leader change

chapter 8 ruby's choice

Weiss stared at Ruby with her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open from shock. She had just admitted to her partner that she was unfit to be their team leader and that Ruby should take over the team leader position once again. This was something the heiress had thought that the redhead wanted to hear all along. After all, it had been Ruby who had suggested the whole switch, saying that Weiss didn't know what she had to go through. Now that she fully understood what it was like to be a team leader through the hard way, the white-haired girl had been certain that her partner would happily to take back her position.

However, that had NOT happened. Instead of taking over as team RWBY's leader once again, Ruby had simply refused her partner's plea. The way the scythe-wielder even said it spoke volumes of how serious she was about this. There had been absolutely no hesitation in her voice at all or even a hint of this being a prank of some kind. As far as Weiss knew, Ruby Rose was refusing to be the team leader of team RWBY.

"W-What!?" Weiss yelled in shock and slight anger. "What do you mean "no"!? How can you just refuse the position that is rightfully yours!? I even admitted that I can't carry the burden of being a leader myself! What more do you want from me!?"

"It's not that I want something more. I actually want something less," Ruby explained. "Didn't you just tell me that you have learned about all the burdens that come with being a leader or did I misunderstand you? Now tell me, why do you think that I would want to carry those burdens again? Especially when I'm already dealing with more than enough, even without being a team leader?"

"What do you mean?" the heiress asked, wondering what the younger girl was talking about.

"Even without having to carry the burden of being a team leader, I already have to deal with a lot of things YOU can't even imagine," the redhead answered. "How about we start with my age? Do you have any idea how hard it is to literally be the youngest student in our entire school? I might have thought that getting accepted to Beacon early would be great, but if I had known what it would cause, I would have refused Ozpin's offer immediately."

"You would have refused getting to Beacon early?" Weiss asked with wide eyes. "Why?"

"Thanks to me being younger than anyone else, I constantly feel isolated by everyone around me," Ruby explained. "I have lost count of all the times I heard people whispering behind my back about how I got accepted early. Some say I bribed the teachers in some way, others claim that Ozpin is losing his mind and so on. No one is willing to believe that I got accepted because of my skills, like it's somehow criminal to even think that way."

The heiress felt her blood run cold upon hearing about what the younger girl had to go through, especially when she herself had often looked down on her partner for her age. She had never imagined what Ruby must have been going through, simply for being skilled enough to be accepted early to Beacon.

"R-Ruby... I had no idea-"

"And it's worse with my own team," the scythe-wielder continued, causing her partner to let out a shocked gasp. "Do you have any idea how many times I've been left behind for "being too young"? Or how many times my opinions haven't been taken seriously, as I'm "just a kid"? You might think that those don't hurt, but believe me when I say they do. They hurt A LOT."

"Ruby... We didn't know..."

"And how about the other problems that come from being accepted early?" Ruby asked. "Did you know or even bother to think that getting accepted early has caused a lot of work to pile on top of me? How I have to take extra classes to make up for the two years I skipped? I might not have told any of you about them, but none of you seemed to bother to find out. Even if I had told you about them, I wonder if you had believed me? After all, you often say that I'm "just a kid", don't you?"