This Is the Run

A RWBY fanfic by

Joak Drysso

Disclaimer: Speedy speed boy, gasoline's burning in, speedy speed boy, as fast as I can be

Chapter the First: The (Reverse Bottle) Adventure Begins

Weiss Schnee knew, with her vow to be the best partner ever still relatively fresh, that she could sometimes miss things about her team, and particularly about Ruby, when she was focused on her schoolwork. It was something she was trying to improve on, to be able to read her teammates so that she could be there if they ever needed her, but the ideas of reliability and teamwork and trust were still alien concepts she was trying to grasp.

So it came as a surprise to her that despite the flurry of activity surrounding midterms and how intensely she was studying to maintain her high marks, she noticed that Ruby always seemed to have cookies. Considering that the girl never seemed to have money, Weiss was very curious where the constant supply was coming from. Because Ruby didn't eat cookies one at a time, she devoured them by the handful.

Weiss sometimes wondered if her semblance was actually just an insanely high metabolism and her speed was just a result of her never-ending sugar rush.

Still, as midterms crept up on them, Weiss kept seeing the cookies, and finally, she had enough and decided to ask Ruby about them, in a roundabout way.

"Ruby Rose, where on earth do you get all of those cookies?"

Or as bluntly as possible.

The other girl paused in the middle of an essay on combat theory – Ruby Rose's Rules of Beating Beowulf Booty (A Working Title) – and looked at Weiss. For a moment, it seemed as though she didn't quite understand the question, and then a bashful smile crossed her lips. She ran a hand through her hair, one of the few tells about her partner Weiss knew. This one meant 'busted'. "Well, you see…"

"The truth, Ruby." Weiss deadpanned. "I know that you don't have the kind of lien to be burning on the amount of cookies you eat, and you haven't asked me for any – not that I would fund such an unhealthy habit – and I know for certain that neither Blake nor Yang has much spare either. Where do you get them?"

The younger girl sighed. "Weiss, look, it's not important, is it? You're right, I'm not buying them, but…"

"It's important if I want to cut you off." Weiss responded, perhaps a bit more harshly than intended. She grimaced, and her tone softened. "Look, I know you like cookies, and I don't think you have to stop eating them entirely but you have to start thinking a bit more nutritionally."

Ruby flinched at Weiss's appeal.

"But if you're not buying them, that means you're making them?" Weiss asked, to which Ruby nodded. "Still, the amount you eat, the cost for ingredients must be almost as much as buying them yourself."

"Well, when you say making them, it…might be a bit different than you think?"

Weiss raised a brow. "I don't really know how much different it could possibly be. You bake them, don't you?"

"Nnnnot really?" Ruby prevaricated. "I use," she paused, her brow furrowing in concentration for a moment, "an alternative method."

"That doesn't really change the fact that you must be paying a fortune for ingredients. How are you getting the money?"

"Oh, I don't pay anything for them!" Ruby explained cheerfully.

Weiss stopped. "Ruby Rose," she scowled threateningly, "if you say you're stealing them I will smack you."

"What? No, no no no! I'm not stealing! Honest!" Ruby pouted at Weiss' unimpressed look. "All right fine¸I'll show you how I'm making the cookies, all right? But you're not gonna get it."

Weiss crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. "Ruby, I've seen a lot. You're gonna have to work to surprise me."

"Trust me, Weiss, you've never seen this." Ruby reached under her desk and produced a jar full of cookies. "So here's my basic cookie stash. I refresh it once every two weeks or so, keep them from going stale."

"Okay." Weiss frowned, looking at the jar. "I'm not really seeing where you're going with this."

"You're about to see, but you won't get it, believe me." Ruby sighed. "All right, now watch carefully." Ruby emptied the jar onto her desk, and Weiss grimaced at the crumbs going everywhere, but kept her eyes on Ruby's actions. "And now the glitch." She swiped with the jar, scooping up all of the cookies expertly…

And then Ruby was holding two jars. Both full of cookies.

Weiss blinked.

Nope, still there.

Her jaw dropped. "Wha…how…what?"

Ruby set her "basic cookie stash" under her desk, and then pulled out two cookies from the duplicate jar. One, she bit down on, holding it in her mouth, and the other she offered to Weiss.

Weiss stared at the cookie like it offended her. It sort of did. She didn't know where that cookie had come from. But she was kind of hungry for a snack…

After a moment's deliberation and a plaintive noise from Ruby, she took the damn cookie and took a bite. It tasted…perfectly normal. Ruby's preferred brand (of course she knew that by now, how could she not?), though she'd opted for white chocolate macadamia instead of her traditional chocolate chip. "There's so much wrong with what I just saw I don't even know where to begin."

"I wouldn't worry too much about it, Weiss." Ruby shrugs. "Once I figured it all out, I realized it wasn't worth worrying about either."

"But you created matter from nothing! You broke a fundamental law of the universe!"

"I, well, when you put it that way." Ruby looked chagrined. "It wasn't anything so special though. I just…used the jar to rewrite memory."

Weiss swore she felt something in her brain pop as she tried to process what was just said. "I'm sorry, what was that?"

"The jar. I used it to rewrite memory so that instead of having one jar, I have two. As soon as the contents are recognized, I just kinda, you know, have two full jars of cookies instead of one."

"What do you mean, 'rewrite memory'?"

Ruby frowned. "That's…a long and complicated discussion that I think would be better saved for another day."

"Ruby," Weiss growled.

Ruby paled and shot up out of her seat. "Oh hey what do you know we have class in thirty minutes I guess I better go don't wanna be late bye." She grabbed her gear and then…started walking into the corner of their bunk bed.

Weiss almost forgot her frustration in sheer confusion. "What are you trying to do? Do you think you can avoid me like that?"

Ruby seemed not to hear her, murmuring to herself, "Dammit, where is that angle, come on…there we are. See you in class Weiss!"

"Ruby you're not going anywh-" Weiss's admonishment was interrupted as Ruby shot away from the bed like she'd been fired out of a cannon. Weiss screamed in worry, but as Ruby made contact with the wall, the weirdest thing happened.

She passed through it like it wasn't even there.

The silence in the dorm room seemed deafening. Then, Weiss broke it by repeatedly hitting her head on the desk. "I must be crazy. They did it. They finally broke me down."

A/N: Gamer fics are all the same tired, repetitive garbage, so here's something a bit different. Title and contents take inspiration from Ocarina of Time speedrunning technique Reverse Bottle Adventure, which involves rewriting inventory memory, as well as Bottle Duplication. The final bit is a common collision detection glitch, which can be seen in a number of games, particularly platformers. Super Mario 64 is a great example of collision detection weirdness.