Ruby Rose | Team RWBY (eyesofsilver) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2018-02-07 19:50:00 |
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Dreams aside, things were going mostly okay now - especially now that Qrow was healed and no longer poisoned and that the apocalypse or whatever had happened at the end of January was over and things back to normal. Ruby was still worried about the Skeeter woman (and now having to deal with Weiss when she was still all start of Beacon like) but she was doing what she did with the things that bothered her - bottle it up and ignore it. While she usually would spend her break in her uncle’s office, he had office hours for his students and thus Ruby was on her own for the time being. Which was fine. It was a bit cool out but not terrible and so Ruby had decided to sit under a tree and read.
At least, that was the initial plan. Noticing that her cell signal was being weird, Ruby’s brow knit forward before she got the brilliant idea to climb the tree and see if the signal would be better higher up. Why? Not real reason. It wasn’t like Ruby was exactly expecting any calls or the like, but given she was now aware of the situation, she wanted to see if it was just one of the areas on campus where the signal was bad or if it was something else. Part of that neverending curiosity and interest in science.
Climbing up was easy enough, even holding her phone out at first to see if there was any signal. Not at first but...oh a bit further out and there was more signal and……. And Ruby lost her balance and fell through the branches.
“Ack!” Reflexes trying to kick in, Ruby landed with an oof and she winced as she stared up at the sky, leaves falling around her. At least she had activated her aura before hitting the ground so she didn’t hurt herself as badly as she might have otherwise.
Ren had had much of the same thought. After Nora’s sudden computer addiction earlier in the semester, Ren had fallen behind in his studies. But the weather was nice, especially now that the snow had melted, and so, with a thermos of hot tea and his criminology textbooks, he’d found a picnic table to sit at and study.
It had been by chance that he’d seen the girl fall out of the tree, but he got up quickly and ran over to make sure that she was okay. It wasn’t until he got closer that he recognized the girl. He’d never met her in real life, but he’d certainly had dreams of the young, but energetic Ruby, and though he hadn’t dreamed yet at the time, he was sure that they’d spoken over the Network.
His step slowed as he approached, and he stopped not far in front of her, extending a hand out to help her to her feet. “It looks like you need to work on your landing strategy,” he teased gently.
And suddenly a wild Ren appeared! Sitting up, Ruby laughed nervously as she scratched the back of her head. She knew that he had started dreaming, or was pretty sure of it anyway based on his conversation with Pyrrha on the network and there was that familiar sense of guilt for failing to save her. For dragging Jaune, Nora and Ren on the trip to Mistral. Yes they had agreed to it, but she was also putting them in danger. But… that wasn’t here or now and she quickly pushed the guilt to the side to ignore it. Instead, she just nodded.
“Yeahhh, that was definitely a bad landing strategy. Mostly because there was no strategy this time.” At least there hadn’t been any birds along the way that got caught in the middle of it. That would have been bad. Poor birdie from Beacon.
Taking the offered hand, Ruby got up and brushed the leaves off of her.
“So hi!” Because Ruby would Ruby and that meant jumping straight into being friendly. It did help knowing the got along in the Dreams so that she was less anxious but there was always the chance she’d still ramble and make a fool of herself as she usually did when first meeting people.
Ren couldn’t help but smile. He had yet to speak to Ruby in the dreams - or rather, she had yet to speak to him, he liked to think he was a good deal more quiet in the dreams than he was in real life - but he had always admired her cheerful disposition. It reminded him of Nora in some ways.
“Hello to you too,” he said. “Ruby, isn’t it?”
It really was strange to Ruby now that she hadn’t spoken to Ren all that much at first. Admittedly she had been closer to Jaune and they had the whole team leader thing going where neither felt like they were quite up to it. But that would pass as the school year went on and the teams worked together more. Add in the everlong journey in the Dreams when Team RNJR had formed. So to her, Ren was a very familiar figure at this point.
But only in the Dreams. Here was a different story. Besides random net conversations, their paths hadn’t crossed and Ruby wasn’t like Yang, where she sought out people from the Dreams to make those connections. No, usually there were run ins and internal flailing now. But it didn’t make Ruby any less Ruby and happy to make friends even in all her awkwardness and social anxiety issues.
“Yep! That’s me.” And she even managed to stop herself from rambling more. Progress! “I didn’t disturb you did I?”
“Oh no, not at all,” Ren assured her. It had, after all, been by chance that he’d seen her fall, and he’d come to make sure she was unharmed of his own volition. “I was just taking advantage of the weather to do some studying. Are you a student here?”
Okay, that was good. Ruby wouldn’t have wanted to get in the way of Ren’s studying. She was a bit more mature and focused here than in the dreams thanks to the fact she was no longer 15. Less food fights and all. So she nodded.
“It is nice out.” After the snow and then everything with the sun going dark right after she’d gotten Tyrian’s stinger to help her uncle. “But yep! I’m actually graduating this year.” The silver eyed teen blinked as she tilted her head to the side, “What about you? I mean you obviously go here since you just said you were studying.” And there was the rambling.
Ren waited until he was sure that she was done talking, finding the rambling endearing. “Congratulations,” he said. “That’s a big accomplishment. I still have a couple of years to go, although I had been thinking of summer classes to speed things up a little.” Actually, he was pretty impressed. Ruby seemed young to be graduating already. But then, he supposed she was the youngest person in their class at Beacon, and yet, from what he’d seen, still managed to be one of the strongest combatants they had.
She was still managing to stop herself from rambling too much. And she wasn’t nearly as anxious as she tended to get around people she was only first starting to talk to. Or when she just had a lot of energy or was excited about something. Here it was science and engineering, in the dreams it was weapons.
“Thanks! It’s nerve wracking but I’m excited.” Because really now. Graduation. Though she at least had her internship which would help with the post-graduation part of life. Still, she did nod some as Ren said he was hoping to speed things up a little. “That makes sense. Do you still have your GE classes? Those tend to be the ones that are more often offered in the summer. I mean you do get some classes within majors that are also offered but usually it’s the GE classes.”
“Yes, I still have plenty left. I’ve been saving them,” Ren said. It seemed like it would be easier once he got to the higher level courses in his major to round them out with some lower level general classes. “Though there are quite a few law classes offered during the summer as well.”
Ruby nodded thoughtfully. She had decided to get all of her GE out of the way first so that she could focus solely on her major. But each person worked differently and some paths required different prerequisites and the like. For Ruby, being able to focus on her major and no distractions worked best. “Ohhh, you’re doing law? That’s amazing! And sounds really hard. Though I guess some people would think that mechanical engineering would be really hard.”
“Criminology, Law and Society,” Ren clarified. “It is a little difficult, but very interesting. I’m sure it’s not nearly as difficult as mechanical engineering is though.” He had never really struggled in the maths and sciences, but he also had never tried given more than a passing glance to the more advanced theories, and that passing glance was more than enough to know that it was over his head. “Or do you not find it difficult?”
That still sounded like a lot. She was good with history thanks to Uncle Qrow and had been able to get through her GEs without too much struggle. But it was in building that Ruby really felt at ease. “Nope. I don’t find it difficult. I like looking at the pieces and seeing how they fit together and work, or what doesn’t fit. And you can build things that can help people.” That was her goal. To be able to create things to help people at large. But it was in the cogs and pieces and seeing how they fit that really spoke to Ruby. More than theory and words.
The way Ruby described it, she made engineering sound no more difficult than a puzzle. He had always enjoyed puzzles as a child, but he didn’t think that that would help him much if he was ever forced to do any engineering himself. “I’m sure that you will help many people once you graduate. Do you have any projects in mind right now?”
Puzzles were definitely fun and Ruby enjoyed them as well. She was just more likely to work with cogs and screws and the like as opposed to pieces of cardboard. Even in the Dreams, she had designed Crescent Rose and loved the workmanship of different weapons. “I hope I can.” It was a lot different here than being a Huntress. There it was pretty straightforward on how you helped people. But she had no plans on giving up on it. “Nothing concrete. I really want to find a way to help places like Puerto Rico, find sustainable energy and power sources for them so that when hurricanes strike they aren’t stuck without electricity or power for months on end. I know there has to be a way but its all theory in my head right now.” Jumbled in the mess of Dreams and separating the two and just realities of the world and what would best work.
“I know you can,” Ren said confidently. Even if Ruby never found a way to help a huge amount of people, even helping individuals could make a big difference, and though he had only just met her, he had no doubt of her ability to help individuals. And with her sights set so high, he was almost equally sure that she would do much more than just that. “That is an admirable goal. I wish you luck.”
Ruby smiled brightly at Ren’s belief in her. With all the stress and anxiety of the past few months, the doubting herself, it was nice to have someone who said that who wasn’t related to her. Plus as she had grown closer to Ren and Nora in the Dreams thanks to their trek to Mistral (which she really hoped they would get to soon but again with the burying that), it was nice getting to meet him in person and not just random bits of conversation on the network. “Thanks! What about you? What do you want to do with your degree?”
“I also would like to help people, though I haven’t yet decided the best way to do that.” All he knew is that he wanted to be able to help prevent what happened to his family from happening to other families. And while he didn’t entirely know what form that would take, he knew that the only way to discovered it was to learn as much as he could about the subject. “Hopefully I will have a better idea how to do it by the time I graduate.”
That made sense. Not everyone knew exactly what they wanted to do, even with a general idea of where they wanted to be. Plus when there were a lot of different possibilities for what one could do? That made is all the more complicated. “I’m sure you will figure it out! Besides, that’s why there are internship classes as well! They can help you find something because you get into the work with your focus.”
“I’m sure I will too,” Ren said. He always had taken things a little slower. He liked to make sure that the decisions he made were the right ones before he committed to anything, and in this case in particular he wanted to make sure that he made the best choice out of all the available options. “Internships do sounds like a stepping stone though. Have you done many?”
Sometimes doing things at a slower pace was a good thing. Sometimes Ruby wondered what her life would have been like had she not started at UC Irvine when she was 16. But that hadn’t happened and she had always been one of those people who just knew so it worked out. But there were a lot of opportunities with what Ren was in school with, so wanting to be positive made a lot of sense. “Especially since a lot of places are all ‘Oh, you need to have experience’ but then unless you find a place that doesn’t require it or an internship, how do you get the experience?” It was one of those Catch-22s. “Only the one I’m in right now at Future Industries.”
That was the question, wasn’t it. Even entry level positions looked for experienced employees, and he imagined that was even more true in the STEM Fields than it was for any career that he would pursue. But the advice on internships was good, and he would certainly store that information away. But Future Industries… that sounded vaguely familiar. “They’re in the news frequently, aren’t they? With helping women get into the STEM fields?”
“They are! Ms. Sato actually came to the engineering awards ceremony at the end of last year and offered me the internship there. But there’s also L Corp, which is also beginning to get news and has the similar aim of helping women get into STEM fields.” Which had been awkward when Lena had asked her if she wanted to join L Corp after Ruby had already gotten her internship all settled at Future Industries.
“You must be very proud,” Ren said, feeling a little proud himself. He didn’t really know this girl, not really, but there was a part of him that felt that he did, and he was happy for her accomplishments. Especially to be offered an internship during an award ceremony.
He hadn’t heard as much about L Corp, but then, he didn’t regularly read up on the STEM fields so it would have been easy to miss. “I’m glad,” he said. “More companies need to think like that.” The world really would be a better place if they did.
It wasn’t so surprising as L Corp was still getting off the ground. But she did agree that more companies needed to think like that given she still got a lot of grief even in her classes. Even with strides being made, it was still very male dominated and there was a lot of male anxiety it seemed but Ruby just ignored them and did her own thing. “So am I. Which..okay yeah that’s kind of obvious. But still.”
Ren gave Ruby a small smile. It was good to see that no matter what world, Ruby was still just as bubbly as she’d ever been. But he did have to get back to studying, and he didn’t trust leaving his textbooks out unattended for too long. “Well, Ruby,” he said. “It was a pleasure finally meeting you in person. I’m glad you weren’t hurt from your fall.”
“You too! And thanks for checking.” Because most people would have just left her be. Which was fine, people did that all the time and they all had their own things to deal with. Still, it was nice to actually meet Ren. “I’ll see you around.” Still smiling, the teen gave a small wave before going to the tree to pick up the book she’d been planning to read before the search for cell service up the tree had taken over.