Ruby reawoke in what some may call a 'fucked situation'. The room was different again. Her pose was different. She felt different.

The room: broad, low ceiling, overtly appointed with mismatched pews, reliefs on the concrete walls faking a stone affect, a red central carpet splitting a long hall between the pews and leading to a lectern. Empty.

Her pose: her arms shackled high above her head, legs shackled out— spread eagle, bound to big, crossed wooden posts in an x-shape and stood up to face the lectern.

How she felt: wretched. She felt deeply vacant, and not in the funWeiss way, clashing with how full her body itself felt. She tried to look around, but found her neck straining against what had better fucking not be a collar. There was a pinch on her left arm: from the corner of her eye, she could see a little tube draining blood into her. They'd taken her hoodie off, but left her clothed otherwise.

"What the fuck?"

Her voice echoed in the empty room.

Why would she be getting a transfusion? Why the stupid x-post and not, like, a crux? Shitty theming? And where was Sun? Why wasn't she dead? Seriously, she'd killed, like, 40 guys; she was way more dangerous alive, as she'd prove by plot—

Ruby cried out as something scorched into her neck, and god dammit, it was almost definitely some kind of Aura-reactive collar. That was low— even for Fourths— it'd been years since even the worst racists would be so overt as to make collar/leash comments about Faunuskind, so this was just saying the quiet part out loud. And that was ignoring how huge and egregious of a crime having one of those things was! Ruby squirmed fruitlessly, only achieving more discomfort in her bound-up feathers and clawing some scratches into the wooden post.

The lectern across the room was on a raised platform— a makeshift wooden stage with red-curtained walls behind it. The curtain shimmered, shifting, pulling back as a familiar Faunus with tan skin and a monkey-tail was shoved out. He stumbled, hands bound behind his back, and promptly fell on his face.

Seeing him, Ruby winced. His handsome face was more bruised and swollen than not.

"S-suh, dude," he wheezed. "This fuckin' blows, brah."

"Sorry," was all Ruby could find to say. "I'm sorry, Sun."

"'S cool," Sun grumbled into the splintery wood. "Prolly shoulda got backup, like, before doing this aha."

"Sorry. I tried."

"All good dude," Sun said ignorantly (because it wasn't all good). "I heard."

The curtain shifted again, and Ruby stupidly surged against her bindings at the sight of Penny jaunting through them.

"Bell!" Penny chirped sweetly, booting Sun across the jaw as she haunted across the stage. She bounced off the edge with childlike glee and skipped to Ruby with a big smile. "Bell, Bell, Bell!"

Fuck. "Bell," Ruby found herself repeating, her face exploding with red shame as her throat worked itself. "Bell. Don't call me— Bell!"

Penny stopped and stared, her head cocking curiously. "Oh, you're slow, too?"

Ruby ground her jaw. "Bell."

Penny giggled, looking over at Sun, her thumb jutting towards Ruby with a 'get a load of this dumbass' look. "Classic Faunus, squawking like her spawnsake."

"Do not fucking say—" Ruby's throat contorted itself at her volume, twisting her justified rage at that slur into a stupid, "Bell!"

Sun writhed angrily. "Not fucking cool, brah!"

Penny waved him off, speaking with a bright smile. "Oh, it is just nature! I am sure you fling your own feces around to entertain yourself."

Sun's face visibly heated as he tried worming towards her. "Hey! Fuck you, dude!"

"You are… Second, right?" Penny asked Ruby, ignoring Sun completely.

"I am not— Be—" Ruby bit down on her stupid fucking disorder with a grunt.

"You do not have to lie. Faunus do not go anywhere else," Penny claimed (straight-up incorrectly, like, what the fuck). "Animals always follow the food."

"Bell!" Ruby yelled, trying to get it out, repeating it until the sound finally slotted right in her throat. Penny watched with the amusement of a kid at the zoo. "So what if I was, huh?" she gritted out, her voice coming with volume that surprised even Ruby. "You butthurt I killed all your fanatic minions? Huh!"

Penny's smile fell, but not into a frown, just into a neutral line. "I do not think either of us need to entertain the idea that that was all our people," she mused. "But it was impressive the way you slaughtered thinking, feeling human beings without remorse. Many of them had families, you know."

Ruby snorted. "Maybe they should've thought about that before joining some murder cult."

"Murder cult?" Penny giggled again, her lips distinctly not smiling to match. "Is it murder when the butcher slaughters the cow? Is it murder when swine or fowl like your spawnsake are culled?"

Ruby really wished she was vegan, just so she could spit put an indignant 'Fuck yes it is.'

Penny continued: "And when a Grimm is exterminated? Is that, too, murder?"

Ruby reeled as much as she could with her back against this post (which was bolted down, given the firm resistance). "Wha— are you serious? What kind of strawman is that! Fuck you!"

Penny pouted mockingly, approaching Ruby with exaggerated, swaying steps. "Ooh, is the little birdie mad? Is the birdie mad at a little figurative speech? Oh-hoh, poor baby, poor stupid bird-brain cannot understand genuine comparisons!"

Ruby thrashed against her bindings. "That is not a—"

Penny surged forward and grabbed Ruby's whole face, jamming the unnaturally hard palm of her heel right into Ruby's teeth. Ruby yelped, the sound muffled. Penny looked her up and down, her inhumanly-green eyes scraping over every inch of her from sole to crown. "You are Miss Schnee's… something, yes?"

Ruby shook her head furiously, her objection muffled against Penny's hand (which, again, was so hard— her ass was not beating the robot allegations!). Penny clicked her tongue and scoldingly shook her head.

"No lying, Florabel—"

"Rhmby!" Florabel tried fruitlessly to correct.

Penny drove her head back hard— with no backing behind her skull, she found her neck being wrenched back painfully like a candy dispenser. She grunted. "I call you what I want," Penny asserted, her breath unnaturally hot against Ruby's straining throat; she'd climbed a little on the post just to maintain the hold on her face. "She said you are her nemesis."

"Hey!" Sun shouted impotently from the peanut gallery. "You're being weird, brah!"

Penny held her there, thumb digging painfully into Ruby's cheekbone. "That means a lot, you know, being someone's nemesis," Penny elaborated, getting unnervingly closer. "But what I saw you two doing…"

'You didn't see anything!' Ruby tried to yell, getting as much as "Y'dnt'ny'ng!" into Penny's palm.

"Disgusting," Penny spat, pulling herself up until her face hovered just above Ruby's. Between Penny's fingers, their eyes met. "Laying with beasts is low."

Ruby tried to surge, but Penny's body was like a brick wall. She craned her neck over her shoulder, shouting back to Sun.

"You know what this one did?" Penny asked him. Ruby squirmed to stop her, her fingers and claws twitching like mad, but to no avail. She even tried screaming against the palm as if that would drown out Penny's voice, which worked about as well as one would expect. "You know what this Faunus did?"

"Bro, get off!" Sun yelled.

"Yes!" Penny said, laughing. "That is quite close to what this one did with a Fourth!"

"Ya right du—"

"I saw her making out with a Fourth in an alley! I did!" Penny locked gazes with Ruby again. "I saw it, and I would bet that you and Miss Schnee have done so much more."

Sun's voice rang like a hammer on glass. "Schnee?"

No, nonono, bull shit, Weiss was not famous, the Schnees were not a thing, no fucking way. That girl had gotten her phone from a fucking dumpster! She was not fucking famous! Nuh-fucking -uh!

Penny didn't move her eyes, but Ruby could see the glowing smile inside them. "Why yes, monkey! The very same!"

"Bull," Sun said succinctly.

"I have pictures."

"Super-bull."

Ruby shook her head, her eyes wide, begging, because she could see the look in Penny's eyes. She wasn't lying. "You could just explain yourself to your friend, here," Penny muttered, lifting her hand off Ruby's mouth. "I am sure there is a good reason for a Second-Archivist and a Faunus to be making out with Weiss Schnee."

"I— I didn't have a choice!" Ruby lied, pinching her shoulders back to hit the itch that rose there.

Penny hummed, amused. "The pictures don't make it seem that way. If anything, they looked like you were holding her in place."

"I—"

Penny started to reach down to her dress' skirt, towards what was probably a pocket. "Maybe we should look—"

"No!" Ruby thrashed. "I— Sun, you've gotta understand—"

"Understand what, dude! You're not saying she's telling the truth, bro, I know you're not!"

"I have Gille's Syndrome!" Ruby blurted. "I get these tics, and Weiss… her Semblance is the only thing that helps, okay! I have to be close to her, or else—"

Sun laughed the kind of laugh you'd never want to hear from a friend. "No, no way, dude! No fucking way! You— no way!"

"I don't even know who she is!"

"Bullshit, bro!" Sun retorted. "How! How could you not! Every Faunus alive knows the Schnees, brah!"

"I! Don't!"

Sun released a vicious scoff, the sound of it striking Ruby right between her ribs. "That's ignorance, dude! Literal willful ignorance!"

"Then I'm ignorant!" Ruby lashed out, her chest hot with hurt and shame. "Fuck me for missing whatever news everyone else got! What even—"

"The Schnees are fucking slavers, dude!"

Sun's voice ripped through Ruby's skull, hot and wretched. Ruby wanted to tear her lips off and burn them for what they've touched, she wanted to scrape the skin from her muscles just to cleanse Weiss' touch away. She felt weak. "But— but she's here!" Ruby retorted stupidly. "She's poor as fuck! There's no way! She— she must've come here to get away!"

"That doesn't fucking matter, dude!" Sun shouted. "She was in that system, she lived off it, she grew up off it! You're in Beacon, dude, how the fuck do you think she got in! Who paid!"

Ruby floundered.

'But Weiss had a hard life!' Yeah, that would work so well against a fellow Faunus.

'But I need her!' Objectively untrue.

'But she kissed me first!' And Ruby didn't have to let it continue.

'But I didn't know!' Already ran through that.

'But I can fi—' No.

"But she's saved my life!" Ruby said eventually. "She's cared for me! She's racist as shit, but she's treated me with respect! And either way, I'm stuck with her as my partner!" Strength rose in her voice— something from mum—

'Yes, petal, I know. It'd be hard not to know, Yang looks just like her.'

'Of course it hurts— it still does. There's a piece of trust I'll never be able to give back to her, and it's completely her fault, and I'm completely justified, and that sucks.'

'I wish I could blame myself. I wish it could be my fault— I didn't please her enough, I didn't love her enough, I didn't give her what she needed— but it just isn't. I gave your mother everything, and there's not some, oh it was a drunken mistake, they didn't mean to hurt me, that doesn't matter. In the end, she hurt me.'

'No. I haven't. And don't you ever ask me that again, Ruby.'

'Oh, I definitely understand why you'd ask, but you will never say those words to me again, okay?"

'I forgive you, petal, and I love you.'

'Yes. I did stay.'

'Why? Why would I stay with Raven? Why would I marry her after she cheated on me? Why would I make you with her after all that?'

Ruby grit her teeth.

"You don't know her like I do."

Penny made a giddy, musical little laugh. "Ooh, romantic."

"That is such a dogshit excuse, bro," Sun said. "You're selfish."

Ruby scowled, all her shame subsumed into indignance. "Yeah. Whatever. I'll kill her one of these days. In the meantime, I won't let her hurt anyone else."

The roll of Sun's eyes was almost audible. "Sure, dude. Like you're doing now? Do you even know where she is?"

"She's with my team, out on a mission. They'll make sure she doesn't do anything."

Penny watched their back-and-forth like it was the most entertaining thing in the world. When she noticed Ruby looking, she mimed eating popcorn.

"Let me guess, your team is a bunch of other humans?" Sun spat. "Is that how you got into Beacon? Cozying up with the hands that hold the leash?"

Ruby gasped. "Fuck! You!"

Penny laughed. "Yeah! Fuck you, monk—"

Ruby spat on her to shut her the fuck up, which actually worked, though it also earned her another fun experience of Penny shoving her face back like she was trying to fold her spine.

"You will never—"

"Miss Polendina," a calm voice rose from the stage, making Penny scramble towards it and fall to her knees. Stretching her neck forward, Ruby squinted at the new person.

It was a boy— a boy— about Ruby or Weiss' age but without all the scruff and chisel of Sun or (to a slightly lesser extent) Jaune. He carried himself with a rigid, militant posture, and he held his dainty-but-square chin high. His hair was a dark brown mop, jagged and rough in texture, as if he'd gotten a bowl cut about eight months ago and let it grow since. He wore a white clergy shirt with a blood-red cravat and shining ruby cufflinks, along with pressed tan slacks that were cuffed above his shining black dress-shoes.

His voice was too deep for his face— and his skinny, nigh-androgynous body, for that matter— but he spoke with perfect smoothness. "I don't like how close you were to that one," he said, nodding towards Ruby. "She's dangerous, Penny, and I value you."

Penny dipped her head. "Yes, Director."

Director? This kid?

Eh, she didn't really have room to talk.

"Hey!" Sun shouted, flipping onto his back to glare at this 'Director'. "You're the one who—"

The kid interrupted Sun by drawing a revolver from behind his back and promptly unloading six shots into Sun's Aura. The Faunus' soul barely held on until the sixth, using the last of its energy to ricochet the final round before winking away in a flash of orangish-gold.

The kid flipped the cylinder open, dropped the smoking casings, slipped another round in, clicked the cylinder shut, and promptly shot Sun in the shoulder. Sun fell back from the blow, crying out and writhing as blood squirted from the wound.

"Sun!"

Sun just grunted in response, his eyes screwed shut with pain.

"Sorry," the Director said, somehow sounding genuine. "It had to be done."

"You—" Sun groaned through his teeth. "You shot me!"

"And your kin here murdered sixty-one men tonight, for your sake," the kid stated. "Someone must pay in pain."

"Then hurt her!" Sun crowed.

"Sixty-one men," the kid-Director restated, slipping six rounds into his revolver one-by-one straight from his pocket. "That is fifty-two individual families I will have to contact. Fifty-two families who have lost their fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, and I am the one who will have to tell each one that they must now live with a gap in their lives."

Ruby spat on the floor. "They should've considered that—"

"Many of these men were disconnected from their families," the kid said easily, slipping his revolver back into his waistband. "And yet you saw fit to make yourself their judge, jury, and executioner. You decided to deprive many of these people their primary provider, and now they will be forced to seek support from the Temple. From us." He bowed deeply, his voice a smile. "So thank you, 'Florabel', for turning that many more towards the truth. Running the numbers, you're estimated to be in the top ninety-fifth percentile for conversions in the whole Temple."

Ruby's body simmered simultaneously hot and cold until her stomach was nauseated. She didn't know how to feel— anger, guilt, rage, annoyance, fear, confusion— everything was boiling up so hard that it choked her words.

"F-fff—" she tried to hold it down. She failed. "Fuck!"

The kid smiled.

Ruby's features scrunched tight. "Caw!"

"Gille's," he stated, as if to genuinely educate Penny or Sun. "More common among bird Faunus such as yourself— a symptom of bestial breeding." He rolled his wrist dismissively, dropping from the stage. "It can't be helped."

Ruby growled and barked and crowed and 'Fuck!'ed, trying to force satisfaction in her throat, and the Director just stared, impassive. He walked towards her without worry.

Ruby scowled down at the boy. "Let me— Caw!— lemme out."

"No," he replied.

She bit her molars, forcing the next tic down. "What're you doing with Torchwick?"

Finally, the kid's eyes darkened. Just a tad. "Struggling," he admitted. "That guy's the worst."

"I don't take moral judgment from Fourths."

"Of course. You just murder them."

Ruby pursed her lips— tried to, at least, since she had to let out the tics.

The kid stared at her.

"L-let me out."

He just hummed.

"At least tell me what you want."

He smiled.

"I'm not scared—"

"Liar."

"I'm not."

He hummed again. He looked back at Penny and Sun. He approached Ruby. He looked at her.

"I'm— f— Fuck!"

He got very close. His eyes were such a stormy blue that they were almost steel. Almost like hers.

"I'll—" Ruby snarled, catching the edges of her tic and giving her room to breathe. "I'll kill you."

He barked a laugh. "Is that all you came here for? Having something to kill without any of those pesky moral compunctions?"

"I came to save my friend."

The Director turned to look at Sun briefly, then back at Ruby with a humored expression. "You're friends? Could've fooled me."

Ruby said nothing. She just scowled. The boy shrugged.

"Oh well. Tell me, Ruby, you're…" he looked her up and down. "No, you're not a Second, are you? You don't believe in anything."

Ruby remained silent, save for the little noises she had to rumble in her throat.

"I guess I can pretend you're a Second," the Director decided casually. "For ceremony's sake. At least you've got the eyes. Penny?"

Penny shot to her feet and whirled to bow at the boy attentively.

He motioned to Ruby and Sun, walking briskly past her. "Get these two ready."

Ruby and Sun made vocal objections, posing questions and demands, but Penny just bowed again. "Of course, Director Ironwood."