Everyone's feeling awkward now, aren't they? Been a buildup, dropped out main monster kicking lass into Remnant, and things went much better than everyone expected. (Though, if Perros can get away with it, we can too.) Main thing here: I didn't deliver the brooding "THESE PROPERTIES ART NOT MINE," spiel, and...

Well, turns out the creator of my second source is an avid reader. (._.)"

Knocking the Nightmares Back is a fan fiction combining Rooster Teeth's RWBY-

(Look up RWBY)

and fancyfairydesign's This Mortal Coil comic

(Look up / fancy fairy design this mortal coil comic)

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going pull a Paige in-two-lines.

...

She wanted to cry.

Instead, she started wishing for some kind of deity of luck to cause this girl to trip and give her the chance to go.

See my previous point: Ea-… Brandon?

Very fortunately for her, Paige's wish was answered as a familiar face called out from a room along the hallway and Ruby was distracted.

The bad part was that it was Qrow who distracted her.

…

Qrow Branwen.

… He does look somewhat like my partner. I have to admit you were… close.

"Shut up."

Paige looked at the personmeant to guard her and prevent her from being a menace, his full name now revealed to be Qrow Branwen.

… This girl's uncle Qrow Branwen.

It was at this point that she remembered the precise reason she chose Angeline's soul, and as soon as the girl's sight left her, she turned around and booked it as fast as she could.

….

Qrow had been trying to avoid revealing his current guardian situation to either of his nieces, since he could think of hundreds of ways for it to go very wrong. This is why Qrow was quite glad to find that after his younger niece briefly talked to him, she left and he spotted her talking to an older student who was heading away from the meeting room he was situated nearby.

This was good. He managed to avoid any further situation that might complicate his workload-

… until he called out to Ruby in order to further distract her and bring her away from the locked meeting room, and the student with her silently turned and ran.

Qrow… paused at the sight. He knew the pipsqueak did get a bit annoying after the first two hours on weapon maintenance and development he had to listen to while sleep deprived; was her talking really enough to get a person to enact a running corkscrew leap out of a second story window?

… It seemed it was. His confusion was made worse when Ruby, previously frozen in place watching him in silence, started frantically searching around for her companion in… terror? As she turned towards the open window the other person leaped out of, she twitched, and burst into a cloud of flower petals that blew out the window.

…Good? At least she didn't stick around long enough to-

.

..

...

Wait.

Qrow had a very bad feeling, and glanced towards the meeting room he locked three days ago. After leaving a scroll that notified him on activation and locking the door to prevent unwanted entry, he had been staying in the school in an office next to the meeting room.

The sleeping individual hadn't woken up for three days, only quietly muttering something about lights on his regular checks. He had notified Ozpin of the behavior, leading to Ozpin's current small interest in old folklore analysis to discover the actual age of their new resident.

Speaking of which, I think that now is the time to check the-

Qrow, while contemplating, removed his copy of the key while walking out and over to the door.

The door to the meeting room which now had a noticeable lack of a lock.

"Ruby. Did you just…"

He paled, and instead of spending any unnecessary breath cursing, he used it to move. Qrow sprinted into the room, and found it… completely uninhabited. Now, very unfortunately for him… there was an incredibly powerful force loose in the school-

-And his niece was 100% likely to be running after them right now.

...

…

Upon looking at the window both students escaped from, he noted they were rather obviously running away from his position, but not seeming to do anything significant to try to hide where they were runningto.

… If they continued with this trajectory, he could easily reach them as the crow flies, but he most likely knew the school's layout far better than the two of them. Since they weren't trying to outmaneuver him, it was a good chance that that direction is where… Paige was running towards.

Qrow began a brisk run down the hall, planning to reach the campus's farm, which they'd possibly run past in twenty minutes by continuing that velocity. Two turns, and a stairwell down, Qrow started to increase his speed, as he passed a few people, all while occasionally glimpsing his quarry through the windows.

Aand they're on the roof now.

The lead runner was now charging ahead, with his niece close behind, occasionally darting forwards in red bursts of flora. He noted that this was a clever use of terrain navigation for her, as she was practically turning the roofs into a flat plain for her to run with full force.

This did nothing to avoid the pressing detail that his niece is chasing another student across the rooftops of the school after breaking into the room that had an inhabitant he was meant to monitor.

…

The windows flew past him like a zoetrope, giving the chase an interesting animated effect which didn't help him one bit. Qrow paused watching the two runners and focused on trying to cut them off before-

-a flicker of yellow light distracted his planning, and he glimpsed that the two had a change in direction, running so their shadows has fallen across his face in rapid succession. Ruby's companion had started sprinting far faster than before, causing her blonde hair to be illuminated by the sun and Ruby to shout out after her. As his jolt of surprise completely dampened his current momentum, he rapidly realized a new and incredibly simple solution to end this chase.

Qrow reached towards his pocket to call-

…Where's my scroll?

He began to run back towards the office room, quietly cursing his luck with vitriol.

….

Ruby was engaging in a high speed chase to find the imprisoned person currently loose in the school, which led her to run after her new companion in searching along the rooftops.

This wouldn't stop her from commenting on the situation, calling out "This is actually a pretty cool way to get around!"

She was assuming the older student knew where to go, and the rooftop running was an incredibly awesome way to get to the grey haired girl as fast as possible.

Occasionally she noted her uncle appearing along the halls, and she was positive that that least one window had him nod approvingly as she managed to fluidly ignore a downwards "V" roof slant with a single use of her semblance. However, as every other sighting had him furrowed in determination, she felt the small lock in her clenched hand start to weigh her down.

… It was either that, or she was using way too much Aura than her average usage on a normal weekend outing.

Ruby gave a small motivational shout as she kept moving, "I have a mission here! I'm not going to stop now!"

… No sound came from up ahead but the wind as it blew past.

"Hey! Are you not tired?" She called out to the student ahead, Angeline.

The other girl was silent as the two bounded past the buildings and few students below that stayed at the campus on this lovely day.

Ruby muttered in worry, "I wonder if the others left by now."

She got distracted, now trying to guess how long it had been since she was tasked to collect… a wallet? Bag? Snack jar?

… Curses. She'd forgotten what she was asked to get from the dorm room. That was a problem.

Ruby gave a small gasp when, upon coming out of her contemplation, she saw her companion in searching get even faster, her hair starting to flicker with yell-

…

Her hair was streaming in bright glistening yellow waves as her shape blurred with speed.

"HEY! THAT'S JUST RUDE!"

….

"This girl just won't stop talking."

There's a simple solution, you vile woman.

Paige hadn't been abusing this soul-form ability, since it nullified her main reason for taking Angeline's form, I,e, to look like a normal person that wasn't her. Angeline was able in life to gain and grant physiological enhancements in return for the ineffable force that made humanity… "human".

Paige always enjoyed called her "murderous muscular Mistoffelees" to her father's Faustus as she kept pummeling her since it was a surefire way to get her angry. Simply put, she traded her humanity for power. If Paige used it now that Angeline was a soul, it would burn her form alive, twisting it into the abhorrent shape she eventually hid from the world in return for incredible physical power beyond human norms. Since it was taking so long to get away from this girl, Paige was all for using it right now.

Idiot. If you really were trying to simulate me, you'd have already ate her legs.

"You're a horrible in-law, you know that?"

I despise my relation to you.

As the two of them mentally bickered, their pursuer fell behind, stopping to catch their breath.

"YAAAAAAAAAANG WAIT UP!"

"WHY… ARE YOU DOING… THIS TO ME?"

Paige had no clue what that was about, instead choosing to find the nearest place to dip out of sight. When she found there was a roof leading to a drop to their right, she leaped off and started to spend the rest of her soul-form's energy.

With such a rapid increase in speed, she blurred into quivering air with speed. The resulting squall that appeared barreled through the campus, ending with a gust which swirled through the meeting room she was currently staying in.

…This… is impressive.

"Dematerialize already."

Go to limbo. Hell's too good for you.

This wind caused some shifting of the objects in the room, knocking over some rectangular object that "dinged" with a soft blue light on hitting the floor.

….

Qrow, slightly buffeted by a wind from outside, reached the hallway and found a notification on his scroll.

He paused, reading the notification from the phone in the meeting room, wondering how in the world it could have gone off.

Ahem.

"Hello, Qrow. I am awake, and would like to try viewing this place."

He turned to see th- Paige, standing outside the office, in a dull faced idling.

"Where did you go?"

… "I took a nap in some shade."

Qrow was going to call her bluff… but then remembered when she dropped bullets into her shadow.

Did… she mean that literally?

…

"Can you wait first? There's something else I need to do first."

He reached for his scroll, and started a call to someone.

"Yang. Please stop running on the roofs."

….

Yang stood in confusion.Stop doing… what?

The team had been preparing to do a walk around town, and she'd asked Rubes to get her bag she forgot, and now they were waiting an unusually long time.

"I'm standing still. What's this about?"

…

Her mouth fell, and she got notified of another call.

"Hey. This is Ruby now. Going to change to her, okay?

…

She viewed her scroll, tapped it a few times, putting it on speaker. This would probably be a good explanation to the others on what was happening.

"Yaaaaaaaaaaaang please STOP RUNNING."

Yang was watched in confusion, as her feet stayed very stably on the ground in front of the school.

She smiled, and asked "Rubes?"

… "Yeah?"

"-Are youstillon the roof?"

… "Yes."

Yang held her hand over the speaker and responded briefly to the voices of shock before continuing her call.

"She's WHERE?"

"On the roof chasing after my copycat."

… "Yang. You're trying to prank us."

Yang briefly enjoyed the level of obnoxiousness her teammates believed she was capable of. Then she went back to her distressed sister on the roof of the school.

...

"Ruby. I'm still at the front of the school."

… "So… I was…"

She waited, to deliver the punchline better.

"Not me."

The silence carried for a few long seconds.

… The call ended after that.

...

Three minutes after the call ended, helpfully provided by Weiss's whispering, they all heard Ruby shouting.

"-SOOOOOOOORR-"

"-GAH! UN-"

…

After the cry of shock, they very strangely heard Ruby begin her "try to make friends" conversation opener.

It was accompanied by silence and footsteps. When the three team members eventually saw her walking backwards past a corner and head up the path towards them, they noted that she was with Yang's uncle.

Ruby was also walking backwards while also continuously talking at a young woman walking next to Qrow with a look of utter apathy.

Yang was all for shouting out something along the lines of "HEY UNCLE! YOU ACTUALLY GOT A GIRLFRI-"

-but he looked up at her with a look that chilled. He was not in a mood for jokes.

...

What in the world did he go through today?

...