Chapter Text
Ten years.
“We’ve always appreciated your work, but Oscar, he’s just got talent.”
She had given ten years of her life to them. To Marigold Tech.
“He’s young and his ideas are going to revolutionize the industry.”
Ten years worth of inventions, of products, of time and money saved. Ten years of watching men who couldn't tell a hydraulic pump from a tailpipe climb the corporate ladder while she remained tethered to the same desk. One minor title change in a decade. That was her reward.
“We’re doing you a favor here. It’s about time you settled down. You’re not getting any younger.”
Ten years of doing the most for the least because she loved her work.
Ruby stared across the sleek, mahogany desk at Henry Marigold. He was swirling an overpriced scotch, looking at her as if she was a piece of office furniture that had overstayed its welcome. Oscar had been with the company for ten months. Ten months. He hadn't even finished his machinery training before they handed him the head position for the department Ruby had practically built.
"A favor," Ruby repeated, her voice deceptively quiet. The silver in her eyes, usually bright and full of life, had hardened into cold steel.
"Exactly," Henry said, offering a patronizing, oily smile. "Let the boy handle the heavy lifting. You can focus on... well, whatever it is women your age want to focus on. Find a nice guy. Bake some cookies. We're letting you stay to oversee the project, of course. We aren't monsters."
Ruby looked down at her hands. They were stained with faint traces of machine grease that never truly washed out, calloused from years of building the prototypes that made the Marigold family billionaires. She thought of the late nights, the canceled plans with Yang, the skipped meals, and the sheer, unadulterated love she had for creating things.
It was gone. Evaporated in a single moment of absolute clarity.
"I quit."
The silence that followed was heavy. Henry actually choked on his breath, his eyes widening in a mixture of confusion and sudden offense. "What? What are you trying to say?"
"I mean I quit," Ruby said. Her voice didn't shake. It was the calmest she had felt in a decade. She didn't wait for him to process it. Turning on her heel, Ruby grabbed her coat from the back of the chair and walked toward the heavy glass doors of his office.
"Wait! Ruby, get back here!" Henry’s voice boomed, dropping the polite facade instantly.
As Ruby stepped out onto the main floor of the engineering department, the entire bullpen went dead silent. Dozens of pairs of eyes snapped from their monitors to Ruby, and then to Henry, who was practically stumbling out of his office after her.
"Ruby! Reconsider this!" Henry shouted, his face turning an ugly shade of crimson as he realized his employees were watching. "You can't just walk out in the middle of a project! I refuse to accept this resignation! Ruby, turn around!"
Ruby kept walking. Her boots clicked rhythmically against the polished concrete floor. She kept her gaze fixed on the double doors leading to the lobby. The exit.
"You're making a massive mistake!" Henry hissed, his voice dropping into a venomous threat as he hurried to keep pace behind her. "Do you think anyone else will hire you after this? I will personally see to it that you are blacklisted from every engineering firm from here to Atlas! You’ll never so much as hold a wrench again!"
Whispers broke out among the cubicles. Ruby didn't care. Whether the threat was empty or not, she couldn't care less. A man like Henry just couldn't comprehend that her talent didn't belong to him.
She was three feet from the glass exit doors when a hand clamped down hard on her shoulder.
"I said, stop"
With a fluid, practiced motion born from years of wrestling heavy machinery, Ruby reached up. Her fingers locked onto Henry's wrist like a vice. With a sharp, brutal twist of her thumb into his pressure point, she peeled his hand off her shoulder.
Henry let out a sharp, pathetic yelp, dropping to a crouch. Before he could recover, Ruby ripped her company ID badge off her lanyard. With a harsh, decisive strike, she slammed the plastic card directly into his open palm, shoving his hand, and the rest of him, away from her. Henry sprawled backward onto the floor, gasping.
Ruby didn't look back to see the shocked faces of her coworkers, or the humiliated rage on her former boss's face. She simply pushed open the glass doors and walked out into the crisp afternoon air, heading to her car.
She kept her posture rigid, her chin high, and her face locked in a mask of cold, unyielding anger as she marched across the asphalt lot. To anyone watching from the windows, she looked entirely unbothered, a woman walking away from an explosion without looking back. She unlocked her car with a sharp click of her key fob, pulled the door open, stepped inside, and slammed it shut behind her.
The second the door latched, sealing her in silence, the brave facade shattered into a million pieces. Ruby dropped her forehead onto the steering wheel, her fingers gripping the leather so tightly her knuckles turned white. Her chest heaved. The adrenaline that had carried her out of the building suddenly soured, turning into a cold, paralyzing wave of panic.
"Shit, shit, shit, shit..."
The word spilled out of her in a frantic, breathless loop, a mantra of sudden, terrifying realization.
"What did I do?."
Slowly, the frantic muttering faded into a ringing silence as her mind completely zoned out, numbly recognizing what she had just done. She had quit. She had actually quit her job of ten years. Her only place of employment since graduating from college. She had built her entire adult identity around those labs, those blueprints, that company.
And Henry... Henry was a vindictive, petty monster. She had watched him systematically tear down, gaslight, and ruin the careers of other women in the company for the past year just to soothe his own fragile ego. Now, she had humiliated him in front of his entire staff. She was under no illusions. There were bound to be consequences. Henry would make calls. He would follow through on his threat.
She was screwed.
Ruby slumped back against her seat, staring blankly at the dashboard. Panic tightened like a vice around her throat as the financial reality set in. She didn't have enough money in her savings to keep her apartment for more than a couple of months without a steady paycheck coming in. She needed this job.
Her mind immediately jumped to her sister, but a heavy weight of guilt crushed that thought instantly. Yang and Blake were already completely overwhelmed, adjusting to life with a four year old daughter and a one year old son. They were exhausted, stretched thin, and running on fumes. Ruby couldn't just dump her crisis into their laps and add to their stress. She was going to have to figure out some alternative way to survive without a job, and she had to do it alone.
Taking a series of long, shuddering deep breaths, Ruby forced the oxygen back into her lungs until her heart stopped hammering against her ribs. Desperate for a familiar voice to anchor her, she pulled out her phone and dialed Yang.
It rang for a while before going to voicemail. The customized response played. "This is Mommy Yang! Sorry to have missed your call, but I'm currently dealing with these little rascals!" Right on cue, the background audio filled with a baby's bubbly giggles and a young girl's screeching laugh.
Ruby let out a long sigh, but a small, genuine smile tugged at the corner of her lips at the sound of her niece and nephew. Yang had updated the recording the second her son had started laughing so she could have a family recording.
Giving it one last shot, Ruby tapped her screen to call Blake instead. It rang once. Twice. On the third ring, the line clicked open.
"Hey sis, what's up?" Blake’s voice was warm, but beneath it, Ruby could hear the distinct, rhythmic hum of tires on asphalt and the clicking of a turn signal.
Ruby took a shaky, uneven breath. Suddenly, the words felt like lead in her throat. Too terrified to actually start the real conversation, she deflected. "Hey... what, um... what are you up to?"
"Just stepped out to get some groceries for dinner," Blake replied, her tone casual. "Yang is back at the house watching the kids. Well, trying to, anyway. I think they were reading when I left." There was a brief pause on the line, the sound of the car engine idling at a red light. Then, Blake’s voice softened, losing its casual edge. "Ruby? Are you okay? You're... quiet."
Ruby squeezed her eyes shut. She swallowed hard, a heavy sigh escaping her lips. "I... I kinda quit my job."
The words hung in the air. Ruby instantly grew quiet, holding her breath as she waited for Blake to respond. She braced herself for the shock, the questions, the panic. But Blake didn't say anything. The only sound on the line was the quiet hum of the car’s air conditioner. The silence stretched. Five seconds. Ten seconds. To Ruby, it felt like an eternity. Her anxiety flared up again, a hot spark in her chest, twisting her stomach into knots as she imagined Blake judging her, or worse, worrying about how they were going to help her. The quiet became too heavy to bear.
"Blake?" Ruby finally choked out, her voice small and desperate.
On the other end of the line, Blake let out a slow, calm breath. "I think you should come over for dinner," was all she said.
The small dining room was filled with the familiar, chaotic warmth of family, but Ruby had never felt more out of place. She sat awkwardly at the edge of her chair, her attention entirely focused on her one year old nephew, Kal. The little boy, rocking a messy tuft of blond hair and always moving cat ears, babbled happily as Ruby carefully guided a spoon of yogurt toward his mouth.
Across the table, four year old Tyla, sporting a mop of messy black hair and cat ears, was completely nose deep in a brightly colored children’s action book, occasionally making quiet action noises to herself as she read. Blake moved gracefully around the space, serving up plates of chicken and vegetables, while Yang sat opposite Ruby. Yang’s face was a battleground of extreme stress, but she was visibly fighting it down, plastering on a tense, fiercely supportive smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Thanks, Blake," Ruby mumbled as a plate was set down in front of her.
"Thank you, Momma," Tyla chimed in, not looking up from her book.
Once Blake finally set her own plate down and slid into the chair next to Yang, the silence of the room felt incredibly heavy. Yang lasted all of three seconds before leaning forward. "So, what even-"
Blake instantly reached across the table, firmly grabbing Yang’s hand. Yang caught herself, closing her eyes and taking a deep, grounding breath. When she opened them, her voice was much softer, reined in. "Do you want to share what happened?"
Ruby sighed, using the edge of the plastic spoon to gently gather the stray yogurt from around Kal’s mouth. She stared at the spoon for a long moment before finally looking up at her sister and sister-in-law.
"I thought... after ten years, it was finally my turn," Ruby began, her voice cracking slightly before she steadied it. "I thought Henry was finally going to give me the lead on the project. It’s for the department I started. I built the foundation for it. I did everything. But instead, he gave it to Oscar. He’s only been there ten months. And Henry literally told me that he expected me to do all the actual heavy lifting and lead the project from the shadows, while Oscar got the title and all the credit."
Yang’s grip on her fork tightened so hard her knuckles turned white, but Ruby kept going, the words pouring out like an open valve.
"I am just so tired," Ruby whispered, the deep seated frustration finally bubbling to the surface. "It’s always the same. No matter how many hours I put in, no matter how many millions of dollars my designs make that company, I’m never just a brilliant engineer to them. I’m just a woman. Henry looked right at me and told me I should just settle down and find a guy because I'm 'not getting any younger.' Like my mind has an expiration date. It was killing me, you guys. Every single day, piece by piece, shrinking myself just to make mediocre men feel comfortable. I couldn't do it for another second."
Ruby let out a long, shuddering sigh, her shoulders slumping as she finally went quiet. She looked up, her silver eyes darting between the two of them, terrified of what they might think of her impulsive ruin.
Blake’s expression was a mask of profound sadness and quiet outrage; she looked genuinely sickened by how much pain Ruby had been carrying alone. Yang, on the other hand, looked ready to commit a felony. Her eyes were practically flashing red, her jaw set so tight it looked like it might shatter. "I swear to the Gods, I am going to go down there and-"
Blake squeezed Yang's arm again to calm her wife down. Yang caught her breath, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling in frustration, but she subsided, letting out a hot breath.
Blake turned her dark eyes back to Ruby, her expression softening but hardening with a practical edge. "He's a miserable, pathetic excuse for a boss, Ruby. And you deserve infinitely better. But..." Blake paused, choosing her words carefully. "Do you have a plan now?"
Ruby shrugged, looking back down at Kal, who was happily smearing yogurt on his own cheek. She grabbed a napkin to clean him off as she answered. "I shrugged Henry off pretty hard on the way out, and he threatened to blacklist me. Knowing him, he'll follow through. I'm pretty sure I'm done in the local engineering circuit. I don't count on being able to get another firm job here."
"Hey, look, if the tech world wants to be blind, screw 'em," Yang broke in, leaning over the table. "You can come work at the gym with me! I can talk to the owner, get you on as a personal trainer. You're strong, you know how bodies work and stuff, and honestly, the change of pace might be good for you."
Ruby offered a weak, grateful smile. "Thanks, Yang. I think I'm going to try applying to some of the other companies in the area first, just to see. But... honestly, if nothing pans out by the end of the month, I'll start putting in applications to be a waitress or a barista or something. Just to pay the bills."
Blake frowned slightly, exchanging a quick, worried glance with Yang. "Do you have enough money saved to keep you going for the next few months? Especially if you have to take a lower paying job?"
Ruby swallowed hard. "I have enough for the next three months. Four if I stretch some things."
Yang blinked. "Three months? Rubes, you've been a mid-level engineer for years. Where did your savings go?"
"I had to spend a chunk of it recently," Ruby explained, her voice dropping into a reverent, quiet tone. "I bought some specialized parts and software. I'm working on a personal design. I know it sounds crazy, but you guys... it’s a prototype that could genuinely revolutionize the world. Clean energy, mechanical efficiency- it’s everything I've ever wanted to build."
"Can you return the parts? Get your money back to cushion yourself?" Blake asked gently.
Ruby shook her head. "No. I already started fabricating the framework. I modified the components, so they're non-refundable."
Blake and Yang looked at each other, the anger fading into a deep, understanding sympathy. They knew how Ruby was when she got a spark of inspiration, not only did her heart belong to engineering, her soul did.
"Well," Yang said, trying to find the silver lining, "are you anywhere close to finishing it? Because if you are, we can help you get it patented, sell the design, and you can buy Marigold Tech just to fire Henry yourself."
Ruby let out a soft, melancholic laugh, shaking her head as she scooped up another bit of yogurt. "No. Nowhere near close." She guided the spoon back to Kal, keeping her focus entirely on her nephew as she murmured, "I've still got a long way to go."
"We're here for you, Ruby," Blake said softly, her thumb gently stroking the back of Yang’s hand before she looked across the table with unwavering certainty. "No matter what happens, no matter how long it takes to figure out your next step. You aren't in this alone."
Yang nodded fiercely, the anger in her expression melting into pure, protective devotion. "Yeah, Rubes. What's ours is yours. Always."
Ruby swallowed the lump in her throat, a wave of relief washing over her. She looked at her sister, then at Blake, then Tyla shoving food in her mouth as she kept reading, and finally down at little Kal, who was currently trying to eat his own fist. "Thank you. Both of you. Seriously."
With everything out in the open, the suffocating tension in the room began to dissipate. The rest of the meal passed with the familiar, comforting rhythm of family chaos. Yang made a terrible joke that got Tyla to finally look up from her action book and giggle, Blake subtly wiped a stray blob of yogurt off the table, and for the first time all day, Ruby felt like she could actually breathe.
~ ~ ~ Weiss Schnee ~ ~ ~
Late that night, thousands of miles away in the frozen kingdom of Atlas, the atmosphere was entirely different. The wind howled brutally against the reinforced glass windows of the Schnee Delivery Company headquarters. Inside the penthouse office, Weiss Schnee sat alone behind a massive white lacquer desk, illuminated only by the harsh, blue glow of her computer monitor and the warm light of a single desk lamp.
As CEO of SDC, a position she had held for the past seven years, the weight of an entire economic empire rested squarely on her shoulders. Right now, that weight felt heavier than usual. Weiss rubbed her temples, looking down at the physical paperwork spread across her desk. The charts were definitive: satisfied customer metrics were down, and shipping delays were up.
Winter was always the worst season for SDC. The brutal, unpredictable Solitas storms routinely grounded their cargo airships, froze mechanical sorting grids, and threw transport schedules into absolute chaos. Weiss had poured her heart into this company over the last decade. She had successfully overhauled worker salaries, drastically improved warehouse working conditions, and implemented comprehensive benefits packages that revolutionized how the company treated its people. But despite all her internal victories, she still hadn't found a way to conquer the Atlesian weather. The winter delays continued to bleed their profit margins and frustrate clients.
Exhaling a long, exhausted sigh, Weiss leaned back in her chair. Her eyes wandered to a sleek, polished silver statue of the Arma Gigas resting on a shelf nearby, a spiritual manifestation of her family's heritage that she often looked to for guidance, an unspoken anchor of hope when the corporate world felt overwhelming.
Suddenly, the sharp ringing of her desk phone shattered the silence.
Weiss checked the caller ID. Marigold Tech.
She hesitated, her finger hovering over the ignore button. Part of her wanted to let it go straight to voicemail and deal with it in the morning. But curiosity sparked. Marigold Tech was a massive technology firm from Vale that SDC frequently contracted with to design automated sorting facilities, heavy-duty machinery blueprints, and logistics programs. With the current winter storms reaching extreme levels, Weiss wondered if they were calling to propose a new, cold weather software solution.
For as long as she had been involved in SDC, Marigold Tech had been an exemplary partner. Weiss fondly remembered that while working her way up through the corporate ranks, whenever SDC placed an order with them, Marigold Tech delivered top notch, flawlessly engineered products that went above and beyond the contract specifications.
Weiss pressed the speakerphone button, her voice instantly snapping into her perfectly poised, professional corporate register. "Weiss Schnee."
"Ah, Weiss! Thank goodness you're there," a tight, visibly strained voice answered. It was Henry Marigold. He had taken over as CEO within the last year after his father stepped down, and frankly, Weiss had found him incredibly difficult to deal with. He lacked his father's business acumen and brought an obnoxious, inflated ego to every contract negotiation. "Do you have a moment to talk? It's rather urgent."
Weiss glanced at the clock on her monitor. 12:43, past the time she told her assistant she would make it home by. "Make it quick, Henry. It is past midnight in Atlas."
"Right, right. Well, I'm calling because I just had a massive crisis at my firm," Henry rushed out, his voice practically trembling with a mixture of rage and humiliation. "An employee of mine had an utter, psychotic meltdown on the job today. They quit entirely irrationally, and on their way out, they actively threatened me and physically assaulted me while fleeing the building!"
Weiss raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow, her skepticism immediately flaring. She knew how corporate politics worked, and Henry didn't exactly strike her as a reliable narrator. "I see," Weiss said, her tone deliberately flat. "And why, exactly, are you calling the CEO of a shipping conglomerate to report an internal HR matter?"
Henry scoffed, sounding entirely dumbstruck that she even had to ask. "Well, to ensure she faces justice, of course! I want your personal guarantee that SDC will blacklist this person from the industry entirely. And I need you to call your other contacts in Atlas and Mantle and tell them to do the same. We need to ruin her credibility."
A wave of profound exhaustion washed over Weiss. She didn't have the time or the energy for petty corporate vendettas, nor did she care to be a weapon for Henry's fragile ego. Sinking back into her leather chair, she pinched the bridge of her nose, not even bothering to hide the skepticism in her voice.
"Right..." Weiss murmured dryly.
Henry completely missed her lack of interest and instantly jumped to the conclusion that she would support him. "Great! Wonderful. Her name is Ruby Rose, and I am currently on my way to guaranteeing she lives to regret the day she walked away from me. Honestly, it’s what happens when you let women handle high level engineering instead of sticking to what they're built for, am I right?"
The casual, ugly misogyny hung thick in the air. Weiss’s eyes snapped open, a freezing cold settling over her expression. "Henry," Weiss interrupted, her voice dropping into a dangerously sharp, icy register. "I suggest you start acting with a bit more decency with your business. Goodnight."
Before he could utter another word, she slammed her hand down on the receiver, cutting the call off entirely.
Weiss sat in the quiet office for a moment, her chest rising and falling as she processed the absolute absurdity of the phone call. But as the frustration began to fade, a strange sense of familiarity tickled at the back of her mind.
Ruby Rose.
The name sounded incredibly familiar, but she couldn't quite place it. Intrigued, Weiss turned to her computer screen, waking it up. She navigated past her immediate emails and opened the secured database folders containing SDC's historical and active contracts with Marigold Tech.
She pulled up the most recent contract, the blueprints for a new automated drone hangar, and used the search function to look for the name. Ruby Rose.
There it was. Right at the bottom of the technical specifications. Her neat, stylized signature was scrawled directly under the title: Lead Designer.
Frowning, Weiss minimized the window and opened an older contract from three years ago regarding a nationwide routing algorithm. She searched for the name again. Found it. Position: Code Writer.
With a growing sense of curiosity, Weiss began opening file after file. She opened dozens of contracts stretching back over the last several years. Every single time she located Ruby Rose's name, it was tied to the most integral, structurally vital component of the project. Inventor. Assembler. Chief Architect. The "top notch, above-and-beyond" quality that Weiss had admired from Marigold Tech for the last decade hadn't been coming from the Marigold family at all. It had been coming from this one woman.
Driven by pure curiosity, Weiss opened a web browser and searched for more information on Ruby Rose online. She managed to find Ruby's professional profile online.
Weiss scanned the work history, and her jaw slackening. Ruby Rose had been with Marigold Tech for ten consecutive years. And in a whole decade of providing revolutionary, foundational work for a multi-billion dollar tech empire, she had only received one promotion, moving from junior engineer to a standard, mid-level engineer.
Weiss scrolled further down, reading through public industry posts that tagged Ruby. Dozens of lower-level technicians and field workers openly praised her in the comments, thanking her for her brilliant inventions and her patient guidance on complex projects.
Switching tabs, Weiss checked the recent posts that Ruby had publicly interacted with or shared. Her feed wasn't filled with corporate jargon, but instead, Ruby had frequently reposted promotional announcements and cover reveals from an author named Blake Belladonna, celebrating her newly released books.
Weiss zoomed in on a promotional photo of Blake Belladonna alongside one of the posts. She stared at the author's face, recognition hitting her. Blake Belladonna was a prominent, highly respected former investigative journalist who used to write searing, deep-dive crime stories exposing corrupt businesses and labor exploitation before shifting to novels. She was the one who brought attention to Jacques Schnee's corruption, allowing Weiss to take over SDC.
And Weiss knew her personally. She had reached out to her after becoming CEO, thanking her for her work and offering her the first interview she would give regarding improvements to the company. By that point, she had shifted her focus from journalist to author, having recently gotten married and wanting to spend time with her wife.
But still, she had her contact and seeing as Ruby Rose happened to appear in several photos with her, she could likely find out the truth of what really happened at Marigold Tech from the author and find out exactly who Ruby Rose was.
Weiss closed the laptop browser, a sharp, calculated look entering her blue eyes. Tomorrow morning, her first order of business would be to reach out to Blake Belladonna and see if she could share some insight with her.
Henry Marigold wanted a blacklist. But Weiss Schnee wanted to see this engineer for herself.