It's not often that one considers it, but the chaos that a single mind holds is broad. It's an organized system of thoughts that contains within it the hopes, dreams, and desires of a singular soul; the idea of which was just fleeting ephemeral speculation on the metaphysical in the world we live in. With that, it's easy to understand how shocking it might be when one unitary mind suddenly became more than just that.

And, how hard it might be to come to terms with it when you were still reeling from that transition.

First came the confusion. The jarring transition from sleep to instant wakefulness was strange, the world to our senses was far too intense and bright. The tugging around our neck had some portion of our awareness focus shift towards the blurry, humanoid shape that shook us as they fastened a colorful fabric around our neck snugly. As they came into clarity, their reassuring smile was the first thing that we saw clearly.

This blonde, twin pig-tailed girl easily drew our attention, and we reached the consensus that this girl was hauntingly, and most disturbingly familiar. She had incredibly vivid violet eyes, the kind you'd only see if someone deliberately wore contacts to change their color. But, what kind of young girl would do that?

"Russ," She finished tying the scarf around our neck and fixed us with an optimistic expression, "Operation: Find The Woman That Left Dad is a go!"

The second collective emotion we felt that came in a wave was sheer disbelief. What had happened to find one's self in this predicament? An average person did not suddenly become many years younger and smaller than a seven year-old child standing in front of them.

We blinked at her, our joint incredulousness at her statement must have leaked given how quickly she frowned at us, it was easy to see that she was about as uncertain about this venture as we were and she was the one planning it! Not even a second had passed, nor had we adapted to the numb, and very surreal disassociation of reality around us we were experiencing and this girl was cheerfully telling us we were going on a scavenger hunt for her father's possible ex-wife.

There's no way that this could end well, could it? She didn't seem all that put off by the weight of our disapproval. Unfortunately, she took our stunned silence as consent.

We compliantly followed her guidance as she ushered us toward the front door of the living room that we only just realized that we were standing in. The brisk cold chill of winter air hit us right as the blonde girl opened the door ahead of us. She gave us little time to take in our surroundings before yoinking us by an arm toward a little wagon, feelings of dread wormed into the back of our mind.

We were all hoping that this dreamlike state would all be over soon, whatever it was.

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Unfortunately, it did not end, and we were stuck on this blonde girl's wild wagon ride whether we liked it or not.

As this journey went on, we became more aware, our drifting chaotic attention found things to focus on that helped center us to a certain degree. The first thing that fully grabbed our attention was the bitter winds, each chilling gust numbing our flesh and leaving us with nothing but puffs of hot air coming out of our mouth. Another thing we noticed was that the older girl had placed us in a bucket of all things; the bucket was inside the wagon that was currently being pulled by her, and an even younger redheaded toddler also occupied the makeshift vehicle with us. She wore a red hood that she was bundled up in a futile attempt to stave off the frigid cold as she laid beside us.

Even so, she was blessedly asleep and reaching for us to drag us down to the wagon bed in her dreaming state for warmth. Our sympathy went out to her, she wasn't the one who drug us out into the freezing cold to go looking for a woman that probably didn't want to be found.

Maybe we should have voiced this feeling sooner to her for her own safety, but we had a feeling that little would have deterred the blonde from going on this self-imposed mission even if we did. Judging from the frigid air that nipped at our face ever so more bitingly, this was shaping up to be one of the most life-like dream sequences that any one of us had ever experienced; each second stretched on and minutes felt like just they would in reality.

We were still having trouble being able to focus on all of the details around the wagon as we were being pulled along with our fellow napping occupant. But it was frankly admirable that this blonde girl had the strength to pull the both of us through the rougher and far more snow laden portions of the path we were traveling.

Potential for frostbite aside, it was a very calm journey as we were being pulled along, but eventually we rounded a copse of trees and saw a dilapidated structure in the distance.

Unfortunately, our idyllic little exploration ended here as the atmosphere that carried in the air sent shivers down our spine for reasons more than just the chill.

All of a sudden the wagon jolted to a stop, the little blonde girl in front of us began to shiver and something deep inside told me that it was not because of the wind. Our gaze rose to see what made the girl so afraid, and our eyes caught sight of an old abandoned barn. The building's rotted walls barely seemed to be able to keep it standing and there was a… feeling to the building that made one's hair stand on end.

It was almost like static electricity in way, but somehow oh so wrong, it felt choking and- and-

Eyes, dark furious red eyes the color of pooling blood emerged slowly from the darkness of the barn's interior. They were so full of hate. We were not sure how we knew that, we were just certain that whatever those eyes belonged to wanted to kill us more than anything else in existence. It was a hatred so raw and primal that it filled the air with a malevolent malice that drowned out any response we could possibly pose other than pure, unfiltered fear.

We couldn't breathe; we couldn't even scream. Our brain simply couldn't react fast enough; there were so many thoughts ramming together between us.  We barely had started even processing the situation, barely started feeling the creeping threads of fear sneak down our spine before all the beasts staring us down were cut to nothing but shreds. Dark wisps lingered in the space around us. And in their place was what looked like an older man, an awkward-looking five-o'clock shadow on his face that was set in a deep grimace of anger, hatred, and concern; Eyes that red did not belong to a normal human. When we recognized him, we had a realization made suddenly clear, and then that made things all so terribly worse.

Tears welled up uncontrollably, and the wails echoed through the air once whatever unity we were operating under cracked as we struggled to cope with this insane situation. One wanted to deny this was happening, that we had become part of a universe we were, to some degree, familiar with. The others knee jerked into incoherent mental screaming, understandably so. No one wanted to really live in a death world even for the soul-powered super powers.

All of this was immediately followed up with a skull cracking headache of five years worth of foreign memories slamming into us all at once, and a surge of something infinitely warm crawling itself out from the center of our chest to embrace every inch of our fragile body. It felt like the loving hug of a mother, like the gentle caress of Spring's sun, and most importantly, it helped protect our head when it smacked into the rim of the bucket.

The world around us faded away much like a bad dream; one that we hoped stayed that way.

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My headphones blared rhythmic music into my ears as I waited. The world around me dulled as the noise canceling kicked in. My eyes glanced briefly at the flickering digits from the clock at the top of one of the corners of the hallway I stood in. I grumped slightly as I idly brushed off some lint off my white cloak, it felt like I've been stuck here for an eternity.

I've been waiting for Ruby's remedial combat class to end, and thankfully, the music made it easier to bear with the slow crawl of time creeping by. Eventually, it finally let out and a couple of students immediately exited the door to the training room. Lagging behind the bulk of the traffic, was my twin sister, a deflated expression on her face as the instructor waited for her to slowly exit before locking the classroom behind her and making his own leave down the other direction to the teacher's lounge.

Instructor Burnside passed me by as he walked, giving me a respectful nod, that I didn't feel all that enthused about returning. He was cordial to me, but frequently singled Ruby out much to my own dislike.

I see the typical spark in her eyes slightly reinvigorate when she finally catches sight of me from her downward focus on the floor, but it's slight.

"Hey Russet!" She spoke up, attempting to inject more cheer into her voice than she clearly felt as we both stood in the hallway facing each other.

She awkwardly shoulders her backpack full of her school books and adjusts the dull-edged metal training sword belted to her side.

I slightly raised an eyebrow at her clearly forced greeting, "You alright there Ruby? I'm going to assume that old Burnside gave you a hard time again." I shook my head as I started nudging my twin forward before she had a chance to respond. "What was his excuse to keep you back this time?"

Ruby idly dwindled her fingers together sheepishly as she glanced to the side of the hallway, silver eyes darting around the slightly faded paint as she squeaked out. "I, uh, kinda… accidentally lost my grip on my weapon when I used my Semblance?"

"Wait, the sword?" I squinted at the weapon on her hip.

She shook her head with an embarrassed sigh, "Mr. Burnside handed me a big, two-handed hammer. Said that there wasn't a way I could mess up using a 'blunt instrument' with how awful my edge alignment with this sword was."

Awkwardly looking away from me, she cleared her throat before elaborating, "You might have heard it earlier."

I was instantly reminded of the nearly deafening crash that shook the school, loud enough to reach me through my state of the art, noise-canceling headphones. At the time I simply shrugged the sound off, since it wasn't exactly uncommon to hear loud, spontaneous noises at Signal. It was something that came with the territory of training Huntsmen-to-be, and honestly, it wasn't like it was my problem. Because it usually was not.

I quickly reconsidered that notion with the thought that my twin sister was the cause of it.

Meanwhile, Ruby started to fidget. I'm sure she noticed how my blank, baffled gaze bore into the side of her head. In fact, I briefly wondered how my dad was going to cover the sheer cost of what was likely to be multiple walls through the school, because I definitely recalled eyeballing those holes spanning at least two separate buildings before the weapon likely came to a stop.

In the end, all I could only offer her was a disbelieving sigh, "Ruby, how? Just how did you manage that?"

Ruby slightly froze as she paused her fidgeting and huddled herself into her cloak, seemingly in an attempt to hide herself away from the world. I almost felt a pang of regret at my question, if she hadn't just managed to cause several thousand Lien worth of property damage.

"I just swung it, while going really, really fast." She murmured into the fabric of her cloak.

"And?"

"...I, uh, sorta slipped?" Her face was going to be as red as her Aura at this rate.

And at this point, I'm going to give my twin the mercy of ending this particular conversation, for I doubt my already fraying sanity would be able to handle this line of thought for much longer.

"Putting aside the bill Dad's going to pay, are you still up for the usual sparring session sans a hammer?"

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

I didn't think she'd be very enthused about doing it today, but I figured I'd ask anyway since she's been heavily relying on me to be her sparring dummy for learning the bare basics of using a sword. She preferred a speedy, quick fighting style and a sword wasn't the worst idea for her to use.

Her actually learning it on the other hand, well, it was saying something that using swords has given her the least trouble out of all the other weapons she's tried so far. It was baffling that she's had so much trouble with other weapons that really shouldn't be causing her a problem. Axes, just like hammers, were no good; her footing and balance was terrible whenever she used them. She haphazardly rammed into things accidentally whenever she used a spear. Throwing knives went spiraling behind her or flung in an arc that went nowhere near her target. She didn't have the arm strength to use a bow. Frankly, she was a mess, and that was being generous.

But, she was my sister, and she wanted more than anything to find a weapon that worked. So, helping her had become a part-time job. The temptation to just throw a scythe at her was overpowering, but I resisted the urge. She really needed Uncle Qrow's instruction because I didn't have a clue where to start to use one of those in combat.

A languid shrug and a shake of the head in the negative came from her, an act that clued me in that she was feeling this particular failure far deeper than she usually does. Typically, she's quick to bounce back with a grin on her face from even her more egregious defeats, usually by throwing herself back into it until she browbeats her obstacles into submission.

I gave her a quick glance, seeing how her usually vibrant eyes seemed dull under the fluorescent lights of the hallway, looking more akin to cold steel rather than her bright silver. Apparently, even she has her limits when her obstacle appears to be insurmountable. Maybe she's had enough fighting and training for today.

Alright then, it looks like it's up to me to be the cheery twin between us for once, a role that I was not at all prepared to handle.

"C'mon, let's get home. Dad said that he was trying to get Mom's cookie recipe right again. Let's see if he manages it this time, yeah?" I gave her my best comforting smile as I gently nudged her side.

She giggled, her down-turned lips flipping to the beginnings of a smile, "Really?"

I nodded to her, a moment of peaceful silence descending between us as we began the long walk home. It was perhaps a little annoying how far we lived from Signal, if it weren't for the fact that Ruby and I had Aura then I probably would have asked Dad for some kind of vehicle to get to and from the house, like he did for Yang for her fifteenth birthday.

As it is, the journey is a relatively easy one and to my relief, Ruby does not stay quiet for long.

"So…" She started to say once we were farther away from the school, every step she took away seemed to lift her spirits.

"Did you manage to get those holo-scopes working!" Ruby asked, hints of the usual, excited chatter that I had slowly come to love from my little sister starting to come through. I couldn't help the small smile that formed on my face as I responded.

"Not quite yet, I'm still trying to figure out exactly how that hard-light dust works and how you're supposed to control it on such a small scale." Because in defiance to common sense, Dust's natural effects became harder the less of it you used. Almost like Dust was just a violent explosion contained within a crystal and I was attempting to harness only a smidge of that explosive force in a specific way.

I suppose it was about time to look up online how to do it. I had spent quite a bit of time trying to figure this out but I had other things I needed to spend my time on and I really couldn't get caught up on trying to trial and error this technology in particular, no matter how cool it was.

Honestly it still amazes me sometimes how advanced technology was in this world in some way, yet also so primitive in other ways. There had been a lot of things that had amazed me like that when I first got to this world but slowly, but by bit I was coming to understand things.

Ruby seemed disappointed I hadn't made much progress yet, when I first told her about my idea to make a holographic scope she had been downright ecstatic. Ranting on and on about how much room it could save and what other cool stuff they could fit into a weapon if we were able to get rid of 'old bulky iron sights'.

As Ruby's words became more and more excited my smile could only grow by several factors. Arriving in this world had been… an experience for certain, but the little redhead had been a surprising rock in a deadly storm. And despite my own worries about her own mental state it seemed that she was doing far better than me, then again she had actually been five when everything went down. She probably didn't even really understand what had happened, everything had been so quick after all.

I remembered though, and like a dark cloud signaling the coming of thunder I felt my thoughts drift towards those dark subjects against my own will. My smile fell as I started to remember why I was even bothering with learning how to fight in the first place. The low boiling dread that slowly encroached day by day, the creeping fear that I did my best to push down every day. Sometimes I would find myself counting the days until I estimated that Canon would arrive, the day Ruby would venture out into Vale for that fateful encounter with Roman Torchwick.

The day civilization would start collapsing…

Something must have shown on my face because Ruby had gone quiet and was staring at me in concern now. I cleared my throat in mild embarrassment as my mind briefly raced to find something to distract her with… Mechashift, maybe?

"So…! Dad mentioned that you got the best grade in weaponsmith class, right Ruby?" I said suddenly, making the girl blink in surprise and then squint her eyes in deep suspicion.

"Of course I am, I'm the best at that! As you should be perfectly aware of, are you…?" She asked, her words trailing off with an implication that was startlingly obvious as she sidestepped my redirection with a hint of fear creeping into her voice.

I just laughed, "No! no, I was actually thinking of finally making myself a proper huntsman weapon and was wondering if you wanted to help me build it."

Her eyes lit up at that, all remnants of suspicion and fear melting away into pure excitement.

"You want me to help you make a weapon?!" Ruby gasped, her face turning excited as she started to rant about all the potential weapons the two of us could make together. The longer we walked the more and more she seemed to grow excited until she was rushing about with her Semblance, leaving a myriad of petals floating in the breeze. I smiled as I waved away a fresh cloud of petals, it was always nice to see that her near obsession with weapons was enough to pull her out of her sorrow, even if temporarily.

"Oh! oh! We should make you like a really big sword! No! Wait, you use axes regularly, right? So an axe instead, but what kind of Mechashift options should it have? Ranged is always a necessity, of course, so maybe something like an automatic rifle? Oh, but what if…"

And on she went, babbling through various design processes and the pros and cons of one feature or another. The way she could mentally outline parts and put them together in her head was incredible, it also gave me the glimmers of a potential idea on how to make further use of my Semblance. Could I make semi-accurate three-dimensional recreations of weapons for Ruby to change and model?

It would need some testing but the idea held some serious merit, but our home came into view before I could express my idea to Ruby. She got caught up in her own world of excitement and dashed into the house at record-breaking speeds using her Semblance, a familiar sight that caused a fond quirk of my lips. But my smile was quickly diluted as I meandered in my walk back to the rather large double-story log cabin as I grew closer to my home, a sinking suspicion creeping down my throat.

Bumblebee, Yang's precious motorbike, was on its kickstand near the porch. That probably meant she just got home.

I watched as Ruby nearly broke the door down to get inside, likely rushing to her room to begin writing down whatever amazing ideas had blown through her head like a tornado. Meanwhile, I couldn't help the feeling of faint annoyance that accrued as the tell-tale sign shouting erupted louder from inside the building when she opened the front door.

I stopped briefly outside the cabin, mentally planning my route to avoid having to run into them before putting my headphones back on. Taking a deep breath to settle the annoyance I felt flaring up, I started some music and marched inside the house. I tried to be a bit quiet but I was almost certain they noticed me from the small dip in the conversation volume and the feeling of eyes on my back.

One of the weirder Aura-enhanced abilities honestly, but I ignored that in favor of making my way upstairs and bursting into my and Ruby's room.

"Ruby!" I quietly shouted, "Did you really need to leave me to… that?"

She winced as I spoke, "Sorry, I got so excited and by the time I realized they were going at it again it felt way too awkward to walk out the door to get you so I just uh… went upstairs."

I sighed, falling face-first onto my bed as I let myself decompress for a moment. The shouting was still going on downstairs but thankfully it sounded like it was starting to wind down-

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the front door slamming shut, the vibration resounding through the house, making me and Ruby flinch. I knew what was coming next, the pattern had become annoyingly familiar, and I was quickly proven right as I heard the telltale noise of Bumblebee rev up and fade off into the distance.

She probably wasn't even home for longer than ten or fifteen minutes.

"At least they're done fighting for now…" Ruby mutters, hugging one of her many stuffed cookies on her bed and nuzzling its plushness with a soft exhale.

I, on the other hand, was grumbling in minute anger, "Probably not going to get our cookies now though…"

'Damn Yang and her stupid teenage antics.' I thought, before shaking those notions away as uncharitable. She's her own person, just because I don't like her habitual partying doesn't give me the right to tell her what to do, it does however give me the right to be angry as it means I might not get cookies tonight.

Instead of wallowing on that, I decided to delve back into the weapon-smithing conversation with Ruby. The two of us have a nice couple of hours of exploring more reasonable ideas to far more ridiculous ones. Which, thankfully, was something that isn't as dramatic as a teenage girl trying to express herself with partying or whatever the heck our big sister does in Vale without us.

Eventually, a soft knock comes from the bedroom door and both me and my twin briefly pause our conversation and snap our heads towards the unexpected distraction. It did not take long for my Dad's messy blonde hair to slide into view from behind the edge of the door as he opened it, a sheepish expression adorning his slightly wrinkled face.

"Hey, kiddos, dinner is just about ready!" He proclaims from the doorway before chuckling nervously, "Uh, so I'll see you two down there if you're hungry."

I peered at Ruby through the corner of my eye, since usually, she's the one who happily bulldozes her way downstairs at the offer of a meal while I fondly follow in her wake, but I also know she usually tends to grow concerningly quiet whenever our dad and Yang have another disagreement. And that typically leads to me having to pick up her slack.

And sure enough, I see my twin peering back at me from the corner of her own eye, slightly motioning for me to answer with a pleading look in her silver gaze.

I simply sighed in response, slightly rolling my equally silver eyes. Sometimes being the older twin came with its drawbacks, but I wasn't going to push her after she already had a rough day. "Yeah Dad, we'll come down in a moment. Just give us a sec to wash up."

He nodded before disappearing, his footsteps echoed as he descended back down the stairs.

After changing out from my school uniform to some more casual clothes, the both of us were greeted with a genuine smile from our dad in the kitchen as he pulled trays from the oven once we made it to the bottom of the staircase. Something I've started to see more often from him, rather than the glassy-eyed stares I had received from him whenever I tried to speak to him just a year or two before.

It was more gutting than I liked to admit, and I was glad that he seemed to be changing from that perpetual mourning, sorry state he seemed stuck in. Yet, I made the executive decision and made sure to avoid mentioning the rather large bill that was heading Dad's way, it might have sent him straight back into the rut he was stuck in.

But even when he was at his worst, Yang used to try to make sure we all ate dinner or breakfast together at some point of the day, essentially having taken over in terms of responsibility. But, it seemed like she's started focusing on having more fun and going out lately. The semi-frequent assaults on my eardrums whenever Dad and Yang were in the same room, just like what happened earlier, were a result of that.

I breathed in the fresh aroma of baked goods, something I hadn't quite gotten over yet even after nine years here in this world was the different foods they cooked. For one thing, bread with a meal was practically mandatory, be it breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Another thing I found amazing was the sheer variety of soup I often had. I wasn't sure if it was a cultural thing or a resource thing because we all lived on an island but soup was definitely a mainstay in this family.

Tonight was a bit different than usual, toasted bread followed by lasagna and cooked broccoli. Even better, Dad had pulled out a wonderfully delicious-looking tray of cookies and said we could have some tonight if we ate our vegetables. Something that was far more difficult than one would expect from an adult in mind, but my taste buds just refused to enjoy broccoli no matter what I did. A trait that I shared with my sister, showcased by the deep grimace on her face as she ate a forkful of the dreaded vegetables.

I was willing to bet a considerable sum of money that the only reason she managed to get it down was the promised cookies as a reward.

Still, I tried my best, and over the next hour, while I tried to choke down the disgusting vegetable that called itself broccoli, I also tried to needle my Dad about upcoming assignments. But all I managed to get was a knowing smile aimed at me with the long-standing patience of someone familiar with my antics and refused to say anything…

Well, he did say something fairly interesting near the end of dinner.

"Ah, before I forget kiddos, guess who's going to be paying a visit soon!" Tai said, a small relaxed-looking grin on his face as he dug into his slice of lasagna.

Ruby, idly poking her broccoli, snapped her head up to stare at Dad with sparkles in her eyes.

"OH, MY CHEESE AND CRACKERS IS IT UNCLE QROW?!" She shouted, and I mean shouted. Her small body rapidly vibrated in place like she was sitting in one of those massage chairs.

Tai just laughed at his youngest daughter's antics, "Yes Ruby, calm down, Uncle Qrow is coming over for a visit."

"Oh, I hope he lets me look at Harbinger again! It gave me some really cool ideas on how to compress high-powered weapons into smaller forms! OH, oh! And I wanted to ask Uncle Qrow how he got Dust integration to work like he did on Harbinger, I thought that if you did it like that it could tear apart the more delicate Mechashift mechanisms and…"

And off to the races she went, the rest of the dinner filled wonderfully up with Ruby's general peppiness. Her excitement let her drift from topic to topic as long as she had already gotten started and maintained momentum, kind of like a lawn mower.

It was a nice dinner, even with the notable absence at the table. But hey, I at least got my cookies in the end. They weren't perfect, maybe a tinge burnt, but they were the sweetest things I had eaten in some time.