A couple of winters ago, when Ruby was about… thirteen summers old? Cinder had come home bringing a bunch of different flowers and berries from a kingdom called Atlas. There were two very similar berries that had stood out to Ruby when she had been shown them.

One had been the poisonous Snowberry, and the other the delicious Winterberry. They were almost identical except for one tiny little detail. The snowberry smelled sweeter, it also had a tart flavor but Ruby had learned that the hard way. Occasionally she would still try and eat a few, they weren't deadly unless you ate a ton. At the worst she'd get an upset stomach from eating more than five, but that was also winters ago and she'd built a tolerance since then.

The more she thought about the smell the more she was certain that it might now be snowberries but instead winterberries. The scent was pleasant but it wasn't sweet enough to make her mouth water. It also had that underlying minty bite from being buried in snow alongside patches of frost mint.

Definitely winterberries.

Delicious tasty winterberries, perfect for eating.

Time to hunt.

Ruby had to focus, she needed to block everything out and find the source of that smell. Her eyes shut tightly and her nose lifted up, she took a breath, and almost threw up. Tears burned through her eyes as she coughed and gagged, drawing a few glances and glares from passing students. The loud noises of engines and overlapping voices wasn't helping, in fact it made it worse forcing her to cover her ears in pain.

There were so many smells here, most of them were rather disgusting. Sweat, vomit from that one guy, oil and lots and lots of dust. There was also a ton of overly heavy smelly stuff from a group of young women strutting around, weirdo's. Why did anything but birds need to strut? Have you ever seen a moose strut? A grimm? No cause it was useless! It was a waste of energy and unneeded in the grand scheme of things.

There, right there! Just a couple meters ahead of the cat faunus trying to disguise her ears in a bow! Ruby ran and leapt forward, her brain only realizing now that it was probably not normal to jump on people because they happened to smell good. Ah well it was too late to stop since she was mid air and about to hit the nicely dressed person. They looked a little small-

With a crash of luggage, limbs, and a case full of dust the two went tumbling to the ground. Said case full of dust hit the ground with a heavy thud before the lid cracked open and displayed… Lots of dust just like she smelled. Ruby turned her attention to the girl now and found herself straddling the waist of a young woman with stark white hair. Light blue eyes stared angrily into vivid silver ones, Ruby was pretty sure she had messed up.

The Faunus that had behind the woman snickered a little bit before clearing their throat and acting like they hadn't just laughed at the situation. Their eyes returning to a black book they had been carrying, flicking across the pages and occasionally glancing at the situation Ruby had caused.

"Get off me right now!" The woman shrieked, shoving the wolf girl off of her and into a long rectangular case. Thankfully Ruby wasn't hurt by the fall or the shove, in fact she felt rather bouncy today. "Just who do you think you are running into me like that! Do you know the damage you could have caused? Damn Faunus!"

The white haired woman then got up, dusted herself off ,and looked around exasperated. She acted as if this was the most offensive thing that anyone had ever done to her, and Ruby wasn't quite sure that it wasn't. The girl's hostility was maybe warranted but She didn't quite understand the need to call out that she was a Faunus, were they not allowed at the school? That didn't make much sense since Ozpin himself had invited her and why invite someone not allowed?

"If you're talking about the case of dust then yes. To put it simply it would reduce us to little itty bits, the resulting explosion would the equivalent of half a ton of TNT and would cause quite a bit of damage to the surrounding area while also releasing roughly 2.092 gigajoules of energy" Ruby explained, picking herself up and the case she had been thrown into. She was making an educated guess due to the size of the open case of dust. Roughly 3ftx6inx1ft, three feet by six inches by one foot, rather large for a student but Ruby didn't have room to judge since she didn't know the normal size for dust containment units.

In all honesty her own bags had a couple of taped together jars, enough to blow a sizable hole somewhere if she wasn't careful. Ruby bent down and picked up the dust case as well, putting it atop the one she was currently holding. On the topic of dust she was able to see multiple bottles of red dust… blue dust… even a little bit of purple dust. Interesting.

"Then you should know better than to run into people like that!" The woman angrily grabbed the cases from the wolf girl's arms, setting down the first one and pulling a bottle out of the dusty one. "This is mined and purified from the Schnee quarry! If you're so knowledgeable about dust then why did you jump at me! Better question! Why the hell did you jump at me at all!"

The men who had… apparently been escorting this very… strangely dressed person, all glared towards Ruby with some sort of deep resentment. A couple of them stepped forward to put some space between her and the woman. Although that did not appear to help as she pressed forward in her interrogation of Ruby, brushing past several of them to get to her.

"I do apologize for jumping on you, it's just… you smelled like winter berries! Actually at first I thought you smelled like snow berries but after a while it was definitely winter berries. Either way they are both delicious and well… I ended up jumping at you!" With her tail wagging excitedly Ruby explained her reasoning and hoped that cleared everything. Only for everyone to continue frowning and making angry eyes. And the tail wagging was over, it quickly curled between her legs as the happiness fled from her body.

"So you decided that it was an ok thing for you, a filthy animal, to jump on the heir to the Schnee dust company? Do you have a death wish! I just can't believe this academy is letting people like you attend!" This woman, this Schnee, had a set of pipes on her. Ruby's ears practically popped as the woman's voice raised several octaves past it's already shrill level. Also what was this about Ruby being an animal? Last she checked she was very much in fact not an animal… right? Hold on, did she actually stink? A quick sniff of the air revealed the normal rosy smell that was perhaps a tad too sweet.

"Excuse me but, for Faunus, especially those of the canine family, her smell plays a very important part of how they perceive things. It's not entirely her fault that your perfume happened to smell exactly like something she finds delicious." The cat woman from earlier interjected, sliding her way smoothly into the conversation and helping pick up a bag in the process. To the wolf girl it almost seemed like this woman was trying to hide her animal traits… Ruby would respect this wish… even if she did want to start barking and chasing her for some weird reason.

Now that Ruby wasn't constantly under the pressure of being yelled at she could finally take in her surroundings a bit more, and the two women in front of her. First of all, they had already drawn a small crowd of whispering onlookers. The whispers of course, were interjected every now and then with a soft whistling sound which Ruby was unable to place. Probably just someone walking around, there were a lot of whistlers in Vale from what she'd seen.

The Schnee Lady was extremely pale, more so than even Ruby who had literally spent seventeen winters in a place called 'The Land of Darkness'. She was also incredibly thin, so much so that the wolf girl almost wanted to try feeding her some jerky or beef of some sort just to make sure she didn't blow away in the wind.

On another note it was nice to see another person wearing a dress… skirt… thing. Strapless, stark white before fading into a blue near the skirt. Still not as much armor as Ruby would have liked but she had a guess that the Schnee was built for agility. Dodging and flipping, quick strikes, but one solid blow and bye bye Schnee. This of course was just a speculation and not based on any actual combat data.

The other Faunus was also… did no one wear armor? Wait… what if everyones protective gear was packed away in their bags? Damn it Ruby, she cursed at herself for being such an idiot. For all she knew these people could all have suits of full plate! Exasperated, she took a second look at the cat girl.

Also thin, but not as much as the Schnee. Definitely what looked like powerful legs hidden under black and purple stockings. The book, well that didn't matter. She did have beautiful amber eyes, honestly both of these women were rather attractive. At least to Ruby they were, which she didn't know if that was normal or not.

Hold on looks like she's getting roped back into the conversation.

"I don't care if her nose or her ears or her eyes are driving that brain, it's obvious she has no idea what she's doing and shouldn't be here. In fact I'm going to submit an official inquiry into her acceptance here! You! Dog! What's your name!" The Schnee yelled, her finger waving around first towards the cat faunus and then directly into Ruby's face, and it smelled deliciously of winter berries.

"Ruby" She answered, swallowing hard and trying to resist the temptations currently plaguing her mind to chomp on the finger. The bodyguards began looking around nervously, at the crown but more importantly at Ruby who had begun sniffing the finger in front of her.

"Ruby what?"

"Just Ruby"

"I mean what's your last name" The Schnee began to lose her steam, or that's what it appeared to Ruby. The woman appeared more and more confused now, as if questioning the wolf girl's intelligence.

"I dont have one" Wait was it strange to not have a last name? Damn it she hadn't put one on the paperwork Ozpin had her sign to register for classes!

"You don't have a last name? How barbaric are you!"

"Well what's your name?"

"I am Weiss Schnee, heir to the Schnee dust company. Not that it really matters to a commoner like you, hah commoner is too much. You really are just an ill mannered dog! Aren't you!" A sneer spread across Weiss's confident face, several oooh's sounded from the crowd. The finger had stayed in her face for too long, she couldn't resist it anymore! It smelled so tasty so it had to be tasty right? With an audible 'Nom' the woman's finger vanished inside of Ruby's mouth shocking everyone around them. Some amused, some horrified.

The finger was not bitten off, nor was there any actual damage to the skin. It had simply been taken into her mouth and rested on her tongue for her to taste the winter berries that it smelled like.

It didn't taste like winter berries.

While Ruby contemplated the taste Weiss fell backwards, fainting, caught by the multiple bodyguards who had been paralyzed by the site of their charge getting her finger sucked by a faunus. The finger had tasted rather bland with a small bitter undertone, guess the smell was a lie then. What had caused it though? After all the girl still smelled like it, did she just roll in it or something?

"Holy shit grab her!" One of them men yelled, the others jumping into action as they collected all the luggage and the fainted girl. Several of them pushed past the people in the crowd, trying to create a path or find the missing items. Ruby didn't really fully understand why the woman had passed out, maybe hunger? Definitely probably hungry, it had happened a few times to the wolf girl when she was being trained in survival. Failing to catch any game or small creatures had resulted in long recoveries and an appreciation for traps and hunting.

Hunting, oh she loved it. The exhilaration and suspense, the feeling of her prey's lifeblood exposing itself to the air under her teeth, claws, even Crescent Rose. Ruby missed it a little, knowing full well that it would be hard to partake in any such activities while attending beacon.

With her business finished, and the Schnee having fainted weirdly, Ruby decided that perhaps now was the best time to move on and find out where exactly she was supposed to be headed. Quickly she turned towards the cat faunus, only to find them already gone. It made her a little sad but it was to be expected, cats don't like hanging around all the time especially around wolves.

The crowd was forced to disperse as the many fine dressed men carried the luggage and fainted Schnee through to one of many buildings that Ruby didn't know what was used for. She was left alone now.

"Well that could have gone better I guess" Ruby said to herself, looking around now. She was unsure of where exactly she should be going now. Yang had vanished with her 'friends', the Schnee had fainted, and the cat person had walked off. The only people around now were what appeared to be maintenance workers for the shuttles that had brought them to the academy. "Welcome to Beacon…"

"Hey there! You're that girl who was messing with the ventilation on board the shuttle right?" A voice called from behind Ruby. Turning around she found herself face to face with a rather tall young man with blonde hair. A properly equipped one as well, semi properly actually. A chestplate worn over a sweatshirt, interesting choice but once again Ruby had no room to judge.

Instead she made a minor note of his basic weaponry, fascinating. A sword fit inside of what appeared to be an expanding scabbard, at least that's what it appeared to be. Ruby could only make that assumption because of the little scratch marks that spread from the surface and irregularly along the sides.

"Yup! And you're the guy who threw up everywhere and still currently smells of vomit!" Ruby exclaimed, wrinkling her nose a little since the smell still lingered. The man seemed to deflate a little, being known as vomit boy or something probably didn't help his self esteem.

"Yah um… My name is Jaune! Nice to meet you" His hand extended in a similar way that Yang's had on the airship, perhaps this was a human greeting of some sort?

"Ruby!" Ruby said, sticking out her own hand but not touching Jaune's. She was nailing this human thing, wait did Faunus do this? Damn maybe she messed up again?

The man took the wolf girl's hand and shook it with his own, confusing her but she maintained an expression of neutrality instead of displaying it. Thankfully he didn't hold it for long and the shaking only lasted a few seconds, otherwise it would have gotten awkward and made Ruby particularly nervous.

"So I wanted to apologize to that other girl I threw up on, do you happen to know where she is?" Jaune asked, referring to Yang and her now smelly shoes.

"Oh she went in that direction, and her name is Yang. I can't say exactly where she ended up since she was being carried off by numerous other humans."

"Gotcha well I can definitely apologize whenever I see her next then, does not need to happen immediately."

"So why did you throw up?"

"What?" The question seemed to confuse Jaune for a moment before clarity entered his eyes. "Motion sickness, I don't do so well in vehicles, weak stomach. It's a lot more common than most people realize."

"Motion sickness huh" Ruby contemplated this, was a weak stomach really that common in humans? Did they just not eat before long travel to reduce the risk of coughing it all up?

"What about you? Why did you suck that girl's finger?"

"Because it smelled tasty"

"Tasty?" This caught Jaune off guard, after all how could someone's finger smell tasty? He had expected her to explain some elaborate plan on confusing the icy woman, do something random to distract or confuse her. Instead he was being told by a wolf faunus that someone actually smelled good enough to eat, it was perhaps a little frightening. Definitely not something a normal girl said, but that was… ok? Normal people were boring, cruel, and weren't all that interesting. It was the quirky people that were the most fun and almost brutally honest, they wouldn't lie needlessly to you. "Could you maybe explain that a little?"

"Sure thing! You see when I first got off the air ship there were absolutely an insane amount of smells I needed to work through, a lot of them rather terrible. Winter berries happen to be a personal favorite of mine, second to snow berries. That Schnee lady really smelled nice, and it was almost like snow berries but leaning more towards winter berries. I thought maybe she tasted like them too, I really tried to resist but she just kept waving her finger in my face so I took my shot to taste it" The explanation was a lot, Ruby took several deep breaths at the end to catch it all.

There was a long moment of silence between the human and the supposed Faunus as he took some time to digest all that information. Jaune just couldn't believe someone would really… randomly suck on the finger of another person to see if it tasted like their perfume.

Ruby was just happy where she was standing, there was nothing really bothering her in this moment and the voices of Grimm were behaving themselves. No desire to go off on a rampage and lose herself to the darkness, the sweet abyss. Well no desire yet, who knew what the rest of the day had in story. Like maybe people would chase her with torches yelling freak and trying to burn her at the stake, that would definitely be a moment to destroy everything.

"That's… well honestly I have no idea what to say about all of that."

"Well instead of standing around trying to figure out what to say, how about we talk about something else? Like that weapon of yours! Tell me how it works!" Ruby's eyes glimmered as she hastily changed the subject. Perhaps tasting people was not normal? Man, humans were weird, there were so many rules and… social norms that she didn't understand yet or even know.

"It's just a simple sword and shield… well sword and scabbard I can just unfold it to make a shield" There was the soft whisper of steel as the sword came free of its holding and a shield soon joined it. Ruby had to hold herself back from just taking the weapons and disassembling them to figure out the inner mechanisms of the scabbard. "I'm guessing that thing on your back is your weapon?"

"Yup, say hello to Crescent Rose!" Reaching back and grabbing the bulky red package on her back, Ruby spun it expertly in her hands as it unfolded into its true form. The tip of the long jagged blade dug into the ground as she finished, leaning against the scythe softly.

"Whoa! Is that a scythe?" Jaune was now not only a bit confused by Ruby but also perhaps a bit frightened, intimidated. That weapon was no joke, its jagged teeth like design was meant for heavy combat and tearing through opponents. He just hoped that it was never turned against him.

"It's also a highly customizable sniper rifle" The wolf girl began lovingly stroking the barrel of her beloved weapon, being careful to now cut herself on the razer edge of the blade. It was then she noticed that there was a small spot that could use just a bit of cleaning, a bit of dried blood. Ah well Ruby could clean it up a little later.

"A-wha?"

"It's also a gun" Ruby pulled back on the chamber and ejected one of the overly large sniper rounds, catching it and smiling towards Jaune. Beginning to walk towards the school he folded up his shield and sheathed his sword, letting out a long breath before speaking again.

"Ruby, honestly that thing scares me, but it's pretty darn cool as well! Where did you get it?" He said, looking over his shoulder to see her folding up the large weapon, walking after him. Ruby had to admit that this Jaune guy seemed pretty ok for now, so was Yang of course but now she knew two people who didn't mind her lack of understanding on how the world worked.

It made her feel happy. Just a little.

"I made it"

"You made it?"

"Yup with my mom! Oh and one of her friends helped. The entire design was done by me however, it was only the actual construction that I needed help with" Ruby hummed, looking up at all the arcs they were passing. Several of them had water falling over the sides into deep pools of fish… were they allowed to eat them? Might be a question for later.

"I'm going to have to stop being surprised by everything if I wanna remain sane at this point. Note to self never question anything Ruby says because it will probably be the literal truth…"

"Hey where are we going?"

"I… don't know… do you?"

"I was following you" Ruby's previous assumption that Jaune knew where he was going began to fade as she realized exactly how lost the two of them actually were.

"Shit… You dont know any of the notable buildings?"

"I've been in Vale for a little over two weeks Jaune, I haven't been able to explore the school yet" What was this… oh yah Cinder told her about this once. Shit was another word for excrement, like crap! Humans had so many weird words that meant the same thing, Maybe Ruby should begin writing these down…

"You'd think there would be a sign or something, like a food court maybe?"

First of all, I would like to thank Kharaki Takan.

They have been incredibly helpful to me, pointing out continuity errors or terms I mess up. Honestly if they hadn't I probably would have just looked over them and kept writing, and that would be embarrassing lol.

Anyways I wanted to say thank you before I began with the usual Authors note I do.

Alright, so... Episode one is finished as is episode two, pretty good start right? The next few chapters will perhaps veer off the main story for a bit, I wont spoil anything but lets just say the team up exercise that Ozpin does for all the new students will be a little different.

As usual don't be afraid to ask questions I'm always happy to answer them. I hope you guys have a wonderful day and happy October 2nd everyone.

X3 see yah next chapter!