A dark room, with a single patch of light from the moons light streaming in from the window situated between two bunk beds. The rest of the features were blanketed in shadows.
A perfect setting for catching humans unawares. Such were the thoughts of one figure, clothed entirely in black cloth save some scant amounts of leather padding, as it slowly swung the dorm door open and shut behind it with an imperceptible click. From there it looked between the four beds and their sleeping figures. That one, that was the girl the figure needed to kill.
Eyes narrowing in excitement, the mysterious person took a few long, leisurely, steps to bring itself next to the bunk bed. Here it paused and considered how best to kill her silently without leaving evidence. Normally, shoving down on the victims diaphragm and simultaneously crushing their windpipes was its favorite manner; the victims often never woke, and were unable to fight if they did, deprived of oxygen as they were. The only evidence would be the marks on the neck, untraceable to any individual.
The figure let out a small growl as it realized this wouldn't work here, however. The bed was suspended by ropes from the ceiling, a foolishly unstable arrangement. However, this time it had worked in the girls favor; The force the figure used in its preferred method would surely cause the ropes to snap.
Something rustled. The tall shadow did an instant 180 degree pivot on one heel, spreading its left leg to the side as it did so, ready to pounce if need be.
The other bunks bottom bed was empty, the covers appearing to have been hastily thrown aside.
The black clad figure froze, eyes scanning the room. This tense pause in movement was its undoing, as suddenly one of the other girls, a girl in a black nightdress, collided with its side.
Thrown off balance, the figure immediately tried to turn, to draw its knife from its sheath and slice her throat. But the girl saw its arm going for its waistband, and quickly shifted her weight to her left foot and sent a sharp kick with her right foot, feeling its left forearms bones crunch as her kick connected. The figure let out an obviously masculine gasp, but reacted too quickly for the girl to follow his next movements.
His left arm was badly broken, his hand jutting awkwardly out from where it should be, yet he swung it at the raven haired girls head with wild abandon. She was not, of course, expecting him to use his broken arm, otherwise she could have dodged it. It connected with her temple and she let out a sharp gasp as the right side of her head exploded with pain. Her amber eyes widened for a moment, fully opened, before fluttering to a near close. She did not, to his disappointment, collapse. But she did appear, to his delight, to be severely hurt and incapacitated for the moment. He glanced around the room, the other figures in bed stirring now from the sound of their struggle.
He looked back to the girl who had been fighting him. He now saw a pair of cat ears, blending well between the pitch dark of the room and her own dark hair, giving even to his eyes difficulty in seeing them. Curse her, he thought. She's ruining everything. No, curse the contractor for not telling me this room has a faunus living in it. Only a fool tries to sneak around a faunus, no matter how skilled they are.
The assassin knew the safest thing for him to do would be to immediately escape. He also knew his best course to escape was out the window. But he also knew he couldn't let the faunus live. Not now that she knew he was a male faunus from his night vision, and also knew of his willingness to fight with broken body parts. The main advantage in his line of work was, after all, the element of surprise. He couldn't return to his target with someone nearby knowing anything about him. And he would rather die than give up on an assignment. Finally, he hoped that, if he could dispose of her quickly, he might still kill the target, as none of the others had woken up. Two of them having seemingly returned to peaceful slumber during the lull in noise.
Acting decisively, calm in the face of the mess his task had become, the man went to draw his dagger out with his right hand - but cursed, as it became stuck in his waistband. Rather than waste time to examine why, he instead tore off one of the many leather pads on his outfit, as they were attached only by a relatively thin string. He swiftly bound the leather loosely to his right hands knuckles, well aware that every second the girl was coming closer to returning to her senses. After a few heartbeats he stepped towards her, binding complete.
The assassin decided that with three well placed blows he would be able to stop the faunus from being able to breathe. He struck once at her throat, only to softly growl in anger as he felt that nothing was crushed. What type of girl was this tough? She must be an aura user, he realized. Shaking his frustration off, he proceeded with his planned attack, attacking as if he had metal knuckles on rather than a thin leather pad. He smiled with grim satisfaction as he felt her left set of ribs crunch under his blow. Those should pierce her lung, he thought. He followed up with another blow into her abdomen, this time at the base parting of her ribcages going up, hoping to damage her diaphragm so badly she couldn't breathe with either lung, punctured or not. Mentally remembering she had managed to summon enough aura to save her neck, he added a final blow, aiming it into the lower center of her stomach. He hoped it would burst some organs, maybe make her die of internal bleeding if she didn't suffocate.
Deeming his brutal assault sufficient, the man now turned to his original reason for entering the shadowy room, the girl with black hair ending in red near the end of its strands. Unfortunately for him, she was finally seemingly awake, starting to sit up and look around in the darkness. He was glad that the faunus girl had collapsed out of the moonlight, and the girl in the red nightdress hadn't seen him from where she sat in her bed. He had one last chance to attack with the element of surprise supporting him.
He lunged forward, his right hand going for the girls neck, his mangled left arm going to put as much pressure on her stomach as it could to knock the wind out of her. As his hand closed around her throat however, she finally became fully sober, realizing she was being attacked. Before she reacted though, but managed to push her back down, crushing her into the bed.
He wasn't blasted back physically, but mentally the silver eyed girls enormous surge of red aura threatened to overwhelm him. Trying to shut it out and continue, he was horrified to see he could no longer even hurt her, much less crush her windpipe.
Do I continue? Do I retreat? I'm already so tired, and this girl is as strong as the last. She may be an even stronger aura user. Freaks, the both of them… I need to retreat before this one learns anything more about me. Decision made, the mysterious man leaped back from the bed, then turned and jumped out of the window headfirst without ever seeming to lose momentum.
Ruby swung herself out of bed and leaped towards the door even as she heard the window shattering behind her. Groping about the wall in the darkness, she eventually found the light switch, immediately flipping it to the on position.
Turning around in the startlingly bright light, she immediately spotted Blake, sprawled out near the end of Weiss and Rubys bunk bed. Ruby cried out Blakes name as she dashed instantly to her side.
By this point Weiss was also sitting up, staring at Ruby and Blake with a confused expression. Yang had only rolled over at the lights, but was now starting to sit up as well, having heard her little sister shouting.
"Blake! Blake! Are you okay?! What happened?!" Ruby was desperately questioning Blake, terrified by the copious amounts of blood coming from around Blakes right temple where, unbeknownst to Ruby, the assassins left hand had collided with Blakes skull. She was, in fact, lucky her eye hadn't been caught by any of the mans flailing fingers.
Blake slowly opened her eyes, but they were fluttering, and her breaths were very short and pained sounding. "Ruby… Please… I need… medical…" With that, what little tension Blake had in her body left as she collapsed, completely unconscious.
Ruby looked up, relieved to see Weiss climbing out of bed. Yang jumped out of her own bed, and immediately ran to and stooped by Blakes other side, concern laced across her face as she saw how badly injured her partner was.
"Yang, go towards the East wing, I'll go the opposite way. We need to find help as quickly as possible." Saying these words as quickly as she could, Weiss departed at a sprinting pace, Yang also dashing out at a similar pace a moment later.
Ruby continued to hold Blake in her arms until help did arrive, several minutes later.
The right side of her head was on fire, and her throat burned horribly. In fact, almost her entire body seemed to be screaming in agony. Blake could feel herself laying face up on a flat cold surface, which seemed to be moving quickly. She could hear several people running around her, their breaths coming and going quickly as their feet rhythmically pumped on the ground, but the only voice she heard was the voice of her team captain.
Ruby kept repeating the same words in a plaintive, almost begging, voice.
"You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. Blake, please, you're going to be okay right?"
Blake felt her heart stir at the sound of Rubys almost crying voice, but couldn't bring her body to do anything. Everything hurt so badly, surely worse than any pain she had ever suffered before. Quickly, she found holding to consciousness was becoming more difficult. Blake slowly drifted away, her mind becoming encased in the shadows of dreams. The last thing she heard before entering the darkness was Ruby whispering in a strained voice.
"You're going to be fine."
