"Florabel?"

How much blood did she have on her? How much of it was hers?

'Is that— hey! I see you! There's a spawn over there!'

It was… it was three men, at first— no, four— and they'd spotted her almost as soon as her feet hit the concrete. They were all in their ruddy robes: one with a pistol, one with a big pipe-bludgeon, the other two with no weapons or with weapons Ruby couldn't see. She'd been gentle with them. She'd looped gun-person's wrist in her wires and sheared it clean off the arm— one of the less-equipped guys bolted at that— before she went for Pipe Guy. Pipe Guy actually had an Aura, so it took a good few swipes from her knife to get it down, but she managed it eventually. He was overwhelmed by the exchange, caught staring at his comrade's squirting stump-wrist when Ruby got to him, so all her hits to his Aura were basically free. Then it cracked, she raked her talons across his belly, and he probably died with his guts on the ground. She didn't look, didn't know, didn't care— she was busy tackling the last guy as he turned to flee. She wasn't able to throw him down with her meager weight, but she did manage to lock him in with her legs, then press her knife hard enough into the skin of his throat that it bled.

'Sun. The monkey. Talks like an idiot. Where.'

'You people all talk like—'

So Ruby killed him. Simple as. It's what mom would've done, and she didn't have time anyways. There were more coming— no alarm was tripped, but the cascade of angry humans came nonetheless. She supposed she wasn't silent, and one had gotten away.

They came in groups— patrols being alerted one-by-one and responding without cohesion— which made them easier to handle. Ruby could draw a group between shipping containers, funneling them into the easiest range Ruby had ever attended. Shitty shot she was, it was hard to miss when your targets were caught close in a tight space, unable to dodge or retreat without running into the walls or a friend.

She made that space into a thin hall of dead racists in record time, which felt… eh. The most she got out of it was some 'good job!' chemicals in her brain, but that was dull beneath the excitement of all her nerves. She was touchy, twitchy, gradually going more off the handle with each human she turned into a corpse, but that was a good thing. It was good to be nervous when you were surrounded by Fourths— it'd save the adrenaline for later.

Then she'd started slipping, but it was artful. It felt right. When the Fourths started bunching up and pressing her into the heart of the warehouse, she tripped on her own claws but managed to lash out with her knife, whirling around and striking a man behind her, making him reel with a deep gash across his chest. Another man swung a bat at her, but she was already moving, making her stumble purposeful as she pivoted and swayed beneath the blunt instrument. She moved, funnily enough, like a chicken with its head cut off, but the Fourths couldn't keep their eyes on her, couldn't track her— if she couldn't predict her own movements, how could they?

She flicked the knife into 'LSWD'— longsword— so the added length would work against her like a pendulum, pulling her this way and that as she followed the momentum of each swing. She moved with the sword, moved like the sword, cleaving meat from bone, poking holes in guts and livers and kidneys, rending Aura before leaping in and finishing the job with her claws.

They hit her. They hit her plenty. But she moved with the hits, taking their force into her, pinging off each blunt weapon like a ricocheting pinball made of knives. They couldn't even shoot her— not for lack of trying; the ones with guns ended up shooting their comrades with the ways Ruby zigged and zagged, forcing them to wait impotent on the sidelines or flip their rifles into improvised clubs. Ruby killed them. Humans, Fourths, those whose ideology was joyously antithetical to her existence, she killed them.

AND THE FIRST WAS HIS BROTHER; AND HIS BROTHER WAS THE SECOND; AND THE THIRD WAS HIS BROTHER AS WELL; AND HE KNEW THEY WERE WITHOUT SCORN, AND HE LOVED THEM; AND HE WOULD MAKE THEM KINGS AMONG MEN; HE WOULD MAKE UNTO HIS BROTHERS EACH A CROWN; AND HE WOULD MAKE NONE HIMSELF, FOR HE KNEW THAT HE WHO MAKES THE CROWN, IS HE WHO RULES THE KINGS

Men into dead men, humans into corpses, children into orphans, Ruby made them.

She had wrapped one by the neck with her claws, twisting to gore his throat, and he had said: 'Please, please, I have kids,' and she had found coming to her lips: 'Know that sinner live on numbered days,' before she gave him his last pain.

WHEN HE CAME TO HIS BROTHER THE THIRD, HE TOLD HIM, BROTHER, I COME TO MAKE ROYALTY OF YOU; I COME TO MAKE YOU INTO A KING; I COME TO GIVE YOU A CROWN THAT DENOTES YOU KING ABOVE MEN AND GOD ABOVE BEASTS;

AND THE THIRD DID SAY, BROTHER, BUT I AM A MAN OF THE MIND; BUT I AM A MAN AMONG MEN; BUT I AM NOTHING WITHOUT THEM AMONG ME; IF I WOULD BE OVER THEM, I WOULD NOT BE AMONG THEM; IF I WOULD BE OVER THEM, I WOULD NOT KNOW THEM, AND THEY WOULD NOT KNOW ME; IF I WOULD BE OVER THEM, THEIR THOUGHTS WOULD NOT COME TO ME;

AND HIS YOUNGEST BROTHER THE FOURTH DID WEEP; HE TOOK UP THAT PROFFERED CROWN AND HE MADE A MACHINE OF IT; HE DENOUNCED HIS BROTHER THE THIRD; HE SAID, MY BROTHER CHERISH ONLY THE MIND, NOT THE SIN; HE SAID, MY BROTHER CHERISH THAT WHICH FESTERS AND BREEDS, SO LONG AS IT SERVES HIM; HE SAID, MY BROTHER WOULD LIE WITH BEASTS FOR AN EPIPHANY!

Ruby wished she had her cassock. She wished she had not stripped it of its cravat and its cruxes, she wished for her sash to be jangling with charms of sickles, tomes, and wheat; she wished to be known as a Second Archivist; she wished to be known as a Faunus and a Second Archivist; she wished to be known as the Second who would lay low the Fourth. For poetic justice.

WHEN HE CAME TO HIS BROTHER THE SECOND, HE TOLD HIM, BROTHER, I COME TO MAKE ROYALTY OF YOU; I COME TO MAKE YOU INTO A KING; I COME TO GIVE YOU A CROWN THAT DENOTES YOU KING ABOVE MEN AND GOD ABOVE BEASTS;

AND THE SECOND DID SAY, BROTHER, BUT THESE FOLK ARE MY FARM; BUT THESE FOLK ARE MY KIN IN THE FIELDS; BUT THESE FOLK ARE THE MEN AND THE BEASTS WHO BREAK GRAIN INTO WHEAT; THESE FOLK ARE THE MEN AND THE BEASTS WHO WEAVE YOUR FILIGREE; THESE FOLK ARE THE MEN AND THE BEASTS WHO MAKE RIFTS OF THE EARTH TO GIVE YOU THIS CROWN; BROTHER, I LOVE THESE FOLK; BROTHER, TO BE ABOVE THESE MEN AND THESE BEASTS WOULD BE TO ABANDON THEM; BROTHER, YOU WOULD MAKE OF ME A MAN WHO ABANDONS HIS FLOCK; BROTHER, WHAT HAS BECOME OF YOUR DISCIPLES; BROTHER, WHAT HAS BECOME OF YOU?

AND THE FOURTH DID STRIKE HIS BROTHER WITH THAT CROWN; WITH A SCOWL HE DID STRIKE HIS BROTHER; HE LAID HIS BROTHER THE SECOND LOW TO THE DIRT; HE CAST HIS KIN TO THE GROUND AND HE BEAT THAT CROWN UPON THE HEAD OF HIS BROTHER THE SECOND; AND THE SECOND DID KEEL AND CRY; AND THAT BROTHER THE FOURTH DID KILL HIS BROTHER THE SECOND.

THAT BROTHER THE FOURTH DID DENOUNCE THE CORPSE OF HIS BROTHER THE SECOND; HE SAID, MY BROTHER HAS LAIN WITH BEASTS; HE SAID, MY BROTHER HAS SCORNED ME; HE SAID, MY BROTHER HAS CONSPIRED AGAINST ME; FOR THIS I GAVE VIOLENCE UNTO HIM; FOR THIS I I LAID MY BROTHER LOW; I WEEP FOR MY BROTHER; I WEEP YET MORE FOR HIS MISGUIDED FLOCK

They didn't stop coming. She killed and she killed and she killed, but for every robe she made redder another two would replace it. The circle around her grew like a cancer, spreading out yet also closing in, sapping her. She began to feel light-headed.

SO HE WENT TO HIS BROTHER THE FIRST; HE CAME TO TELL HIM, BROTHER, OUR KIN DO NOT BELIEVE; HE CAME TO SAY, BROTHER, I LOVE YOU MORE THAN THE WORLD; HE CAME TO TELL HIM, BROTHER, I OFFER THIS GIFT FROM MY HEART; HE CAME TO TELL HIM, BROTHER, I DO NOT GIVE YOU THIS CROWN IN ARROGANCE; HE CAME TO TELL HIM, BROTHER, THIS IS OUR RITE FROM ON HIGH; HE CAME TO TELL HIM, BROTHER, IN THIS THING WE CAN BE UNITED; HE CAME TO TELL HIM, BROTHER, LET ME LAY UPON YOU THIS CROWN AND LET ME GIVE UNTO YOU THE WORLD TO SHARE;

AND HE CAME TO HIS BROTHER THE FIRST TO SAY THESE THINGS, BUT SAY THEM HE DID NOT; FOR HIS BROTHER THE FIRST STRUCK HIS BROTHER THE FOURTH WITH HIS CRUX; HIS BROTHER THE FIRST CUT HIS BROTHER THE FOURTH UNTIL HE WAS LAID LOW; AND THE FOURTH DID SAY, BROTHER, I HAVE LOVED YOU; HE DID CRY OUT, BROTHER, YOU ARE KILLING ME!

AND HIS BROTHER THE FIRST DID SAY, BROTHER, YOU HAVE KILLED MY KIN; HE SAID, BROTHER, YOU HAVE SLAIN THE HEART OF US; HE SAID, BROTHER, YOU HAVE KILLED THAT WHICH LOVES AND GIVES, AND YOU HAVE DENOUNCED HIS CORPSE; AND HE ALSO SAID, BROTHER, I KILL YOU NOW MORE SWIFTLY THAN YOU HAVE MY CHERISHED BLOOD; AND HE ALSO SAID, BROTHER, I CAST YOU DOWN!

AND HIS BROTHER THE FOURTH DID CRY, AND HE DID WEEP, AND HE DID SAY, BROTHER, I SCORN YOU!

AND HIS BROTHER THE FIRST DID SAY, I AM GLAD TO BE SCORNED BY YOU.

Ruby had plotted.

She didn't know how many points she had made, but she knew it was more than she'd ever done. She also knew it would be enough.

Then Ruby had reappeared. She had snatched the monofilament into her claws. She had pulled.

Her silver spiderweb awoke, wrenched taut, casting fingers from hands, hands from wrists, slicing into waists and necks and legs, killing and maiming with a crescendo like crimson fireworks. All the men dropped among red-coated lines like so much tinsel, all in various states of death, incoming death, or incapacity. Ruby fell to her knees in the center of it all— the scant two or three feet of space she had left after the Fourths closed in— the concrete below her now crawling with trails of blood like crimson millipedes.

She had passed out for… ten seconds? Something like that? Judging by the fact nobody immediately got her, that was what she guessed. That or she'd killed every Fourth here, which she sincerely doubted; the rally had looked like hundreds in the pics, and she'd killed… well, it had been too many to count with her vision swimming, but it definitely hadn't been that much.

'Hurry, fledgeling,' Raven would probably say. 'You can't sit here catching up the whole time, get to where you are.'

Summer would probably add: 'Come on, petal, you can do it.'

Which meant she was concussed, since that seemed to be when her internal advice came in real-time. Which also meant someone had concussed her.

Right. She'd been laying there, her whole right side soaking in the blood of dead or dying Fourths, having fallen over when she blacked out. She had pushed up to her feet, staggering, searching the inside of the warehouse for a deeper entrance. She had heard static— one of the dead Fourths, his radio crackling to life. She had snatched it up and listened:

'...all good, Ricky? Things went quiet up there.'

'Up there,' as in they were 'down here,' as in 'there's an entrance somewhere around here that leads to a basement level or something,' which resolved quickly when Ruby laid eyes on a cellar door at the other end of the room.

'Ricky? Bud?'

Ruby had held the radio to her mouth, saying in a tired mumble as she moved to the cellar door, 'Hey, fuckass, I killed him.'

'Repeat? What was that, Ricky?'

Holding the radio between ear and shoulder, Ruby had reeled her wire up into her palm. 'Ricky's dead, some Faunus heathen killed him.'

'Damn! Who is this, then? What's the situation?'

'Where's the monkey? She's coming for him; we hit her, but she's coming for him.'

'Safe with us. Who is this?'

'Sick. See you soon.'

Ruby had chucked the radio at the cellar doors, making a loud metal noise as it clattered against the rusted metal. She had reloaded her pistol, holding it in her right hand— slightly awkward with the reel protruding from her palm— with her sword reduced to its shortsword-form in her left hand. It was getting hard to hold the hilt; her tendons were still too freshly repaired to be doing this much, but she didn't have a choice. She had to rescue Sun.

The cellar door had opened, and a man had poked his head out, periscoping. Ruby, who had been standing behind the diagonal slant of the cellar door, promptly absolved the Fourth's body of his wretched brain via small arms fire. She blinked through the door before the men behind him could close it, lashing one across the neck with her sword and breaking the other's Aura with her claws, then following up with a shot that made her ears ring in the tight hallway— ring more, that Is . Her ears hadn't stopped ringing since those guys had spotted her.

And past the cellar… in the corridor… that much was a blur. She'd been gassing out— too much blinking, too much fighting, not enough blood. She lodged her sword between a guy's ribs but she couldn't get it out, her grip failing, so she left it in him and moved on, slipping her shitty hand into her shitty plastic-plated glove.

After that, she remembered a lot of guys. She remembered them one-by-one coming down the corridor. She remembered holding her anchors in her gauntlet and wielding the slack wire like a whip— not enough to kill, but more than enough to open them up for her claws— but that was where the crevasse in her memory was. Jumping over that rift brought her back to her knees, this time at the end of the corridor, and this time she didn't get back up. The last thing she'd seen was a big concrete antechamber, brimming with crates but mostly devoid of people. She hadn't found Sun. She hadn't found Roman. All she'd found were a bunch of Fourths, and she'd killed most of them. Net positive.

"Flora-bel-bell!"

She coughed. She'd found Penny, at least.

In the hour of the rising sun— that being about 6 or 7— Weiss Schnee took up her things and made egress from the godless Frontier of Vale, making such a venture upon the same airship that had ferried her four days before. Her minions— the buxom blonde brute and the bitchy Blake Belladonna— spoke hardly a word to her, as had been the state of things since the beginning of their dull mission. They were simply not made for cleverness or wit, unlike their farcical-appointed leader.

Unlike Florabel.

Florabel. Florabel. Florabel.

Reprehensible Florabel. Repulsive Florabel. Radical, reactionary, repugnant Florabel. Florabel, with the snout of her spawnsake. Florabel, with the gait of a chicken. Florabel, with the voice of a crow.

Florabel, whose smell was of citrus. Florabel, whose lips she had made like sandpaper. Florabel, whose ugly face haunted her. Florabel, whose soul tasted like sweet rose hips.

Weiss struck herself, which did not attract the attention of anybody aboard their vessel. She had taken to frequent bouts of self-flagellation— not for any particular reason, just for… the… fun. Of it. Aye. Not to scourge her brain of Flor—

Weiss struck herself again. She would not think of her nemesis that way. Even if she was the only person who should think of her nemesis that way. Florabel deserved only to be sullied by her, not by the floozy Belladonnas and Nikoses of their academy. She should make a true claim, to that end. For Florabel's sake. Twould be a blessing for the beast.

The bricky thing that was her phone chirped its tune, which her comrades had verbally vilified her for many times.

'Holy shit, Weiss, set it to fucking vibrate,' Yang had told her at one point, to which Weiss had engaged her on the logical front, flanking her with twin forces of fact and truth: one, her phone lacked any such 'vibration' function, and two, if her phone did have onesuch 'vibration' function, she would not be able to sufficiently spelunk its labyrinthine menu of settings.

None made objections this time save for being visibly displeased, but Weiss Schnee, Bane of Wendigo, did not care for the micro-expressions of her lesser kin-in-arms. She made the notification known to her by means of pressing 'OK' on the large, central button of her device's keypad. The message made a show of itself upon her screen:

rubrtubr: [ LocationData - Download - 1.9 KB]

Weiss quirked one of her perfect, attractive brows, but that did not convince the device to explain itself. Trusting the button that seemed to do most non-typing things sufficiently, Weiss pressed 'OK'.

The screen went black briefly, then came alight with a gradually filling bar of progress. Weiss Schnee, Bane of Wendigo, experienced an insectile writhing twixt her ribs— anticipation— but surely for the fact that her relict telecommunications device had an as-yet undiscovered feature, not for whatever it was her nemesis saw fit to send her. The screen at the top of the bricky thing shifted with its mute colors, a title swooshing across the screen:

CCNAV

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loading - 1.9kb

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loa

Weiss laid her eyes upon the screen, making careful watch as it filled with little black boxes— outlines; outlines of buildings, of streets, a map— but she did not recognize any landmarks.

But slowly— with an achesome crawl like the winter upon the summer— the maze of little black boxes was made small, like the perspective of a bird taking flight, and small, blocky letters took their reign upon the screen:

251A MASS FREIGHT STOR.

GREATER VALE

VALE