Honestly surprising Ruby, her sister did not cave in the jaw of the poor sap who vomited on (and partially in) her shoes. It was definitely because Jaune had immediately collapsed to his knees and started groveling, wiping his own barf away with his shirt, still loudly retching while he did so. Yang stared down at him, stunned, as he alternated between blabbering, profusely apologizing, weeping, and dry-heaving. Not sure how to feel, Ruby scratched the metal tiles with her talons.

"I'm so, so, so sorry, I— eurgh— t-this almost never happens, I swear— heurk— lemmejustgetthisspot."

"D-dude, chill. It's cool. It was an accident."

"I could never ch—uck—ch-chill when a lady's been mistreated, even if it's my fault!"

Yang leaned towards her sister and muttered through the side of her mouth: "My bad, Rubes, shoulda seen the red flags. Get outta here once the shuttle lands, I'll distract him."

Ruby looked down at Jaune. He now seemed to be crying on her sister, alternating between weeping, wiping his eyes with his nasty shirt, heaving, then wiping Yang's shoes. Fully on his knees, bent forward, Ruby hoped any spectators wouldn't misconstrue this as some weird groveling (or, god forbid, a fetish thing), but literally no one was looking. Not one eye was turned their way. Instead, the late-transfer occupants of the airship to Beacon gathered around a large screen. Seeing a way out of this… weird thing between her sister and (hopefully not) her first friend, Ruby shuffled to the hubbub. The crowd, thick as it was, did nothing to restrict Ruby's view of the screen as she stretched up on her very long, usually-bent legs, gaining at least a solid foot over everyone.

This had the unfortunate side effect of making what little blood she had rush to her head, which caused her to stumble forward into one of the bodies in the crowd— a considerably shorter body, now, so the unfortunate leverage was more than enough to topple them both to the ground.

"Lo, thou ingrate!" The person warned, their accent silvery and floral— frosty, even. "Watchest thy gait, herein fareth personage of import! Doubtless, thou'rt with…out… sight…"

Ruby opened her eyes to the person below her— a girl, she felt moderately safe in assuming, clad fully in white from the crown of her head to… well, Ruby could only see down to her shirt from this angle, so she wasn't sure what else there was, but everything she could see was as blinding as bleach to the eyes: long white hair with a high, asymmetrical braid, bangs brushed (for sure deliberately) over the left eye; skin like thin, colorless paper, blue veins visible at the corners of her jaw and below her bottom lip. She was so pale that her visible eye— dark and deep-set— looked like a black hole, but shone with the white-blue heart of a frozen star. Her features were angelic; beautiful, sure, but holding something incomprehensible— terrifying and otherworldly— beneath little more than a layer of flesh.

The girl stared back with her one blazing, indecipherable blue eye.

Every one of Ruby's nerves went haywire, the sickly shame and hot embarrassment shocking her so profoundly that she scrambled back from the girl, panting, as the frayed ropes of anxiety coiled up, tied themselves into knots, and tried to floss out all the chambers of her heart.

The girl sat up, a little dazed, her eye as wide as Ruby's felt. She started over, her gaze (wait, was it hateful or confused?) darting between Ruby's legs and her feathers. "Thou art… befeathered."

Ruby blinked, then smacked both hands over her mouth as she felt the tickle rising. She squawked into her hands. She cawed harder than she'd ever cawed before. Again and again, like a corvid begging for scraps, she squawked and cawed and crowed into her cheeks. She couldn't stop it. She couldn't hit the spot.

She kept squawking, kept cawing, kept crowing, her unsatisfied nerve spreading out and infecting others; her leg kicked, her ankle bending uncomfortably so her talons could repetitively scrape the floor; her jaw flexed hard, neck wrenching around so aggressively that it nearly freed her mouth. Her right arm flexed, about to shoot out, about to liberate her lips and let out a cacophony of noise so embarrassing that she'd be ousted from every social group in the school, plus some that hadn't even been invented yet. She'd be an outcast. She'd be shamed. She'd be a reluctant Huntress with no allies, which was a 6-word synonym for 'dead meat'.

Ruby did something drastic.

Biting down hard on her right hand and cawing against her own skin, Ruby wrenched her left wrist as hard as she could.

The tender radius and ulna crossed over each other, new ligaments straining against fresh, raw bone, screaming, begging, such a wash of nerve and feeling that the other tics whimpered and died in reverence. Ruby bit her cheeks so hard she tasted blood, but managed to rein in the scream to her insides.

Ruby opened her eyes to the girl. Through the curtain of her colorless bangs, now disheveled, Ruby could see a milky pupil, wide with… something.

Was it so wrong that she expected some sympathy? Pity, even?

Evidently, yes.

The girl burst out into a fit of roaring, rocking laughter, falling onto her back and springing up again as the mirth took her fully. Pointing at Ruby, cackling, as she announced:

"A cock! A cock thou art! Thy befeathered arms, thy legs, woe is me! Thy visage— such a beak thou havest! And thine eyes, art thou an owl? Canst thy neck make an orbit? Dost thou cluck? Dost— dost thou— ha!— dost thou bend double to take thy food in pecks? Kin, fellows, countrymen!" she shouted, gathering gazes to the indicative point of her finger, concentrating every stare right on Ruby F. B. Rose. "Ye blessed with eyes to see, throweth thy gaze to yon fallow! The sight! The sight of it!" She rolled on the floor, holding her stomach as she cackled. "Envision thy domes afilled with such frivolous gaiety— a cock embattled to the nightmare daemon of Grimm!" She wheezed, wiping tears of joy from her eyes. "B-brothers! Sisters! Mine siblings-in-arms, mine kin-in-blood, see ye! See yon chick— khakh!" She recoiled, hands flying up. "Fuck!"

Ruby had punched her in the face, planting all the knuckles of her right hand squarely to the girl's now-bleeding nose. Ruby blinked in surprise. "Wait, where's your—"

The girl leapt at her bodily and, with all the mass of normal bones made of normal bone-stuff, crashed into the one whose bones were full of stupid bird-air. They landed in a heap, a full-on scrap, their flailing bodies tumbling over each other as they fell. Ruby punched her in the face again, feeling teeth scrape her knuckles as she split the girl's lip against them, draining uncannily red blood over her pale mouth. The girl spat that blood back into Ruby's face, her own expression a thing of raw, unwashed, uncensored hate. She yanked Ruby's hair with one hand (fucking ow) and scratched at her face with the other before rearing that latter appendage back. Ruby tried to bring an arm up to block, but the girl leveraged her superior weight to throw Ruby off of her.

The girl pinned Ruby partly on her side, locking one feathered arm against the floor and agonizingly straddling the slung one as she bent low. She pushed Ruby down with her whole body, her hand still firmly twisted in her dark locks, pulling the follicles nearly out of Ruby's scalp as she forced her head down and pressed the raven Faunus' temple to the metal floor.

Ruby's eyes met the other girl's, and she hoped against hope that looks could kill.

The girl stared down at her so oddly, though, which really took Ruby by surprise. Her face was perfectly tranquil, save for the flush of exertion, which was so red on her skin that it looked like she'd just spent an hour making out with unshielded fissile material. She looked down at her, and Ruby could see a smile that wasn't on her lips, but it was somewhere deep in that spectral blue eye. She looked happy.

Or relieved. The easy look of a hawk with a bird in its claws.

Ruby plotted.

Guys: 0. Girls: 1 (assumed with confidence). Weapons: 0 for now. Disposition: who the heck knows; it doesn't matter, she's yanking her hair and she's racist, plus she talks funny. Affiliation: Unknown; hopefully not Beacon Hunters' Academy; knowing Ruby's luck, it was definitely Beacon Hunters' Academy. Notes: used the chicken joke, lethal force required.

Rubys: take a wild guess. Weapons: 0 for now, but all it took was a little movement to turn that circle into a line. Disposition: ow ow ow, her friggin hair, ow ow, her arm. Affiliation: Beacon Hunters' Academy. Notes: kill that girl, please god, kill her so hard she comes back to life so she can kill her again, then if Ruby's lucky they'll expel her for murder.

Predicted winner: Ruby. 100%, 1000%, 1000000%. It had to be.

Ruby saw the line of her Semblance emerge just behind the girl and crowned it with a point, immediately feeling her body start to—

The girl slapped a hand over Ruby's mouth. Would this stop Ruby? No. Was it weird? Yes.

Ruby threw herself into the line, her body—

Doing nothing. Doing less than nothing— doing the opposite of nothing, it was doing something; convulsing, twitching, all of Ruby's nerves exploded with a feeling that was wrongand unfamiliar:

Sucking.

There was a sucking to Ruby— no, from Ruby, to the girl's hand, the one that was over her mouth and pulling at Ruby. It wasn't yanking— the pull wasn't real— it was something gravitational, and for all of Ruby's skin and bones and flesh and feathers, it touched none of them. It reached past; it brushed them aside; it shoved a hand deep into a part of Ruby that was more Ruby than Ruby herself, and it took it. It drew it. Like a syringe or a parasite, it siphonedsomething implacable from Ruby.

"Beast," the girl seethed, right in Ruby's ear. "Animal. Creature. Thinkest thy vestments art unseen? I have seen it, and to see thy skin in yon fabric— defaced fabric, I note— I am afflicted. Strike thy name from His pages, filth." She leaned even closer, bearing her weight, pressing body-to-body. Ruby could hear the smile, now, as the girl hotly whispered through her teeth: "And know that I, Weiss Schnee, eidolon of the Fourth Archivist, grant thee succor in deliverance."

People were running towards Ruby. They could see the look in the girl's eye, too— it couldn't be missed— and there were at least a few people who weren't keen on watching a fellow student (even if she was a Faunus) get murdered in front of them. Yang, of course, was at the front, sprinting like her life depended on it, but that didn't matter.

Ruby could feel it: the impending vacuum. The final trails of her own soul clawing their way into the girl's— Weiss'— hand with finality. It honestly wasn't a bad feeling. Kind of pleasant— really pleasant, actually, like holding in a tic all day and then letting it out at home, but that was what scared her. It shouldn't feel so nice.

The people coming to save her would all be too late, and Ruby could see the one holding her was lost in her own way. Her visible eye was addled, riven with swollen red veins, staring reverently like Ruby was the Fourth himself, and she caught another glimpse through the bangs:

A scar, jagged and singular— like someone had ripped a meat hook through her face— tore up from her jaw and over her cheekbone, its track running through the organ itself, drawing a vertical line of pinkish-white where pupil and iris should be, before splitting her brow and tapering off halfway to her hairline.

But the white shifted, and Ruby felt herself slip away. Like a drop of dye in water, silver splashed over Weiss' ravaged pupil.

That made Ruby kick. Among the relief, that was what was wrong. Her eye— her mum's eye— on some Fourth Archivist psycho? Never.

Hands pinned, legs mostly useless at this angle, Ruby used what she could. With all the strength offered by one of her few normal, non-pneumatized bones, Ruby bit the hand.

The girl screamed, whatever she was doing to Ruby's soul instantly slingshotting back into Ruby, but the raven Faunus didn't let go. She bit harder. When Weiss thrashed, Ruby turned and flipped them, ignoring the anemic headrush as she freed her arms, grabbing the Archivist's wrist so she could keep the hand there until Ruby bit chunks out of it! For being an asshole, that was what she deserved!

Iron flooded Ruby's mouth. Her teeth guillotined into the meat of Weiss' palm, freeing a fleshy piece into Ruby's mouth, which she promptly spat into the girl's face along with a gout of their intermixed blood. The girl cried out, but the sound died with a wheeze when Ruby's hands clenched her neck— because she'd had enough shit and enough chicken jokes and enough of almost dying to smug pricks who didn't know what it was like to get fucking punched!

Fuck her! Fuck this girl! She'd kill her! She'd squeeze her pretty little neck— she'd choke her, until she… until she… flopped over and… and…

When Ruby awoke, she immediately tried to jolt to her feet. This only accomplished a few inches of butt-to-seat freedom, namely because both of Ruby's wrists were handcuffed to her chair, painfully constricting her feathers and her unslung arm. Her mouth tasted like blood. She looked around.

Another hospital. Great.

"Thy name."

Surprisingly, Ruby wasn't surprised. She was just disappointed. Of course the guys who got her into this school the way they did wouldn't think twice about shackling her next to the giant bigot she failed to kill. She sighed.

"A question I have posed to thee. Answer."

Ruby let her neck flop back over the chair, meeting the girl's eyes upside-down. She was in a hospital bed at which Ruby was positioned by the foot, laying down with her left hand thickly bound. She looked at Ruby with surprising neutrality.

"Ruby," answered Ruby.

The girl— no, wait, it was Weiss, which was a stupid name— rolled her eyes. "Thy title, 'Ruby', in full, such that I may tally it appropriately among mine nemeses. Know thou'rt honored by this, and I am sullied to name thee in my own meager tally."

Ruby stared at her blankly, but she was too sapped to fight. Even with the blood bag they had draining into her arm, Ruby was on the verge of blacking out again. Sure, this loser could probably try to harm her family with that kind of info (good luck) but Ruby felt pretty comfortable that she was the sole focus of this girl's attention. Plus, if she did try something, Ruby would just take another bite out of her.

Yep, that was definitely the worst way she could've worded it. Oh well.

"Ruby Florabel Branwen-Rose," she answered.

"Florabel," Weiss repeated wistfully. "Far superior to 'Ruby'. Why declarest thyself the inferior name?"

Ruby shifted, bouncing her chair around— it wasn't bolted down or anything— until she faced Weiss. "I dunno, why do you talk like that?" she shot back.

Weiss cocked her head. "Whyfor speakest thou in thy lowly tongue? I anoint thee the grace of formal High Valish, yet mine own ears art granted the pig's squalor of the Middenlands."

"You…" Ruby squinted at her, scouring Weiss for ant signs of the punchline. "You know we don't talk like that anymore, right?"

Weiss' eye widened, genuine fear coursing through her gaze. "Thou… thy words are in jest, surely."

Ruby slowly shook her head. "I was hoping that you were the one joking."

"That fetid stillborn!" Weiss suddenly spat, throwing her face aside. "Damn-nation upon thee, brother! This jest— this jest thou hast made of me—" she turned her head up to the ceiling as if it were a portal for her vitriol. "Shalt be visited upon thee tenfold!"

Ruby pursed her lips, unimpressed. "Yeah, I don't think you could ever be threatening like that."

"Blamest me not!" Weiss whined. "I am the victim of deceit! Thy heathen tongue I learned from the scholars, since this," she raised her arms around them. "Is a school!"

Ruby snorted. "What, you've only got ancient academic sources for Valish?"

Weiss dumped her head in her hands. "And Huntresses art made from beasts," she groaned. "In these things, the world is undone."

Ruby's face crinkled with righteous anger, but the sound of her handcuffs emasculated her completely, making her deflate. "Who brought me here?"

Weiss met her eyes with one. "Thinkest me an oracle? Thou'rt bird-brained."

Ruby plotted—

"Take thy victory in thine heart," Weiss said more solemnly, her gaze falling back down to her lap. "Thou chasest the breath from my lungs, thou makest a sleeper of me, and in the company of witnesses. My triumph is as sure as the setting sun, but alas," without looking, she pointed at the window, where easy, post-morning sunlight made the thin curtains ghostly. "Even noon has yet to come. So, for the moment…"

"Thou walloweth?" Ruby mocked.

Weiss glared at her, letting a pause linger long enough for Ruby to see the cold murder in her eye. "Aye," she said slowly, threat in her voice. "Bask if thou wilt, Florabel, but know this: thy mockery of Archivism—"

"Ah, my favorite students," greeted Headmaster Ozpin, his voice and figure making them jump as if he'd materialized from thin air. "Miss Schnee, I see you've met Miss Branwen-Rose."

Ruby gave him an unrestricted scowl, then turned to—

Weiss was terrified. Her eyes— both, from this angle— were wide, quivering at the man before them, her whole face twisted like Ozpin had killed her dog in front of her and now it was her turn. Her lips, slightly parted, mouthed something that Ruby didn't recognize. Her gaze fell after a silent moment, locking onto his brown dress shoes, but her face kept that same taut horror, and her lips kept moving.

Looking back at Ozpin, he didn't spare Weiss a single look. He kept his eyes on Ruby, his face perfectly careless and neutral, as if Weiss wasn't even there. That smile on his lips, the ease in his brow, the twinkle in his eye— it all made Ruby's nerves coil, spreading anger all over her face. She tried to chase it away by scrunching her nose, wrenching her jaw, and squinting, but the dissatisfaction just dropped into her throat, tickling her larynx. Ruby grit her teeth, trying desperately not to stroke it, but she could hear Weiss' cry in her ears— 'Fuck!'— and she could feel exactly how it was supposed to ring in her throat, and she hated it, and she hated Weiss, but her fuck!-ing voice fuck!-ed her up and had a fuck!-ing scratch to it that Ruby fuck!-ing needed to—

"Fuck," Ruby growled, throwing her head aside as if she could toss the tic out of her throat. It didn't help. "Fuck."

Ozpin raised a brow. He cocked his fuck!-ing head as if he fuck! hadn't read herfuck! medical f(fuck!)ile. "Miss Branwen-Rose?"

"Fuck!" Ruby repeated, almost shouting, her face burning as her throat lunged for the sound. "Fuck, fuck! Fuck!"

Ozpin, the guy who 100% did read her file because he was the fucking dean and had hand-picked her, looked at her oddly. "Miss Ruby?"

"Fuck!" Ruby crowed again, giving up on any restraints to her voice— she was already doing it, no point in holding back. Better to get it over with. "Fuck! You know I have— fuck!— Gille's! Fuck!"

Ozpin turned his ear towards her. "Sorry, Miss Ruby, what was that? I couldn't hear you over the rampant, unnecessary profanity."

"Fuck!" Ruby shouted again, with real heart in it now, because wow. "Fuck! Fuck!"

Ozpin shrugged, ignoring her as he continued: "Well, I'm glad you two have met—"

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"

"Honestly, I just knew you'd hit it off—"

"Fuck! Fuck!" Ruby's neck started feeling as needy as her throat did, so she threw her head back hard enough to rock the chair, again and again in time with her vocal tic. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"

"F-Florabel?"

"Ignore Miss Ruby. Anyways—"

"Fuck!" Ruby snarled, trying desperately to catch the itch, throwing her head back too hard and sending the chair fully backwards. Ozpin easily caught one of the legs with his foot before she could hit the ground, though, and tauntingly rocked her on the back legs of the chair. Her own bird-legs flailed out, making Ozpin's golden Aura pulse wherever her talons scratched, but he made no acknowledgement of her violence.

"Fuck!" Ruby growled. "Fuck— you! I don't— fuck!— wanna be— fuck!— I was dru—"

Ozpin dropped her chair, making her words die as the impact with the tile floor shunted all the air from her lungs. He smirked towards Weiss. "Mouthy one, that Ruby."

"Bran— fuck!—"

"Apologies, Miss Branwen-Rose. As I was saying…"

Ruby continued swearing. Her Aura weakly flared as her unsatisfied neck kept wrenching her head back and into the floor, pulsing crimson until it snapped into nothing, and she got one good strike of skull-on-tile before Ozpin slipped his shoe underneath her head.

"Aaaaas I was saying, I even delayed your flight, Miss Schnee! Just so you two little…" he wiggled his hands vaguely at them both, and Ruby might have heard the word 'freaks' underneath her own shouting vulgarity. "Could meet."

"Headmaster Ozpin? The beast… thrasheth." She turned to Ruby and her gaze instantly eased somewhat— as if so much as looking at Ozpin hurt her, and even the intrinsic hate she had in her eyes for Ruby was easier than what she felt for the headmaster. "Florabel, knowest thine fate endeth by my hand, not upon yonder tile."

Ruby, after a few more 'Fuck!'s, felt the itch subside enough to ignore. She flexed her right hand against her handcuffs until it hurt, making the need in her neck slip back into her mind, ignored but dissatisfied.

"Well, that's just perfect," Ozpin mused, sounding worryingly genuine. "Alright. Miss Schnee, I suspect your hand is better?"

Weiss winced at being addressed by him, but nodded. "Aye."

Ruby craned her neck to look at her. "A— already? How— I bit a chunk—"

Heels came clacking around the corner like hail on a tin roof, heralding the arrival of one Glynda Goodwitch, who roared at the headmaster: "Sir!Ini—" her heels loudly dragged against the tile as she halted, noticing the other students. "The thing," she continued vaguely, hissing through her teeth. "Is tomorrow. Get your scrawny rear in my gosh-darn office before I bring those recordings to—"

"And that's my time!" Ozpin announced, kicking Ruby's chair because he's an asshole. "Miss Schnee, see you tomorrow."

Weiss jolted, reeling so hard it looked like she'd fall out of the bed. "Thou wilt not visit punishment upon—"

Ozpin waved her off and turned away. "Miss Ruby tried to kill you, Miss Schnee, and she did start the violence, so no."

"Oh," Weiss said, looking at his back as he left, bewildered but not relaxing. "So I am…"

"Free to go," the headmaster summated. "As for Miss Ruby—"

"Branwen-R—"

"Miss Branwen-Rose, yes, you will be getting punished."

Ruby felt those words tickle her nerves, dripping down to her legs, making them tic as if there were a floor beneath her talons to tchk-tchk on. She tried to level a baleful gaze on the headmaster, but he was almost fully out of the room already. He still didn't turn as he said:

"There's something important tomorrow, and it's quite mandatory," he mused. "Don't be late, Ruby."

Ruby surged in her chair, jangling her cuffs uselessly. "Wait! I'm still—"

"Don't be late!" he restated, rounding the corner.

Ruby opened her mouth to call after him, but the call hitched in her throat.

She was stuck in a chair; handcuffed to it, half-sitting, half-supine. According to Weiss (who was still there, not helping, because she's also mean), it wasn't even noon. She'd have to stay there all day, motionless, then probably all night, because normal students don't get hospitalized before the friggin' nurse even shows up! Because why would they! Because it's not even the first day!

Ruby seethed internally. Externally, she also seethed: "Weiss."

"Florabel," Weiss returned. "I suspect thou'rt keen to amend thy slight against me?"

"Stop calling me that."

"Hmm," Weiss sarcastically hummed, tipping her head left and right. "Nay, methinks."

"Me-thinks?" Ruby mocked with a snort. "'Scholarly,' by butt."

"Thinkest thyself… boneless?" Weiss said after a long, considering look at Ruby, her expression curdling as if she hated her own words. "Wilt thee not beseech mine aid?"

"Nope," Ruby answered spitefully. "Don't want your help, anyways. Just wanted to say, I hope tomorrow goes terribly for you— you deserve it for being racist, bigoted, and a Fourth-Archivist. Screw you."

"So sayeth the haughty Second-Archivist."

"I am not—" Ruby breathed deep, then let it out in a long, annoyed huff. "Whatever. Go away. You get to get away with this, so… enjoy it while it lasts."

Weiss turned up her nose and scooted out of the medical bed. Now that Ruby could see her fully, she had some loose-sleeved blouse and a pleated navy skirt that Ruby hated looking at. "Goodbye, Florabel," she casually intoned. "When I next see thee, I expect violence."

"Yeah," Ruby mumbled. "Sure. Whatever. Go die."

Weiss started walking, then sang, "Only to my nemesis!"

Which…

Ruby shook her head. Weiss left. Ruby was alone.

She plotted.