((A/N: I mean like, if the heroes get to have a huge emotional power-up after their friend dies or is fatally wounded, why not the baddies? They've probably been through some shit together, especially in such a tight-knit terrorist cell.))

I've been sat here for just a few minutes. Just long enough to think on my actions, to hopefully find out what caused that `outburst`. It would be my downfall if that ever happened in public. Or anywhere that wasn't an immediate combat zone. Even then one could argue that it's a little too brutal.

[Acquisition: Active Skill]
[Meditation]
Enter a state of Zen. Recover MP while meditating.
[LVL 1]
(No cost)

'Hmph. Yeah, that checks out.' With an internal groan I stand up, disappointed that I found nothing. I walk to the still-smoking corpse of the sword guy, surprisingly undisturbed by his gruesome corpse. 'Sorry, man, I really don't want to die.' Again I apologize to no one, leaning down to pick up his sword and its sheath. 'Your ammo's probably ruined… so is your clothing. But your sword is still good. Sheath looks… okay.'

With some effort, I manage to stretch the belt to wrap around my steel waist. It's clearly too small for me, but that's alright. With just a little more looting, I manage to come across a little handgun. Jackpot… but I have basically no ammo for it. Most of the guy's ammo is probably incredibly unstable from getting zapped to a crisp, and I really don't want a potentially fatal misfire.

Or… well, it is just a handgun, while I'm a military-grade killing machine. I… okay, that last part doesn't really inspire any good feelings in me, but it is how it is. I pick up the gun and whatever remaining clips he had on his person. 'I could just put these in my inventory… but I really want to have quick access to my side-arm.'

I rub my chin, making a somewhat annoying metal scraping noise as I do. 'I wonder if I could fashion some form of holster…'

I look down at the charred form of the man, shudder, and turn. 'Not from him.'

Instead, I head to the other corpses, who have far more intact clothing. I strip them of clothing, leaving the underwear on because… come on, that'd just be a little too disrespectful. 'Oh, I am so glad I can't feel sick anymore. But still… I'm gonna be sick.' With the sigh of a mind a little too crowded right now, I check my crafting inventory.

Only a little bit of scrolling lets me see that yes, there is indeed a holster. It's little more than a strip of tied cloth and a little leather from the jackets they'd been wearing, but it's still a holster. As a matter of fact, it almost looks decent.

I slide the gun into it, feeling the weight on it. 'Huh, meatier than I thought it would be… anyway.' I open my inventory again. Thank god for all the scrap in this car, otherwise I probably would've had a harder time against those people. 'Traps, traps… I need a trap. If the third wave is gonna be harder than those guys, I really don't want to fight them head-on.'

To my chagrin, the crafting system is kind of specific about certain things. Meaning that for any actually deadly trap, I would need big, fat springs or some form of extra knife or gun. And I mean, I just got this new glock, I don't wanna let go of it. At least I think it's a glock.

'Damnit.' I lean on the wall, crossing my arms as I scan the crafting inventory again, the little bear trap icon mocking me with the single missing component: A spring. 'Of all the things these robots don't have, it's a spring.' I bump the back of my head against the wall, exasperated.

…

'Wait a fucking minute, I can just make other types of trap.' I instantly stand upright, reaching into my inventory to fetch me some scrap. It's assorted, the inventory seemingly piling everything that comes from the robots into mish-mash little piles of scrap. Which is… space efficient, I guess, but it's gonna be a pain to sort through it.

So, 5 minutes of my 20 minute break are spent on frantically searching through my scrap, seeing what could help and what couldn't. 'Okay… wires, batteries… I think, more of those Dust containers, chips that I don't understand, metal, robot heads, gears, motors… I think I can do something with this.'

I'm currently sitting on the floor, rummaging through my scrap. I hold up some wires and one of the robot heads. 'A decoy, maybe…?' I shake my head, tossing it back into the pile. 'No, that'd take too long. God damn it.' I pick up some of those little Dust containers, looking them over.

'Okay, this is definitely not a grenade. Maybe it was just a reserve or something.' The little metal orb, labeled with a bunch of jargon and warnings, feels weighty. Oddly enough, I can actually kind of… feel the Dust inside. It's faint, but I can vaguely feel the essence of spiciness. 'Hrm… fire Dust?'

Picking up another, I feel the essence of numbness instead. 'Electricity?' Yet another, and this time I feel the essence of cold. 'Oh, yeah, no, that is definitely ice.'

I put away the other two Dust containers, keeping the icy one out. 'Weird. I thought the system would-'

[Acquisition: Key Skill]
[Magic Sense]
Feel the essence of magic.
[LVL 1]
(No cost)

'oh, there it-'

[NOTICE]
You have acquired your first magic skill.
Cultivate Your Potential.
Become Ungovernable.

'…' I stare at the pop-up, kind of surprised by the sudden change in tone. It's been few words and no emotion up to this point, you know, like some form of automated system, but this… this kinda even feels inspirational. 'Uh… okay.' And massively jarring.

I swipe it away with a wave of my hand, shaking my head. 'That was weird. Felt sorta nice, though… agh, whatever, enough wasting time.' Standing and deciding to figure out what's up with the system later, I set to work booby-trapping the door.

I'm no mechanical expert, hell I'm barely a competent handyman, but I like to think that I do my best. With the few resources at my disposal, I set about making the trap. It's little more than 2 of those icy Dust grenade-container things, propped up on little bits of bent metal on either side of the door. Between them is a hopefully not too noticeable length of wire.

Of course, I have absolutely no way of triggering the Dust, since I have no clue what any other more advanced component in my inventory does. And those that I do recognize need a computer or something to properly run or modify. So, instead, the wire just pulls the grenades around someone's feet.

Once they're under my targets, I hope to be able to shoot them. You know, rupture them and hopefully freeze the hell out of them.

If successful, I'll trigger the other part of the trap. It's basically a big swinging ball of sharp, pointy and heavy scrap, more or less a wrecking ball.

If I fail, I'll trigger it anyway. Might as well try, even if I fail. Aside from that, I stack up the remains of the crates that were in this room and the corpses in small piles, just barely big enough to hide behind. It's… screwed up to use corpses as cover, but I do the best I can with what I got.

'Ugh… ew…' I wince internally as I press my back to the shoddy barricade, feeling the now-cold blood smear on my back, subsequently getting absorbed into the gray steel plating. 'At least it's beneficial, I guess…'

I have 4 minutes left on the clock. I use this time to give my scrap weaponry a little once-over, making sure everything's secured and properly moving or otherwise not about to snap on me.

[!WARNING!]
[Break Over]
[FINAL WAVE!]

Once more I hear the bullhead approach, the train shaking quite a bit after it lands. There's three bullheads out there. Honestly, I could probably scrap them and have a ton of stuff to fuck around with once this event blows over.

I grip my gun tighter, holding it close to me so the tips of it don't peak out of cover.

I hear heavier, almost synchronized steps coming to the cart. It's silent, which does nothing for my slight anxiety. I turn my head, only barely peeking beyond cover. I see that this new batch of enemies is far more armored than the last, their torso protected with a bullet-proof vest, their faces covered in edgier-looking versions of the masks the other grunts were wearing These ones have proper rifles instead of handguns or melee weapons. They're walking fast, the three of them keeping their heads on a swivel.

"Remember, in and out, don't fuck around." The man up front says, the other four nodding and switching the safety off of their rifles. They all step into the room, getting a little startled from the metal clinking as the Dust-filled orbs clatter against the ground.

It takes them a second, but one of them immediately perks up. "Shit! Move aw-"

I cut him off by springing out of cover, wildly firing at the feet of the five-person team, both of the gatling's barrels spinning at everything they got, the sound of bullets hitting metal fills the air as they all try to scramble away.

A stray bullet finally hits one of the balls, making it explode in an incredible show of magical energy, enabling the other Dust container to explode as well, filling the room with a thin layer of frost, and a thick cloud of icy fog.

As things settle down, I hear the crunching and slow squeaking of ice being rapidly formed… and perhaps a few bones breaking. I turn away, not wanting to see a bunch of truly mangled corpses… or, well, I hope they're corpses…

[Acquisitions: Mixed]
[Rogue's Intuition]
Your traps are harder to disarm and detect.
[LVL 1]

[Basic Mana Manipulation]
Your barebones ability to manipulate mana.
[LVL 1]
(5 MP)

Well, that was surprisingly easy. I guess using traps has merit! I sigh, putting away my gatling. The room is still filled with the fog, thankfully shielding my eyes from whatever the hell those people got mangled into.

[!EVENT CLEARED!]
[Rewards Deposited]
15/15 killed
0/15 subdued
0/15 befriended
[RANK: !BLOODBATH!]

I stare at the pop-up, feeling… honestly surprisingly numb. I could've subdued them? God damn it, then why did it say 'kill' them before that?! I let my head go limp, looking down at the floor in disappointment and a little shame.

But… one bright side to this is that I apparently got some rewards. I'll check it out… after I'm out of this fucking room. Since one of the doors is blocked by ice and corpses, I instead choose the other exit, leisurely walking out.

There's a morbid itch, something in the back of my mind to look back and just admire what happened to that last wave of enemies, but… I kinda don't want to. At all. I slowly push open the door to the outside, keeping in the urge to turn and look.

Stepping out, I let out a massive sigh of relief as I feel the sun's light shine down on me, the noise of birds singing filling my… ears, I guess. I take a second to take in the scenery, seeing nothing but oddly intense bright orange-reddish trees and grass around me and the train. I remember just a little bit about the show, from that time my friends made me watch volume 1 and 2…

I look down in thought, thinking back on that time. 'There's only one place that's this red. Everfall, I think?' I mentally muse, hopping off of the flatcar onto the ground below. There are empty crates around the place, all of them with a snowflake branded proudly on the side. 'Ah, I know this place now. I'm in the black trailer… so I fought Blake?'

I sigh, putting my hand on my chin. 'How the hell did I last as long as I did?' It was truly a marvel that I'd not only managed to fight her, but that I somehow got her on the back foot in that fight. Is it just because I'm a robot? Or was it the constant adrenaline rush I was in? So many questions…

Thinking harder, back to the times where I just sat in a discord call with my buddies rambling on and on about crazy ass RWBY stuff, I recall them theorizing about how long it took between trailers and the start of the show… don't really remember all of it, but I think they said that the Black trailer took place… like a month before Beacon?

Wait, why does this matter to me? I should just be looking for a way to become human again!

And that starts with an understanding of mechanics… maybe magic, too. I jog to the other side of the cart I was in, climbing onto the flatcar. Just my luck… there's 3 whole ass bullheads here for me to disassemble!

With everything else out of my mind for the moment, I just grin, rubbing my hands as I approach the unsuspecting crafts. 'Oh, this is a blessing and a half.' My hands run over the smooth surface of the weird helicopter/airplane-like vehicles, sighing mentally. 'This is gonna take me a while. But that's okay.'

Before I can even dig into the bullheads, a little notification pops up on my HUD.

[Unchecked Rewards Waiting!]

'Agh.' I groan. There's a big ass red circle on my inventory icon, like a notification on an iphone, though missing the number. 'Fine, fine, fuck off…' When I open the inventory, I see exactly 2 new things.

First is a big ass wrench. Like, a comically big wrench, one you'd probably use to tighten meter-big pipes, enough to classify as a god damn staff and mace at the same time. So… guess my scrap spear's been immediately taken out of service.

Second is a little gray token, somewhat oddly shaped, looking like a smoothed out poker chip with the words 'GACHA' engraved on both sides. This one piques my attention far more than the others, so I pull it out. I find it somewhat heavy, and its smooth surface makes it really nice to hold.

'Hmh. Guess I get gacha tokens now…' I recall a few fics I'd read that incorporated gacha tokens. So following their example, I snap it in half. The second I do so, a bright light envelops my hands, flashing between white, green, red and blue, like a roulette. 'Hooh, that's bright.'

I look away just as it lands on red, brightening to the point that one could easily classify it as a bloody flashbang. A few seconds after it starts, it stops, my hands finding themselves filled with something rather heavy. Looking back, I find a whole ass arm in my hands. Not a human one, mind you, a robot one. Green and heavy, with a really large arrowhead-like… well, arrowhead, right on the palm.

'A whole arm, huh?' I flip it about a few times, inspecting it, slowly coming to recognize it… and when I extend the wire out and hear the satisfying whzzzzip of the servos inside, I get incredibly excited. 'Hang on, this is the whiplash!' I chuckle, taking out a loooong length of the wire inside it. 'Oh my god this is so cool.' It snaps back into the arm with a satisfying clack.

'Wait, shit… this thing's too small for my body.' Immediately, my giddiness is subdued into just contentment. 'Darnit. I'm gonna have to size this up if I want to use it… or I can find a new body.' I start weighing the cons and pros in my head. 'If I size it up, I could maybe fit more wire and strength into it… but if I size me down, I could maybe actually copy the V1 style of fighting.'

I scratch my chin, before shrugging and putting it in my inventory, coming to an age-old conclusion that even the oldest of men can agree with. 'I'll deal with it later. I need someplace safe to modify myself… for now, bullheads.'

My focus is finally back on the bullheads. I take a deep mental breath, preparing myself to start ripping these things apart. I feel somewhat giddier than I would usually be about something like this. It might just be the fact that I'm a robot, but whatever.

With a swift hand, I punch deep into the hull of the bullhead, beginning to rip it all apart.

((A/N: And thus, Roboboi is freed. I'll find a way to bring back team PWKE, I swear. Sorry for the smaller chapter length, but believe it in not, RGB is one of the only fics that I kinda struggle to think up story for.))