Ruby Florabel Branwen Rose spooned food into her mouth.

Weiss Schnee spooned food into her mouth.

Blake Belladonna spooned food into their mouth.

Yang Xiao Long spooned Blake Belladonna. On the cafeteria bench. Somehow. She looked pale and sickly, her eyes red with dark bags beneath.

"So, uh…" Ruby started, her mouth half-full. "How was your night?"

Yang only groaned in response. Blake actually answered: "Fun. You?"

Ruby side-eyed her nemesis, who side-eyed her back. "Fun," Ruby agreed. "What'd you guys get up to after prom?"

Blake shrugged. "Orgy in the JNR room."

"Oh!" was the only way Ruby could possibly respond.

Blake waved her off. "Don't worry, your gf wasn't there. Your other gf made sure she wouldn't be attending. Left her ass looking like 'X~X'."

"L-like what?"

Blake did an 'X~X' face to the limits of what corporeal skin and muscle could achieve. "Dead as hell. I mean, not really, but p much."

Ruby turned to the girl she mentally referred to as 'nemesis', though it sounded annoyingly like 'girlfriend' in her head. "Pyrrha's not… my girlfriend anymore."

"Oh, you broke up with her?"

Ruby curdled. "N-no, not… necessarily—"

"It won't be necessary," Weiss answered, putting on her most stuck-up airs. "That duel was specifically to relinquish her claim upon thee, so—"

Thump.

Weiss paled. Somehow.

"Heeeeeeeey, gem!" Pyrrha drawled, wrapping one too-perfect arm around the girl she supposedly had no claim on anymore. She didn't even bring any food. "I'm so sorry about last night, I shouldn't have made you come, that's on me, love. I'm really sorry."

Weiss Schnee, bless her heart, did actually get to her feet and make a stand. "Relinquish my Florabel, you wretched ginger."

"Your?" Yang blearily mumbled.

"Hey, wait, didn't you try to kill Weiss?" Blake recounted. "After you'd lost a fair duel?"

Ruby was starting to worry that other people didn't find the idea of murder as simple as she did. Oh well. "Shit, princess," she muttered, throwing Pyrrha's arm off her shoulders with more force than strictly necessary. "Did you really?"

Weiss stuck up her pointy little nose and smirked triumphantly. "Aye. I did."

Ruby scooted a bit towards her, which was objectively stupid since she'd be the one protecting Weiss, but it made her feel a little safer. "How the hell did you manage that?"

Pyrrha's face reddened. "By cheating," she claimed. "Challenging me to an unfair duel."

Weiss snorted. "Unfair?"

Yang groaned. "Shut uuuuuuup, no cat-fighting. Ruby, stoooop theeeeem."

Ruby deferred to Blake, who answered her silent query: "She's hungover as shit."

"That makes sense. Pyrrha, please go away," Ruby asked politely. "I'm breaking up with you."

Weiss crossed her arms. Ruby stretched her arm up and back, palm flat. Weiss smacked it in perfect partner synchronicity. Hell yeah.

Pyrrha raised an unimpressed brow and puffed out a disbelieving laugh. "You're not breaking up with me."

"Uh, yeah. I am."

Weiss leaned forward, making Ruby wince as her shrill voice got in danger-close with her ear. "You heard her! Begone!"

"You're not," Pyrrha asserted. "Especially not with this Fourth zealot. Those people kidnap—"

Ruby bolted forward to silence her once-GF, but Pyrrha scooted back and had her stumbling face-first towards the bench. Weiss saved her by swiftly grabbing the back of her collar and none-too-gently yanking her up.

Pyrrha continued: "They kidnapped you, Ruby! Her people!"

Weiss scoffed. "They are not 'my peo—'"

"They what?" Yang growled. "Who did? Ruby!" She turned to her sister, her lilac eyes simmering with subsurface crimson. "Why didn't you say anything!"

"I—" Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Fucking… Pyrrha… goddammit. "Look, I know it seems bad—"

"Noooo," Blake drawled sarcastically.

"You guys were on a mission and I… I got in a situation with some Fourths—" Yang opened her mouth, but Ruby got out quicker: "Not Weiss! For god's sake, not fucking Weiss; she was with you. It was some militant cult sect in the city. I was…" she sighed, looking away and preparing for the lampooning from her sister. "I was spying on them. With a friend—"

"You were—"

Blake smacked a hand tight over Yang's mouth and nodded to their leader. "Please, continue."

"Look, you see pics of some militant cult with extreme anti-Faunus ties, you can't just leave it alone!" She deliberately left out the whole Torchwick thing. "And my friend… might have gotten captured. So…" Her voice dropped to a mumble, trailing off. "I went in to save him. And I… got captured… too…"

"You're lucky I came to save you," Pyrrha said, obviously hiding how good it felt to jerk herself off.

"Shut up," Ruby spat. "You just followed Weiss cuz you wanted an excuse to beat her ass."

"Waiwaiwait," Blake rushed. "You told Weiss, but not us?"

Ruby shrugged. "Y-yeah? I thought she'd be able to, like… sneak me out. Or something."

Weiss made a wee offended noise. "S-sneak thee out? What, thinkest— do you think we all share some secret password?"

Ruby winced. "I… might have thought that."

"Good god, Florabel…" Weiss sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"But it's done," Ruby said. "We chased them off."

Blake slowly removed her hand from Yang's mouth. Yang fumed. "What did they do to you," she ground out through her teeth.

Ruby cringed. "Uh… they didn't hurt me."

"They were going to beat you to death with a crown," Pyrrha stated, deadpan. "Like a ritual sacrifice."

Miraculously, Yang did not explode. She breathed deep and exhaled like a dragon. "Ritual sacrifice. Amazing. And they were Fourth Archivists?"

"Yes!" Pyrrha jumped to answer.

Yang moved her glare over to Weiss, but Ruby stood up in the way of it. "Hey! Don't look at her! She's the one who came to get me, Pyrrha just stalked her there!"

Weiss put a hand on her shoulder. "Florabel, you don't have to—"

"No, I do!" Ruby asserted, throwing the hand off. "Weiss is my partner, okay! You guys don't get to judge her, I do!" She turned to her nemesis. "What did you say you challenged Pyrrha for?"

Weiss blinked rapidly, confused. "To… lay a claim on you?" The others raised their brows at her. "A-as my nemesis!"

"Then I lay a claim on you, Weiss!" Ruby declared, wagging a finger at her nemesis before directing that finger at the other three around her. "She's mine and only I get to say shit! I don't care if she's Fourth, whatever!"

Everyone blinked at her.

"Gayass," Blake coughed.

The hard line Yang's lips crumpled, suppressing laughter.

Pyrrha did some weird offended nose-honk. "You can't do that. That's too much like she's your girl—"

"She's not my girlfriend!" Ruby said too quickly. "And so what if she was! I could fix her!"

Yang said: "What the fuck?"

Pyrrha said: "What?"

Weiss said: "Uh?"

Blake said: "Lmao."

Ruby slumped back into the cafeteria bench, dropping her burning face in her hands. "Pyrrha, please fuck off. You're controlling as hell and you treat me like you own me; plus, ten dates before a kiss?" Bitterly, she added: "You didn't really like me, you just wanted some… religious fulfillment thing. I'm an atheist, dude, not a friggin' Second Archivist. So go away."

Ruby shooed her. Pyrrha recoiled as if being shooed away was the worst offense she'd ever taken. "You can't just—"

"Don't you have a team to get back to?"

Pyrrha finally went pale and quiet. Maybe it was the razor tone, maybe it was the point she was making, maybe it was some grand internal epiphany— whatever it was, it didn't matter, because it was enough to get to her. Pyrrha made a perfect face of gaping shock, looked around at Ruby's teammates like they'd help (they wouldn't), and decided at last to cut her losses and dip.

Ruby heaved a sigh at her absence. Weiss sat back down beside her, brushing the backs of her knuckles against Ruby's. Ruby took the comfort without question, timidly slipping her fingertips into Weiss' palm beneath the table, and only realized she'd been scratching the floor when Weiss' trickling siphon made her stop.

Blake and Yang stared at them pointedly. Silently. I-know-what-you-are-ly.

"So…" Blake started. "'Nemesis', eh?"

Weiss' hand shot away from Ruby's— way too quickly for the movement not to be obvious above the table. She scowled. "Aye. Nemeses. That is what we are. It entails rivalry, hatred, and respect for each other's abilities. No more, no less."

"Lol," said Blake, disbelieving. "Lmao."

Yang eyed Weiss. "You… saved Ruby? From other Fourths?"

Weiss rolled her eyes and groaned. "Dear god, how many times do I have to reiterate this? Yes!"

"And you're okay with that?"

"They were a gaggle of lunatics and zealots. Why would I not be okay with it?"

"Because you're… also…"

"I am not—"

"What's the difference, then?"

"The difference is that they kidnapped my partner," Weiss claimed. "I'm the only one who can do that."

"You actually may not do that," Yang said stonily. "If you kidnap Ruby, I'm gonna murder you."

'Again', Ruby wanted to add, since Yang had already exploded Weiss' skull once by accident. Instead, she said: "Can we please leave this alone? We chased them off, I'm okay, let's be done with it."

"Psh, no way, dude," Blake replied. "They're Fourths. They don't just go away."

"These Fourths got a taste of their own medicine that they won't forget," Ruby said darkly. "That Ironwood guy's gonna be scarred for life. They'll think twice—"

"You said Ironwood?" Blake asked, no longer leaning back casually, now leaning so far forward they were nearly in Ruby's lap. "Like… James Ironwood?"

Ruby shrugged. "Director Ironwood's all I—"

"He's a Director now?" Blake leaned so far back they fell off the bench, landing on their rear with a groan of "Fuuuuuuuck."

"So what?"

"How old did he look?"

"About my age?" Ruby answered tentatively. "Maybe younger? I dunno. Why?"

"Damn," Blake said from the floor, slowly rising with Yang's help. "Damn, shit, damn. Flip."

"Dude, what!"

"Okay, okay, so—"

Ln1.66

THE VALE TRIBUNE

1 January, 3F440

CULT SIEGE ENDS IN DEATH

JAMES IRONWOOD FOUND DEAD

FAMILY KILLED IN MURDER-SUICIDE

—

Vale Municipal Forces Declare End to Week-long siege on Armed Fourth Archivist Compound

—

BY: Timothy Champan

LESSER VALE — Municipal Captain Edelgard Schwarz announced just before sunrise that the bloody siege was finally over, and with it, the rampant rise of militant Archivism can be expected to end. Late last night multiple long-range teams were tasked with putting a final end to this weeklong conflict, which has so far resulted in the tragic deaths of four Municipal Officers (Emile Roche, Cassiane Chartreuse, Orville B. Gerin, Purla Lait), Two Professional Huntresses (Nadira Cestene, Elvira Cestene), and several local Faunus. These long-range teams executed what is being called a 'smokeout': dropping several kilograms of crowd-control irritants in key locations via mortar and incapacitating the occupants as they fled the left the compound open to begin the rescue operations, successfully saving the lives of kidnapped Huntress-in-training Dante Cestene, local township leader Sybill Greymoor, Emma and Pavel Bleu, and several Faunus children and adults.

James Ironwood, patriarch of the Crowned Saints Post-Archivist Founded Temple, was discovered in a safe room underground, situated between the surface compound and the underground holding cells for Faunus captives they were reportedly using for free labor and (as attested by other Faunus captives) brutal ritual sacrifice. He and four members of his family were found in a circle, killed by what investigators are identifying as 'undeniably suicidal' wounds. The only survivor— his eight year old son James— was found with the bloodied suicide weapon (a revolver) in his hands, its last bullet a dud.

"Holy shit, for real?"

Blake nodded slowly. "F fucking R."

Ruby inhaled as if more air was all she needed to cope with that lengthy explanation. "God… god."

"Don't act so surprised," Weiss mumbled.

Ruby whirled on her. "What was that?"

Weiss slumped like all the world's guilt was dropped on her shoulders. "What? You already knew we were the worst people in existence; this fits quite well into your ideas of us. Frankly, it's quite tame to the things I've seen."

"And… what things have you seen?" Ruby slowly asked.

Weiss stared at her food. She pointedly stuck a spoonful of it into her mouth, mumbling, "'M trying to eat."

Ruby hadn't felt hungry since Pyrrha sat down next to her, but she nodded nonetheless. She just sat there in silence as her team ate, thinking. If Blake was right, and they probably were— Ruby suspected as much herself, she just didn't want to believe it— she wasn't in the clear with the Fourths. She was, if anything, even deeper in the muck after murdering so many of them and permanently scarring their leader. And knowing for sure he was involved with Torchwick… at least insofar as acquiring highly illegal collars and using the man as a getaway driver… fuck.

"Shit," she whispered to herself. God, she cursed so much now. Whatever. Weiss' fault. Probably.

They had one more mission before winter break. All she had to do was lay low, keep an eye out, and try to get back in touch with Sun. He could keep her in-the-know if he found some way to track them while he was at school, and she'd much rather know where the Fourths are to avoid them than risk running into them on a normal day out. So long as she stayed vigilant and focused on school, not drawing attention, she'd be fine. Yang and Blake could do the shopping trips.

She just had to chill. That was all she had to do until winter break.