I DON'T EVEN HAVE A RWBY ICON WHAT IS THIS

[spotto]

I DON'T CARE ANYMORE
remember that story i keep mentioning to everyone and have been for like a year and was like 'yay i wrote 100K words!' but showed no one!?

BECAUSE I WAS TOO ANXIOUS TO EVER POST IT? BECAUSE I HAD WRITTEN WITH THIS SORT OF PREMISE KINDA BEFORE AND I WAS WORRIED PEOPLE WOULD BE LIKE "SPOTTO WHY YOU OBSESSED WITH WRITING ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK CROSSOVERS!?" WELL I WILL TELL YOU ONE THING. AND THAT THING IS THAT I'VE NEVER SEEN THAT SHOW.

Also several months ago I linked it to one person but as far as I know they've never read it, probably because I sent all 181 pages of the first arc to them at once. Perhaps that was too overwhelming.

SO, BECAUSE I DO NOT CARE ANYMORE, here's chapter one of the cheesiest title ever (but I still spent weeks figuring it out)

The Goat, the Sheep, and the Lamster.

 1

 
Slumped.

 

Head down.

 

Eyes glazed.

 

The words exchanged back and forth between people she cared not for were mere inaudible noises in her mind. They were as interesting as the birds that squawked in the mornings when Ruby walked to school. Oh, but then those same birds would be lovely and preferable to the scene she was subjected to at the moment. She could've sat up and assumed excellent posture, but what would that do? The looming figure responsible for her fate cast down upon her as she deflected all beams of eye contact off her own. She just wanted to shrink into a tiny little ball and disappear off into a drain, filtered into the ocean never to be seen again. Usually when that happened no one gave one thought about where that particular ball went off to, but if that happened now it would cause an uproar.

 

Perhaps Ruby would have had an ounce of optimism if the man next to her wasn't stuttering every sentence, silenced so easily by everyone else in the room. It got to the point that Ruby herself might have done a better job than this so-called lawyer, but even so she had no leverage against all the wrongs the people, as the opposing commanding lawyer called it, were arguing for. She was an irredeemable delinquent and if the law was just, she'd have the book thrown against her. She didn't even know how this sorry excuse of a defender managed to convince her to take this plea at all. No contest would've at least saved them from the embarrassment, from the taxpayer's dollars sunken into this mess they called justice.

 

Justice, the very word sent an ache through her sternum. Ruby attempted to merge her face into the desk whenever it was spoken throughout the courtroom. Her biggest dream to become a defender of justice was on the opposite end of the world now, so far away in the distance it couldn't even been seen and in its place, the downcast forlorn eyes of a woman...

 

"Ruby Rose!"

 

"Your Honour!" The dreary daydreams popped like a bubble. Ruby jutted up so fast her chair collided with the bar behind her leaving a dent. She gulped for a moment, suddenly regretting her prior state of mind considering how incredibly important this was. Maybe Her Honour would show compassion and leniency if Ruby was at all proper and sound, but she was anything but. 

 

Leniency? Ruby was faced with a glare so powerful it bore through her very soul. This was it. The end of the line. Her life had piqued three-years-ago when she won the regional junior-high lacrosse championships and was voted the most valuable player. Instead of following a hero's footsteps she fell into the wayside, dragged down by all the other slips of the cracks. The judge's lips moved and the words to seal her fate were spoken as if in slow motion and the ensuing echo of the glaive threatened never to stop. 

 

-

 

And so here she was. Ruby blinked back the last of her tears as she stood awkwardly in the darkness of a corner, thinking back to her furious father who unceremoniously flipped off the judge before taking his daughter in an embrace that neither of them ever wanted to stop. An officer, or the bailiff as most people in that courtroom called him escorted her away before a sudden bathroom emergency interrupted her transport. She tugged on her cuffs chaining her left wrist to a doorknob. She did not consider herself a high-security risk, but this lack of supervision on a convicted criminal sure seemed a tad...much.

 

Then an hour passed. Unbelievably not a single man apparently required the use of toiletry after that bailiff, who had yet to exit the washroom. Perhaps he had an expired lunch today, but while Ruby had begun becoming quite bored standing about, she was definitely in no rush to see whatever facility the law wanted to send her to. She was also pleasantly surprised that not a single person in the courthouse seemed to notice that she was standing there, still obviously handcuffed to a doorknob. 

 

Suddenly an angel descended from the heavens. Her hair was pearly white and her eyes a shade of innocent blue. She sported an obvious scar wracked across her left eyebrow and eye, but that only served to make her more interesting than the no doubt spotless other angels. Her hair was pulled to the side in a long ponytail giving her face a bit of a lopsided look, but it sort of fit with her scar marking the other side. What she wore looked like a fancier version of an angel's dress, but Ruby didn't pay it much attention. Ruby almost accepted death's embrace so that she may follow the girl to a fate much more desirable than this. That is until the angel's mouth opened.

 

"Really!? I refuse to believe this is the direction to the truck! You said that last time, and the one before! Why not just let me go so you don't have to attempt your sorry excuse of a job you brainless ape!"

 

Ruby then noticed a man who towered over the young angel...er, girl, who Ruby realized was decidedly not an angel as angels would never speak in such a condescending tone. He was dressed in the same uniform Ruby's bailiff was in and Ruby took this opportunity to get herself noticed. She flailed her arms as wildly as she could, jiggling the doorknob and hoping the sound would alert the two to her distressed state. She could've simply called out instead, but the hiccups she acquired from all that inconvenient sobbing refused to go away and for whatever reason Ruby did not feel like trying to communicate through her diaphram's attempts to kill itself.

 

"Listen lady I just need t'get ya to a trunk...er truck and you'd never see me again! So how 'bout you stop faffing your arms about and co-operate before I get that there judge to charge you for more things than ya can count!" He pulled on the girl's cuffs and easily lifted the fallen angel up in the air. As impressive as such an effortless show of strength was, it certainly wouldn't have been comfortable for a person to be lifted up by their wrists.

 

Predictably Lucifer shrieked, but not for reasons Ruby had assumed. Her eyes suddenly jabbed into Ruby like icicle daggers, "What is that girl doing chained to a doorknob!?"

 

"Oh yer right, that don't look proper at all. Wait here."

 

The second bailiff proceeded to cuff the false prophet's right wrist to Ruby's before entering the washroom himself. Ruby instantly turned away, wondering how on earth such a terrible day like this could be mismanaged so badly that not only was her life pretty much ruined with this prison sentence, but now the whole business of sticking her in a cage away from society was too complicated for these people to handle. Perhaps she should try to escape, would they even realize she was missing? Did anyone realize she was missing at the moment anyway?

 

An indignant huff bounced off her back and Ruby turned around, seeing the former angel in clear-cut view. She wore white just like her hair was white and had a pale complexion to boot. Perhaps this girl was trying to blend into the background in order to escape, but was unfortunately caught during the wrong season. Neither of them looked especially content with their situation, what with being detained and all, but this girl certainly was far more vocal about the adults' inability to do their jobs.

 

"I cannot believe he just left me here like this. Just as he mentioned how this wasn't protocol—how is cuffing two people to a doorknob any better either!? At least put me in prison with dignity damn you!" She shouted at the men's bathroom door before throwing her arms across her front once again, unintentionally pulling Ruby slightly closer due to the length of their cuffs.

 

Well at least Ruby wasn't bored anymore.

 

"...hi?" She began, though she didn't know if provoking the miniature yeti was the greatest of ideas. Luckily her hiccups had subsided, the endless gulping settling her abdomen.

 

The girl simply ignored Ruby, or at least she attempted to put a front of ignoring Ruby. It was certainly not difficult to notice her turning her head away and muttering something under her breath. Due to their proximity, hearing said mutters wasn't especially difficult either. These feats could even possibly be achieved by the bailiffs themselves.

 

"Tethered to a random criminal unsupervised...there'd be nothing I could do if it had been anyone remotely dangerous."

 

"Hey! You don't know what I did!" Ruby almost instantly rebuked. She had no idea why being offended at not being something like a serial killer was a thing. Sure she looked like a fifteen-year-old girl, precisely because she was a fifteen-year-old girl, but that was no way to simply assume she was only here because she vandalized city hall or dealt drugs in the form of banned nicaraguian cookies or something. Ruby was not a girl to be underestimated. Her big sister had always told her that.

 

The snow angel finally took the bait, "Oh please. You? A violent offender? Give me a break. You're probably here for doing something stupid."

 

"I--! Well...technically, it..." Ruby took a moment to think. What would her crime be considered anyway? "I don't know if it counts as violent, but everyone gets arrested for doing stupid things! So you're here for doing something stupid too!"

 

She could only roll her eyes, "Hardly. Couldn't you tell how inept these officers are? The justice system is not any better."

 

A moment passed before Ruby processed the girl's sentence. She did admit, at first glance someone as mesmerizing as her could not possibly have even considered the idea of committing a crime, but her words were not delivered in any convincing manner, "But you don't even sound upset."

 

"Don't sound upset!? I sound plenty upset! Do you need me to reiterate!? This is preposterous, unacceptable, unforgivable!" The girl in white stomped the ground, "If everyone in jail is like you they’ll soon have a real reason to lock me up!"

 

"Yeah well if you said that to any of the muscleheads already there you'd be leaving in a body bag!" Ruby attempted to stretch her arms up into the air to describe the size of these criminals, but her cuffs continued to remind her of her bizarre situation.

 

"How would you even know this? Have you been in prison before?" She raised an eyebrow, wondering exactly who this Ruby could possibly be if she was not only this young and harmless-looking, but potentially very problematic at such an age.

 

Ruby hesitated for a moment, realizing what sensitive information she may have just leaked, "W-well I've been there visiting someone, and the people were mean and snarling and..."  

 

"...and faunus?" She finished.

 

"Just because there are lots of lawbreaking faunus doesn't mean all of them were faunus," Ruby continued, wondering if this girl was going to get any worse with her whining and now prejudice.

 

She shook her head, her demeanour and tone shifting, "No. You said snarling, I just assumed."

 

"Well they don’t all snarl too."

 

A silence followed and Ruby looked down at the floor. The floor was made out of marble, a sort of reddish tinge with a vague reflection of those walking across. She noticed the bright girl next to her in the floors as well, her head turned away once again, but an expression not so much of haughtiness but a resigned sadness instead. The glint that came off their cuffs brought Ruby back down to reality and they both stewed in their unfortunate situations for a moment.

 

"I wonder what's taking those idiots so long," She murmured, pushing in the door to the men's restroom slightly. What was unleashed was the utmost horror of horrors, set free into the corridor to reign in its pungent tyranny.

 

"Oh god this day cannot get any worse," the porcelain girl reactively covered her nose with her free hand. 

 

Ruby had no such privilege, one wrist still attached to a doorknob and the other to the girl. She knew bringing that hand up to her nose would likely annoy the girl and decided to endure the assault on her sinuses. Regret filled her nostrils and Ruby wondered why she kept making so many terrible decisions lately. Her arm attached to the doorknob jerked in instinct, so desperate to shield her precious nose. The shackle came off almost in a sense of mercy and Ruby plugged up her follicles before she even realized how free her hand had become.

 

She felt herself being pulled across the hallway, her fellow prisoner taking all the steps to escape from the nasal assault. Ruby rubbed her watery eyes dry before for whatever reason protesting her actions. She had just been liberated from the men's restroom, for what reason would she need to complain?

 

"Hey wait...you!" Ruby called, following along the huffy girl's purposeful footsteps clumsily, "If they notice us missing we could be in big trouble."

 

"Really? That's what you're worried about!?" She responded, "If someone were trying to stab you, the natural reaction is to flee!" She growled and continued clacking her shoes on the marble halls, as if she didn't care that people would be staring and wondering why two people handcuffed to one another were walking around through the courthouse, "And it's not 'you'! You will address me by Weiss, Weiss Schnee."

 

The name Schnee sounded familiar to Ruby, but she could not place it at the moment, especially since this girl adorning such a noticable last name was yelling at her every time she tried to recall where she had heard it from, "Hurry up you dolt! The way you're walking is going to trip us both! What kind of undignified gait is that!?"

 

Ruby unfurled her brow as she upped her own volume just to get a word in, "I have a name you know!"

 

Weiss stopped dead in her tracks, her head snapping around in slow motion, "I have no desire to learn your name."

 

"But but, I know yours! Isn't it only fair to-"

 

"If the world were so fair I wouldn't be here now would I?" Weiss stepped through the next door and the two of them were now standing on the steps, breathing in fresh, free air. An armoured police truck was parked right next to the steps, next to a group of uninterested distracted individuals. They were neatly lined up behind the truck and being kept in position by a tall lanky man, who was no doubt a police officer judging from his uniform. He noticed the two girls in seconds, catching a glimpse of the handcuffs casting glare off the sun which the two prisoners did not think through to hide, but it wasn't like Weiss was expecting to get very far should they have attempted to escape.

 

"Finally, you latecomers have shown up! My superiors are going to have a field day with me if I don't get going in the next five minutes!" He shuffled the two of them to the back of the line, not once ever questioning why they had shown up without some sort of security or escort. Perhaps these incidents occurred often, which only further deflated their confidence in the ability of the security officers. It was almost to the point that their ineptitude was suspicious, but Ruby could not pinpoint why all of this would ever be on purpose. 

 

"Greetings soon-to-be-new-inmates, I will be your transfer officer, the name is Winton Whitaker!"

 

The group of girls groaned in unison, as if they had been waiting around for some time and were tired of this man's personality already. Weiss was already visibly exasperated from the confines of the Courthouse; she had little to no patience left for anything else. Ruby watched in sheer curiosity why any of them even had to know this person's name when their job was to simply drive them off to some sort of walled off institution.

 

"As you have all been found guilty today, shame on you all, I will assure you that your next trip will be as uncomfortable and unnerving as possible. We will be driving through the most boring of scenery and taking the bumpiest of roads!"

 

One of the older, taller girls raised her arm, "Yes, you, the horned one with the nosering!"

 

"Uh guy? There's no windows on the truck," she spoke, her tone with a tinge of annoyance that he had pointed out her race. After all, she was the only one in the line with a nosering, so it felt even more unnecessary.

 

"That's right! To make the trip feel even more endless and full of despair!"

 

"Uhm but like, y'know that makes the whole scenery thing sort of pointless?"

 

"Yeah, you're really only making this more menial and tedious for yourself."

 

"Who wants to drive through bumpy roads anyway?"

 

"SILENCE!" Winton raised his night stick, which no officers at all ever used these days, but he carried around anyway, "You will be miserable, and you will like it!"

 

Ruby took her eyes off the officer for a second to look through the crowd, most of them towered over Ruby, who still obsessively downed milk to one day match the rest of her family in height. In fact, Weiss, who Ruby had the unfortunate fate of being next to, was the only one who matched her in statute. The majority were also faunus, which wasn't normally something Ruby would notice had the police officer not gone out of the way to point it out himself. When Ruby took a peek at Weiss she could see the visibly dressed girl had been planting her face in her palm for the entire speech.

 

"Anyway, let's outline the rules that will be strictly enforced while you are passengers of my truck," He cleared his throat, "There will be no kicking, no spitting, no banging on the walls, no attempts to escape, no fights, and no excessive noise. Are we clear?"

 

There was a collective grunt of acknowledgement, but that didn't seem to satisfy the officer.

 

"I said, are we clear!?"

 

Ruby was in no rush to head off to wherever she would be forced to stay these next six months, but at the same time even she was starting to lose patience. She recalled what the man said moments before and raised a hand.

 

"Yes, you in the red hoodie."

 

"Didn't you say we had to leave in five minutes?"

 

The officer almost punted his own forehead with his wrist, digesting the time that was situated on his watch. He pulled open the doors and forced everyone in so fast they almost tripped over each other, "Shit shit shit! Go, hurry, now!"

 

There were little to no details Ruby could make out inside the truck as it had no artificial lighting. The small cracks where natural light could seep through from the grates separating the cargo and the front and the crack under the door weren't enough to illuminate the inside. The ride was as advertised not especially comfortable considering how the tires screeched in pain as they pulled out of the driveway. Ruby wondered if the officer was even following the traffic laws his people enforced. She listened in on the murmurs exchanged among the rest of the guilty party. One of them had gone to jail around four times now and had been driven there by the same guy who would pull the same stunts every single time as if this job was something that required grand speeches. Oddly enough despite the whirlwind introduction she had with Weiss in the courthouse earlier, the girl remained silent throughout the drive.

 

That is, until they felt the vehicle slow to a stop and the front window roll down.

 

"Welcome to Duke's Caffeinehouse! How may I help you?"

 

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Ruby heard Weiss whisper harshly beneath her breath.

 

"Yeah I need uh, two dozen glazed donuts and a cup of your finest coffee. Oh, with two sugars and no milk please."

 

Weiss stretched out to take a closer peek at the scene, before surprisingly upping her voice, "Father, I thought I told you I wanted jelly donuts, not glazed."

 

Ruby felt a strong shove into her side and noticed despite the lack of any light a purposeful glare coming from her handcuff partner, "Er, uh, yeah dad! My coffee needs at least five sugars, remember?"

 

Soon the rest of the passengers understood Weiss' initial outburst and quickly followed up.

 

"Daddy! I thought you were going to order me a latte!" 

 

"Pops the clam chowder is today's special! Let's get that too!" 

 

"Why do we have to go to Duke's Caffeinehouse? I wanted to go Valkyrie's Pancake Factory!"

 

"Wait no no no, please ignore their orders. Just the normal coffee and glazed donuts please," Winton repeated. 

 

Ruby felt the truck drive a few feet, just before the officer erupted.

 

"What the hell is this!? I only wanted donuts and coffee!"

 

"We feel it isn't right for you to neglect your daughters."

 

"They're not my daughters! They're a bunch of crim-"

 

Ruby could almost make out the devilish smirk on the barista, "What were you about to say? If they aren't your daughters I'm going to guess you're not supposed to be here."

 

"Well in that case I refuse to pay!"

 

The coffeehouse employee almost giggled before she continued, "Alright then. Let me make a quick call to my father, police commissioner Julius Saffron Arc."

 

"You little piece of sh—...no no no stop! Stop! Fine! What's the total?"

 

"How did you...?" Ruby began, eyes wide open to how perfectly the officer's detour backfired, "Wait, do you know her?"

 

"Acquaintance," Weiss responded matter of factly. They heard more grunts of annoyance before the truck pulled out of the drive-in. As the long journey went on, Ruby heard Winton cough each time he tried to take a sip of his overly sweet coffee. The doughnuts indeed were not glazed but filled with sugary jelly. A bow of clam chowder and several drinks sat unattended.

 

"Can we have our drinks since you actually bought them?" Nosering girl asked.

 

"I ain't spending a penny on you pricks!" He answered, "These extras are going to the love of my life."

 

"This dude has a girlfriend?" There were shocks of utter amazement.

 

"Well er, I wouldn't go as far as..."

 

"I hope she dumps you," another girl added.

 

Winton took another sip and almost gagged this time, but Ruby wasn't sure if this was in response to the comment or that his tolerance of the sugary coffee was dropping, "There's no need to go that far!"

 

"In a ditch!" Another of the passengers continued. Several of the girls laughed, though Ruby remained silent and Weiss didn't seem to enjoy the insults either. It felt like they had been driving for hours already.

 

Winton growled, "Unlike you bitches--" a chorus of 'oooohs' started, "this woman is the pinnacle of beauty and success. You'll be seeing her soon and boy will you be miserable!"

 

And so, for the rest of the trip which felt equally as endless as the first half, the officer began describing this spotless, flawless prison guard who worked dilligently for the law. She was tall and was very well-built, fit enough that he could tell despite the guard being in uniform pretty much every time he saw her, which hinted to Ruby that no, she wasn't his girlfriend at all, just an incredibly out-of-reach crush. She apparently had the most flowing of locks like that of the night sky, which someone pointed out was a terrible description because the stars implied she had dandruff. Winton quickly shot down the notion she had any flaws in her hair. Instead, the stars were more like her golden eyes, pupils which never strayed from her job. She was a fierce discipliner and kept all the inmates in rule.

 

Or at least that is what he assumed because he had never really watched her work for longer than half-an-hour as he was only a driver and never stuck around long enough to observe. He also never seemed to have even spoken to her because he could not describe her interests or why she chose such a career or anything. He didn't even know who she was at all.

 

Finally, they arrived. 

 

As Ruby stepped off the truck, she first stretched out her legs, having sat there for almost three hours. It was a miracle she didn't suffer any cramps, though the few groans from other passengers indicated they weren't quite as lucky. Ruby then drew her attention to the building they arrived to, which was larger than she remembered. Before, the building simply looked plain and sort of boring sitting isolated in the middle of some desert oasis, but now it felt humongous and dark, backdropped by endless thunderstorms so all the planes that happened to fly over would for sure realize that yes, all the bad people in the world were gathered here. An occasional witch laugh would accompany the lightning as well, leading Ruby to realize she couldn't even tell if her image of the prison was a prison or just an abandoned haunted laboratory. Ruby sighed as she and the rest of the former passengers were lead inside what she felt would be the longest six months in her life.
I swear to god this is very different from my Negima story which was also in a similar setting.