Rust and Ash became a duo, with Ash starting to make friends with a couple other rejects from school. Rust figured it was easier to let Ash hang around since it was becoming more and more obvious that Ash was not as naive as Rust thought, often threatening to cut Rust off from her house if she felt like she was being ignored or mistreated. Once, Ash threatened to call the cops, and it led to a full-on brawl between the two. Rust overpowered her and was beginning to leave before Ash cried for her to come back, telling her that she didn’t mean to hurt her, she was still willing to stash her dope, and that she loved her like a sister.
At school, Sissy and her gaggle of friends noticed that Ash and Rust were frequently together and started to include Ash in their friend group, hoping the connection meant easier access to drugs. Rust and Ash were ever present in each other's lives, Rust growing more tolerant of Ash’s antics, with Ash picking up more and more of Rust’s mannerisms and traits. Bone would naturally meet Ash, 17 at the time, and start hanging around more often. Rust, Ash, and Sissy’s friend group would all start hanging out regularly- Rust only feeling the obligation to do so to quell Ash’s needs.
Rust was pulling the highest profits from her routes out of anyone in her syndicate. Realizing she wasn’t making as much as she wanted and that nearing adulthood meant added risk, she started making plans for upward momentum. It culminated in Rust manipulating Bone into setting her up for a private meeting with ███████, where she shot him dead along with a few other lackeys accompanying him. Rust would send Bone off running, telling him to let their superiors know where she is. Following this, a few days later during a hangout, an incident would occur that would result in Rust, Ash, Sissy and her friends to go missing for 4 days. Whatever occurred during this time resulted in the head of Rust’s crime ring dead, and Bone along with other foot soldiers answering directly to Rust from now on. The police would never get involved at the request of the kids. The friend group, traumatized but alive, would not speak about what happened again and go their separate ways.
Ash’s parents would die within a year of each other after contracting the same illness while on vacation. Rust would drop out of school and Ash would graduate, Bone and Rust would be the only people present specifically for Ash during her graduation, save for the slight handful of friends graduating beside her that weren’t Sissy or her floaters. Things would carry on as Rust’s responsibilities and work-load grew, with her and Ash spending less time together. Rust would gift Ash a very expensive piece of mouth jewelry for her 20th birthday, but would not be able to attend her party. Bone was the only person to show up, and shortly after Ash and Bone would start dating.
The newfound space compelled Rust to quietly prepare to move to LA as she felt she could be making more money on the west coast. In LA, Rust would dominate the scene. Her early 20s were spent in a drugged up and violent haze, wrecking penthouses, robbing casinos and banks, establishing a seemingly unstoppable drug enterprise and killing and killing and killing. In 2012, Ash traveled with Bone to LA to discuss the state of business in Crellin with Rust, and Ash would get more involved with Rust and Bone’s criminal activities over the course of a year. Ash would break up with Bone while visiting after her infatuation with Rust was reignited, dramatically proposing to be girlfriends one night a year into their stay with Rust. Rust would accept without really knowing the implications of it all. Bone would fly back to Crellin and report to Rust that their dealers were being brutally killed on their routes and that the police were investigating her believing she is involved in some way- some of these killings mimicking incidents that happened in Crellin when she was a girl. Rust, no longer having a full grasp of her identity or on her childhood experiences decides to return to manage her business. Influenced by an increasingly manic and obsessed Ash as well as semi-delusional grandeur, cocaine and for the very first time in her life, fear and anxiety, is also convinced to investigate the killings in tandem.