Chapter 50

"If you had to own just one car, what would it be?"

Weiss furrowed her brow, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel and pondering the odd question. The snow had picked up again, floating down around them in great big clumps. The antique windshield wipers were having difficulty clearing the heavy mass of snow that continued to collect on the glass.

"Odd question. Any guidelines I'd have to follow?"

"This is your only car. You have to drive to work, get groceries, drive to the bank, and anything else you do, including having fun, with only the one car for the rest of your life."

Weiss turned her head sideways at the question, frowning. That question didn't seem fair. She was wealthy! She could afford to buy whatever car she wanted! Ruby crossed her legs just out of view and piped up again.

"Like, if I had to have only one, I'd want something practical and fast. Maybe something like a Hunter Rallye-X, or something. I dunno, I don't really have the income to even picture owning something more expensive than that."

Weiss smiled unconsciously, still more focused on the road than the conversation. She remembered the two hooligan kids from the morning in that atrocious yellow Rallye-X. She looked back over at Ruby. Did she seem like the kind of girl to drive a road-legal rally car? She shrugged. Maybe.

"You know, Rubes, I don't know what I'd want. I mean, the car I already have is pretty good as-is. I wouldn't mind better mileage, but there's really nothing wrong with it. I mean, I guess if we're talking about having more sensible cars, I might be inclined to choose the diesel version of my Klasse-7. Same car, better mileage, you know?"

Her passenger nodded slowly, as if contemplating.

"I mean, my car actually is the diesel version, albeit very modified."

Ruby turned, frowning.

"But you said it was a real GT-Spec, didn't you?"

Weiss shrugged and waved off the question.

"Well, no it isn't. They don't actually make the GT with a manual transmission. You have to buy it with the stupid flipper-paddle automatic, and I'm told by people 'in the know' that they have a tendency to break down. I wasn't gonna spend almost two-hundred-thousand lien on a car that was going to have catastrophic failure of the important bits."

Ruby made a confused noise.

"Then how does yours..."

"Simple, Ruby. What my car actually is is a diesel Klasse-7 that has a heart transplant from a GT-Spec car. It's all the same wiring, and apparently it just bolts right in place. When you know the right people, you can have whatever you want built. So I did. They also had to install the GT-Spec wide-body fenders to accommodate the wider rims and tires. But underneath, it's all diesel car goodies."

"That explains the lack of sport mode. I wondered why your car didn't have that knob."

Weiss chuckled.

"It also means no speed governor. The diesel isn't powerful enough to exceed two hundred and fifty, so they aren't fitted with one. The GT-Specs have a limiter set to two-fifty because government reasons. All Atlesian sports sedans have that limiter. Wait, why am I telling you, you know that."

Ruby nodded again. She seemed a little distracted. Weiss cocked her head sideways.

"Something bothering you, Ruby?"

She shook her head, seeming to return to the real world.

"No, just...distracted. Cars on my mind."

She tapped her temple to enunciate her point. Weiss wasn't convinced.

"You'd tell me if something was wrong, right?"

"Of course, don't be ridiculous."

Weiss nodded, returning her attention to the road. There was a brief silence in the car, lasting only a few minutes.

"So where'd you go this morning? You were up before me, weren't you?"

Weiss shrugged.

"Out. I bought you breakfast. Well, us breakfast."

Ruby nodded slowly.

"Okay."

Weiss was suddenly concerned as the car got quiet.

"I just think it's funny..."

Of course. Here we go.

"Yes, Ruby?"

"Well, this morning, you brought me breakfast back from what I can only assume was the market, which, in itself, is a nice gesture. But you came back smelling like cologne."

Oh shit.

Weiss dropped her shoulders. Of course this is where this conversation was going.

"Okay, I'll tell you what. I'll tell you straight up, I met an old friend in the market, and we had coffee. Yes, he was wearing an obtuse amount of cologne."

Ruby crossed her arms, frowning.

"You just said 'he'. Want to explain?"

Weiss tried not to snap back at Ruby.

"Yes, an old male friend of mine, Ruby. My friend Dean Celeste, the youngest son of my fencing tutor from before I attended Beacon. He's my best friend, but I would never be able to look at him in a romantic or even sexual way. He's a child to me. So don't overreact."

"Nobody comes back from 'just coffee' smelling more masculine than an actual man, Weiss."

"Look, he was wearing a lot of cologne. There was nothing more than coffee! We even talked about our relationship, and how he thinks you're perfect for me."

"Uh huh."

"Ruby, I am gay. I don't even like men, why are you so bent out of shape about this?"

Ruby went quiet. Weiss suddenly realized she was angry. Why would she be angry at Ruby for justifiably upset over this? She let out a sigh.

"Ruby, I'm sorry for raising my voice. I get it, you're upset that I didn't tell you about him immediately upon returning. I just didn't think it was important. We just hung out for a bit while I was shopping. I'm not going to cheat on you with him. Ever."

Ruby sniffled. Maybe it would be good if she tried to lighten the mood with a joke. So she tried.

"You should be more worried that I'd cheat on you with Yang. I mean, have you seen the rack on her, holy shit."

"Weiss!"

Ruby swung her arm out and smacked her on the shoulder, making Weiss laugh. She could see the girl pouting out of her peripheral.

"That's not funny."

Weiss sighed, reaching over and resting her hand on Ruby's arm. Her body flushed as she felt the muscle flex underneath the knitted sweater. It felt like braided steel cable.

Oh fuck, I forgot how buff this girl is. Panty status: Soaked.

"It is too funny. The look on your face, Rubes. Priceless."

Her face was fighting to redden. Weiss wouldn't let it. Every single gods-damn time there was a serious moment between the two of them, inner Weiss would try and jump the poor girl. But every time they were naked, inner Weiss would behave. Something was very wrong upstairs.

"I don't like you anymore."

Weiss pouted and pretended to be offended. Ruby's tiny smile betrayed her real feelings.

"You don't like me? Well, how convenient. I don't like you either."

Ruby's tiny smile disappeared, replaced by the look of fear.

"Wait, what? No, that's not what I... Weiss, no!"

"You dolt. I love you."

Chapter 51

Ruby felt kinda bad about getting angry at Weiss. She had been shown a few pictures on Weiss's scroll, and had to admit that he was indeed very pretty. She couldn't quite picture what the reason for her apprehension. Something was just off that day. She could feel a bad omen hanging over the car as they drove. It was probably nothing, but it made her skin crawl.

"Want to play another game?"

Her driver turned a little, a tiny smile across her lips. Ruby's gaze was drawn to said lips. She blushed.

Lemme smooch.

"Alright. What did you have in mind?"

Ruby tore her eyes from the inviting lips of Weiss for a moment, hopping up on the seat and grabbing her bag from the rear cargo area. She flopped back down on the seat, fighting with the old zipper on the thick fabric. Reaching inside, she pulled out a brand-new puzzle book and a pen, which she clicked open as she kicked the bag onto the floor, curling her legs up underneath her and rebuckling her seat belt.

"Alrighty, then, what would you like to do? Crossword? Logic puzzle?"

"How about a logic puzzle, Rose-Petal."

Ruby thumbed through the book, turning to a page with one of the puzzles labelled 'medium difficulty.'

"Okay, here's one. It's called The Three Rooms. Okay. Here's the puzzle. You are trapped in a room with no windows. On the walls to your left, right, and directly in front there is a door. Beyond each door is another room with a door to the outside world placed on the far wall. On the left, the room contains a large lion, which has been denied food for two weeks. In the middle, there is a room containing a massive magnifying glass that magnifies the sun's rays to a blistering one thousand degrees. On the right, the room contains an Olympic-length swimming pool wall-to-wall filled with acid corrosive enough to dissolve your body in the time it would take you to cross the pool. You have twenty-four hours to escape to the room, and if you cannot figure it out, the starting room will fill with water and you will drown. What do you do? Holy shit, that's dark. Here, look, there's a diagram."

The picture showed the layout of the three rooms, with little labels on them and tiny pictures of the lion, the magnifying glass, and the pool. Ruby studied the diagram for a minute. She could actually hear Weiss's brain working.

"And there's absolutely no way I could skirt the edge of the pool and escape without swimming in acid?"

Ruby shrugged.

"I would guess not. It did say wall-to-wall. So I would assume that means there is no lip around the outside. I haven't read the solution yet, so I don't know. Oh wait, there's a hint at the bott-"

"No, don't tell me yet. I want to do it normally first, giggity."

Ruby rolled her eyes.

"Uh, what if we waited out the lion? Wouldn't it die of starvation very quickly, seeing as it hasn't eaten in, what, two weeks you said?"

"That's correct."

The hint at the bottom of the page was about to bring down this explanation.

"Alright, so I'd go into the room on the left, where I'd find the lion either extremely fatigued or dead. It wouldn't be able to maul me or eat me in such a state. Right?"

Ruby tapped the pen against the hint listed at the bottom of the page.

"To avoid the easy way out of waiting for the lion to die of hunger, imagine that the animal has enough life left in it that it still has the capacity to kill you during the 24 hours. Sorry, Weiss. No death of the lion."

Her driver tapped her hands against the wheel.

"How about...hmmm. No..."

Even the mighty brain of Weiss couldn't figure it out. This was concerning. Ruby gave it a go.

"How about you pull your shirt over your head and go through the middle room? Then the sun doesn't get you, right?"

Weiss wasn't convinced.

"How hot did you say the room was?"

Ruby checked the rules again.

"A thousand degrees."

"See, even with your shirt up, you'd still be killed by the heat. That's like kiln-level heat, you'd be cooked alive."

Ruby frowned down at the question. It seemed that this puzzle was too difficult even for-

"I got it. How long do I have?"

Ruby was flustered by the outburst.

"Puh, uh... twenty-four hours."

Weiss snapped her fingers, breaking out in a grin.

"Wait for nightfall. Then the sun isn't burning into the room. Final answer."

Ruby flipped to the end of the booklet, and read the answer out loud.

"Wait for night time, and exit through the middle room when the sun is below the horizon. I am genuinely surprised that you got that. I would never have figured that the answer was simple enough."

Weiss chuckled.

"Hey don't feel bad. I was trying to figure out a way to employ the heat of the sun to evaporate the acid or something, but then you mentioned hiding from the light. You mostly solved it, I just accidentally figured it out. Neat puzzle. Got another?"

Ruby flipped through the book again, quickly finding another puzzle, this one shorter.

"A single-celled organism is capable of performing perfect cellular division every twenty minutes. How many copies of itself would be created in eight hours? You're good with math, you should have this down."

Weiss looked like this question had barely fazed her.

"Roughly sixteen million. Hang on, still getting an actual value."

Ruby flipped to the back of the book. The answer read over sixteen million. Her eyes went wide. How in the hell did Weiss know the answer so fast?

"The correct answer is two to the power of twenty-four, which is exactly sixteen million, seven-hundred and seventy seven thousand, two hundred and sixteen. Sorry for the slow answer, I'm a bit rusty with my maths."

Ruby slammed the book onto her legs, turning abruptly towards her driver, a confused look on her face.

"A little rusty? Are you... there's no way you can say you're rusty, Weiss. You just did a twenty-fourth power multiplication in your head. Are you being deliberately facetious?"

Her driver cocked an eyebrow.

"Nice use of the word facetious, Ruby. I'm impressed."

"Am I the only one who notices that you are ungodly intelligent and entirely humble about it?"

Weiss shrugged, again. She was getting an excellent shoulder work out.

"Eh. I have a calculator at my desk most of the time. I don't even have to use my brain at work. You know. Because I work in corporate."

Ruby smiled and exhaled slightly harder than usual.

"That's not true, I'm sure you use your smarts all the time just to show off."

"I only show off to pretty girls, Rose-Petal."

Well. You are good with your words.

"You need to shut up."

Ruby rubbed her nose on her sleeve. She still wasn't fully okay quite yet. Something bad still lingered in the air. Maybe it had something to do with the nature of their destination. But now was not the time to worry about that. They could talk about it later. It was just a gathering, right? A tap on her shoulder made her jump.

"Hey, you okay? You look a little upset…"

Ruby turned in her seat. Weiss's face became concerned.

"Ruby, you're crying…"

Oh? Ruby brought her hand up to her face. It came back down mildly damp. She pulled down the visor and looked into the vanity mirror. Her eyes were red. Perhaps she was crying. But she couldn't figure out the reason why.

"Is this about her? Are you worried?"

Very much so.

"No, I'm ok. It'll be alright. Just a little apprehensive is all."

Ruby tried avoiding the subject.

"How are we for fuel?"

Her driver kept her stern expression. She didn't look convinced. Shit.

"We'll need to pull off at the next exit. Ruby, you're upset about something. I'd like to help you feel better. I'm here for you-"

"Weiss, I'm fine! Jeez!"

Ruby brought her hands to her mouth. That outburst was completely unexpected. She tried to apologize.

"Weiss, I'm-"

A hand was raised. Weiss didn't look upset about the shouting.

"Ruby, it's fine. I am scared too."

Ruby crossed her arms across her chest. If she was scared, she hid it well.

"Look, when we turn off for fuel, I'll buy us ice cream. Maybe we'll be able to take our minds off things."

The mucus in her nose threatened to fall out. She sniffed and rubbed her nose, nodding. Ice cream sounded like a great idea. Even if it was snowing. And cold outside. And not a particularly good day. But it was ice cream. The sound of the turn signal loudly clicking on returned her focus back to the road as her driver pulled the heavy truck into the off ramp. Weiss braked, and the truck leaned lazily forward on its springs as they slowed down up the ramp, coming to a stop at the intersection. Ruby could see the little town out her passenger side window, probably half a click or so down the road. Weiss turned the truck down the road, towards the little nameless town. Even as the big-block motor breathed deeply, Ruby still couldn't settle the bad feeling in her chest. The deep rumble of the engine did little to sooth her. A poke in her boob made her turn.

"Hey. No more Miss Frowny Face. Today's a good day. Alright?"

Weiss wore a weary smile, as if she was trying to convince herself as well. Ruby returned the smile, before turning her lack-of-attention back out to the road. They pulled in to the gas station. Ruby heard the driver door open, and felt the truck's weight shift as her driver dropped out of the tall cab. How could Weiss maintain such a cheery composure? Didn't she know? Eh, she was a business woman, she probably had experience hiding emotion. She sniffed again.

Maple?

She frowned, sitting up in the seat. Something smelled like maple, and it smelled like it was close by. Ruby completely ignored the strange depression feeling in her chest, and moved her face around the cabin, sniffing the air for the source of the smell. See, the main export of the island of Patch was maple syrup, so this sudden smell intrigued her. The sweet scent wasn't the sharp sugary goodness she was used to, however. It smelled a bit like chemicals. She turned her head and looked out the window again. The vehicle in the adjacent fuel bay was a large transport truck, wearing snow chains. Ruby snapped her fingers. Of course! The truck was likely running hot, due to the extra strain the chains were making. The smell was the ethylene glycol in the coolant, which gave off a sweet smell when burning. Ruby smiled and settled back into the seat, content it wasn't a stain on her interior from the enormous bag of candy just behind the seat.

"Ruby! Unlock your door!"

Ruby tried not to jump out of her skin from the sudden knocking at the window. She had been distracted again, not noticing that Weiss had walked up to the window and tapped her fingers on the passenger side glass. Ruby let her heart stop thundering in fear for a moment, pulling up on the little metal door lock toggle. She watched Weiss through the window. She had a bag of something in her hand, and the other one had wrapped itself around the exterior door handle. The door was pulled open heavily.

"Hey, Ruby, I bought us som-OOF!"

Ruby barely had time to react to what had happened. One moment, Weiss was standing on the truck's running board, and the next moment, she was on the ground, her hands cupped against her crotch. Ruby looked down at Weiss, not sure if she should laugh. She stepped out of the cab and knelt down beside the other woman. Weiss seemed to be in pain. Ruby couldn't not giggle.

"Weiss, are you alright?"

Weiss nodded, trying to sit up, which in itself seemed like an ordeal for her.

"Yeah, no, I'm...ouch...alright. I just hit myself in the lady-bits with the door."

Ruby winced, drawing a sharp breath in through her teeth. She helped Weiss to her feet, lifting the girl into the passenger seat. Would that have really hurt that bad? She smiled, closing the big heavy door and strolling slowly over to the driver's side of the truck with the bag of Weiss's snacks in her hand. She grabbed the door handle and tried to yank it open. It didn't yield. Ruby sighed.

So this is how the day is going. Alright.

She wrapped her fingers around the chrome handle, and put the whole of her military might into the pull. It creaked open, but not after great protest. Ruby sighed, climbing up into the cab of the truck. She looked over at Weiss. She seemed very uncomfortable, gritting her teeth and trying to look uninjured.

"Are you sure you're alright? I don't think I'd be able to compose myself after hitting myself in the crotch, Weiss."

The girl shifted, sitting with her legs open.

"Funny story. You've seen the scar I have down there, right?"

Down there? Ruby frowned.

"No, I thought your scar was on your eye? Did it migrate? I mean, I can still see it, so I think you're alright."

Weiss chuckled, shifting uncomfortably on her butt.

"I'm surprised you didn't see it in the shower the last two times, dummy. No, I've got a second one, a little lower than my eye, Rubes. I'm surprised you were bashful enough to not look down low."

Ruby was taken aback. Weiss assumed she was brazen enough to take a gander at someone's undercarriage? Preposterous!

"Excuse me?! I would never look at your... lady-bits without you telling me to!"

"You can say vagina" Weiss deadpanned "There's no children around, you know. If you haven't seen it, I can show you, if you like."

Ruby sighed, twisting the key in the ignition and trying to silence Weiss's insolence. The heavy engine growled at the two of them almost instantly, and anyone else standing around them at the gas station. She flicked on the wipers again, clearing the dusting of snow that had collected on the window. She pulled the truck back into gear, crawling forward back onto the street.

"I mean, I guess you can if you want."

Weiss piped up, smiling. She reached down to her waist, fiddling with her pants button and zipper. Ruby heard the clasp come undone, the zipper following it down. Ruby cheeks flared up, realizing that all of a sudden Weiss was taking off her pants in front of her. Wait, hadn't she asked for this? She could hear the sound of Weiss's bum shuffling on the seat fabric as her skinny jeans were pushed down to her knees. The sight of bright pink panties in her peripheral briefly made her shudder, her right leg tensing up and making her foot slip from the accelerator. Weiss giggled, clearly noticing this subconscious reaction.

"Have a look, Ru."

She looked over, seeing that Weiss had pushed the hem of her underwear down almost past the erogenous area with her thumbs. There it was, the aforementioned scar. It was shaped like an upside-down 'L', only a few inches long, extending up from what Ruby assumed was right at the top of Weiss's happy place, just up to a few inches below her belly-button. It looked like it had hurt really bad. Like, getting cut in half by a beowolf was one thing, but an injury to the most sensitive area? Gosh. The area was a little red from the impact from the door.

"How did you manage that? Did you get in a knife fight with a chair? Crash on your motorcycle?"

Weiss laughed, pulling her panties back up over the scar. Ruby noticed that she had left her pants around her knees.

"You're close with your second guess. It was my bicycle, not my motorcycle."

Weiss rubbed her nose with the back of her hand.

"So, I must have been like six or seven, and we were on vacation in Vale during the summer. No, I would have been six for sure, because that was the summer we took Whitley's training wheels off his bike. Anyway, not important for the story. So. We were riding our bikes around this little town, with Winter babysitting us, and all was well. Oh, if you want your ice cream, it's in the bag there. It's just the Drumstack brand stuff."

Ruby tried to ignore the bright glare that was coming off her passenger's pale white mirror-smooth legs. She reached into the plastic bag with the fuel station logo, pulling out one of the two paper-wrapped cones and opening it with her teeth. She took a bite. It was pretty good.

"And we found this long hill. Winter warned us that we shouldn't go down it on our bikes, and that it would be safer to just walk our bikes down instead. Of course, being a little shit child, I decided she was nuts, so I started to ride down the hill."

Ruby blushed.

"Was it fun?"

There was a snort.

"Oh, fuck yeah it was. So about halfway down, I decided that maybe I was going too fast. So instead of braking slowly, like a sensible person might, I just squeezed the brakes as hard as I could."

Ruby smiled. That sounded very much like a Weiss thing to do. Overreact.

"So, like, did you flip over the handlebars and land on something?"

Weiss gave her a face that seemed to indicate that this would have been the preferable outcome.

"God, I wish. I might have only scraped up my knees that way. No, my brakes decided that that was the day for them to completely break at the welds and come off of the frame. Needless to say, the brakes of a bicycle are a bit useless when they aren't attached to the bike."

Ruby winced, despite Weiss's cheery expression.

"Did you die?"

Weiss chuckled.

"Yes, I died very bad. Seeing as my brakes were now out, I could not stop going down the hill and I was picking up speed rather alarmingly. Now, a normal kid would have put their feet down and tried to stop like that, but not me. I decided that driving onto the grass would make me slow down, so I drove onto the grass, which only slowed me down a little. I spent the whole ride down looking down at the frame. So I didn't see the mailbox."

Ruby nearly jumped.

"Mailbox?!"

"Yeah, it jumped out into the road and hit me. At full speed. Which became full stop really quickly. My bike stopped, and my body kept going forward. My pelvis impacted the handlebar stalk like a sledgehammer. It left the gash that you have now seen, and was quite badly swollen for like a week. I was on some seriously hardcore anti-imflammatories just so I could use the washroom properly. And now I've got this dinky little scar on my vagina. Neat, huh?"

Ruby nodded, trying to push the image of having a steel bar shoved painfully into her lady-area. It did seem neat.

How about we kiss the scar later?

Aaaand the redness was back to her cheeks. Ruby pushed out that thought as well, trying her very hardest to focus on the road ahead of them. The snow had picked up again, as had the wind. A good distraction from the not-unwelcome thoughts of her passenger's sex. Was it okay to think about that? It must be! They were in a moderately sexual relationship now, so, shouldn't it be well within the bounds of a relationship? She had caught herself thinking about Weiss in a fairly sexual manner a few times in the last few years. And by a few times, she meant once or twice a day. Like, pretty much every time she looked in the mirror at home, she had pictured herself reflected back with the older girl's arms around her waist. Usually naked.

Stop it! Behave yourself! You're not a pervert!

She felt like a pervert. Maybe what she really wanted was someone she could be like that with... The last few days with Weiss had been heaven-sent. There had been nudity, cuddling, making out, boob-touching, and everything she didn't realize she needed! Ruby blushed. Maybe what she needed was...

"Ruby! Stop the car!"

Ruby was torn from her fantasy by a loud shout.

"Stop! Look!"

Ruby mashed the brake pedal into the floor, and the truck lurched forward on its springs like a sea-saw. When the heavy vehicle had been brought to a stop by the antique anti-lock brake system, Ruby looked where Weiss was pointing. Just on the edge of the road, straddling where the white line would have been had there not been snow coating the road, was a large strip of bright yellow steel, bent over at each end like a bench.

"What is that thing?"

Weiss was already reaching for her seatbelt and the door handle. She jumped out into the blizzard, dashing to the large object. Ruby flicked on the hazard lights and front auxiliary lights that were bolted to the front brush guard. The highway in front of them was now flooded with light as she too stepped out onto the highway and walked over to Weiss. She was mumbling something as she knelt down in front of the object.

"Please don't be what I think you are, please don't be what I think you are..."

"What is it, Weiss?"

"Ruby does this look like a car part to you?"

Ruby glanced over the object. It was about five foot wide, only a foot high, and was very clearly made of carbon fibre. It actually did look like a car part.

"Yeah, it kinda looks like the wing of a third-generation Rallye-X. Wait, now I think I see where you're going with this."

She looked around, but could barely see through the snow.

"Do you think someone crashed?"

Weiss too had been looking around now, jumping up from the ground and dashing off the highway and into the ditch. Ruby briefly lost sight of Weiss, who had disappeared into the ditch. She heard a scream. It sounded like Weiss. Ruby dashed forward towards where the yell had come from. As she trudged through the snow, something horrifying slowly came into view. A bright yellow car sat in the snow, some thirty feet off the road, partially buried in the bank. Upside-down. It was missing many of its body panels, and what was left was badly mangled and broken, like a neglected soda can. Weiss was kneeling down beside the window, looking in.

"Looks like the seatbelts were cut with a knife or something. All the airbags are out, too."

She examined the crash sight. I looked fairly open and shut. Judging by the distance from the highway and the impact marks in the snow, the small sports sedan would have been travelling upwards of a hundred and sixty. Not a problem for the turbo-charged pocket rocket, which on dry pavement would only have been just over half the car's top speed. It looked like a simple bit of recklessness, where the driver was probably testing his car, and hit a thick patch of snow that bucked the car sideways, where it dug in on the left side and rolled at minimum three times. A normal car, like a Sanus Fission, would have likely been torn in half and crushed completely at such a high velocity.

"It looks like they were extracted professionally, actually. There's evidence that the glass was broken with a tool and the door frame was pried open. Man, this car must have been moving at quite a clip. What do you think, Ruby?"

Ruby couldn't speak. She knew that Weiss was being extra serious when she addressed her by her name. She was completely speechless as she looked over the crash. There was no evidence of a fuel leak, luckily, but there was great deal of coolant and oil everywhere, littered in the snow.

"Do you think they're alright?"

Weiss paused, still examining the interior.

"There's no evidence of blood on the fabric. Looks like they were held in by some kind of cage. Did these cars come with them?"

Ruby shook her head, no.

"Hmm. I'm feeling a little better, then. There's a race car cage in here. The snow is all matted down around here, so I would assume they made it out all right. Man, I just saw these guys this morning."

Ruby nearly jumped.

"This morning?!"

"Yeah, they were in town, joy-riding. Looked like fun, actually. And now look. Shitty day for everyone, huh. I guess there's nothing we can do here, anyway. Let's just keep going."

Ruby let out a sigh of relief. Knowing that the occupants of the car were even protected a little made her feel a little better. But seeing a car crashed off the road this early in the day made her very worried. It made the bad omen from earlier return in full force. The walked cautiously back up to the road where their truck was parked. Ruby glanced down at the wing that had been ripped off in the crash, deciding to move it off the road before climbing back up into her vehicle and setting off again. The door crashed heavily against the frame as she climbed into the driver's seat once more.

The feeling lingered.