If it Fits Ch 1

“Smile!”

Ruby Rose, future silver eyed warrior and holder of the title of the most simple soul in all of Remnant, did so. Not because she’d been asked to, but because she’d just felt like it. She just enjoyed the feeling of being alive and surrounded by people that loved her.

Why wouldn’t she smile, when life was so good to her?

“Say, Cheese!”

A flash of light that had her blinking for a moment answered that question. Her smile fell. Her silvery orbs filled with tears. The diaper she was wearing gained a few ounces of water weight, and things were no longer so happy as she began to scream.

Everything sucked. Everything was terrible, and mean, and wrong, and not good. She’d never be happy again, she just knew it.

“Oh, sh—” Daddy started before Mommy gave him a look. His mouth then clicked shut and he dropped the flashy thingy that had scared her, just so he could grab and pick her up. “It’s alright, baby. It’s alright…”

Ruby continued to scream. She’d already started, and she wasn’t going to stop now, no matter what sounds Daddy made.

“She needs a changing. Where’s the bag?” Mommy sighed, her nose wrinkling slightly and ears flickering as she started looking to her sides, then at her back with her hands. Not finding it, she sighed again. “Yang!”

“Yeah, Mommy!?” Yang screamed. Loudly. From barely five feet away in direct competition to her littlest sister.

Ruby wasn’t happy about that...and neither was she happy about the noises Daddy made while patting her back...and then everything got worse because, now, she was screaming and throwing up and now he was screaming louder and everyone was screaming and it was loud and—

“Where’s the bag!”

“Bathroom! On the ceiling!”

“Why is it—”

“I dunno!” Yang finished proudly to her parents and their stunned silence. “Lemme get it!”

“No!” Mommy and Daddy said at the same time, just before Ruby found herself moving really fast. Then, she was on the ground and confused, with Yang plopped down right next to her. “Stay with your sister, honey, and we’ll get the bag down. All right?”

“Awwww…” Yang pouted.

Ruby, being Ruby, pouted as well and tried to make the same noise...but it didn’t come out right because she was still uncomfortable and crying. Worst. Day. Ever...and then Yang picked her up and sat her down on her lap, and things were better! Just a little!

“Mommy! Ruby got squishy!”

Okay. A lot better! And her tail wasn’t in it this time, which was great! Daddy was bad like that, but Yang was comfortable enough to make up for it!

“Just hold onto her for a little longer, honey! We’ll be right there!”

==========

“I’m a bit concerned about Ruby.” 

Qrow only raised an eyebrow and looked up from the blender with his tongue out. It was only the fact that it was new that kept Tai from putting his fist in his old teammate’s face.

Licking things to prove ownership wasn’t cool. It was just kind of gross, and that was Tai’s, damn it. He’d won it in a raffle.

“Before you start giving me shit, it’s already too late. I’ve licked it. Dibs.”

Tai sighed but went back to tenderizing meat with his bare hands. Out in the wilds, it was all about being self-sufficient. And looking really, really cool. Not many things better at making you look cool and self-sufficient than beating up meat that you killed with your bare hands, in Tai Yang’s opinion. 

“And it’s just a regular smoothie. That too. Nothing to worry about.”

“Bull shit.” Tai would eat his shoes if that smoothie couldn’t peel paint.

“No, really. Pina Coladas are smoothies.” The disheveled man shrugged. “Or as good as. A booze run is in my future.”

“That’s always in your future, you raggedy old lush,” Tai muttered, getting a knowing look from Qrow in response that would have the blonde man checking his pillow for surprises for at least the next week. “But, seriously. I think it’s a Faunus thing.”

“Define ‘Faunus thing’.”

Tai said nothing. He just turned his head, giving Qrow the space he needed to lean over and see what the blonde was talking about.

In the living room, a three-year-old Ruby seemed to be playing a one girl version of musical chairs. She would wobble over to something, give it a look, then sit on it. Toys, books, chairs, random bits of furniture and a sleeping Yang more than once. Then, she’d wait for a moment until her criteria of about ten seconds of sitting were fulfilled...and she would then stand up and wobble over to something else.

“Could be a Faunus thing. Could be a kid thing.” Qrow whispered and shrugged. “I wouldn’t know anything about it, considering I know better than to not wrap up.”

“And Remnant thanks you for it.”

Anything that Qrow might have said to that bit of wit was lost to the ages with what happened next.

“Zwai!” She gurgled excitedly as she toddled towards the tiny corgi puppy that Tai had picked up from the pet store barely a week ago...that was also toddling in his own way, away from Ruby’s grubby clutches.

“Hey, no!”

If it wasn’t for how something like Ruby sitting on him would probably end at Zwei’s age, Tai would have thought it was hilarious.

==========

“Alright, firecracker,” Uncle Qrow said as he wiped his mouth and put the top back on his flask. “You know how it’s your birthday tomorrow?”

“Yeah!” Ruby answered cheerfully. With a little whistle that came with the gap in her teeth being silly. “I’m going to be seven!”

“Congrats, kid.”

“And you’re old!” Ruby shot back. It had to be said. She wasn’t sure why it did, but it did. He was like...thirty or something. He was probably older than the kingdoms. “And you’re probably going to go bald soon!”

That last thing was something Yang had told her to say. Ruby wasn’t sure why, but whatever. She’d done it, and now Yang owed her candy!

Qrow gave her an odd look while Ruby blinked happily at him, already imagining the taste of caramel on her tongue. “You’re lucky you’re seven.” Uncle coughed, his hand almost reaching towards his hairline before he stopped, and looked away to pat under his cloak. “Anyway, I got you a present.”

“Yay!”

“Now, you’re not allowed to open this until tomorrow, and I’m not allowed to tell you what it is.” After what felt like forever, he pulled a box out from behind him and laid it in her grasping hands. “But, all I have to say is that you should probably wake up early tomorrow. For reasons.”

Ruby looked the box over and gave it a couple of flips. Heavy~

“... In a totally unrelated topic change, you still want to be a Huntress, right?” Qrow, carefully, put his hand behind his back again.

“Uh-huh!”

“Okay. Yeah.” He pulled his hand out from behind his back, this time with nothing in it. “That’s good then.” He then stuck it in a pocket, rummaged for a little, and pulled out what looked like a receipt, looked it over, then made a sigh of relief before he put it back. “Great. So, how about you go and bring that inside…”

Ruby put her gift on the ground and turned around.

Qrow’s eyes went wide as he realized where this was going. “Hey, wait, no!”

Ruby sat down with all of her weight for emphasis and then, with a loud bang, a hole appeared in the side of the box and a window exploded.

A beat of silence.

“QROOOOOWWWW!” Tai came roaring out of the house with fire in his eyes and his fists up. “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING!?”

“I THOUGHT I UNLOADED IT, TAI!” Qrow backed away, hands out and eyes on his friend and teammate. “CALM YOUR SHIT!”

“I GOT A WEAPON!” Ruby started tearing at the wrappings of her present out of pure excitement with a mad cackle. “I LOVE YOU, UNCLE QROW!”

“MY HAIR!” Flames burst out from the hole Ruby had made in the window and finished the job the younger girl had accidentally started. “WHO DIES!?”

At that, everyone scattered, and it was only Ruby’s birthday being the next day, and the debt that was owed, that kept her alive in the face of Yang’s wrath.

==========

“From this day forward, you will work together as Team RWBY. Led by… Ruby Rose.”

When Yang had wrapped her arms around her sister’s neck with a cry of pride, Ruby had found it within herself, and her sister’s iron-grip, not to sit on her new teammates in front of everybody in the auditorium… Mostly Yang’s iron-grip though. She’d never quite got the hang of that whole ‘not declaring ownership by sitting on it’ thing.

“Um… Ruby?” Blake shrank back into her armchair, eyes wide as the tiniest member of their team cornered her in said armchair. Corralled her with her hands to either side and a happy smile. “Can I help you?”

“You sure can!” Ruby nodded eagerly. Maybe a little too eagerly, seeing how much farther Blake had pushed herself into the back of the chair… Meh. Whatever. She was used to it by now. All that those attempts to break that sitting habit had done was give her an irrational fear of squirt bottles… And, maybe, an understanding of when to indulge in that habit without getting spritzed. Mist was the enemy. “You’re my teammate, right?”

“Yessss?”

Oh, Blake. So silly. Giving answers and making them sound like questions. It was to laugh.

“You’re my friend, right? And I am your leader, yeah?”

“I...I suppose? We kind of just met a little while ago, and I don’t...dislike you? Yet?”

Good enough!

“Also, Ozpin already said that you were the leader of our team. I’m not sure how that is even in question.” Blake’s brow furrowed and her bow twitched, just before she tried looking around Ruby’s sides in confusion. “What’s that noise?”

“What noise?”

“Like fabric sliding against another piece repeatedly...and a lot.” Blake, still acting as funny as ever, craned her neck just a little bit more and getting absolutely nowhere. Either she peeled herself off her chair, or she took a look. One or the other, no choices in between. “It’s...irritating. And, would you please let me go? You’re in my space.”

“Oh. It’s nothing.” Ruby answered, completely ignoring that last bit with the ease of long practice. Selective hearing, go! “Just my tail wagging.” A twist of the hip showed off the constantly moving hem of her skirt. “Hi! Nice to meet you in a non-life threatening situation!”

Blake’s brow continued to furrow before, all at once, it loosened and her mouth opened into a little ‘o’ of realization. “Faunus. Sure. Okay. This makes sense now.” Then her face tightened up again. Minutely, but it was definitely there. “Are you a breed of dog?”

“Uh…” Ruby thought, then shrugged. “I dunno, actually. It’s kinda fuzzy.”

Breeds of foxes, and what animal family they’d come from, hadn’t exactly been on her list of things to learn when she’d taken the Signal entrance exams. She was a fox. That was it. Deal with it.

“Ah.” Blake nodded and pulled herself out of the indentation she’d left in her seat. It might have taken three seconds too long, seeing how the back wasn’t feeling up to letting her go without a fight. “Fox then. Good enough, I guess… Makes even more sense now. You need a sit-down.”

Ruby’s tail, if it had been out in open air, would have been little more than a blur when Blake looked around to see if there was anyone else in the room. There wasn’t. Ruby had checked...but she didn’t say anything. That was a good habit.  Situational awareness should never be allowed to get rusty.

Blake, now completely assured that there was no one here to see this, patted her lap.

Ruby, taking it as the invitation it was, sat. Wriggled a little, her tail still moving but not nearly as much as she looked to get comfortable in her new seat. And, as she did, she felt an itch get scratched. An almost perpetual call in the back of her head to claim everything she saw, temporarily sated.

“If someone opens the door before you’re done, you fell on me while I was reading, alright?”

“Sure!” Ruby didn’t mind that. It was actually kind of true after all… 

Man though. Growing up Faunus could be kinda tough, once you thought about it. It had it’s good parts, of course, like never needing a night-light, which was pretty sweet…and the ability to smell candy from across the room was good too. Still. Hard.

After a count to twenty, one where Ruby felt honored to feel Blake’s headbutt and nuzzle against her back in return, she stood up, let out a happy little sigh as she rearranged her skirt back over her tail.

What was black, red, and fluffy all over? This girl!

“Okay. My turn, I guess...” Blake said almost grudgingly as she stood up with a hand on her bow, tugging at the ends...and Ruby’s suspicions on her new friend’s race were confirmed beyond a doubt as she saw what laid under.

It had been kind of obvious, once you looked back on it.

“AHA!” Ruby exclaimed triumphantly. “I knew I saw it twitch!” 

Blake gave her a blank look. Rosy-cheeked, yes. But blank.

Ruby chuckled nervously.

“Stop making this weird and just scratch my ears,” Blake ordered. 

Ruby blinked and found herself quickly nodding as her fingers found the velvety soft center in between Blake’s ears and began to scritch.

“Ooooooohhhhhhhhh,” Blake purred as she pushed up against Ruby’s hand, the stress visibly melting away from her frame and Ruby all too happy to continue. She was the team leader and all that...and that meant that she needed to keep her team in the best shape possible. Mental, physical, and emotional.

Blake made several chirping noises in Ruby’s ear when the younger Faunus's knuckles rubbed against her cheeks.

And if that meant scritches then by God she was going to be the best giver of scritches that Beacon had ever seen!

This, of course, had to be ruined by the sound of the doorknob turning. 

Blake backed away with a hiss, her ears laid flat against her skull as she attempted to force her bow back onto her head.

Ruby, in turn, screamed loudly and did an upwards, forward hop into a wide-eyed Blake...and what followed was a flurry of limbs, cloth, color, pain, and fluffiness.

Weiss stared down at the two of them with a raised and twitching eyebrow, looking unbelievably frustrated for some reason as Ruby used her cloak as a cover so that Blake could put her bow back on.

“What are you two idiots doing?” Weiss asked, her voice full of vitriol.

From under the sheet, Ruby looked at Blake for direction, only to get a mouthed order of “Stall!” as the feline Faunus desperately tried to get her ribbon back on.

And so, Ruby stalled. She’d promised after all.

“WE’VE FALLEN AND WE CAN’T GET UP!” Ruby yelled the first thing that came to her mind. 

Blake cringed at the noise but otherwise pretended she was still stuck...and Ruby silently disapproved.

Even if she didn’t quite agree with it philosophically, she understood why Blake was doing what she did. Unlike Ruby’s tail, which often got caught on doors when she wasn’t paying attention, that bow was obviously just there to hide what Blake was...and that was terrible! That shouldn’t even be a thing they were forced to do!

“HELP US, WEISS!” Ruby continued to flail.

They were Faunus! They should be loud and proud! Go Menagerie! Go Faunus rights, yeah! … But yeah. Not everyone was as proud as Ruby was about it, and that was sad.

“Oh by the gods.” Weiss hissed under her breath as she stomped over to them. She not so gently grabbed Ruby’s sole uncovered leg and started tugging on it. “The both of you are just hopeless.”

“OW! Be gentle!” Ruby cried as she found her tail grabbed through her dress.

Weiss ignored her and pulled even harder.

“You’re pulling on my tail!”

Eventually, physics caused the inevitable to happen.

“Wait? What? Tail?” Weiss asked, pausing a second too late for it to matter. With a slight tearing of cloth, Ruby came free and up into the air... Which meant that Weiss was now pulling on a free, and extremely light, airborne Ruby...and what was going to happen next was only obvious.

The sound of a body meeting another. Continued airtime. The meeting of plaster and flesh...and Ruby found herself the first to gather her wits.

With a semblance like hers, you either got used to hitting stationary objects really hard or you figured out how to adjust for obstacles… In other words, that barely even registered as an impact in her experience, so she was feeling fine enough to think about where she’d found herself...and offer input.

“I’m okay! That’s good!” Ruby looked down. “How about you, Weiss? Are you okay?”

Weiss muttered something angrily and unintelligible thanks to her face being planted in the carpet harder than an old TV.

Ruby bounced a bit, her rear against Weiss’s, surprisingly, springy bottom as she did so. “Wow. You’re actually pretty comfy. Do you do squats?”

“GET OFF!” Weiss screamed as she pushed herself off the floor like a rocket, sending Ruby tumbling along the ground until she hit the bed at Blake’s feet… Where the quiet Faunus was there to offer her a hand with a sloppily applied bow on her head. “What is wrong with you!?”

“Hey! The family motto!” Yang said excitedly as she walked into the door. “Have fun without me?” She asked as looked around the room.  

Anything further wasn’t said as Weiss stomped over to her desk and grabbed a textbook off of it. She then brushed past Yang, only to stop, seemingly as an afterthought.

“Your sister is a menace.” She directed at Yang...and then she quickly walked away, leaving an awkward silence to hang in the air.

“... I think that went well.” Ruby beamed. And then her smile fell and started wringing her hands. “Right?”

Blake buried herself back in her book.

Yang gave her sister a pat on the shoulder.

Ruby pouted. “You guys suck.”