It was a sunny weekend in Vale, and Team RWBY had decided to take a trip down into town to enjoy it. Yang and Ruby had gone ahead to buy tickets for a new movie that Ruby wanted to see before they were sold out, while Blake and Weiss had decided to get an hour of studying in for their upcoming exam in Doctor Oobleck's class. As the two of them boarded the train that would take them down into town, Weiss turned to her teammate. "Blake," she asked, "would you mind quizzing me on these flashcards? I'm not sure if I have everything down yet."
"Of course," Blake said, taking the cards from her as they sat down, "let's see… Okay. What were the turning points in the Siege of Grey Reach?"
"The assassination of General Pike, that one is obvious. Uh… right! The destruction of the Loyalist troops' supplies by a pack of ursi!" Weiss beamed, proud to have remembered that detail.
"And the third one?" Blake asked.
"The third… uh... the third one? Um, that was, uh…"
"The defection of Commander Finch from the Loyalist forces." Blake reminded her.
"Uh… right! I was just about to say that!" Blake gave her an amused look. "Well I was! Let's just move on to the next one."
Blake rolled her eyes, and then her expression suddenly shifted to one of confusion. "Weiss?"
"What? Come on, I want to get through these before we arrive."
"It's just… Ruby's supposed to be waiting for us at the theater, right?"
"Well, yeah. Why do you ask?"
"Because she just walked into our car." Blake pointed behind Weiss, who turned around to see Ruby Rose walking down the train.
"Ruby!" Weiss called. "What are you doing here? You're supposed to be getting us tickets!" Ruby froze, her eyes widened in shock, and then she immediately ran back the way she had come, through the doors into the next car over. "Wait," Weiss shouted, "why are you running?"
"Maybe you shouldn't have yelled at her." Blake suggested.
"I was not yelling," Weiss asserted, "I was reprimanding. There's a difference!" She crossed her arms.
"Do you think we should go after her?" Blake asked, standing up. "Something seemed… wrong. She might be in trouble."
Weiss sighed. "When isn't she?" She rose to her feet. "Okay, but this had better not escalate into something needlessly destructive. Just for once." The two of them took off down the car, pushing their way into the next one. When Ruby was nowhere to be seen, they ran down further into another car. As they entered, they saw Ruby disappear behind the door into the final car. "Well," Weiss said, "there's nowhere she can go from here at least."
They rushed towards the door, but before they reached it, a deafening sound erupted, blasting the doors free from their frame in a flash of fire and smoke, sending the entire train tumbling off of the rail and towards the ground. The train doors flew toward the two huntresses, but Weiss summoned a shield of ice just in time. Unfortunately, the shield didn't help that they were falling and tumbling down sixty feet into the harbor below. Weiss tried to keep her footing with her glyphs, but they were moving too fast. Thinking quickly, Blake kicked a hole in a window, and leapt out, drawing Gambol Shroud as she did so. She disappeared from view, but Weiss saw the weapon's ribbon whip through the broken window, wrapping around her waist and pulling her from the plummeting train car.
The two of them began to fall freely now, which was something Weiss could work with. Focusing, she conjured a series of platform glyphs arranged in a slide that slowed their descent and guided them into the water.
Surfacing, the two of them climbed to shore to survey the wreckage. Three train cars had been blasted off of the elevated rails, while two more remained mostly on the track. The cars that had fell had landed in the shallow water near a rocky bank, and they were a grisly sight. Over a dozen bodies floated in the water, and more were presumably caught in the wrecked train. The final car, from where the explosion had originated, was almost completely destroyed. Weiss felt her heart stop.
"Ruby!" She shouted, darting towards the burned-out train car. "Oh my god, Ruby!" She reached the wreck and her fears were confirmed. A body lay face down in the shallows, draped in a red cloak. Tears started to fill her eyes, and she collapsed to the ground, sobbing. She felt Blake's hand on her shoulder and tried to push away, but her teammate refused to move.
"Weiss…" Her voice was shaking, but not just from grief or shock. There was fear, Weiss realized.
She turned to Blake in a rage. "If this was your "friends'" doing…" She screamed, but saw that Blake was looking past her.
"Weiss, look!" Blake forcefully turned her around, to see… Ruby? She was crawling, injured, from the water, blood running down her face. Weiss looked back at the corpse at her feet, and turned it over. The face was unmistakeable. It was Ruby, but something was wrong. Her skin was a greyish tint. In fact, everything about her seemed desaturated, as if there was a grey filter over her. She glanced back at the other Ruby, and saw that she had the same greyish tint. But if she was over there then how could she be here? It was then that she noticed what Blake had been so afraid of.
Three men stood above the Ruby that had crawled out from the water. They were dressed in white suits, with surgical masks and dark goggles covering their faces. Two of them lifted Ruby up from the ground, while the third produced an instrument from a holster on his hip.
She ran towards them, but it was too late. The man jammed the instrument into Ruby's eyes, and then removed it, leaving only bloody holes in her face. Ruby's body went limp. "No!' Weiss shouted, and lunged at him with her sword drawn. He turned to look at her, and as he looked into her eyes she felt her muscles stop responding, and she fell, limp, to the ground. She saw another of the men turn as Blake pounced on him, but the third caugh t her gaze, and she fell to the ground as well. As Blake fell, Weiss's vision started to blur, and then everything turned black.