The ending! Now, it's not the best,but you can't deny that this could be turned into a full story someday...right?

*Cricket and owl sounds sounds*...right?

(^^^^^^)

"A silent person can be heard the loudest, if they have the smallest voice and the biggest heart."

-Me-

(^^^^^^)

Sitting with her legs crossed and her scythe folded up in the crevice that her crossed thighs made, Ruby relaxed her back muscles, slumping as she felt the sleepiness that had plagued her for the past year arrive like a freight train. It slammed into her full force, and before anyone could even see it happen, her eyes were drifting downwards.

This was the first time she'd even got close to sleeping in nearly six days, the constant sips of coffee she had partaken in the only thing keeping her awake through the night to brave the next day. She missed sleeping, but not the nightmares that came with it; the cliché screams of 'Why did you do this?' and 'We had families, you took us away from them!' didn't bother her at all, it was what, exactly, she had done that made her fear sleep; nightmares were just dreams that took a turn for the worst, and she'd managed to elude that turn by sleeping next to Neo, who knew too well of her plight.

Neo, however, was out training in the hall, leaving the rest of them to look at Ruby, who was in a meditative state and sleeping, with worry. Blake worried the most, being the furthest from Ruby when she was here a year ago. She'd preferred reading over trying to decipher the signs Ruby made with her hands and the occasional grunts she'd make when she wanted to convey something. It made it even worse that she was sleeping with Ruby's now ex-girlfriend.

Yang was tearing herself apart; her sister had changed, that's for sure- while she was never a cheery girl to begin with, her silence and inability to socialise crippling her growth in charisma and positive attitude lead to her being a bit cold. When Weiss began to date her she thought this was a milestone for Ruby...only to realise Weiss only wanted her for the sex, while she was cheating on her with Blake all along. Needless to say she had still never forgiven them, even if she acted like she did; she couldn't look them in the eye anymore knowing they drove Ruby to become what she is now- a stone cold, powerful fighter, assassin, thief, and now Huntress.

She didn't know what to do in this situation, because her sister who had vanished for a year arrived yesterday with an unknown pink and brown haired girl calling herself Ruby's partner; she figured Neo was Ruby's partner from her thieving and assassination days, and she simply decided to follow her boss to Beacon. She was somewhat right in that regard, but the train of thought stopped as the entire team, who were all staring at Ruby's figure, widened their eyes dramatically and in synch when Ruby woke up, not five minutes after sleeping.

Her eyes shot open, she jumped a little bit, and looked around as if in danger, frantically turning her head this way and that, before calming down and sighing. She slithered a hand gently over both her eyes, wiping them of sleep to wake herself up; five minutes: Figures that without Neo she'd be asleep for only five minutes.

She turned her head, spotting the entire team minus Neo staring at her with what could be described as worry. Ruby shook her head at them. 'still too nosy for their own goods...they're really not going to like the job I have tonight then, if I know them.' she stopped thinking, turning her head to the door as it opened, and she lifted a hand slowly to Neo, who raised one back, slightly faster. 'We have a job to do, and if they follow me, they better not get in my way, or I'll be telling Ozpin and moving teams first chance I get.' She turned her head to eye Weiss and Blake, who were sat together, and shook her head before standing up, walking with a slight sway in her hips when she noticed Neo watching her.

'First thing; get her attention. She had it alright, if the slow blush blooming on Neo's cheeks indicated anything, and Ruby decided to put Neo out of her misery; she stopped just in front of her and pecked her on the cheek. Ruby then made a couple of signs with her hands, Neo watching diligently as her girlfriend and boss signed the words she wanted to speak.

"Yeah, I remember. It's tonight, right?" Ruby nodded, and Neo sighed in relief; she had not remembered at all. Tonight was the job that could make them billions of Lien if done right, and they were always done right.

Ruby signed again.

"Hey! I did not forget!"

Ruby lifted an eyebrow, and Neo's shoulders slumped, defeated by Ruby's nonverbal logic; she knew Ruby was right to be mad, but that kiss, if only chaste, proved they should reveal what they were now, or Ruby would get madder and do the one thing Neo hated when Ruby was mad; withhold sex. Ruby was a damn goddess in bed! Neo needed the sex, and she loved her too much, so she abhorred it when Ruby got mad.

"Okay, I forgot...Sorry."

Ruby's expression grew soft, so she slowly and gently cupped Neo's cheek, bringing her mouth to her own in a prolonged kiss that Yang, in the background, could not help but catcall to. It only lasted five seconds at the most, but it did provide the chance for a small smile to grace Neo's lips, grinning like an idiot when Ruby parted, only to kiss her cheek, grab her scythe, and leave the room.

Neo turned and saw three dropped jaws.

"What...?"

Yang shot upwards, sprinting at Neo with the force of a bullet, slamming into her and pinning her to her massive chest, squealing like a baby and smiling all the way. "Ooohh, Ruby and you are so cuuuuuute!" Neo's arms flailed around and she gasped for the breath that wasn't coming. She'd been suffocated before, by Roman once when he got angry, and again by a White Fang member when she was four. But the usual burning of her lungs didn't come, no, instead it was the feeling as if her entire body was on fire.

"Breath...air...! Need...release me...dying..." Yang dropped her and worriedly looked her over for bruises or injuries. When she saw there were none, she rubbed her hand on the back of her neck sheepishly.

"...Yeah, sorry 'bout that...I tend to get carried away sometimes."

"Sometimes!?" Weiss screeched, her stupor gone and high pitched voice making all in the room wince. "You almost killed me and Blake when we told you about us!"

Yang deadpanned. "...Because I was trying to kill you two, princess."

Blake interjected, her voice sounding unsure and careful; what she'd done to Ruby was horrible an' all, but what she did to Yang was worse. She had listened to Yang give an entire speech on how she loved Blake, and sure Blake felt flattered, but for obvious reasons she declined. Though...maybe it could've gone better than 'sorry, you're not really that interesting to be honest'.

"I thought you said you forgave us...?"

Yang glared, Neo giggling in the background. "I lied."

What!?" Weiss' voice was annoying Neo now, but Yang just sent Weiss a look that said 'I promise you pain and suffering if you keep it up'.

"As if I'd forgive you two...no, you're both still firmly on my shit list." She crossed her arms and looked at Neo with a smile. "You keep making her happy you hear?" she leaned into Neo's ear and whispered. "She likes cookies and cream when she needs calming down."

Neo nodded, shouted her thanks as she sped out of the room, and left the three teammates with issues to stare at each other.

"When will you forgive us?" Blake questioned warily, as if the answer would scare her.

"When Ruby tells you she forgives you for what you did."

Weiss' eyes widened in rage her voice echoing past the walls as she screamed at Yang. "She's mute, she can't tell us anything!"

Yang grinned smugly, turning around and jumping on her bed. She rested her hands behind her head as she looked at the ceiling.

"I know."

(^^^^^^)

The target was within her crosshairs, but from what she could tell, the man was too old to be the target she was after. The contract specifically said 'thirty year old bank manager'; it did not say eighty year old with cataracts and a relative who worked in Atlas's Military Corps, a walking stick in his hand.

Growling angrily, she scoured the area with her rifle, her scythe at home tucked safely beneath her bed. Midnight missions and assassinations like this required stealth, not stopping power, to ensure success. Her rifle was powerful enough to stop a bull, and with anti-personnel rounds, an ensured kill in any area with a vital organ. To ensure stealth for this mission, she used a silencer, along with a carbon stock for mobility and the longest scope on the market for rifles such as this; known as the 'Hawk-eye' scope, this thing could be zoomed to its full 22x zoom capability to make a target halfway across Vale appear as if they were right in front of her, and it came with infrared heat vision and night-vision toggles to boot.

It cost her at least two months of her fortune from stealing, plus another two from what she got from other assassination and mercenary jobs. Overall, it cost her about seven and a half million Lien. The rifle cost nine million Lien, plus the high tech stealth suit she wore that cost another two hundred million Lien.

The suit was known as 'Shadow-Dancer MK-II', the latest in stealth tech and AI advancement in the world of Remnant; built specifically for snipers and night-time reconnaissance. The suit itself was made of poly-fibre carbon, with thin Kevlar plates held together on the outside of it by ballistic gel, which could stop a high impact armour piercing sniper round. Thin and made for mobility, the legs of the suit were interconnected to the torso by two wires on each leg that travelled upwards, past the thighs to the waist, which connected the torso to the legs. The boots were connected to the legs in a similar manner, as were the gloves of the suit to the arms of the torso. All in all, it was a full body stealth suit designed to stop a minigun's hail of bullets, provide one hundred percent safety from close-range explosives, and unparalleled mobility.

Then there was the AI part; the suit was integrated with a combat awareness module, an AI that was designed to provide tactical feedback; places to hide, vital weak points in enemy armour, velocity of bullets fired, etcetera. It was fully voiced by a female, which made Ruby want to get it even more- feminine AIs were rare finds these days, the male AI gender being superior. The MK-II suit was by no means experimental, but it was costly to the point of the amount of money spent in buying it being able to fund a massive company for the rest of its existence. Which is where Neo came in; Ruby had decided to buy it has a birthday present to herself, since her sixteenth didn't come with presents; her friends were off celebrating some national holiday.

Neo decided the amount of money wasn't fair, so she snuck in, robbed it and the tech they were using to build more of the suits, killed everyone, and walked out with her umbrella swinging and she whistled in nonchalance.

The suit came with a neural interface, something that was painful to have implanted in the back of her skull, but proved to be more useful than it seemed; not only could her AI provide information through her eyes, only so she could view it, it also provided her with soft melodious music- the rock music she used to be in was only a phase, she realised, and now she preferred old music such as Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Where the AI learned what she liked she'll never know, but it hardly mattered- in fact, she mentally praised the AI, which would hum in glee or sometimes join in singing along with whatever song was playing.

As 'fly me to the moon' was playing in the background, Ruby finally found the target; greyed hair but not too grey to be any older than forty. No limp, perfectly healthy, green eyes and dark skin.

This was her target.

The scope zoomed in so much that she could see the goose-bumps that the cold air oft the night was giving his cheeks. She squeezed the trigger, a bullet flew out silently, and the target dropped dead within a millisecond of the bullet being fired.

"Target neutralised; probability and survival rate of the target...zero percent. Well done Ruby." the AI spoke through her interface, praising her for another job well done; it also came in handy for moral support, considering Ruby treated it as a person and not a piece of machinery in her head. While the interface wasn't part of the suit itself, it did help for it to have something to connect to feed it her vitals and medical information.

Nodding in affirmation, Ruby packed the sniper into her suitcase, taking it apart and placing all the relevant pieces in the areas they were built to fit. Once done, she mentally asked the AI to send a message in the form of two Morse code clicks to the small radio she had in the getaway vehicle. Morse code was the most useful thing to Ruby; it allowed her to communicate via her AI to let Neo know when a mission had been done successfully.

Neo responded a second later with a small sigh through her earpiece. "Okay then...so why did I have to be here with you?"

"I believe Vale's Police Department have responded faster than anticipated, hence your need for being here." Ruby's AI spoke what she herself would have said if she could have said anything at all. Not two seconds later sirens and gunfire could be heard through Neo's headset, causing her to wince when Ruby pulled out her baton and hit a policeman who had gotten lucky; she guessed it was her baton, because the sickening crunch of something cracking echoed through her headset, causing her to hold down the bile at the back of her throat. The baton smacked right off of his shin, causing him to crumple to the ground in pain; it was fractured, and as he stared in shock at the girl with the red hood, he silently thanked the heavens that it was Jacky he was called to get and not a different criminal, say, with a passion for crippling cops or killing them.

"Engine's ready and waiting, Ruby." a moment of silence ensued before Ruby sent out two more clicks via her AI.

That basically meant yes, but to Neo's slightly immature mind it meant 'let's get the hell out of here before I get bored and start killing people'.

It was a frighteningly close description of something Ruby would say...if she could say anything. Hell for all Neo knew Ruby could be shooting up VPD's finest right now!

Tonight was gonna be a loooong night.

(^^^^^^)

(OMAKE: The first time ever that Neo embarrassed Ruby with simple logic.)

"Say, Ruby?"

Ruby, who was walking with one hand in her black casual slacks pocket and another behind her head, turned shifted her eyes lazily from the centre to the side of her peripheral vision, where Neo was swinging her umbrella occasionally. Beacon was too easy for her, as were the lessons, so she and Neo decided to skip the mandatory and boring Chemistry lessons.

Seeing the slight eye shift took her at least a minute, but Neo could see she had Ruby's...somewhat divided attention. "Why don't you ever use that AI thing to help you in classes? You hate work, I know that...but, I mean, wouldn't it help?" Neo sped up when Ruby casually turned a corner. "It's not technically cheating, because it's a part of you for the rest of your life, right?"

Ruby suddenly stopped, turned her head, and blinked slowly, processing what her partner had just said.

Of course! She could have done that right from the start. Beacon's work was a little too tedious, considering she was far above it anyway in both skill and knowledge, but applying that knowledge to paper was always tricky, so why didn't she think of using her AI? Sheer stupidity of the situation slammed into her, causing her to look at the ground with the first look of even slight shame Neo had seen on Ruby's face.

"You didn't think about it? Seriously!?" she was shocked; doing that would be the first thing she'd use a high-tech AI for! Well, that and calculating how much tubs of ice cream she'd devoured in her lifetime.

Ruby looked at Neo, as if pleading for her not to carry it on.

Neo carried it on.

"I mean, come on! You get one of those and the first thing you do is...well, actually, using it to help you shoot better is kinda cool...but still! You should have done it!"

Ruby face palmed. "I'm right, aren't I?"

Ruby walked away, screaming in her head at the AI, who was apologising profusely, for not coming up with the idea sooner.

Neo grinned stupidly, whistling as she walked away with a triumphant spring in her step.

"Yeah, I'm right."