Imagine Lien as equivalent to something like cents or Yen. The 2000 Lien card that Jaune picked up a long time ago was the equivalent to a twenty dollar bill. Since we don't know the actual value of Lien in universe yet, it just makes sense to guess it works similarly.

Ruby stared down at the smooth and polished concrete, bored and slightly cold. It smelled of bleach. Her dad Taiyang was still rambling on about one thing or another about motorcycles with the undivided attention of her six year old sister, Yang, whom still had dirty blond hair and two long braids.

"Daddy?" Yang asked in a innocent and hopeful voice, "will I get to ride Bumblebee when I'm older?"

'That's right,' Ruby thought, 'their working on the bike, they've been working on the bike for the past five hours.' She just wanted to sleep, but she knew Taiyang wanted her company, so she stayed.

"Maybe you'll get to ride it, but only if we get it put back together" he laughed. The young rose looked up to see her father run his hand playfully through Yang's hair. Black streaks of dirt and grease were left in her sister's hair, but Yang didn't care; she wouldn't care till later. Taiyang looked over to the sleepy Ruby, all bundled up in a red hoody, and said "maybe your sister will get to ride it too! But we'll see, she hasn't shown any interest yet..."

'Not particularly' thought Ruby, 'While it's interesting how it works, once I learn how to go fast on my own, what'll be the point?'

Taiyang rolled the four piece carburetor over so the top was facing up, and four separate boreholes sat without their rubber gaskets and vacuum pumps. He held out a hand, "hand me the needle braces, and make sure they have all their shelling's too."

Yang gave him a crooked eye. "And by shelling's you mean the single fat washer?" She dropped the four plastic beige pieces into his large opened hand. He eyed the piece briefly, confessing that he thought there was a clip or something more to it. Before long the pieces were put in.

"Uh oh..." exclaimed their father. He turned in his stool to face the door from the garage to the house, and carried a guilty look on his face. "I'll send the girls in for dinner soon, I promise..." Summer Rose was giving him a death glare, sharpening her kitchen knives while she was at it. She was very pretty thought Ruby. "Okay, five more minutes and you guys should go in, unless of course you want your mother to use me for dinner tomorrow, ha!" he burst out laughing, the murderous look on Summer's face also breaking into one of a slight upturned smile.

She waved the knife at him sternly, and in a scratchy voice warned him "five minutes okay? Otherwise, you're right, tomorrow night it's... Taiyang-a-bob, or uh..."

Yang almost jumped out of her seat, "Ooh! How about Sweet 'n' Taiyang-y pork!?"

Summer nodded in favor of the notion, "ooh, I like that idea" she said cooly, squinting her eyes at her husband.

Ruby giggled. Still tired though, she let her head fall back down to stare at the spot in-between her feet, back at the smooth polished concrete. She jerked her head back up however once she heard someone cat call at her. Waking up just now, her homeless looking cell mate liked what he saw, but was surprised to see Ruby's actual face without her growing hair in the way.

Her eye and mouth were still and cold, her missing eye a surprise as she didn't have her head band with her, and her body language as a whole reading out 'predator'. To further his surprise, she bared the teeth on her left side and growled like a wolf. Rather, instead of surprise, her cell mate was stricken with fear and regret, scooting himself rapidly to the opposite corner of the cell. Ruby figured they must've brought him in while she was sleeping.

Now regrettably fully awake, she leaned back into the brick layer wall that smelled of bleach and stared blankly into the empty adjacent cell across from their door, trying to remember what her dream was about, but found no luck in doing so. She turned to pondering the consequences of the night previous, and all the ramifications of killing Fox.

As Ruby figured, Blake too was probably thinking about it, as the Rose could hear her teammate crying in the cell to her left, probably lamenting her first very personal murder, along with worries about what happened to Weiss. Ruby didn't cry though. For one reason or another, Ruby felt assured that Weiss was okay, and that things would be alright for her teammate, and wasn't very concerned about the morality of killing someone she knew. He was a bad guy... apparently.

"Blake?" she yawned.

She could hear the sniffling quiet down as Blake composed herself behind the brick wall. "Yeah?" she eventually answered.

"You okay?"

A sniffle. "No." Her voice was breaking.

"Okay..."

"..."

"Ruby?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you okay?" Blake's rendition of the question was a little more concerned and worried than her team leader's.

"Yeah."

"..." Blake's sniffles got quieter.

"..."

"How?" Blake asked disbelieving.

"I dunno." Ruby yawned again. "Just am."

"How'd you deal with it when you killed someone for the first time?" Blake asked. It was a question she had actually wanted to ask ever since the raid in their freshman year, when they saw Ruby take several people's lives with little hesitation after the first and no mention of it after the fact.

"It's simple. When someone holds open the door for you, you return the favor. Someone tries to kill you, you kill them back. If someone's the danger, you become the danger." It wasn't so simple though. Ruby vaguely remembered the turmoil of her conscience and the contemplation of her actions, how much she had to justify the means to herself, and the conclusion she came to after much trouble. Jaune understood, Ruby couldn't remember how she put it, her conclusion, but she remembered that Jaune had a clear understanding of it all and could put it into words; something about putting the odds into your favor.

Blake didn't want to buy it. "But is it so simple-" she was cut off as a guard walking up and down the isle of cells tapped the cages with his baton, telling them to remain silent. They complied.

Bored out of her mind, Ruby carved a picture of a rose into the wooden benches they had as seats, played an hour of rock, paper, scissors with her cellmate, napped, and altogether refused to use the toilet in the corner of the cell. Around lunch time they were given a decently sized bowl of porridge that was quickly devoured regardless of the lack of taste. Blake started asking her leader what she thought was going to happen to them, and Ruby answered honestly that she didn't know.

By the third night they had spent in jail, while Ruby was working on her thousandth sit up and Blake working on her handstand personal record at ten minutes, the young jail guard took them both to a questioning room. In it was the obvious one way mirror and the single lamp light over the wooden table, three chairs, and a barred window with a shattered moon barely visible through a cloud line. Ozpin was waiting for them.

"Girls" he greeted them. He didn't have his regular cane nor his coffee, rather his 'weapon', whatever it was or did, and his attitude seemed more stern and unforgiving than it regularly was with them. Not mad exactly, just serious. They understood however, as from his perspective, they could see how some students being the cause of death for another student regardless of the context would be awkward for the person responsible for the student's overall well being; if Fox had family, Ozpin was probably suffering for their rash actions.

"Headmaster" Ruby nodded back. They took their seats opposite from the older man. Blake didn't wait to ask what had been bothering her.

"Is Weiss okay!?" Ozpin wasn't surprised, and seemed quite prepared to answer.

"How much do you want to know? She's fine by the way, but the details of her injury are not so simple..." He had his arms folded, and for the first time in their memories, Ozpin seemed uncomfortable. Blake recalled the night he questioned her alone in a almost identical room, with the same overhead light isolating the people discussing things over at the lone table. Too many things have happened between now and then she thought.

"How bad is it?" the girl in red asked without hesitation. Ozpin looked Ruby over and saw her unwavering posture, deciding after a moment that he could disclose more than enough information.

"She had to have a lung transplant and rib reconstruction," he leaned forward placing his elbows on the table, taking a deep breath as if to confess all of his sins, "that is after she had a blood transfusion first." Blake gasped in horror. Ruby knew Blake still felt responsible for Weiss's fall, and as much as Ruby didn't harbor ill will towards Blake, she couldn't deny the fact that if Blake had planned better, Weiss wouldn't have almost died.

"I'm assuming theres more to it?" Ruby asked. Ozpin's grim mood didn't suggest that it was so nice and tidy.

"Well, it would be an understatement to say that it was expensive for her surgery and for the current care she's under; she has yet to wake up and is still in the hospital of course. To make matters worse, she isn't an actual citizen of Vale but is attending Beacon under a academy voucher."

Blake raised a brow. "What does that mean?" Having spent most of her life as a fugitive, Blake consequently never learned the more complex legal bindings of civilization being more caught up in breaking the basic ones like damaging and theft of property.

"Vale pays a portion of health insurance for it's denizens, but someone like Weiss whose a citizen of Atlas doesn't get that coverage. Vale will pay for a small portion as apart of it's Humanity Clause, Weiss being a person and all, but hardly anything compared to multi layered surgeries." The only reason Ruby remembered such polices was because Taiyang made a point that she appreciate the insurance they had when she started going to combat school.

"Exactly," Ozpin started, "now the price for lungs have gone down as synthetically grown parts have entered the market in the past decade, but the lungs still cost 800,000 lien, and the surgery alone cost 7,000,000 lien. Add the rib reconstruction, you're talking about 3,000,000 lien. After a week in the hospital, she's going to have a bill of 12,000,000 lien after extensive care, of which Vale agreed to pay 200,000 lien for rather than the regular %50." As much as it bothered Blake, Ozpin seemed to become more comfortable when talking about numbers. What she didn't know was that Ozpin rarely had the chance to let off the burden of thought for his students, and talking numbers allowed him to pretend even if just for a moment that he wasn't in charge the lives of several hundred death prone kids.

"This will sound terrible but," Blake swallowed in a strange shame, bringing up a point she never thought could be a positive one, "she's an heiress to the largest dust company in the world... isn't money not an issue in the slightest?"

Ozpin looked down at the table.

"Ozpin?" Ruby asked. She was scared, what was it that bothered him so?

"I contacted Mr. Schnee, and he claimed that he didn't care for whatever trouble Weiss got herself into," he looked to them with an uncharacteristic anger, saying "he claimed that until she came back, he disowned her."

"What about any money to her name?" Ruby inquired in growing desperation.

"All revoked. She has no money to her name. He disowned her."

A silence fell between them. They had never known such matters were happening in Weiss's home life, shocked that she had never brought them up. They would've felt betrayed if they weren't too busy being worried about Weiss falling into debt to Vale and getting shipped back to Atlas.

"There is hope though." The silver haired headmaster leaned into his arm rest, bringing his cane onto his knees. "Mr. Fox had paid for a full year of intuition at Beacon, and that money is mostly unspent. I am currently in the middle of negotiating with Fox's apparently only living relative, his uncle in Vacuo, to putting his unspent tuition to paying for Weiss's medical expenses. At best, 7,000,000 lien could be go to Ms. Schnee."

Silence fell again. It was a disgusting thought Blake believed, a thought where the requirements to keep someone alive could be broken down into such lifeless numbers. She would ask what the price for life was, what the government had decided was the worth of a soul could be sold for, but she knew the answer she would get from her leader; Ruby would give her the price of a single bullet.

"Now, I have been keeping in touch with the city council and the prescient regarding the trial being held for you currently..."

"How is it?" Ruby interrupted. It bothered her no end how the were not allowed to attend their own trial, the guard explaining it to them that the city council was wary of them starting a second fight in the courtroom and deciding to void their right to bear witness.

"It could be better" Ozpin admitted, almost chuckling as he said so. His ease of tension also calmed the two girls, feeling as though they were home free. "The situation looks bad to be blunt. The prosecutor has a strong case stating several incriminating items against you two, such as that you chose the mission which would show premeditated thought, Blake's missing records, Ruby's shells were found in the room with the two latest victims whom were a married huntsmen and huntress couple, meaning that the crumpled lead they found on the ground could've been used to have shot the two of them without leaving marks, a destroyed wall done by Ruby's scythe, a broken window, Fox's method of elimination was particularly... brutal..."

"He almost killed Weiss!" Blake shouted, upset that her actions could've been interpreted as anything else than strong camaraderie. Ruby simply itched her brow in embarrassment, thinking of how to more modestly kill someone next time she had to.

"-And I understand, but, the passengers on the train give a one sided story against you, and you're history of convenient timing has raised many flags among the jury- in fact, the verdict he is pushing is that you Ruby Rose and you Blake Belladonna, that you two are working in tandem with the White Fang, setting up elaborate plots to confuse the public with staged fights and what not. Even I reconsidered my trust in you, especially when told you had killed Fox-"

Blake flinched, she didn't like how Ozpin put it so bluntly.

"-Sorry, but yes, he made a strong case for you two having Weiss hurt to make it appear as though you fought Fox in self defense, when in reality you planned out premeditated murder on him and countless others like him..."

Ruby slammed her forehead into the table. Then again. Then she did it again after that. "So we're screwed is what you're saying?" she asked, rubbing her nose in regret.

"But, Ms. Rose, I believe you have a stronger case for you. Testimony from team CFVY states that Fox wasn't where he should've been, and that they admitted to him sometimes wandering off at night throughout their Grimm extermination shifts down south of the agricultural district, putting him as a likely suspect for the string of murders. Once they told me this, my faith in you had been reaffirmed, but it goes on from there," he smiled, reassuring them, "the jury has been informed of the physical contradictions of the accused crime and your capabilities. Fox would've been far more capable of the murders than either of you, justifying you're attempted apprehension of him and results. Also, Roman has been branded as apart of the White Fang officially by the city council, and as such, the injury he inflicted upon Ruby's eye gives notion that she is an opposing force to the White Fang instead of the prosecutor argument she's fighting for them. To top it off, as you might remember last year during St. Davids Day, there was another string of murders..."

"I remember" replied Blake. She remembered Ren and Nora talking about the headlines Jaune read out to them earlier, how some sponsor who had paid for the portion of Ren and Nora's intuition that Vale didn't cover with scholarships was killed in his home.

"The son of the murdered CEO described the killer in rather vague terms of the time, but when the Vale City Police questioned him yesterday, he denied recognizing you two, but said Fox was in fact the one he saw that night. If the boy wasn't so young, the case would be closed immediately, but even with his testimony not completely trusted, the jury is leaning heavily towards attributing your predicament to bad timing." Ozpin seemed somewhat pleased.

"But then this raises questions," Blake thought out loud, "like who Fox is working for, or what his motives were. We had a potential mole under our noses this entire time and we didn't notice it."

The room got colder. Blake was right, and Ozpin had thought about it, as did everyone else. A growing contention was if any moles remained in Beacon, and a more worrisome concern was if there was more traitors, how many? What if Coco, Velvet, and Yatsuhashi were all actually moles? What if a professor was one? What about the newcomers? What about the visitors during the Vytal Festival? After all, there were infiltrators the last time through, one of them killing Sky Lark, what if more came? The paranoia was enough to drive someone mad, and that in itself was another concern for Ozpin to ponder.

Ozpin looked displeased once again. "I regret having spent 3 years of my faculty resources towards training Mr. Fox, only to find out now after he almost killed your teammate and that he is working with our enemy, and I feel as though Beacon has been defiled through his betrayal, but we have no choice but to continue on, only now we can make efforts to weed out any unsavory characters such as him." He stood up, a new vigor about him. He grabbed his cane weapon. "Your trial ends tomorrow. I expect to see you all at Beacon by tomorrow night..." and out the door he left.

The two girls sat there, synched in their thoughts. Although inappropriate, they still found humor in that they would be returning to Beacon on time from their mission regardless of the unexpected turn of events. The next day's night would've been the last day of their mission had nothing happened.

"Funny how that works eh?" Ruby elbowed Blake lightly.

Blake hid her smirk. A long sigh. "I can't lie, it's certainly interesting."

Ruby chuckled. "Ha, you can't lie but'ch ya can murder someone? Ya murderer? Eh?"

Blake's eyes started to well with tears as she cried out "Ruby!? How can you even joke about something like that!? What if Yang found out!?"

"Hey, if anyone should be crying it's me... cause I have the one eye, it has to work overtime when I get upset, get it?" she giggled as she pointed to her empty eye. She thought it was funny. Blake just cried harder.

-End Chapter 7-

Ooh, that was a wordy chapter :) Tell me what you guys think of these dialogue heavy chapters in the comments, I'ma curious. Anyways, good night you lovely peoples.