to be about the Mistral-Atlas Conflict, otherwise known as the Five-Month War or the Corporation War due to the... particular belligerents involved, and the circumstances that led up to it after the Great War had ended. She picked it out of the shelf, and opened up to the Mistral-Atlas Conflict page to start reading what it said on the magazine.
It has been 80 years since the ending of the Great War, and while much work has been done to ensure another war wouldn't break out amongst the Four Kingdoms, it is also common for people to talk about how the Atlas-Mistral Conflict that followed some 66 years after has shaped the way the peace that has been preserved by the Huntsmen Academies since has left its own smaller, but no less forboding mark in the history of Remnant.
While the Atlas-Mistral Conflict itself started just over more then six and a half decades after the Great War, it was afterall the result of rising tensions and political intrigue between the Schnee Dust Company based in Atlas, and the Mistral-based Gaean Industries, specifically the rival mining company it helped found, the Mistrali Dust Mining Conglomerate.
During this period of time, the Schnee Dust Company was in dire straits, that is until current owner Jacques Schnee was chosen in the will of founder and dearly beloved husband and father of 2, Nicholas Schee, to inherit it. His practices, though controversial today, managed to ensure the company didn't go bankrupt, even as he began expanding it rapidly.
At the same time, the smaller, but no less ambitious Restori-Life Cybernetics, Electronics, and Robotics was founded and grew within Mistral, notably by acquiring a government grant through the Vet-Care Act, which was used to fund a post-Great War project to give the veterans of the Mistral Armed Forces wounded in it prosthetic limbs and psychiatric counseling they otherwise wouldn't have been provided. The company garnered a great amount of international attention, when the company was also willing to hire Faunus workers, and in a surprising turn of events, fired one Ren Grove for discrimination towards three of his coworkers, prompting what turned out to be false accusations of planning to commit treason via launching a coup against the Mistrali throne.
By the time Jacques Schnee had turned his eye towards the Dust mines of Mistral, Restori-Life had grown alongside several other companies through the Kingdom, merging with them to form what we now know as Gaean Industries, a corporation which would include Helian Firearms, the Restori-Life CER company itself, and Weaver's Forge, the automobile company that also manufactured such war machines as the Mistrali Templar-34 mech that became ubiquitous as a symbol associated with Gaean Industries in much the same way the Atlasian Knight-450 did for the Schnee Dust Company after the Five Month War.
Upon seeing how the Schnee Dust Company was attempting to monopolize Dust mining, not just in Mistral, but all over Remnant, this prompted the head of Gaean Industries, one Lapis 'Don' Lucci to start lobbying with the government to prop up the many smaller, family-owned Dust Mining Companies by allowing them to purchase extra mining equipment and transportation vehicles to better compete with the SDC's own not inconsiderable output, and forcing it to raise its own Dust prices via import tariffs to subtly push Mistral's economic infrastructure into buying from said local mines.
The biggest move, however, was the founding of the Mistrali Dust Mining Conglomerate, which an unnamed cousin of Lapis helped oversee by speaking with the various smaller Dust mines, convincing them to pool their resources together by forming a single mining company to rival the Schnee Dust Company trying to put them out of business. Once this happened, the-
"Hey, kid." a voice said, interrupting Ruby's reading. The 15 year old frowned, as she turned to see a man dressed in black. As he approached, she saw he was carrying what looked to be a submachine gun, a SM-367 by the looks of it. He then gestured with his thumb at the door of From Dust Till Dawn.
"This is a robbery, door is thatawa-" he didn't even have time to finish his sentence when Ruby drew her Sniper-Scythe Cresent Rose, hitting him with the back end of it hard enough to launch out of the window. As Ruby looked up and over the shelf of Dust that was blocking her view of the rest of the shop, she saw more men in black suits, with the apparent leader of the group wearing white with a black bowler hat looking in her direction. The leader, who she noticed had bright orange hair covering one of his eyes picked up his cane and gestured to the rest of his men towards her.
"Get her." he said, scowling as his men approached her. Seeing that the close confines of her current environment meant that Cresent Rose would be hard to use effectively, Ruby switched it into its sniper rifle configuration, and fired out a bulley of Burn Dust into the stone wall, launching herself out of the front of From Dust Till Dawn without nothing but a scorch mark. She also made sure not to hit anything flammable or reactive to the shot to minimize the damage she had already caused, turning back to the Shopkeep as everyone inside saw her fly out.
"Sorry sir!" she shouted, as the man mumbled, then lowered himself down to avoid the potential crossfire. Ruby shot a second bullet to launch herself out of line-of-sight from the robbers, as the men in black suits fired off a number of bullets at her. The men ran out, and then saw her charging them.
"...Alright, this is going to be annoying." Their boss grumbled, letting the black suits rush Ruby. She replied back by swiping the legs of one of them out from under them with Cresent Rose in scythe form, while speeding past the others to maintain a minimum distance from them.
Using broad sweeping strokes, Ruby used the back end of Crescent Rose's scythe blade to club another black suit, clipping him in the shoulder, then the side of his stomach. During this, she kept herself hopping and moving about, dancing around the other store robbers and then swinging her weapon hard enough to smack her current target in the jaw with the back end of it, causing him to fall over and groan. He was officially out of the fight.
When one the men tried to reach for her hood from behind, she sensed his presence through her Aura, a sort of energy field that she learned during her training in the combat school of Signal on how to use in combat that all living beings on Remnant possessed save for the monsters of Grimm. she met him with a sharp and quick back kick to the abdomen just above the pelvis, the combat boot she wore in place of regular shoes making him cry out as she then shot it forward to high kick another in the chin, sending him up a few inches as both fell down to the ground.
Only one of the black suits were left standing, and he attempted go draw his gun on her, only for Ruby to bat it out of his hand with Crescent Rose and send it flying out into the street, next hitting him in the leg which sent him sprawling to the ground. As the small teenager looked around, she saw the ringleader was scaling a ladder, and had just gone up the roof of the building it was attached too.
Thinking quickly, Ruby turned Crescent Rose back to its sniper configuration, and fired off another bullet into the ground, flying up into the air and onto the building. The man in white tapped his cane, a nonplussed look on his face.
"Ok... talk about being worth every cent." he muttered to himself, while Ruby pointed Crescent Rose at him.
"Sir, I am afraid you will have to surrender and drop whatever Dust you have on your person." the teenager annouced, trying to sound authoritative as best as she could. The man was clearly not impressed.
"Are you sure you want to try me, Red?" he said with a deapan tone. Ruby frowned, and charged the man. He lifted his cane, and rather easily deflected the attack she swung at him, striking out with his cane which whiffed the air as Ruby ducked. When Ruby swung Crescent Rose, however, the man ducked under the scythe, and struck her in the knee.
As Ruby collapsed to the ground, she was forced to raised her weapon to block another swing that was made with an upward motion, allowing the man to force her back as the strength he put into his attack launched her into the air. A small airship then flew up into view, open the doors on its side for the man to jump inside. He then proceeded to throw something at Ruby.
"As nice as beating a brat may appeal to me Red, I have bigger fish to fry." Ruby then paled as she realixed that it was a red crystal of Fire Dust, as the man then raised his cane. When a sight popped out of the end of it, she got and attempted to shield herself with her Aura when he fired a shot at the Dust crystal.
As the Dust detonated in a violent explosion, Ruby felt more then saw that someone managed to intervene, and looked up to see her savior was a middle-aged woman with what looked to be a riding crop. In front of the two was a barrier of some kind, which deflected the force of the explosion away from them.
The woman was dressed in what Ruby thought resembled a witch costume, with a black cape which complemented a set of black leather pants and boots. For a top, she wore a white button-up blouse, and her eyes were framed by a pair of square eyeglasses.
Reacting quickly to the airship raising into the air, the older woman used what Ruby realized was her Semblance, an ability that is unique to its user, to lift up the rubble created by the Dust explosion, and lauched it at the transport the man was on.
Ruby stared as an exchange between the older woman, and another passenger ensued, ending with the airship flying away. When the older woman turned to look at Ruby, the young teenager smiled awkwardly at the frown she had... and then found herself in the Constabulary interrogation room.
"Do you realize how dangerous that could have been for you?!" the woman exclaimed at her. For the past ten minutes Ruby was being shouted at for her nearly getting herself killed. As the lecture continued, it was then someone else made their presence known.
"It's alright Glynda, I can take over from here." the two looked to see the man who spoke up. He was dressed in a primarily green and black uniform, with a green shirt with matching cowl inside a black suit jacket and pants. Ruby immediately recognized who he was, as the man set down a plate of cookies he held in one hand and a mug of what smelled like hot chocolate was held in the other.
"So, Ruby Rose... you have silver eyes" he said while he looked at her with his own, which were brown. After a moment, he backed up, allowing Ruby to look at the plate of cookies. After nibbling on one of them, she began to eat the rest of them as the man spoke up.
"So... Ruby, where did you learn this?" he asked, showing her what was likely a street camera recording of Ruby fighting the robbers. She got excited for a bit as she answered.
"Signal Academy, I was taught by my uncle Qrow." she replied, missing the way the man and Glynda both widened their eyes in recognition of the name.
"I see. Would you happen to know who I am?" the man asked. Ruby took a moment, then smiled as she realized who he was.
"You're Ozpin, Headmaster of Beacon! Qrow mentioned you before when I talked about wanting to go to Beacon!" she exclaimed, to which the man smiled.
"Well, as it happens, after watching your display in the street fighting those robber hired by Roman Torchwick-"
"Wait, that guy in the white coat was Roman himself!?" Ruby practically shouted, then blushed upon realizing she interrupted Ozpin.
"Yes, that was indeed him. Suffice it to say, what do you say about joining Beacon? the school curriculum for this year is going to start soon, so I have been looking around for particularly talented individuals such as yourself..."
A couple weeks later, Ruby was at the Vale International Airport, walking besides Glynda into an airship. Due to regulations, both of them had to have their weapons checked and examined by the Air Transportation Security Administration, who then put at least one security measure or other on their equipment. This was a sore spot for Ruby, as Cresent Rose had two Gravity Dust-laced brass security bands wrapped around it's portable form Ruby keeps it in when carrying with her like a backpack.
The Dust was activated to tighten said metal bands around it to ensure she can't transform it during the flight to Beacon, whether accidentally or on purpose, then put into a carry-on luggage bag that she had to carry alongside the one she brought with her. The luggage bag that her Sniper-Scythe was in even had a numerical keypad that she wasn't allowed to know the combo too. When she asked, it was insurance that she doesn't open it until they reach Beacon, where only then the A.T.S.A. would tell her the combination to open it!
Glynda meanwhile... only had her riding crop put into a small black metal case, with a electronic lock programmed to release only when they made it to Beacon. Ruby had a glum look on her at the unfairness of the whole thing. Though she at least was able to take the airship flight to Beacon for free. After a few minutes of walking, Glynda who sternly looked out among the throng of bodies.
"Is there something wrong, Miss Goodwitch?" Ruby asked. The woman looked over to Ruby with her expression unchanged. The teenager flinched back, to which Glynda softened her gaze.
"Sorry, just making sure there isn't anything or anyone... suspicious." Glynda, who Ruby now understood was both a teacher at Beacon and Ozpin's personal assistant.
"...Ok." Ruby said with a raised eyebrow, as she walked on in the opposite direction she was going. The two of them had separate seating in different parts of the passenger lounges, and Ruby turned upon hearing Glynda called her name.
"Miss Rose... it's a little early, but welcome to Beacon, and enjoy the flight." Glynda said, before going down a corner. Ruby smiled lightly at the acknowledgement, and headed to the cabin she was assigned.
After a short time waiting, the seating was filled, with her sitting by a window and the seat next to her occupied by a blonde who looked to be the same age as her. He was dressed plainly in a denim pants and hoodie, over which was a breastplate that gleamed white. He was sitting back down in his seat, returning from the restroom, when Ruby spoke up to him.
"Motion-sickness?" she asked, to which he nodded.
"Yeah..." he mumbled.
"Well, my name's Ruby, current destination Beacon. What about you?" she asked, to which the blonde man turned to her with a befuddled face.
"...Jaune, I am also going to Beacon." he says. Ruby brightened up at that.
"Really? I suppose that makes sense for the get up." she says, gesturing to the pieces of armor Jaune is wearing.
"Yeah, it was my grandpa's... ugh." the blonde teen mumbled, suddenly reaching into his pocket.
"What's wrong?" Ruby asked.
"There's a piece of gum on my shoe." Jaune replied, then he pulled put a set of matches. Ruby simpled stared dumbfounded as he pulled one out, and began dragging it across the sole of one of the simple tennis shoes he was wearing.
How did he... Ruby thought, when an alarmed voice cried out.
"He's trying to light his shoe on fire!" she heard from the row of seats behind her and Jaune.
"It's a shoe bomb! GET HIM!" somebody screamed, causing panic to erupt between the now scared crowd of passengers. As Ruby watched Jaune stammer, he only managed to dig the hole deeper for himself.
"It's not-no, it's gu-gum."
"Gun?! HE'S GOT A GUN!" a Rabbit Faunus dressed in what appeared to be a school unifrom shrieked. Ruby could only stare blankly as the fear of the passengers intensified further.
"Not 'Gun', 'Guum!'" Jaune tried to say, as out of nowhere a dusky-colored man with vibrant green eyes and hair rushed over, and then by Jaune's collar, yanked him violently out of his seat and lifted him up and over his head with one arm.
"GUUUU-WWWAAAAAHHH!"
*SMASH!*
"Special Operatives, you're under arrest!" the green-haired man exclaimed as he pinned Jaune to the floor of the airship cabin, while a Dog Faunus and a woman with white hair in a long ponytail watched from a distance.
"Ooooowwww..." Jaune moaned pitifully. Ruby, seeing that doing or saying anything wasn't going to do much, looked over to her travel case, and pulled out the current edition of Helian Firearms. Once Ozpin paid her bail to prepare for the trip to Beacon, she went and offered up a significant portion of her Lien to the Shopkeeper for From Dust Till Dawn to pay for the damaged window, his anger and frustration from the damage her intervention caused to the shop was satisfied and cooled. In exchange, he gave the magazine she had been reading, allowing her to go with her day.
"Everything alright?" Ruby turned to see who spoke to her, and saw it was the Dog Faunus with the Special Operatives. She heard about them, but as she couldn't recall the name of the ones in the airship, she stumbled over her words.
"I-I-I... uh, no. No, I am good." she replied. With that, the Special Operative walked away with a nod, leaving Ruby to read on in peace.