Disclaimer: You guys know the drill, RWBY is owned by Monty Oum and Roosterteeth. I don't own anything but this crappy laptop.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::
It was late at night but Yang was resolutely remaining awake. Blake's and Weiss's breathing had fallen into easy sleeping rhythms more than an hour ago; Blake breathing in right as Weiss breathed out. Yang wouldn't ordinarily notice or care about details like that, and felt a bit creepy but she had nothing else to focus on as Ruby was still out training. Ruby had kept up a relatively cheerful front after the Breach but she couldn't fool Yang. Ruby blamed herself for the supposed failure. In hindsight, she could've used her speed to traverse the train and make it to the front, but that was months ago. Ruby hadn't slept after a long day of constant Grimm fighting and was low on aura from being roughed up after being taken prisoner. In frustrated Yang to no end that her efforts to convince Ruby of this were completely ineffectual. She lazily glanced at the clock before shooting up in bed.
"Oum it's late, that's it Ruby we're having a serious talk tomorrow," Yang muttered as she grabbed her coat and made her way out of the room. "Between Blake's white fang obsession, Weiss's studying, and now this you'd think we were all allergic to sleep or something." Summer was quickly approaching so it was warm enough the coat was just due to habit. Yang moved toward the training rooms on autopilot as she steamed over having to look over her teammates' sleep schedules at the expense of her own. Reaching the door broke Yang out of her reverie as she swiped her scroll across the terminal. Training rooms could only scheduled for entire teams so the door would open for any of the team. The door slid open easily releasing a tidal wave of rose petals into the hallway.
"... What," Yang said, too confused to keep her anger up, "Ruby?" She was only met by the soft hum of air conditioner. Slightly flaring her semblance, Yang began to burn through the petals to get into the room proper. After a full 5 minutes of burning and who knows how many petals gone up in smoke, Yang's confusion had only grown. "Ruby?" Yang yelled into the mountains of petals that seemed to fill the entire room. Yang pulled out her scroll and navigated to the team condition section to check Ruby's GPS, but was stopped by an alarming sight. Weiss's and Blake's aura's were full, her own was slightly diminished by using her semblance to burn petals, but Ruby's wasn't even showing up. Her mind flew to the worst. Ruby could be dead without a single inch of aura remaining. Her semblance flared larged, consuming petals at a vastly increased rate. The fire alarm went off from the smoke and the sprinklers began to pour down on her. Her normally precious hair was being ruined but she didn't even make a note of it. Ruby's GPS was somewhere in this room, and she would be found.
Glynda woke up to a notification of a fire in a training room reserved by team RWBY. Her opinion of RWBY was split. On one hand, they were extremely effective, certainly the best first year team and she could think of a few second year teams *cough USLS cough* they were probably better that, but my goodness they were always causing some sort of trouble. Regardless, she needed to go repair whatever they had done now at… 2 IN THE MORNING. "Alright, this better not be something stupid" She made her way towards the training hall but was much further away than Yang had been.
Yang's fire continued to burn brighter with every moment of not finding Ruby. There were just so many petals. The core of reason in Yang knew she had to stay angry, if she lost to hopelessness she wouldn't be able to reignite herself, and right now her flames were the best way to find Ruby. Years ago she had found that her semblance wouldn't harm people she cared about so Ruby wasn't in danger of being torched. Yang reached deep inside herself and flared her semblance to consume the entire room, flash igniting the remaining petals and revealing a slumped figure up against the side wall. With that final push Yang's fire went out and drained her completely, she crawled over toward Ruby to confirm that her baby sister was alright. If she wasn't…
Glynda was met with a strange scene when she finally arrived at the source of the alarm. Everything short of the walls and floor had been obliterated and Yang held Ruby in her arms sobbing. Yang's aura broadcast her emotions as being in relief while Ruby's aura was so depleted she could have been dead. "Excuse me, Ms. Xiao Long but what happened here?" Glynda decided that, at least to start, she would try to be gentle with the still conscious sister. "I-I came to check - I mean grab Ruby since it was so late, and I, well, there," Yang devolved into sobs for a moment before continuing "The whole room was full of rose petals and Ruby's aura was at 0 and she could've been dead but she's alright." Yang was gaining control of herself as she ordered the events in her mind. There was a long pause before Yang admitted, "I guess I was the one who, erm, broke all of the equipment" glancing at the scattered slag pools that marked the locations of the equipment. "I still don't know how Ruby got so low on aura or how the room filled with petals."
Glynda was quiet for a moment as she took the events in, before her eyes hardened, "Go back to your room Yang, I'll bring Ruby to the infirmary to make sure no damage was done. Once she's woken up I need to talk with her." Yang looked down at her sister, before drowsily agreeing.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Ruby woke up feeling better than she had in a while, which probably meant she had overslept. She had probably stayed up too late last night as she couldn't remember cleaning up or returning to her dorm room. Did she have any classes today? Her head was throbbing too badly to even attempt to remember. "Ugh... I ought to get up," Ruby said to the (she assumed) empty room. She, therefore, wasn't prepared for the veritable wall of excited jabber and shouting that she received as a reaction.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::
"Why do you think she did it?" Blake asked the various students assembled around Ruby's hospital bed. Team RWBY had remained gathered around Ruby's bed since Yang had woken up that morning and immediately run to check on her sister. Weiss and Blake had kept up a constant barrage of question ever since they had gotten the rough outline of the story. "She's going to tell us as soon as she wakes up," Weiss responded harshly. "I think that she feels like she needs to do better and was doing some sort of training," Yang intervened trying to sound more confident than she was. "Ugh… I ought to get up"
Everyone froze.
"RUBY!" "YOU'RE AWAKE." "YOU HAD US SO WORRIED." Ruby lept out of bed with enough force to send the hospital bed flying across the room, slamming into the far wall and scattering her ecstatic teammates. "Ummm, what's going on?" Ruby asked. 3 mouths opened in tandem to answer but Weiss got the first word in.
"Do you have any idea how worried we've been. You can do serious damage to yourself with that kind of stupid stunt."
"I was-was just training, what do you mean?" Ruby was now looking at the floor and bumping her index fingers together; a telltale sign that she was nervous and a signal for Yang to take over the interrogation. "Ruby, I found you in a training room filled to the brim with rose petals and you completely drained of aura," Yang said in as calm a voice as she could manage. "I know what I'm doing; If I don't go all out I won't improve fast enough. People were hurt… it can't… I won't let it happen again," Ruby declared. "Sacrificing your own health and wellbeing won't help you protect anyone," Blake asserted. "How can you all be ok with this; Grimm got into the city because we weren't good enough, but Weiss and Blake still refuse to do strength training and Yang stil won't do any schoolwork. Our team needs to get better and I'm willing to do whatever it takes," with that Ruby disappeared from the room leaving a trail of rose petals. "Ruby wait!" Yang yelled to the now empty space. "A few white fang members tried this a few years ago, its called aura nuking. It consists of repeatedly bringing one's aura to absolute zero in order to increase maximum capacity. It often leads to injuries but almost never anything serious," Blake explained, "Unless anyone has a great idea to get her to stop, our best bet is probably to wait for her to burn out. She doesn't seem like a glutton for punishment." "You'd be surprised Blake, but I'll try talking to her again," Yang said.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Really wanted this to be a oneshot, but it seemed to need more than one part. First fanfic so problems will be rampant and criticism is needed.
Thanks for reading.