It was supposed to be a smooth train ride. Rest for about six to seven hours, enjoy the scenery, and dine on some fine Mistralian cuisine offered by a luxury rail service. With an extra fee, Dee and Dudley had their entire railcar privatized. No one other than them had access to their special cabin which was coupled behind the boiler car and the locomotive itself. Things seemed to going smoothly.

That was until Ren and Nora burst back inside, panting and wheezing. A brief exchange later, a shadow banged on the door. Ruby knew where to place herself at this point. Hand on her dagger, she rested the other on the strap of Jaune's backpack. The formation they assumed together came naturally—Jaune deployed his shield while he held his sword hefted to hip level with the blade pointed forward. Pyrrha did likewise, though with her javelin sitting atop the groove in her buckler. Ren and Nora covered their flanks.

Standard Imperial legionary formation.

"Any idea who he is?" whispered Jaune.

"No clue," panted Ren.

"Something about him wasn't right," Nora added nervously.

Bump! Bump! Thump!

The shadow moved away from the glass.

They held their breathes, listening closely. Nothing but the humming of the train engine and the gale outside. Then Ruby heard it. A faint pitter patter overhead. He was on the roof. Moving fast!

She turned around in time to catch him crash through the glass of one of the unoccupied booths behind them. He was already on top of her before she could blink. The Empress felt her heart leap into her chest when three blades glistened against the fluorescent bulbs. She threw up her dagger to blunt the first edge meant for her face. The other two scraped her belly from two angles, drawing a yelp and shattering her Aura.

"Ruby!"

Jaune whirled around and thrust his shield forward, stopping another blow as Pyrrha whipped on her heels to counter-attack. Nora and Ren caught Ruby and pulled her away.

"She's fine," barked Miss Valkyrie, covering up the open tear in the Empress's dress with her own hands. "Her Aura took the most of it."

"Not for long," hissed the man in the brown leather jacket.

"Stay back!" Pyrrha snapped, fronting her own buckler.

"What do you want!?" Jaune hollered, his narrow eyes never once leaving the agile intruder.

The man snickered. He angled up straight in a manner that mocked the rigid formality of every organized army on Remnant. He flicked off his hood to let his tightly bound braid whip down to his shoulders while a larger serpentine coil arced over his head. "Why, I wish only for the release of Her Imperial Majesty from this torment, of course!"

"Y-you," Ruby gasped between ragged breaths. That demonic chisel, that crooked grin, the bulbous tail hovering below the ceiling. "It's you!"

"Ave Imperatrix totius Sanasae!" The man bowed. "It has been awhile."

"Your Majesty?" Pyrrha voiced, confused.

"My, either the Imperial Guard is recruiting young or"—he bared his teeth in a wider grin—"you're getting desperate."

"Shut up!" Jaune hissed.

"Jaune, wait!"

The blond charged only to miss spectacularly. His opponent bounced off the walls with stunning finesse, dodging every swing. "Sloppy swordsmanship!"

"Stay still, connard!"

"Jaune, stop!" Ren hollered. "Fall back!"

Pyrrha threw her hands before her and, with a tight grimace, drew back. A black sheen coated the armor around her partner, yanking him away from what could have been a lethal stab from the man—no, faunus. The intruder was a scorpion faunus whose defining appendage appeared constructed entirely of polished Atlesian steel.

"Regroup," Nora barked, pulling Ruby's arm over her shoulder and helping her up.

"You're right, you're right," Jaune breathed.

"Come now, Your Majesty," taunted the man. "Don't you wish to get reacquainted?"

Ruby felt the outside gale whip against her cheek. In her peripheries whipped the curtains of the shattered booth. "Out the window!"

There was no time to question her. Immediately team JNPR hurried back into their booth. Nora smashed the glass with her fist, allowing the winds to whip into their faces. She climbed out and established her footing on the window sill before reaching down to pull Ruby out.

"We got you covered!" Jaune yelled.

"Don't look down, don't look down, don't look down," Ruby chanted on her way up. She did look down though. And the canopies of many a speeding tree shocked her so much that she scurried as fast as she could onto the roof, hoping that it was not slippery and that there was room to move around. Luckily, there seemed to be no overhands in coming.

Ren followed suit quickly thereafter. They could hear the struggle underneath them yet were resigned to wait. Jaune and Pyrrha later emerged ragged and frantic.

"Watch your footing!" barked Mister Lie.

Glass cracked and shattered behind them. Another window broken. Followed by another set of footsteps landing on the roof. Ruby had already started running with Nora to the other end of the train before someone yelled that they should.


It was an exhausting sprint across a moving train. Ruby expended her strength restoring her Aura while leaping from railcar to railcar. Nora had her arm around her throughout, constantly telling her to keep her eyes forward. Behind them, the Empress could hear the rest of team JNPR struggling against the assassin she recognized from all those years ago.

The piling snow made the surface slippery and the loss of traction more than once nearly sent them over the edge. But they had made it...to the end of the train.

By this point, Ruby was freezing. The northern Mistralian winds were pelting them with so much hardening snow that it was getting harder to see. Maybe it was because of this that the assailant moved quick. Ruby remembered raising her voice, raising her dagger, and herself being raised off the roof, swung around, and slammed against something hard. Then glass. Then the sky. Then cold steel. And then dry carpet.

Her back hurt, her arms hurt, her legs hurt. Everything about her hurt.

"Ruby!" Jaune coughed.

Ruby could see a blurry shadow loom over her. She reached up her hand and winced at the pain lancing in her side.

"Ruby, I'm right here. I've got you, I've got you." Panting. "Pyrrha!"

"I'm fine!" Pyrrha bellowed from somewhere. "Protect the Empress!"

"Not so fast, darlings!" hissed the faunus.

Something tore at her midsection once again and this time, it burned intensely. Ruby cried out upon the complete loss of her Aura. She fell into someone's arms and was dragged to all the way to the back.

"Ruby! Stay with me, stay with—merde! Ren! Watch out!"

Ruby blinked until the blurriness went away. Across from them, their opponent stood proudly over the other half of team JNPR. Ren and Nora grimaced in pain as his boots dug into their spines, pushing them against the bristles of the carpet, their own weapons tossed far from reach.

The Empress powered her way back up to stand, gritting her teeth and fighting back tears while gripping tight the pommel of her dagger until her knuckles were pale. Jaune had his back to her, his shield raised and his sword angled towards the intruder. Pyrrha covered her flank, stealing worried glances her way.

"Come now, Your Majesty," crowed the man through jagged teeth, "I am merely offering you an escape from this cruel world!"

No words could come out of her; nothing but shaky breathes that grew more and more uncontrolled. She was in agony. "You..."

The faunus toyed with them. Making faces, gesticulating madder than a condemned jester, even humming twisted melodies while he dug his heels into the other half of team JNPR who were by now finding it harder and harder to breathe.

"Who are you!?" Jaune demanded, inching closer and closer.

The intruder chuckled. A chuckle from her dreams. Her suppressed memories. Her past. Wide silver eyes and a slack jaw regarded the assassin with the venomous scorpion stinger twirling over his shoulder like a Menagerie viper.

"I...I c-cut it off," she whimpered. The shaking spread to her wrists and she had to hold the small blade with both hands to keep from losing control.

He snickered with an angry glint in his eye. "Yes, little flower. You did."

"Cut what off?" Pyrrha pressed her back against the Empress. Her wide green irises darted over her shoulder with a face sporting dawning horror. "Ruby, what did he do to you!?"

Jaune grit his teeth harder than his grip tightening on the hilt of his sword. "You...dared to...dared to touch her!?"

"Oh, I wish I could have." The assassin laughed until his face contorted into a malicious sneer. "After what she did to me!"

And the scorpion tail that Ruby now vividly recalled lobbing off with a sword many years ago now reemerged as a reconstructed mechanical appendage dripping with the poison that killed her father. A second passed and he lunged. The Empress squealed.

Fwoob!

"Hey! I told you to keep it down—"

Shlack!

"You keep it down," snorted the contorted faunus.

Dee gasped in horror at the bulbous steel telson embedded into his chest. The licensed Huntsman grasped desperately at the tail. Too little, too late. He was lifted off the ground and tossed against the wall. His body dropped like a sack of potatoes onto the floor.

"You...killed him," Pyrrha gasped horrified.

A condescending laugh echoed back in a voice that mocked motherly concern. "Really? Can't stomach a little blood? Ooh, precious little magnet. How'd you win all those tournaments then?"

"Shut up!" Jaune roared, having come close enough to engage. He swung down hard only to miss and hit the space between Nora and Ren, barely scraping their arms when the assassin leapt off their backs and bounced acrobatically off the walls.

"Ooh! You're so easy!" he taunted.

Another swing. Another miss.

Ren and Nora staggered to their feet as Pyrrha stretched her palm. Their discarded weapons, coated in a faint black sheen, flew across the floor back into their hands.

"S-semblance?" coughed the Empress.

The champion nodded. "Stay behind me, Your Majesty."

The faunus cackled wildly while effortlessly dodging and parrying every blow. "I expected better from a Huntsman but I digress. You are still a trainee, hah!"

"Stay still!" hollered the blond, swinging wildly.

"Jaune!" Pyrrha cried out, stepping in to block a strike meant for his neck. "He's making you lose focus."

"Ruby," Ren wheezed. "We need to get you out of here."

"We're on the last cabin, Ren," Nora coughed. "Where are we supposed to go?"

"In here!"

Heads craned to the two shapes clamoring inside from the open doorway at the end of the railcar from where Dee had emerged. One ran in with a face full of shock and a mouth screaming the name of his now dead comrade. The other stood at half of Ruby's height. Yet despite her crooked back and the fragility of the strange optical device that served as her eyes, she somehow commanded an air of authority that she enforced when she extended her oddly designed cane, hooking the assassin's stinger with the toothed jaw of the skull-shaped pommel, and pulled. Hard.

"Still active, eh, Callows," she quipped.

Callows hissed upon loosing his balance for a few seconds. He unhooked his stinger and bounced away to land back on his feet. For an old lady that needed a walking stick and a high-tech visor, she somehow had the strength to hold down a skilled murderer long enough for the Empress and team JNPR to scramble together.

"Dee! Holy shit! Dee!" mourned Dudley.

"He's dead!" hollered the old woman with the cybernetic spectacles.

"You fucking hag, he was my friend!"

"And you'll be just like him if you don't pull your head out of your ass and get over here!"

Before Dudley could fire back, he found himself narrowly missing a venomous laceration on his chest. Callows continued chipping away at the only registered Huntsmen around. He did, however, hold his own. The assassin fell back to the end of the railcar while Dudley retreated behind the old lady with a weakened Aura and his rifle hanging off his now broken arm.

"Maria Calavera!" Callows sang. "Aren't you retired?"

"Retired?" Nora parroted.

"Calavera?" Ruby mouthed. The name sounded strangely familiar. Could have been one of the many names she may or may not have glossed over in the Imperial archives.

Maria pounded her cane on the floor. "Leave us, traitor. You will gain nothing from this."

"I will gain nothing, that's right." Callows stood straight, mockingly so over Dee's corpse. With a twirl of his tail and a hand on his chest, he raised his voice to the ceiling with the veneer of an excited orator. "But my goddess will gain everything! I do this for her!"

"Goddess?" Pyrrha repeated.

"Crazy psycho," Dudley hissed.

"Your goddess, eh?" Calavera worded. "What about the other one?"

Callows threw his arms up. "Bah! He will be eclipsed. My goddess is the only true divine and she demands sacrifice!"

Nora reconfigured her hammer into its grenade launcher form with the stock pressing against her hip while her finger massaged the trigger guard. "Weird creep."

Ruby tilted her head. Goddess? Other one? Who was he referring to? Either he was deliberately throwing them off or there was a method to his madness. It was clear someone wanted her gone, someone who intended to sow havoc, someone who wanted to instigate war between Sanus and Mistral. There were some likely candidates but none fit the description of projecting a deified image...

Unless...

"Goddess?" the Empress mouthed.

The assassin stopped. And stared at her. His face twisted into a wider, more disturbing grin, before bursting into a fit of laughter.

"What's so funny!" Jaune barked.

Callows reined himself in. "Oh! Oh my! You haven't the slightest clue, have you? Oh, how exciting!"

"What do you want," Ruby worded as heavily as she could. She had to be brave. She had to show that she was not intimidated by the man who murdered her father in front of her.

"Why, o precious diamond of the Empire, the rose whose thorns have yet to grow! I've come to offer you serenity. Lifelong, eternal serenity. Separation from the suffering of this world!"

"Always the amateur poet, eh, Callows," Maria snorted. "Can't even rhyme."

"How do you know him?" Ren demanded.

The old lady shrugged. Then smirked. Both at the young sovereign and the scorpion faunus. "I'll tell you when we're done here."

"And what could you possibly do, Maria Calavera?" taunted Callows.

Maria countered with a glowing sneer, much to the discomfort of the others.

The Empress, however, held onto the hope that the old lady had a plan of some sort. The name Calavera was familiar somehow and that fact alone meant something. Maybe she was another Spider agent? Or someone else important? Perhaps there were people in the other cabin who were waiting on her signal to strike. Ruby turned to the old lady with a confident nod.

Maria then nudged Dudley. "Seal this car."

Ruby paled.


ORIGINALLY DRAFTED: December 28, 2019

LAST EDITED: April 6, 2020

INITIALLY UPLOADED: April 6, 2020