After Ruby took a long walk back onto campus, she noticed that it was time for her to go back to class. She walked over to the building she was to be at and finished her now fourth cigarette before extinguishing it and walking inside. She had the class with Jaune and Blake, so hopefully they would be able to help her out if Penny were to show up. When she walked into the room she saw that Blake had already arrived. Ruby sat down next to her and slouched down in her seat. Blake noticed the odd scent coming off of Ruby, so she turned to face her. "Why do you smell like smoke?"
Ruby turned towards Blake with a small amount of fear in her eyes. She quickly thought of an excuse and cursed the Faunus girl for having a heightened sense of smell. "Oh well I went into town earlier today and saw this outdoor food stand, and the people in front of me in line were smoking and I guess I got caught downwind I guess." Ruby tried to sound convincing but even she wouldn't believe that.
Blake however decided that now wasn't the time to press the issue any further. The two of them looked up in time to see Jaune arrive and sit down next to Ruby. The professor came in right afterwards and began the lecture almost immediately, meaning that Ruby didn't have time to talk to him about what had happened in their prior class. Unfortunately for her, Jaune was able to smell the smoke coming off of her. He looked over to her bag and subtly saw the corner of the pack of cigarettes that Ruby bought earlier. It was hard for him to admit it, but to him it looked like Ruby was back into an old habit.
'Oh man, not this again.'
Despite having his own issues with Ruby during the time that she had quit smoking, Jaune still did what he could to help her quit. Now she was starting back up again and he knew that it needed to be handled soon. Jaune subtly pulled out his phone about halfway through the lecture, while the professor droned on and he typed out a simple message, sending it to Yang, Nora and Ren.
=Code Red=
Weiss sat down with Yang, Nora, Ren, Pyrrha, and Sun and ate her lunch. She didn't get a chance to talk to Ruby about what had happened earlier and it was irritating her. "And just like that, Ruby ran off without even explaining anything to me. I tried calling her but she won't answer, and now I don't know if she's doing things with that other girl and it's just really upsetting me right now." Weiss felt like she was going to cry soon if she didn't get some answers from Ruby.
Yang moved so that she was sitting next to her, and then took the girl and pulled her into a hug. "Weiss, the girl that ended up sitting next to her is someone that Ruby doesn't want to be around, just trust me on that. She probably ran off so that she didn't have to deal with her anymore. As for why she isn't answering her phone, you know how attentive Ruby can get at times."
Weiss sighed. She knew as much as Yang did that Ruby wasn't always attentive to things like that. "Yeah, it just bothers me that she won't explain what's going on."
"Maybe she's doing it so that you don't go Frosty McSnow Queen on her or the girl that is making her uncomfortable." Sun said, throwing his opinion into the mix.
"Yeah it could be for that." Yang said, adding on to Sun's theory.
During that time, Nora felt her phone vibrate, and she pulled it out. She quickly looked at the message, taking a few moments to decipher exactly what Jaune was trying to say. 'Code Red, why does that sound familiar? It has to be something important if it gets that, but for the love of me I can't remember what it means. Does it have anything to do with Ruby? Maybe it means that...' Suddenly it all clicked for Nora and she knew remembered exactly what the message meant. Her eyes burst wide open and she turned to Yang. "Yang!"
"You ok, Nora? You look like something just-" Yang was cut off mid sentence when Nora spoke up again.
"Code Red!" Nora shouted.
When Yang heard this, her expression changed. Unbridled fury started to build up inside of her because of what Nora said. 'Of all the stupid, reckless decisions that you've made Ruby, you go back to doing this?! I'm going to fucking kill you!' Yang thought to herself as she looked on the confused expressions of those who were unaware of what was going on.
"Wait what do you mean by Code Red?" Pyrrha asked.
Ren thought about it for a second then realized exactly what Nora was talking about. He put his food down and looked right at Nora. "Please tell me that you're joking." He fished out his own phone from his bag and looked at it, getting the exact same message that Nora did. "Oh man this is bad."
"Would someone please explain to me what you guys are talking about?" Weiss demanded.
Yang finally spoke up after Weiss had asked that. "It means, that your girlfriend, my sister, has got a whole mess of trouble coming to her from me." Yang's eyes were blood red when she said that. When everyone saw it they started to get nervous. Nora froze solid, tried to look away and check on Nora. Everyone else just watched as Yang stood up and walked away from them.
Weiss stood up and decided to chase after her, despite hearing pleas from Nora not to do so. "Yang what the heck is going on?" She asked when she caught up to the fiery blonde. "Why won't you guys tell me anything?"
"I'm going back to our room to wait for Ruby to show up. When she get's there, she is gonna wish that I wasn't living with you guys." Yang said as she kept walking.
"But why, what did she do?"
Yang stopped and looked at Weiss. "I'll make sure that Ruby tells you herself, and I'll make sure that she tells you everything, I promise." Yang started to walk again. Weiss looked down at her phone to check the time and she saw that Ruby's class was almost over. Weiss caught up to Yang again but didn't try to stop her.
"Promise me that you won't hurt her if you can avoid it." Weiss said.
"I'll try not to Weiss, but she needs to know just how upset I am with her." Yang said back to her. The rest of their walk was in silence as the two of them went back to their dorm for the day.
After Ruby got out of class, she started to walk back to her dorm with Blake. "So what did you think of the class so far?" Blake asked her.
"Eh, it's alright I guess. The professor seems to be trying to hard to make us laugh. None of his jokes seemed to be that funny though." Ruby replied as she opened up the door into their building.
"I seem to recall you laughing at a few of those jokes. Thought you said they weren't funny." Blake said as they got into the elevator.
"You know what I mean."
"Yeah yeah, I do know what you mean."
"Besides at least I didn't spill my bottle of water by slamming my face against the desk."
"Ok that was an accident and you know it."
"Sure it was. At least it made the class less of a drag today." The elevator stopped at their floor and the black and red duo walked out and over to their room.
"Yeah, next time I'll be sure to bring something more revealing then, get all the guys turned on." Blake said as Ruby fished out her key.
"Not sure how Sun would react to that." Ruby opened up the door and saw Weiss and Yang standing there. Yang was leaning against the wall in between the two rooms with her eyes shut. "Hey, how was your day?" Ruby asked both of them as the door shut behind her. Ruby looked between Yang and Weiss, who were both remaining quiet. "Um, guys is everything ok?" Ruby looked at Yang right when the blonde opened her eyes, and she saw the blood red color that they possessed. Ruby instantly knew right then and there, she was in major trouble.
"Oh no." Ruby muttered when she knew what was happening.
Yang walked up to Ruby, who was frozen out of fear, grabbed her by the shirt, and threw her into the room shared between Yang and Blake. Weiss didn't do anything to try and stop her, and she watched as the door to the room was slammed shut. "Weiss what is going on?"
Weiss sighed. She didn't want to know that Ruby was going to get yelled at, but she knew that it had to happen. "Ruby did something stupid, and now Yang is mad at her. That's all I know."
"But why would you-" Blake began to speak, but she was cut off when she heard someone shouting.
"Ruby Rose, do you have any idea just how fucking idiotic you are right now?"
Both Weiss and Blake were surprised when they heard Yang screaming and cursing at Ruby. Neither of them expected something like this to ever happen, so now they didn't know what to think. "Of all of the stupid things that you have done in your life, you end up pulling this crap off yet again? What the hell were you thinking?"
Inside the room Yang looked down on Ruby as she started to shrivel up on Yang's bed. Yang was in a really irate mood and Ruby was forced to take the brunt of it because of her own actions. "I-I-I-"
"What, did you think that you would be able to just brush this off as if it were nothing? All of our hard work to get you off of that the first time, and now it has to happen again. Did you even think about how this would affect the rest of us?" Yang shouted.
Ruby finally snapped. She stood up and got right up in Yang's face. "Did you ever think that maybe I didn't expect or even want any of this to happen? It's not my fucking fault that you know who decided to show up again out of the blue. Throw that in with an ungodly amount of stress that I went through in the past few days, and what the fuck do you think would happen? I've been getting the third degree from everyone recently, especially Weiss, and honestly it's just getting to me."
The sudden contact Ruby felt against her face knocked Ruby down onto the bed. Looking up at Yang, she saw that her sister had slapped her in the face. Yang and Ruby heard the front door to their suite open up and just as quickly shut afterwards. "Did you ever think that maybe Weiss is just a little bit worried about you? Did you?" Yang shouted, getting louder than ever. "Earlier today she was nearly crying in my shoulder because she was afraid you were cheating on her. Do you think that maybe it's not fair that she would have to go through that?"
As soon as Ruby heard what Yang said, she felt a tear roll down her face. "Oh god." Ruby felt everything crack, all of the stress from the past few days had finally caught up to her and she started to cry loudly. "I'm such an idiot." Ruby said.
Yang realized that Ruby had gotten enough from her and that now she needed to have someone help her. "Ruby..." Yang said as she sat down next to Ruby, pulling her into a hug. "...I don't want to see you go through all of this again. You need to tell us when something is going on, and you need to solve your issues with Penny." Yang pulled Ruby off of her for a second so that she could look her younger sister in the eye. "First thing you need to do though is talk to Weiss and tell her everything. The smoking, Penny, all of it. She deserves to know most of all."
Ruby nodded and wiped the tears from her face. "You're right. I need to tell her everything," Ruby said as she stood up. "Thanks Yang. I really needed that."
"It's my job after all," Yang said as she pulled her into a hug.
Ruby walked back out the door into the common room and looked for Weiss. "Where did Weiss go?" Ruby asked Blake when she couldn't find her immediately.
"Ruby, Weiss heard what you said and she got upset because of it, so she took off and ran. She said something about how it's all her fault for doing this to you and that she needed to leave you alone," Blake said. Ruby didn't say anything. Instead she left the room and ran down the hall to go search for Weiss.
AN: Things are starting to reach the tipping point. So brace yourselves for all of the feels that come within by next chapter.
I gotta say, when I first wrote this story, I never once thought it would get to where it was. But here we are now, nearly a year after I started writing in general, with a story that is still one of my personal favorite stories out there (clearly biased opinion though).
Anyway I wouldn't have gotten to where I am without all of you, so thank you all for reading this story. Whether you're just seeing it for the first time, or you've been reading it since the beginning, thank you. I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and that it stays up to the quality that this story gives to you all.