Ruby Rose: Huntress of Fenrir

Disclaimer: I don't own God Eater or RWBY.

6- A Little Bonding Time

She woke groggily. Barren ground flooded her vision as she picked herself up. Her claws dug into the dirt as she sook herself awake. The giant metal carcasses of skyscrapers hung askew above her as she trotted forward, eager to cover more ground to satisfy her curiosity. However, she soon noted her kin surrounding her, roaring warnings to not proceed. She did so anyway.

Soon, her ears perked up. Shouts. A new quarry? She snuck forward. Carefully peaking over a fallen building, she saw her kin hunting her kin. Indignation rushed through her. How dare they forget their mission! She snarled and rushed forward, eager to remind them of their purpose, when she was suddenly thrown back.

Another snarl ripped through her muzzle as a voice broke through her mind: "Such invasive thoughts…are unbecoming of you, Ruby…"

Ruby gasped for breath as she jolted awake. She grabbed her chest as she tried to steady her breathing. Her eyes darted around, seeing only the drab, grey walls of her barrack. Her breathing finally evened out, making her exhale in exhaustion as she fell back onto her bed.

"…What a dream…" she mumbled and closed her eyes. However, the visions of the dreams assaulted her, making her grit her teeth. She spun to her side, trying to get comfortable, but it didn't help. She spun to lay on her front and face in her pillow, but it was ineffective as well. She growled as she flipped back to her back and threw the blankets over her head, but still, it did nothing.

After several minutes of tossing and turning, she snarled and kicked her blankets off. "Well, I'm awake now!" she ground out. "Now what?!"

Friar lobby, a few hours later

Nana yawned as she sunk into one of the benches in the Lobby. She had received a text from Captain Julius to meet here even though this was their off day. But Nana wasn't one to shy away from meeting her new friends and so got dressed and made her way down.

What surprised her, however, was she was the first one to arrive, which was strange. She would have assumed Julius would be first, but he could be excused because of captain things. But Ruby was always first to arrive to meetings like this. And she was nowhere to be seen.

She tried texting her, but Ruby had yet to reply. That wasn't like Ruby at all.

"Hey, Nana…" Nana turned to see Romeo sluggishly trudging his way to her. She waved at him.

"Hey, Romeo! Morning!" she called back, getting only a groan in return. He blearily looked around and frowned.

"You're early," he commented. She scoffed.

"I wish! I almost went back to sleep when I got the captain's text!" she complained.

"Then where's Ruby?"

"I don't know. I tried calling and texting, but she's not answering."

"Huh. That's…weird," Romeo admitted. "Ruby always answers…"

"Right?"

"Glad to see you two here on such short notice," Julius's voice called out from the elevator, drawing the two God Eaters' attention over to see their captain walking towards them. "Have any of you heard from Ruby?" he asked. Nana shook her head.

"She's not answering her phone," Nana answered, making Julius nod.

"It's the same for me," he admitted with a frown. "I even stopped by her barracks, but she was already gone."

"Really?"

"Indeed." He sighed. "Since this was our first break since all of you have joined Blood, I thought it would be a good idea to spend together and get to know each other better."

"Oh! That's a great idea, Captain!" Nana exclaimed.

"Please, Nana, just Julius will suffice," Julius told her. "We're not on duty today; there's no need to be so formal."

"O-Oh! Ok then! Sure! Cap-I mean, Julius! Hehe!" Nana giggled. Her eyes widened as she thought of something. "Oh! I know!" she cried as she pulled out her phone, confusing Julius and Romeo.

"Uh, Nana? What are you doing?" Romeo asked.

"Calling Barbara! If there's anyone who would know where Ruby is, it's her!" she told him as she dialed the number. The dial tone went on for a few seconds before Barbara picked up.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Barbara! It's Nana!" Nana said.

"Hey, girl! Let me guess, you looking for Rubes, huh?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"She's been here at Maintenance since three this morning," Barbara explained. "She's testing ways to modify her Arc to fit her preferred style, and it's not been going well!" Suddenly, over the phone they heard a crash and a roar of frustration, making Barbara laugh. "That makes numero twenty!"

Nana could help but be a bit concerned at the background noise, but Barbara continued, "Anywho! Ya needing Ru for somethin'?"

Nana jolted. "Huh? Oh, yeah! Cap-I mean Julius wanted us all to hang out and get to know each other since it was our day off, and we were hoping Ruby could join us!" she explained.

"Heh! Sounds like somethin' Ruby'll be interested in! Tell ya what, you guys head down to the cafeteria, and I'll have Ruby headin' there shortly. Because I know my girl hasn't eaten breakfast yet!"

"Sounds perfect! Will do!" Nana exclaimed.

"Great! See ya there! Bye!"

"Bye, bye!" Nana hung up her phone and turned to Julius. "Seems like Ruby was in Maintenance and was working on her God Arc. Barbara said to meet at the cafeteria, and she'd have Ruby up there in a few minutes!"

"Sounds good," Julius told her and turned to Romeo, silently asking his opinion.

"No complaints from me!" Romeo told him with a salute, making Julius nod.

"Then let us depart to the cafeteria," he told his team.

"Yes sir!"

With Ruby, minutes later

"I hate you."

"Aw, I know! I love you too, Ru!"

"Your punishment will be swift: it will be painful: it will be glorious."

"Don't threaten me with a good time!"

"I will savor your screams as you lay helpless before me."

"Sounds like a date!" Barbara teased as Ruby's eyes narrowed further. She giggled in delight. "Oh, lighten up, Ru! It was for your own good!"

"You tried stealing my cloak," Ruby told her flatly.

"Like I said, for your own good!" she said back. "Honestly, Ruby, you've been at that table for nearly six hours! Six! That's only two hours away from a full shift!"

"Kind of hypocritical of you to point that out when you were there since midnight!"

"Because I've got a backlog of eleven Arcs I gotta fix! I don't do long ass days like this for the hell of it!" Barbara protested. "Besides, it's better than your endurance runs when you were still with us! No human should be able to go a full forty-eight hours straight repairing God Arcs with no sleep!"

Ruby scoffed. "Forty-eight hours is lightweight!" she told her. "I've once went four days repairing my team and sister team's weapons!"

"FOUR DAYS?! Girl, how are you human?!" Barbara exclaimed. "And also, WHY four days?! You told me Beacon was working on smaller God Arc units! It shouldn't have taken you that long to fix them!"

"They were also far more mechanically intricate than God Arcs!" Ruby replied.

"That's still a weak argument, and you know it!" Sadly, Ruby knew it was. She didn't speak often of her cover story, so to keep details sparse and not unravel on her. But she was comfortable speaking with Barbara, and it made certain details slip out, much to her chagrin. Thankfully, Barbara wasn't likely to report any discrepancies to anyone out of her friendship with Ruby.

She didn't deserve such a loyal friend.

They entered the mess hall, and Ruby instantly saw where the others in Blood were sitting. They saw her and waved her over, making her sigh. "Alright, I'm here," she told Barbara, making the young woman huff.

"Good! I better not see you back for at least several hours!" she ordered. She smiled and waved as she turned around. "Bye!" Ruby sighed as she moved to grab a plate of food.

Once she had her breakfast, she walked over to the rest of her team. "Sorry 'bout missing your texts! I was…busy…" she said lamely.

"Yeah. It sounded like it when I called Barbara!" Nana said, giggling. Ruby sighed as she took a seat next to Julius.

"I'm so close too!" she complained. "If only Friar had better materials on hand, I wouldn't be in such a rut!"

"Can't you just synthesize the materials with Aragami cores?" Romeo asked.

"Yes, but to make the parts I need, I need specific Aragami cores, and they're either rare to pull from the Aragami or the Aragami exist in an area too far from Friar's operation parameters!"

"You could requisition the parts from Fenrir headquarters," Julius told her.

"And waste my hard-earned Credits on overpriced trash? Pass!" Ruby scoffed. "Been there, done that! Last time I used those parts to repair an Arc, the God Eater almost died on mission because the parts broke too easily!"

"Are they that bad?" Julius asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Individually, they'll hold their own, sure. But outfitted on a machine that is heavily used and abused, like God Arcs, they aren't worth the price Fenrir charges for them!" Ruby explained.

"Hm. That sounds like something I'll need to make mention of in my reports later."

"Hey, Ruby?" Nana asked suddenly.

Ruby turned to her. "What's up?"

"I was wondering: your old team. Could you…maybe, tell us about them?" Nana asked hesitantly. Despite themselves, Romeo and Julius looked interested in that. Ruby winced a little but sighed, nonetheless. She gave them a slight smile.

"Sure!"

"A-Are you sure?"

"Yeah! We know it's kind of personal," Romeo said.

"It's fine!" Ruby assured them. Taking a deep breath, she sighed as she geared herself up for the next conversation. "Beacon had two God Eater pairs make up a four-man squad for their teams, so during my training I was on a team with three other girls."

"Really? So awesome!" Nana shouted with sparkles in her eyes.

"So, you had a team before us?" Romeo asked curiously. Ruby nodded.

"Yep!" Ruby's face turned wistful as she continued, "We were team RWBY! And before you ask, I didn't name the team. It's an acronym created from the first letter of our names."

The others laughed at that. "I was about to say!" Romeo giggled. "But that's quite the coincidence, isn't it?"

The former Huntress shrugged. "Maybe. But yeah. Team RWBY, consisting of myself, my partner Weiss, my sister Yang, and her partner Blake."

Julius hummed in interest at the new information. Ruby being a part of a team before made sense. She adapted to Blood far quicker than Romeo and Nana, easily working in tandem with all of them after only a few missions. Not only was she an experienced combatant, but she also had experience as a member of a unit. He took note of that for later.

"Wait. You have a sister?!" Romeo asked. "How come you haven't told us?!"

"You never asked," Ruby shrugged, making Romeo gape as Nana giggled. Ruby dug into one of her pockets and pulled out a picture. "Here. This is us." She set the picture down, and the three leaned over to look at it. It was taken a few years ago, with a younger Ruby in the center, her eyes closed as she gave the camera a wide, toothy grin as she flashed peace signs. To her right was a short white-haired girl who was glaring at a tall blonde haired, lilac eyed girl, who had her arms around her and a black-haired girl with a bow, who flashed a peace sign in one hand and held a tiny flag with 'Team RWBY' written on it.

"Awww! You were so cute!" Nana gushed, making Ruby blush a bit. She shook it off and pointed to the white-haired girl.

"That one's Weiss," she told them and moved her finger to the black haired one. "This is Blake." She moved to the blonde. "And that's Yang."

"THAT'S your sister?!" Romeo asked. "She looks totally different!"

"We have different mothers," Ruby explained.

"Oh! M-My bad…"

"Don't sweat it. We get that a lot."

"Hey, is it just me or do you look…younger than the others?" Nana asked.

"I am. I was fifteen when the director of Beacon accepted me into the program," Ruby explained. "Typically, the acceptance age is seventeen, but I…" She chuckled sheepishly. "I was a special case…"

"You were accepted into Beacon's God Eater program two years early?" Julius asked with a raised eyebrow. Ruby looked sheepish.

"Y-Yeah. Let's not…talk about that right now," she said. "You guys want to know about my team, right? Let's focus on them!" Julius raised an eyebrow, but he decided to humor her.

"Sure. Who was the leader, if I may ask?" he replied.

"Oh, me," she said simply and matter-of-factly. This caused Nana and Romeo to gape at her while Julius's eyes seemed to brighten a bit.

"YOU were the leader?!" Romeo and Nana screamed.

"Yeah. I was assigned to be leader of team RWBY. Now you get why I had to clarify on the name deal. People seemed to think I named the team after myself!" Ruby said with a laugh. The other two laughed with her as Julius let a small smile cross his face, once again filing this new information away for later.

Meanwhile

This trip turned out quite informative.

Cinder hummed in contentment as she strolled through the upper halls of Friar, her mission complete. Well, almost. Her primary objectives were complete, but before she left, she sensed another source of power aboard the massive fortress. One she didn't recognize.

Her curiosity got the better of her as she took off to identify the source. It wasn't hard; it certainly wasn't masking its presence at all. Very sloppy, in Cinder's humble opinion, but she very much doubted many here could actually sense it. That only fueled Cinder's interest. Whoever this was didn't fear getting caught.

She walked down a long hallway to reach two final doors. Cinder looked to the one on her right and grinned. There. Without any fear, she simply walked up to the door, opened it, and walked inside.

"Welcome!" a paraplegic blonde said cheerfully as Cinder closed the door behind her. "I've been expecting you!" Cinder chuckled.

"Were you? I'm surprised you knew I was here!" she commented in a sultry voice.

"Oh. I wasn't sure until you started accessing Fenrir files!" the blonde said with a smile and eyes closed.

Cinder smirked as she walked around the room, investigating the area. "And yet," she replied, "you haven't ratted me out yet."

"I certainly could, but I find myself far more interested in you! Oh, but where are my manners?! My name is Rachel Claudius! And might I ask yours?"

Cinder chuckled at her. "Cinder Fall."

"Please! Have a seat!" Rachel said, gesturing to a couch. Cinder rolled her eyes as she walked over and laid down on the couch and stretched out leisurely, making Rachel giggle. "Please! Make yourself at home!"

"I intend to!" Cinder told her. "Now, how about we cut to the chase? You obviously know I'm not from your organization, so what's your angle?"

"Straight to the point, are we? Very well! My first reason is I wanted to meet another person like me!" Rachel told her.

"Ah, I see." Cinder nodded. "You are indeed like me, although I suspect you are far 'older' than I am…" Rachel giggled again.

"I suppose that is true! Although, you are far more powerful than me!"

"I've learned recently more power doesn't exactly measure up to experience."

"You'd be surprised! But onto my other reason…What are your intentions with Ruby Rose?" Cinder laughed at this, making Rachel tilt her head to the side.

"You know, if you had asked me that two years ago, my answer would be a lot different!" she purred. "Back then, I likely would have said I wanted her to suffer for what she did to me…"

"And now?"

"Now…Now, I see things clearer," Cinder explained. "It was thanks to her that I finally found myself free of all the shackles that chained me." She looked up to the ceiling and said, "For the first time in my entire life, I'm completely free, with all the power I could ever want at my fingertips." She raised a perfectly manicured hand and smiled as she stared at it. "I find myself truly grateful to Ruby for this new lease on my life…"

She clenched her and smirked. "And after finding out she's just like me…hehehe…you could say I feel something akin to a familiar bond with her." She turned her gaze back to Rachel. "That answer your question?"

Rachel burst into a fit of giggles. "Perfectly!" She sobered up and asked, "One last thing, what are your future goals?"

"Currently? Simply enjoying my freedom," Cinder told her simply as she sat up. "Later? Who knows?" She shrugged as she stood. "It was fun talking to you, Miss Claudius. But I think I'll be taking my leave."

"Very well," Rachel agreed. "I do hope we can find ourselves as allies later, Miss Fall." She gave a serene smile. Cinder walked out of the room and closed the door. She walked away from the door and chuckled.

"She'll be one to keep an eye on for later," Cinder murmured to herself.

An: Don't forget to review and tell me what you think! 'Till next time!