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Weiss has always been a clean and tidy person. From a young age she was taught to clean up after herself, pick up her things, make everything she owned presentable. This wasn’t out of a need for doing chores mind you, this was because your living area, your appearance, all reflected on how people saw you, ‘if you live in filth people will assume you are filthy’ her sister, Winter, had told her.
From picking up her crayons after herself at the age of three, to helping clean up the garden after a sparing match with Winter. She always was, and will be a clean and tidy person. This cleanliness was a habit she brought to Beacon, Blake was the perfect room mate, she kept her bunk and things tidy, and any mess she did make she quickly cleaned up after herself. The two sisters they both shared the room with, however, they never cleaned up, they never swept the floor and they never folded their bedsheets.
The cause of this sanitation furled break down for Weiss, was the current state of the dorm. The room was in complete disarray, bedsheets thrown all over the floor, all of the books were thrown off the bookshelf and it looks like every drawer had been pulled out and the contents emptied onto the floor. The cause of this chaos was the younger of said sisters, currently sat in the middle of the dorm sifting through a pile of unmentionables before zipping in a flurry of rose petals to sift through another pile of cosmetics.
Her brave and powerful leader was completely oblivious to her partner stood in the open doorway. Weiss for her part almost completely shut down at the sight, not only was it Ruby’s belongings on the floor but everyone's, everything was mixed up, it would take hours to organise everything back the way it was. Ruby finished looking through the pile, muttered to herself and moved on to another pile, this time it was a pile of books, even some of Blake’s more ‘adult’ books were included in the pile, not that Ruby seemed to care. She picked up a book, held it upside down, and flipped through the pages expecting something to fall out. Then tossed the book behind her when nothing came out of the book. “Damn it,” she muttered and moved on to another book.
“Ruby, Rose!” Weiss announced, knocking Ruby out of her own little world of chaos. “What in the world are you doing?” She asked, closing the dorm door behind her, lest someone walked past and saw team RWBY’s clothing strewn across the floor like a cheap motel room.
Ruby hopped up, suddenly in a much brighter mood now her teammate was here. “Oh, Weiss, so glad you are here. Can you help?” She asked, not even answering the heiress’ question.
“Help with what?” She looked in the corner, even Weiss’ own suitcases were not spared the carnage, they had all been unzipped and were thrown on top of each other completely empty. The contents most likely mixed in with the rest of the stuff on the floor.
Ruby zipped to another pile leaving a trail of rose petals across the room, she pointed to the book pile behind her with one hand while moving things around on the floor with the other. “Could you look through those books for me?” Completely misunderstanding her partners question, she threw one of Yang’s shoes across the room in anger. “Damn where’d I put it?!” She yalled to herself.
“PUT WHAT? RUBY?!” Weiss raised her voice, Weiss never raised her voice like this. She’d insult, talk down and scoff, but she’s never shouted at a teammate in the three months they’d been at Beacon.
“MY DUST!” Ruby exclaimed, matching Weiss’ shout.”Yang kept stealing my expensive purified fire dust, so I hid it.” She explained, taking a break from searching to stand up and speak to the Atleasian on eye level. “But now,” she waved her arms to direct Weiss’ attention to the state of the room. “I can’t find it! So could you help me look for it please?”
Weiss face palmed, “that’s what this is about? You tore up the dorm for some fire dust? Why did you bring dust into the dorm to begin with? What is wrong with you?”
“Weiss, this is PURIFIED dust. It was a gift from my dad.” Dust came in many forms, it could be a powder, crystal and even woven into clothes, it was often categorised by the element of dust be it fire, ice, lightning or even a man made element. Dust was mined in an impure state and could then be refined and sold to stores to be used for weapons. However dust could be refined further to increase it’s potency, this process took longer and was much more expensive so it was never truly done at scale, instead most dust companies, her own included, opted for a quantity over quality approach.
Even Weiss herself, the girl who had two of everything, rarely used purified dust like that as the stocks were never enough to support a combat style like that. For Ruby to have had even a pound of refined fire dust clearly spoke volumes for how much her father trusted her. Trust or not, that didn’t excuse the state the room was in. “Ruby, relax.” She ordered her panicking leader.
“Weiss, we have that end of semester excursion on Monday. We don’t have time!”
“You won’t be able to go at all, if Blake breaks your legs for touching her books.” Weiss muttered. “Listen, Ruby. This excursion does not rely on the type of dust you use. Relax.” She commanded again.
“But, what if we find a Goliath, or a Deathstalker nest!” Ruby started bouncing at the thought, and to Weiss it was pretty hard to tell if it was from excitement or fear.
Weiss, just sighed and shook her head. “Don’t make me regret this.” She muttered to herself. “Ruby, you forget you are on the team with the Schnee Dust Company heiress. I probably have enough spare purified dust in my locker to cover a few rounds for you. You can just borrow some of that while we look for the dust that your father gave you.”
“Weiss, you’re a genius!” Ruby cheered.
“Thank you, but it’s not like you couldn’t have thought to do that yourself, instead of tearing the room down. How about we clean up this mess and then we can go-” Before Weiss could even finish Ruby was out of the room, leaving the door wide open and a trail of roses leading presumably to the locker room. Weiss wasn’t left alone though, Jaune was frozen mid reaching into his pocket for his scroll, staring at the door that had swung open with enough force to kill a Beowolf. Weiss realised he wasn’t looking at the door any more, his eyes were captivated by the state of the room as he took in the mess on the floor. “Don’t even ask.” The heiress sighed and slammed the door closed.
Typical, Ruby had left her to clean up her mess again, with an exasperated sigh Weiss got to work. Starting off by putting the bedsheets back. She expertly put them back on all four beds, she was in the process of smoothing her own sheets down when the door opened again. “Finally, Ruby. You can help sor-”
“Weiss what did you do?!” It wasn’t Ruby who entered like Weiss expected, it was her older, blonder, sister.
She finished up with her bed and stood up to address the blonde, “Me? I didn’t do this, it was YOUR hyperactive sister.”
“Why did she trash the room? Did Nora eat her cookies again?”
Weiss walked around and started gathering the books Ruby had strewn about the room. “No, she was looking for some fire dust she hid from you. She said you had been stealing it.”
Yang gasped and recoiled as if the mere accusation of her being a thief wounded her. “Stealing? I wasn’t stealing her dust! I was moving it to her locker because she kept hiding it in my bed sheets. I mean have you SEEN my semblance, one spark and my bed would become a rocket to the moon.” Yang explained as she leaned down to start organising her make up that Ruby had scattered over the floor, cringing as she stood on a glass bottle, the nail polish quickly staining her boot and the floor. “That’s gonna be a nightmare to clean up.”
“You’re telling me, Ruby destroyed our room and lost her mind, over something that was already in her locker?!” Weiss huffed, and it wasn’t just because of the 15 pounds of books she was carrying.
“She isn’t exactly the most rational of minds, when she needs something.” Yang explained still gathering her cosmetic supplies of the floor.
“In that case, I should tell her to not destroy my locker looking for my dust.” Weiss dropped the books next to the bookshelf with a thud and pulled out her scroll and began tapping out a message to Ruby explaining the situation. Pressing send she smiled, happy she has put an end to Ruby’s rampage. *Buzz* Yang and Weiss looked to a pile of white, red and black clothes, which buzzed.
Yang reached down into the pile and pulled out a thin rectangular object. “Well, it would be hard to get your message across when she doesn’t have this.”
Weiss looked down at her hands and let out another sigh, adding to the many she had already release today, wondering if eventually it would be possible to communicate using only sighs. “Of course. I should probably go and stop her, can you handle things here?”
“You got it.” Yang threw the scroll to Weiss and the heiress bolted out the door, akin to how Ruby left not fifteen minuets earlier, however this time she actually closed the door since she was raised in a civilised society. Weiss quickly made her way out of the dormitory building and towards the locker rooms, fully aware that every minuet longer she took was another 500 lien in property damage.
Bursting through the door to the locker room, the room was silent, that was good maybe she found the dust and made her way to the armoury to make her rounds already. Weiss walked down the rows of lockers, she had been there for months now, she knew where her own locker was off by heart. But anyone in the student body could tell which one hers was at this precise moment. “Oh gods,” Weiss muttered and ran to her locker. The door to the locker was open and the contents was all over the floor. That description was a gross understatement.
The door wasn’t ‘open’ it was loosely hanging on to the hinges after the door had been pried open, most likely by an oversized red scythe. Ruby didn’t even need to pry open the door, she knew the combination! Everyone on the team knew each others combinations in case of emergency.
Next was the dust, or lack there of, Ruby had taken every scrap of dust in her locker. Not just the purified fire dust EVERYTHING. The wind, water, even the gravity! It even looked like she had deliberately opened up Myrtenaster’s cylinders and took out the individual dust canisters that were already loaded. Weiss picked up her now dustless weapon and stashed it on her hip, it wouldn’t do if some random student stole her weapon, and besides, she may need it when she finds Ruby.
Speaking of her chaotic leader, it was clear she wasn’t in the locker room any more. Without her scroll she had no way of contacting her, so in stead she left the locker room and started to back track to the dorm to find her unhinged partner. It didn’t take long to pick up her trail, literally, Weiss found a trail of rose petals leading towards the student kitchens in the dorms. Weiss let out a sigh of relief, it was clear now that Ruby was satisfied with the dust she stole and was making herself a snack after burning through her energy the last hour looking for dust.
Sure enough, when the heiress stepped through the kitchen door, there was her leader hovering over a stove with a cartoonishly large pot boiling. “Gods, what is that smell?” Weiss asked Ruby as she got closer to her leader.
“Weiss!” She cheered, throwing her arms in the air and as a result dropping the wooden spoon she was holding on the floor. She must have had the heat on pretty high as the room was feeling like a sauna. “Thank you for the dust, Weiss!” She rushed from her wooden stool to give her partner a quick hug before zipping back to tend to the pot.
“I said you could have some of the fire dust, not every scrap of dust I own! Besides, Yang said she didn’t steal your dust. She said she put it in your locker.”
“Ooooooohhhhh.” The realisation struck her, “thank you for your help with this today, Weiss. I’d go and get the dust but I kiiiinda in the middle of something right now.” Ruby laughed awkwardly.
“Think nothing of it, Ruby. We are partners, we look out for each other.” Weiss pinched her ear. “But you will be offering an apology to the team for the damage you caused, and you better hope nail polish comes out of wood.”
“Ow, ow.” She whined at the force of her ear being tugged.
“What are you cooking anyway, it smells horrible. No offence. I thought you’d be baking cookies or something.”
“Oh this? It’s dust.” Ruby explained, dipping the wooden spoon into the pot, stirring it and then inspecting the red liquid.
“What?”
The chef leaned across the stove to take a shaker and sprinkled something into the pot. “Yeah, you didn’t have any of the purified fire dust I needed so I thought, ‘how hard could it be to make myself?’ So I grabbed all the dust in your locker to make some purified fire dust myself. Cool huh?” She explained her actions with a grin often seen on the face of a lunatic, all the while as Ruby’s explanation went on Weiss covered just about every emotion from dread to horror. She looked across the counter, these shakers were her weapons dust rounds, dust was scattered on all of the surfaces around them, highly volatile, very explosive.
“Ruby! You can’t boil dust! You’ll sauté the both of us!” Weiss reached forward to turn of the heat to the stove.
Ruby grabbed her wrist with one hand and dismissed her with another hand. “It’s fiiiine.”
“Ruby, dust is refined in expensive high tech equipment over a period of days, not by a hot pan in a school kitchen!”
Ruby just blushed. “You think I’m hot?”
Weiss face palmed, “now isn’t the time for jokes, Ruby. Turn the stove off before we level the campus.”
Ruby pouted but relented. “Fine,” she reached over to the knob on the stove, or at least she would have, if she didn’t need to sneeze. Just like when the two first met three months ago, the fumes of dust Ruby had been inhaling was the catalyst of an explosion that ensured they would miss the excursion on Monday.
No one could agree on what caused the Beacon explosion on ‘95 some people say it was caused by an ancient grim lady, some say it was caused by a farm boy with a nuke in his pocket, and others say it was caused by an energetic corgi. But the one thing they could agree on was that the view of flames, rock, ice and wind exploding eighty feet in the air was a spectacle. Luckily only two people had been hurt, but the west side dorms had been completely demolished by the explosion.
As Weiss laid in the hospital bed reflecting on the day she looked to the bed on her left. Her leader was asleep, a few more days in recovery and they could move into the temporary dorms they had arranged. Ruby had taken most of the damage, but her leader, being the prodigy she was thought on her feet. Using her insane speed she hugged Weiss and smashed an ice crystal under them, creating an ice wall around them for a brief second to take in the explosion. She really did earn the right to be the leader of the team.
But their miraculous survival was not what was on her mind, no it was something far more complex that she will have to come to terms with. ‘She really is a hot pan.’