A/N: I know I should probably be writing The General's Fall, but I really want to write this to the point that I'm just having a hard time with writing General's Fall. Anyway, I'll try to get back to it soon, but for now I'm gonna work on this.
Yang sighed heavily as she threw herself into a chair beside her teammates. Ruby had requested to be left alone, and Yang thought that maybe Ruby needed to be left alone.
"Did you find out what it was?" Weiss calmly asked.
Yang paused for a second, before saying, "No. She wouldn't tell me."
[Shift]
When Taiyang finally arrived, he angrily stomped through the waiting room, not even acknowledging his eldest daughter and her friends. He almost ran to the receptionist, and left her as soon as he arrived, having everything he needed.
The man quickly pushed past the large doors, darting down the hallway to the room where his daughter was. He walked for what felt like days before he finally reached her room.
Taiyang delicately pushed the door open, sauntering around the corner to the bed. Her knees were pushed up against her chest and her arms were crossed, resting atop of her knees. Her head was buried in her arms and she was loudly sobbing. The loud sobs were occasionally interrupted by loud coughing that echoed throughout the room. It didn't take him long to figure out why she was crying.
He quietly sighed. She was going to die. Soon. Despite his instincts telling him to find the nearest liquor store, he moved closer, taking a seat on the bed next to her. The movement on the mattress caused the girl to suddenly look up.
Her hair was a mess, hairs sticking up all over her head, pointing in every direction. Her eyes were red and puffy, indicating that she had been crying for quite some time. On top of the fact that she looked terribly sad, she looked angry as well. Not at him, of course, just in general.
"Hey,—" Cough, "Dad." She quietly said, putting her head back down.
"Hey." He said back.
The loud sobbing didn't continue, but he knew her well enough to know that she was still crying.
He sadly sighed and moved closer to her, pulling his daughter into a hug. Or at least he tried to. He put one arm around her and she quickly pushed it away.
He sighed again.
"I'll just leave you alone for now." He told her, slowly getting up. "I'll just be in the other room if you need me."
He began to walk away, but stopped when she called out.
"Wait," she said. "They said I could leave as soon as you got here."
He looked at her for a second before nodding. She was already dressed in her normal attire and ready to leave.
"Let's go, then." He said, motioning for her to follow him.
Ruby stood, and Taiyang could see the gears turning in her head. She had an idea.
"Yeah," she said. "I've got something I need to do anyway. Homework."
Taiyang bit his lip, but understood completely; she wanted to act as though nothing was wrong, so that's how he would treat her.
She quickly dried her tears as the two walked past the receptionist, into the waiting room. Taiyang went up to the desk, while Ruby approached her friends and teammates.
"Are you okay?" Jaune immediately asked her.
She nodded. "Just tired is all."
Yang looked at her for a second, making eye contact with her sister. She understood what Ruby was going for. She didn't want to be treated any differently. Taiyang must have heard the exchange as well, as he managed to discreetly hand Ruby the business card for an oncologist.
"Just try not to push yourself so hard in the future." Taiyang said.
Ruby tightly clutched the card in her hand as Taiyang left. He mouthed the words, "Two weeks." As he walked out. It meant he'd be back in two weeks to take her to the oncologist.
[Shift]
The ride back to Beacon was quiet and uneventful, the only sounds being Ruby's occasional coughing. No words were spoken until both teams returned to their respective dorms, and Ruby started dialing a number on her scroll.
"Who're you calling?" Yang asked, throwing herself onto her bed.
"Amir." Ruby said. "I'm quitting. I can't do this anymore."
Yang quickly sat up and the other two stared at her.
"It's not like we needed the extra lien in the first place." Ruby told them. "So, I'm done."
The other three were shocked; Ruby would usually do whatever it took to help her friends, necessary or not. What had changed? Only Yang knew the answer to this question, not that she would share it with the others.
[The Next Day]
Ruby knew exactly what she was going to do, in light of the bad news. She needed to leave behind something so that she wouldn't be forgotten so easily. She always knew that she would eventually repay her older sister for the kindness she had been shown, she just thought she would have more time to do something meaningful. Unfortunately, she didn't, so she was going to have to settle for some form of inheritance. She couldn't tell Yang that she was working on creating an inheritance, of course, the blonde would try to stop her. But she did know one person who would be able to help, and wouldn't tell a soul. The only question was whether or not he would help.
"Sun." She said, sitting down across from the monkey faunas. Both of the leader's teams had already finished eating, and had left them both alone in the cafeteria.
"Yo." He said, looking up from his food. He looked a little shocked to see her, but quickly pushed those thoughts aside.
"You're…" he paused. "You're Blake's leader. Ruby, right?"
She nodded. "We've met a few times before."
"What'cha need?" He nonchalantly asked, beginning to stuff his face with bananas.
She looked around and sighed, "You know a good way to make a lot of money fast?" She asked.
He stopped. "Like, illegal stuff?" He quietly asked.
"Doesn't matter." She told him.
"What makes you think I'd know?" He asked.
She gave him a look.
"What?!" Sun asked, throwing his hands in the air.
Ruby continued to look at him, and he rolled his eyes.
"Fine!" He said. "I know a bit about the illegal stuff."
She gave him the look again and he sighed.
"I know a lot about the illegal stuff." He quietly said.
"That's what I wanted to hear." She told him, subtly grinning. He shook his head.
"Now," Ruby began. "What's the best and quickest way to do this?"
"Crystal." Sun quietly told her.
"What?"
"Y'know. Crystal."
"I'm not following."
Sun sighed and shook his head, "Crystal is a type of dust that gets it's user extremely high. It's illegal."
"Of course." Ruby said. "How do we get some? To sell it, of course."
"You make it." Sun emphasized the point of her being alone on this, but she ignored him.
She rolled her eyes, "And how do we make it?"
Sun laughed, "You think, if I knew how to make it, I'd be here?"
Ruby shrugged.
"And," he added, "If you wanna get anywhere selling that, you've gotta make the best damn crystal on the planet. You've gotta be like a chemistry teacher or something!"
"We're in a school, Sun." Ruby pointed out. "It wouldn't be too hard to figure it out after a visit to the library."
"Yeah," Sun said. "But who's got time for that? Libraries are so boring!"
Ruby shook her head and stood.
"I'm gonna go study up on this." She told him. "Don't help if you don't wanna."
He nodded. "Yeah. I won't."
[Shift]
Ruby sat in her chemistry class, struggling to keep her eyes open. She had stayed up a majority of the night trying to learn about making this "crystal" stuff, and still only had a basic understanding of the substance. She read chemistry books, and even looked it up— with a VPN, of course.
"Miss Rose?" Professor Peach suddenly asked, tearing Ruby from her less than legal thoughts.
"Hm?" Ruby asked.
Peach rolled her eyes, and asked the question again, "Can you tell me what the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is?" She asked.
Ruby slightly nodded, "Any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle, known as complementary variables, such as position x and momentum p, can be known." Ruby quickly said, monotone.
Her team looked at her, shocked. Peach was shocked as well, looking at the girl with a proud smile.
"What?" Ruby asked, looking around at all those staring at her.
"Nothing." Peach said, turning back to the board. Ruby's team quickly turned their gazes from their leader, to their teacher. Ruby just shrugged this off and returned to her daze.
[Shift]
It had been a few days since Ruby had begun her mission to create crystal, and she had gotten pretty far, using all of her spare time studying the substance. And now, she had finally figured out the process. She had spent her nights breaking into the chemistry lab and stealing what equipment she needed. Now, all she needed to do was get the substances required to formulate such product, and a place to cook. Fortunately, Weiss had all the dust she needed, and every team had a sort of lounge room somewhere in Beacon. A room that no one from Team RWBY entered, at least to Ruby's knowledge.
It was the perfect place for it, so long as she managed to filter out the smell, something she could easily do with a few purifiers, fans and open windows.
She had already stored all of her equipment in there, as well as the dust she "borrowed" from Weiss. She just needed to cook it now.
Ruby had stolen a gas mask from the science department, and had even bought those jumpsuits that people use for painting. With this, she could keep the smell off of her, and herself alive were she to screw up in a big way. She knew it probably wasn't the best idea to do this on Beacon Campus, but what other choice did she have? No one would help her. It's not like she could ask for help anyway. If she told her team that she was trying to use dust to create Methamphetamine. That was the official term for the "Crystal" as Sun had called it. Crystal was just a street name. It was called that because most of those who used it were so fried that methamphetamine was too big of a word for them, so they just called it crystal. Or just meth, depending on who you asked.
Ruby sighed. She had covered most of the lounge in plastic wrap to keep the smell from soaking into the carpet and walls, as well as making a quick clean-up easy—if it ever came to that, of course. Ruby hoped to whatever God might exist that it never came to that. She hoped that she could just sell it to some distributor for a few thousand as long as she could until one day she just never woke up in the morning.
Of course, this was probably the route that would hurt her family the most, finding out in such a way. If there even was a way for them to find out.
But that didn't matter now. All that mattered was cooking. If she didn't cook, then there wouldn't be any money to leave.
Ruby softly hummed to herself as she began the long process of making methamphetamine. She didn't get very far before her scroll began to buzz. She rolled her eyes and answered it without checking the caller ID.
"Hello?" She asked.
"Hey," Yang's voice came through the other end.
"Yang," Ruby said. "I'm a little busy right now. You think this could wait?"
Yang paused for a second, "Ye—Yeah." She said. "Just, uh, just call me back whenever you get a chance."
"Will do!" Ruby happily said.
"Sorry for bothering you." Despite her words, Yang didn't sound particularly upset, just apologetic.
"It's fine, really." Ruby said.
"Yeah. Talk to you later."
"Yup. Bye."
Ruby hung up and sighed. This would be extremely hard to do without Yang finding out. Nearly impossible. Luckily, Ruby knew how to slip things under Yang's nose. As long as she didn't act any different when she was around Yang, the blonde would never know that anything was happening at all.
[Shift]
Ruby watched the chemicals slowly travel down the long, thin tube, into her arm. Everything felt numb as she absentmindedly watched the chemicals travel into her bloodstream.
"So," A voice said. "What are the side effects of this?"
Ruby turned her attention to the voice, now blankly staring at her father as he spoke to a nurse. The nurse paused for a second and looked at Ruby before looking back at Taiyang.
"Well," she said. "There's mainly just fatigue and pain."
"Pain?" Taiyang asked, worriedly looking at Ruby. Her eyes were on him, but she wasn't looking at him. It was like he wasn't even there to her. Like she was just looking through him.
"Small amounts, usually in the fingers or toes." The nurse told him.
Taiyang paused for a minute or two, staring at Ruby.
"She's not getting high off this, is she?" He asked.
The nurse shook her head. "This happens all the time. The magnitude of this whole situation is probably just now sinking in for her."
Taiyang snapped his fingers in front of her face and she jumped back, rapidly blinking as she was broken from her trance.
"You okay?" He asked. She watched the nurse walk off, then turned back to him.
"Yeah." She said. "I'm fine. I'm still shocked is all."
He rested his hand atop of hers.
"It's gonna be okay." He assured her.
"Yeah."