Black Rose Blooms SilverCyberQueen_JolyneChapter 15
Chapter Text
"How… how did this happen…?" Ruby muttered to herself, staring in shock at the paper sitting before her, eyes blank and unseeing as she sat in that cold, empty room with her hands clenched around her head, unable to focus at all.
Across from her, the gray haired man simply took a sip of his drink, raising an eyebrow slowly as he shared a look with his blonde colleague. Said blonde colleague just rolled her eyes before she cleared her throat and inclined her head towards Ruby.
"Considering that I was in the vicinity at the time, I'm quite sure that you know exactly how this happened, Miss Rose," Professor Glynda Goodwitch stated dryly, crossing her arms and placing her clipboard down onto the interrogation table, cocking her hip lightly as she began to recount the events of not two hours prior.
"Let's see," she continued on, completely ignoring Ruby's groan of embarrassment as the silver eyed girl thunked her head against the table and her ears went limp, not wanting to hear a scathing review of her own actions again. "According to the camera footage from the Dust shop known as From Dust Til Dawn , graciously provided by the shopkeep, the incident began when a gang of armed criminals entered the store and began harassing the shopkeep and taking every last bit of Dust that they could handle. After approximately thirty seconds, one of the armed criminals spotted you Ruby Rose… and attempted to rob you. At which point you responded by allowing him to stab you before somehow absorbing his weapon and using his state of surprise to punch him across the shop floor and not only into but through the wooden shop counter."
Ruby nodded slowly, a tiny little groan escaping her mouth as she agreed with what Professor Goodwitch stated. The footage didn't lie- she had done all of those things. She could remember it like it was yesterday- better than, honestly, because it had happened less than two hours ago. The goon had come up and told her to put her hands in the air and started waving his anodized combat machete in her face like she couldn't tell that it wasn't any kind of Dust blade beyond the most basic of reinforcement and edge retention patterns. And then she'd told him, in her words exactly, to "try it, jerkface!".
He took exception to that, and tried to stab her in the chest.
Naturally, that didn't work out for him.
And, as Professor Goodwitch continued narrating with all of the clinical dispassion of a coroner reading out autopsy results, she had punched the man in the face (and stole his weapon, because of course she did, she needed to upgrade it! Also if he was gonna stab her then legally that machete was hers).
After that, things had become a bit of a blur, because the guy in the fancy suit and bowler hat (a rather famous criminal in Vale named Roman Torchwick, apparently) had ordered the other goons to attack her, and so of course she had to start beating them up too (and steal their weapons)- and she'd done it all without even pulling out Crescent Rose! Sure, her hand to hand combat skills weren't amazing because Yang was way better than her at punching and kicking things, but Ruby was super strong anyway because of all of the Grimm she'd eaten since she was like six so the goons didn't stand a chance anyway and then the guy in the suit (wait, hadn't Neo once complained a guy she once met named Roman? Well… Neo was always pretty open about her past as a petty thief) had tried to shoot her with his cool gun cane and then she'd gotten distracted by the explosion and thinking about how she'd build her own gun cane with an even higher caliber and then the guy had started running and she'd spotted him on a ladder going up to a rooftop so she had to chase him, right?
Except she also made sure that the shopkeep was fine- he was old, maybe his heart couldn't take too much excitement, right? So even if she had emotion senses she needed to secure the civilian first and then when she'd turned around the guy was already running across the roofs so she pulled out Crescent Rose and shoved one of her smaller .50 caliber anti-personnel Lightning Dust rounds into the chamber and she fired and she hit him in the back and his aura almost shattered and he got tased and he fell over the side of the roof and she was worried for a moment but not that worried because, well… Criminal.
But either way she didn't want him to break his neck so she went to go chase him but then when she got up to the roofs the guy was nowhere to be found and then there was a really loud roaring noise and it made her ears hurt because jet engines and super sensitive wolf ears didn't mix so she kinda missed the whole Bullhead thing and then the guy was there and he was twitching a lot but looked fine which was good because Ruby wasn't out to kill anyone and then…
Er, well.
He'd thrown a Fire Dust crystal at her feet and Ruby had been really confused for a sec because Fire Dust was super highly explosive but it was only volatile enough to explode on impact like that in powder form or shard form or when made into bullets… and then he'd shot it while she was just staring at the crystal.
And then it exploded. And then she exploded, but she'd been fine because Ruby was super tough and made of condensed grimmstuff anyway and it wasn't like being exploded by a single medium sized Fire Dust crystal was going to kill her or anything- maybe burn her a good bit if she didn't have her Aura up but still! But Professor Goodwitch had blocked it and then she'd tried to bring the Bullhead down and then that Roman guy had called for someone else and then there was this pair of really pretty ladies that showed up (or, Ruby thought they were pretty? She couldn't really see them super well even with her night vision, but they had on really tight, pretty dresses that were full of Dust weave and then they'd started flinging around elemental effects from the Dust woven into their clothes and it was really hard to fight back because she didn't want to kill anyone and if she'd actually downed the Bullhead like she wanted to then it might have broken a building but she swapped magazines and fired a few extra strength high impact taser rounds (which was going to put a dent in her wallet so bad because 30mm was not cheap!) and managed to knock out one and drive back another up until the point that one of them threw out her own lightning dust in response and then it exploded like a giant flashbang and of course Ruby had to scream because of that because the actual volume of the sound had popped all four of her fucking eardrums and yes she knew how to swear she was a mostly homeschooled fifteen year old with near unrestricted access to the CCT Network! It fucking hurt! It was bright and loud and the heat from being near it drained her aura something fierce even with Professor Goodwitch protecting her at the time and- and…
And then she'd tried to ask for Professor Goodwitch's autograph, which resulted in her getting not-quite arrested and dragged to the closest police station for questioning about her involvement in the incident and then Professor Ozpin had walked in with a plate of cookies and she couldn't control herself so she ate all of them and then he'd talked about how her eyes were silver and- and…
…
And now Professor Goodwitch was wrapping up her narration and giving her a decidedly unimpressed look because Ruby had purposefully left out the part where she made embarrassing karate noises like a child in front of Professors Ozpin and Goodwitch and the lady of the two had not spared her the humiliation of reminding her that she did that not fifteen minutes ago and gaaaaaah!
And then… instead of putting a black mark on her record or something, Professor Ozpin had taken a look at her combat prowess, the amount of Grimm on her kill list (which was way smaller than her actual list, since it only tracked the ones she'd killed once enrolled at Signal), the fact that she'd listed Uncle Qrow as her master in an extended apprenticeship, and also all of the stuff she'd tested entirely out of at Signal… and he'd offered her a spot at Beacon in the upcoming semester.
Despite the fact that she was fifteen . Despite the fact that she still didn't know how to talk to people and usually defaulted to either flailing embarrassingly like a child or just standing there and staring at them like some kind of creepy weirdo. Despite the fact that she hadn't caught the bad guys because she'd been distracted by the fact that they actually fought dirty and were throwing Dust everywhere and she wasn't supposed to use her good ammo because she didn't want to kill anyone and bringing down a Bullhead in a residential area with ammo meant to decapitate Goliaths was almost certain to result in some fatalities or injuries. Despite the fact that she had no idea if she was ready for the kind of responsibility that being a Beacon student implied.
With all that in mind, Ruby could really only stare at the already filled out enrollment form before her- the only thing it was missing was her signature.
After a moment, she looked up at Professor Ozpin and Professor Goodwitch, swallowing thickly as her ears and tail twitched in response to her emotions, cape billowing out slightly as she subconsciously withdrew slightly into the warmth of her own Semblance to try to keep herself calm.
Really, there was only one good answer to be had. And that was…
"I-"
[This is actually technically not Ruby's first design for this fic, but I'm not posting that til later. Anyway, it's Ruby Rose!]