@Justin-Sowers Fair enough. Sorry I wasn't able to help.
fast-gpio set 6 1 should not be creating any additional processes. It just uses hardware memory register access to set the pin value (as does the get-direction calls - only pwm causes fast-gpio to fork a separate process).
So, it is a bit of a puzzle as to why you end up with multiple processes running.
Since I really don't have any experience with Ruby or Python which you say you are using all I can suggest is that you look at what Ruby or Python are doing when they run the shell command fast-gpio set 6 1 etc. Perhaps others with more knowledge of these could advise.