Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-7472785-20130908092917/@comment-11481298-20130908112316

For visual indicators, the page for Dust says that those glowing circles appear when someone uses a lot of it, and for Aura, the person glows. One of Glynda's attacks had her glowing, then flinging a purplish light thing at the sky, which exploded with one of those glowing circles, blurring the line between Dust and Aura a bit if we go with those indicators.

There was a discussion about Weiss being tired by creating that line of circles. We know that Dust is mined, and Aura comes from the soul. Using a device powered by a battery the way that (we assume) Dust powers things won't tire you out. If it does turn out that Maki is right and Aura activates Dust, then that means anything Dust-powered is also soul-powered. (Unless s/he's [Maki, I really don't know which I should refer to you with, sorry] only referring to when they're used in combat.)

Use of a lot of Aura, at least, has been shown to tire someone out, like when Pyrrha unlocked Jaune's Aura (though there could've been some weird Aura-spirit-thing that overtook her body and that was just her going back to normal, but I highly doubt that). This makes me think that Aura was involved in some way for that line of circles, and possibly also the black-red circle that shot Ruby.

As for the movement=Aura thing, if moving your limbs around in one way makes a different Aura effect, then moving your weapon a certain way should, too, since weapons are conduits for Aura. (That, and whatever Glynda did, her crop helped fling it.)

All in all, I think Aura is at least partially involved in the two big tricks Weiss pulled of to help beat the Nevermore. I don't know if Aura can help Ruby run up a cliff, but it's at least possible that shooting her to the Nevermore's neck was like shooting the Basilisk's fang through its eye.

But is there any reason we can't just put it under the speculation for now? :/