Hey guys, back with another story!

See, I've wanted to create a RWBY/MCU fusion story, but I have no experience with writing superheroes. So, I decided to write a stand-alone superhero story to learn how to do that before moving on to my original idea. Therefore, this story, like To Steal from the Cookie Jar, will not be cannon to any of the story universes I have planned.

Fair warning: this wasn't my idea originally. This is inspired by fanart I saw of Ruby as Spiderman/girl and also a fantastic story called Ruby Rose The Spectacular Scarlet Spider by The Vigilant Spider which can be found in my favourites and is being currently re-written - go check it out! So you may be wondering - why do a story idea that somebody else has already written? My response is that I feel I can bring something new to the table. And anyways, this is fun practice for my later endeavours.

And now, enjoy the chapter!

Ruby Rose: Spidergirl

Chapter 1 – The Beginnings of Greatness

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Ruby was in heaven.

This, of course, was figurative; The gleaming walls of the SDC facility were far from the soft white of the pearly gates, but Ruby somehow found them to be more appealing. Ruby jumped from display to display to display, staring intensely at the contents of each – a gun here, a prosthetic there, all stamped with the SDC seal or the Schnee snowflake emblem. She saw a sniper rifle and squealed loudly.

Yang laughed behind her, watching as her sister hopped around with abandon reminiscent of a dog in pursuit of a stuffed toy. She shook her head and looked over at Weiss.

"You'll have trouble stopping her now."

Weiss scoffed, tossing her hair with a flick of her head. "I doubt it will be that hard. We don't have all day, after all."

At this moment Ruby flew back and clamped down on Weiss like a clam, smiling widely. "Thank you so much for this, Weiss!"

Weiss scowled half-heartedly. "Ruby, get off me!" After she had prised herself from Ruby's grip, her frown loosened. "It was nothing really. Being the heiress can get you a free pass to basically everywhere."

"Doesn't really feel like it." Blake shrunk into herself again, looking around warily. "I swear all the guards are staring at me."

"You're just paranoid, Blake! It's not like you're a faunus or anything."

"What's that supposed to mean-"

"Guys!" They both looked over at Ruby, who was pouting in annoyance. "No arguing! Weiss went to the trouble of getting us a day trip to a Schnee tech compound, we can at least enjoy it."

Yang chuckled, walking up behind her. "Easy for you to say, you love it here!" She grabbed Ruby and ruffled her hair as Ruby squirmed. Eventually she let go, and Ruby sighed.

"Let's go, guys." Weiss and Blake nodded, and the four of them walked to the end of the hallway and through the door.

The atrium was huge; giant chandeliers hung from the ceiling, surrounded by a menagerie of robots, weapons and armoured vehicles. Ruby's eyes went wide at the sight as she gasped. In the centre of the room stood a woman staring over some plans, fuzzy hair falling down her back. She turned around as they came in, a worried smile set on her face.

"Ah! I was wondering when you would get here – my name's Doctor Oct-"

"Doctor Octavius! Oh my god, I'm a huge fan of your work!" Ruby flew forwards and shook her hand violently. Octavius, surprised, eventually shook back.

"Thank you, it's so good to see people interested in the sciences, especially huntresses. Anyhow, I'll show you around if you don't mind?" At Weiss's nod, she turned to one of the items on display.

"The Atlesian Knight, Model 1. Stronger than a foot-soldier, more obedient than a dog. You could say I personally played a 'hand' in this devices construction." She smiled when Ruby giggled. "A personal victory of mine. The programming constraints were quite extreme, as the AI was quite simple, but I managed to churn something out. I have contributed to every model since – in fact, a little birdie told me that another may or may not be in the works. This project, however," She turned to the next case, "Is the work of a colleague of mine."

Ruby stared up at the huge robot in the case. It dwarfed her not only by size but by presence; it seemed to command the room in a strangely oppressive manner. It was made of desaturated green and grey panels – each an inch thick of solid steel – and had an orange visor over the front of what appeared to be a cockpit of some kind. Its servos were massive, each clearly larger than her entire arm, and she suspected that if it were to move it could crush her easily. Ruby shivered.

"The Atlesian Monarch prototype." Doctor Octavius stared up in muted awe. "Never finished, this was the work of the elusive Doctor Polendina. They say he designed the framework in a single day 40 years ago."

"Why have I never heard of this?" Weiss said, stepping towards the display.

"Because it was never finished." Octavius looked back at them. "It was meant to be a convertible tank – it could shift from this form into and airborne mode, allowing it superiority over land and sea. It was a response to the Mistral Airships. The military thought it promising, but it proved too costly; it used up dust so quickly that portability was impossible, let alone the terrible resource draw it would be to any unit assigned one. Polendina abandoned the project to move on to other projects – all of them top secrets of the Atlas Military. This was the only one ever made."

"But surely it wasn't a waste of time, right? You have to have learned something." Ruby looked at Doctor Octavius and she chuckled.

"Of course not. The cockpit design was implemented into the then-unfinished Bullheads, the revolutionary servo-to-system connections were repurposed into prosthetics and the Knights… almost everything reusable you can see elsewhere, and that which you can't is all top secret, I'm afraid."

Ruby nodded; it made sense to keep some things secret, especially for a military; even still, she wondered what secrets this marvel of mechanics held. She looked over to the last display. "What are those?"

"Ah, I suppose you'd be interested; I'm not exactly partial to weaponry, but you as a huntress in training may think about it differently." Doctor Octavius pressed buttons on the console and a cover shifted back to reveal a set of shells, one open to reveal a case filled with spiders. All four girls jumped back in surprise.

"What the f-" Blake started, but stopped herself when Yang glared at her. The doctor giggled.

"Don't worry girls, they can't harm you. Their venom glands are surgically removed prior to testing. They couldn't hurt a fly – well, I suppose they could, but you get what I'm saying." Octavius opened the box quickly and pulled out a handful of spiderwebs. "See?"

Ruby looked over at the spiderwebs in the doctor's hand. It glowed unnaturally, light reflecting off Octavius's palm. She looked over at the spiders. "What is this?"

"An old experiment, repurposed." She wiped her hand against her lab coat and locked the box closed. "A long time ago, there was experiment to see the results of infusing naturally-resistant animals with generic dust samples. We were particularly interested in their results for the spider tests, and so we did them ourselves to harvest their webs." She pulled out a box filled with dust rounds and picked up an open one, showing them the white contents. "The web glands of a dust-infused spider, for whatever reason, generate dust by themselves. The reasons for this are uncertain, but we have been experimenting with their use in weaponry and fuels-"

"To make dust sustainable!" said Weiss, taking the round from her and inspecting it. "If we could farm dust instead of mining it, we'd have a permanent sustainable source of dust." She smiled for a few seconds before frowning again. "I'm not sure my father would approve of this."

"He doesn't have to. This test was commissioned by General Ironwood himself."

Weiss nodded, setting the round down. They stood there for a few seconds, staring at the spiders in the display case. Suddenly, Doctor Octavius clapped loudly, shaking them out of their melancholy.

"Well, we'd better go into the next room, shall we?"

They all gave their sounds of affirmation, and she led them to the door. Just before Octavius opened it, Ruby felt a sharp pain of the back of her hand.

"Ow!" She shook her hand and watched as a tiny spider fell from it to the ground. Her eyes widened as she went to stomp on it, stepping back only when she was sure the creepy crawly was good and crushed.

"Ruby, are you okay?" Yang walked over to see her caressing her hand.

"Yeah, only a spider bite." They all looked over at Doctor Octavius.

The doctor walked over and inspected Ruby's hand. She smiled. "Don't worry. Like I said, no venom. You'll be fine. In fact, I'm more annoyed by the loss of research subjects."

Ruby let out a sigh of relief and smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, overreacted."

Octavius nodded, and turned back to the door. "Shall we go?"

Ruby nodded, and they walked through.

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Ruby groaned.

She grabbed her stomach as she lay on her side, staring off the edge of the bed at where Yang was so casually playing on her phone. She groaned louder to get her sister's attention but was ignored. She sighed loudly.

Shortly after returning to the dorm, she had suddenly become ill, and was now suffering for it. She had gone down to the infirmary at first, but the doctor there had said that she had eaten something off and just needed to rest. She believed him – she had eaten an extraordinary amount of A Simple Wok's noodles on the way back – but that didn't make her sickness any better. She groaned again loudly.

"Ruby Rose!" Said Weiss, gripping her pencil as she got up from her desk. "I appreciate that you aren't feeling well, but you need to quiet down. I'm trying to study!"

"I'm sorry Weiss, I just feel so sick." Ruby said, curling up.

Weiss sighed dramatically, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Do you need a glass of water or something?"

"Yes please, nice-Weiss."

Weiss frowned. "Okay, but only if you quit calling me that."

"Fine, just water please."

Weiss left the room, presumably heading to the kitchen. Blake hummed to herself as she flipped the next page in her book. Yang gave out a cry of success when she won her game. Ruby waited.

Weiss eventually came back with water in a mug and handed it to her. Ruby took it gratefully, drinking it down like medicine. When she was finished, she gave the cup to Weiss and looked over at the window, shielding her eyes.

"I'm going to sleep now, please don't bother me."

"Ruby, what about our homework for Monday-"

"Weiss." Ruby shifted her bloodshot eyes to meet Weiss's blue ones. "Please."

Weiss pouted, but got the message. "Fine." She sat down on her bed in exasperation. "Tomorrow then."

Ruby nodded, the curled up on her side. Even as she drifted off, she realised that it was going to be a long night.

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Ruby rolled out of bed with a muffled thump and a squeal.

He eyes snapped open as she frantically looked around at the others – but they were sleeping deeply, entirely unconcerned with her embarrassing fall. She let out a sigh of relief and thanked the gods that it was Sunday.

The dreams she had had that night had been strange – sharp sounds, epileptic colours and a constant sick dread – and she felt she finally understood the phrase 'fever dream'. Standing up, she noticed that something felt off as she walked to the bathroom for a drink.

Taking a drink and washing her face, she realised how hot she felt, and pulled off her top to let out heat. Stupid sickness, she thought, but upon looking at herself in the mirror she gasped.

Before, to have called her weak would have been a disservice – she did wield a massive solid steel scythe, after all – but her stomach had been flat, and her limbs had been quite thin and flimsy-looking. Now though, her stomach rippled with prominent abdominal muscles, and her arms more resembled Yang's and Pyrrha's than Weiss's. She looked down at her legs and noticed her pyjama bottoms showed more of her legs than before. Looking back at the mirror and leaning on the counter, she realised that she was significantly taller than before. She pulled back.

Her fingers caught on the counter. She looked down in confusion, pulling again. He hand didn't budge.

She pulled a little harder. Had somebody left superglue on the counter? She breathed in deeply and gently pulled.

Her hand pulled away like it was nothing. She leant over to inspect the counter where it had been, but there was nothing there. Confused, she turned to leave before realising she should probably put her shirt back on first. She tried to pull away, but her hand was stuck to the doorknob. She used the same technique she had before, and it pulled away cleanly. She checked her hand to see hundreds of tiny hairs across its surface. She ran her other hand across her palm and found that they didn't even feel of anything, but she knew her own body enough to know that they shouldn't be there.

She shook her head as she pulled her shirt back over her head. She needed to get to the bottom of this.

You most certainly do, Ruby.

We'll see how this goes, now. I'll keep writing, even if nobody reads it - I want to put this idea down, no matter what. Again, this is good practice for my later fusion crossover ideas.

I noticed that many of my story ideas start with: "something weird/bad happens to Ruby." I was wondering why that is, but I realised it; Ruby Rose has the greatest narrative potential of the whole cast. She is the daughter of two of the most powerful hunters of all time, she has an expert teacher in the form of her uncle who is part of a grand conspiracy, the team SHE leads contains on of the richest people on the planet, an ex-terrorist and her sister who is also an incredibly powerful huntress. She has fancy eyes that make her one of the most important people on the planet, she is taught by an immortal hero and is hatefully targeted by the closest thing they have to the DEVIL. She is in the most prime position to do anything, but she never does in the show until far later... so my stories force her to act NOW. Which gives us good drama and action.

So yeah. Let's see how Ruby deals with her new developments next week, Sunday.

BTW not doing the "Next Chapter:" thing I did for To Steal from the Cookie Jar anymore because that gets stressful after a while, and there's no real point to it.

See you dreckly!