A/N: In celebration of RWBY Volume 3 starting tomorrow!

~X X X~

Ruby Rose walked—well, "staggered" would have been a better verb—into her team's dorm room and collapsed onto Weiss's bed, her feet dangling over the edge.

"Uggggh," was her inarticulate yet concise summation.

"Wow, rough meeting, sis?" asked the room's only other non-canine occupant, Ruby's sister Yang. "Must be, if you don't even have the strength to climb into your own bed."

"Why didn't I pick the lower bunk?"

"'Cause with our engineering skills, it's definitely safer to be the one falling instead of the one landed on."

"I'm not sure I'd notice at this point."

Yang swiveled in her desk chair, genuinely curious now, and not just because her baby sister's travails were more interesting than the essay she was writing for Professor Port.

"I thought you were at some special strategy and tactics class for team leaders?" she asked.

"I was."

"So why do you look like a rhino used you for a treadmill?"

"Ms. Goodwitch made us take turns playing out various scenarios and our reactions to them. And she had Team CFVY playing the opposition. I never liked makeup before and I am now sure it is the devil!"

"One too many bags to the face?"

"I think the bag took it personally."

"Did you learn anything?"

"Floors are hard? No, seriously, it was actually pretty good. Keeping track of a whole team and its capabilities in battle and directing the right people to the right job is complicated."

Yang smirked.

"That's why I'm happy you got to be the boss. Just throw me at whatever needs hitting and I'll punch it in the face."

"You're a woman of elegant tastes, Yang."

"Of course! Hey, take your boots off and I'll give you a footrub."

"Thanks. Yatsuhashi stomped on my foot and pinned me in place while he hit me with that giant cleaver of his. I'm not sure I still have toes."

Groaning, Ruby managed to push herself upright, then bent over and began to undo her bootlaces. The boots came off with a pop and thunked onto the floor, barely missing the tail of a sleeping corgi.

Sorry, Zwei," she said when he woke up with a startled yip. He regarded her carefully for a few seconds, then judged that she was sufficiently contrite and gave her a friendly bark and a doggy grin.

"Okay, then, I'll come over and you can put your feet in my lap while my magic fingers get to work." Yang cracked her knuckles as she got up. Ruby swung herself up onto the bed, and that's when Yang saw it. "Wait a second. You've got holes in your socks."

"What? N-no, I don't," Ruby stammered, yanking off the offending garments without even disturbing the stirrups of her tights.

"Yes, you do. Your little toenail monsters have been chewing at them for a while, by the looks of it."

"I do not have toenail monsters!"

"That one's got two holes! What, did you start wearing it on the other foot until both big toes had a snack?"

"I…nnnoooo…"

"Come on, hand 'em over and I'll sew 'em up for you."

"Y-you don't have to do that," Ruby stammered.

"And what would Dad say?" Yang pointed out, calling to mind numerous childhood lectures about his rambunctious daughters' habit of damaging their clothing.

"Dad isn't here. And I don't like wearing darned socks. The sewing makes the fabric all clumpy and they feel weird on my toes. You don't want your team leader thinking about her feet during battle, do you?" Ruby tried hopefully.

Hope was not to be rewarded.

"Hand over the socks, sis. Unless you want to throw them out and buy new ones—or just stop getting stirrup tights and start getting the kind with feet," Yang ordered, fully aware that Ruby had spent the last of her allowance on cookies the day before.

"No! And hey, I am the team leader, so that means you have to do what I—"

She never even got to finish the sentence, because Yang used her momentary distraction to snatch a sock free.

"I'll do this one first, since it's got two holes to fix."

"Noooooo!"

Ruby proved the value of motivation, then, as despite her exhaustion she became a blur of movement and rose petals as she shot across the room to grab the sock before Yang could react and pull it out of reach.

Speed, though, did nothing to make Yang let go of the other end.

"Give it back!"

"You're going to give yourself blisters and you know it."

"I can't fight with clumpy toes!"

"You can't fight with hurt feet, either!"

"Let go; it's going to rip!"

"They you'll just have to get new ones!"

"Graaaah!"

"Arrrrrrgh!"

Shouting, they both yanked backwards at once. The sock held. Their footing didn't, and they crashed over onto the floor, still wrestling and pulling for control of the sock. Zwei jumped to his feet and started barking enthusiastically, apparently as much of an aficionado of games of tug as a spectator as he was as a player. The fight and the din were so intense that none of the three of them noticed the soft clicks of the door opening and closing.

In fact, it wasn't until two minutes later that a particularly hard pull by Yang sent her shoulders skidding to bump into a pair of shins. She looked up into the eyes of her partner, Blake Belladonna. Well, the eyes and the camera lens of Blake's scroll.

"Um, er, we can explain, Blake."

"No, no, keep on with your sock tug'o'war. But I'm going to save this video for the next time someone makes a joke about me acting like a cat."