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Student Identification Report
[photoID: 31101831RR]
RUBY FLORABEL BRANWEN ROSE
CCC: 31101831
DOB: 31 October 3F439
TYPE: FA - AV - Ra
PHNO: Arms; Legs; Eyes
SEX: F
EYES:
WGT: 126
HGT: 5' 10" (6' 7")
Abbv. Biography:
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Student Psychiatric Report
Administered by: Dr. Aaron Lavis
Proctored by: Glynda Goodwitch
Patient: Ruby Rose 31101831
Synopses:
Patient already diagnosed with Gille's Syndrome, but copes reasonably well with emergent tics; reports great difficulty coping with tics during 'anxiety attacks', which are as-yet only self-diagnosed. Patient also seems extremely reluctant to give personal information regarding their time at school, especially in regards to how they entered Beacon Academy. Patient visibly discomforted by Goodwitch's presence, but attempts to divert when probed. Patient outwardly expresses interest in being a Huntress, though this seems remarkably platitudinal.
When confronted regarding recent self-defense killings prior to enrollment, patient expressed neither remorse nor regret, nor did they seem keen on exploring that particular facet. The phrase 'Get stabbing or get dying' was used in reference to their parents' advice, seemingly as a way to lighten the mood, but neither myself nor Goodwitch were assuaged. Recommend further probing on the subject of childhood trauma.
Inkblot test was, as usual, fucking useless. Stop making me do this pseudoscience bullshit.
-Dr. Aaron Lavis
I worry for Ruby Rose. She very clearly does not want to be here, but despite my petitioning Oz, here she remains. The girl has deep-rooted insecurity and every time I see her I am overcome with a sense of dread. She looks like she's on the verge of a full mental break. Maybe it's the Faunus features— the big eyes, etc.— that I'm just not used to seeing, maybe she just looks like that normally, but I can't shake the feeling that her gears are stripped, and one day they're going to slip all at once. I don't want to be here when that happens. I don't want her to be here when that happens. We don't need another [REDACTED] situation.
-Prof. Glynda Goodwitch
Full transcript:
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[SPECIAL REPORT]
Delve Report
Administered by: Shion Zaiden
Proctored by: [N/A]
Patient: Ruby Rose 31101831
Synopses:
I am petitioning the union ASAP to have Oz tested for narcotics. This student should never have been allowed on campus, and the fact that she's still here is a testament to the frailty of his senile cortex. She is, for lack of a better term, extremely disturbed. Something's keeping her from tipping fully— the delve didn't tell me exactly what— but she needs to be put on mood stabilizers or kicked out. She's not gonna stay on the edge forever.
GOD I hate this job.
-Prof. Shion Zaiden
Full Delve Report:
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Clunk.
Clunk.
Clunk.
"F-Florabel?"
Kplcht.
Weiss watched her nemesis straighten and turn, her face a mask of red with two shining pools of silver. She looked down at the bulky wrench in her hand, covered in gore, and the dead Fourth below her.
"Oh," Ruby said, her expression unreadable beneath the blood. "Uh… hey, guys."
Blake vomited again. Oobleck hummed.
"Have you seen my stuff?" Ruby asked casually. "They took my weapons."
Weiss shook her head. "Nay."
Ruby harrumphed, flicking the gore off her tool. She nodded opposite of the way their party had come in. "Let's go, then. I need my stuff."
Yang spoke up: "Why? We need to get out of here."
Ruby cocked an eyebrow at her. It was very hard to see that beneath all the blood, but Weiss did. "Because there's a sect of militant Fourth Archivists hiding underground?" Ruby said slowly, obviously. "They were definitely gonna kill me."
Yang lifted her chin. "We wouldn't have let them."
"Cool, I'm sure," Ruby said a little awkwardly, as if she weren't sure how else to respond to that. "Regardless, we gotta stop the bad guys."
Blake groaned, abhorrently wiping her encrusted mouth on her sleeve. "Do we have to? I… I think I need anti-nausea meds. And, like, a year of therapy." She let out a wet cough. "Lmao."
Oobleck, reminding everyone of his presence, cleared his throat. "I'm afraid Miss Branwen-Rose may be correct. It is a Hunter's responsibility to root out the source of local Grimm incursion if possible, and an underground terrorist group— especially one which is confirmed hostile and aggressive— would be a sufficient threat to Greater Vale to warrant expeditious action."
Blake dramatically tipped over into Yang's arms, one arm draped over her forehead. "Yang, make him talk normal."
"Says the one teaching Weiss to do the same."
"Nor-mal!" Blake enunciated. "He's too sciencey!"
"Scientific," Oobleck corrected.
"He's saying I'm right," Ruby summated. "We need to root them out before whatever's getting done down here gets done. Weiss, hankie?"
Weiss blinked. "What?"
"Your hankie," Ruby restated, gesturing over her bloody face. "I think you can figure out why."
Begrudgingly, Weiss extracted her periwinkle handkerchief for Florabel a second time, trying very hard not to think about how badly it was going to stain with some dead Fourth's blood. She handed the dainty cloth over, watching Ruby's eyes as she did. Her gaze wasn't met, but Ruby missed her first attempt at grabbing all the same, and when she did manage to get her death-wet fingers around the thing, Weiss could feel how much they shook.
"A-adrenaline," Ruby explained unprompted, laughing nervously at herself. "We need to do this quick, I'm kinda close to passing out."
Weiss watched her nemesis wipe her mouth, turning the red mess over her lips into something more like macabre lipstick— only if it'd been self-applied by a boy first discovering his mother's makeup supplies. The voice of their supervising Huntsman snapped her out of the sight.
"Any clue where they've taken your things?" he asked. "I imagine you escaped imprisonment before we arrived."
"They've got some kind of robot girl fighting for them, she probably took my things after…" Ruby's gaze slid away from her partner, ducking away in shame as her voice trailed off. "Torchwick's probably here, too."
"Roman Torchwick?" Oobleck inquired, his face taut with surprise. "The criminal? How do you know?"
"I saw him at… uh… something else. I know he's affiliated with the Fourths."
Oobleck opened his mouth, clearly set on interrogating her further, before a sharp set of barks drew their attention to Zwei. His little legs had carried him off to the other side of Weiss' now-less-bloodied nemesis, where he barked fervently around a bend in the cavern. Weiss smiled at the angelic sound, but her smile quickly sagged when something else filled the tunnel.
A drum beat. A roar. A gha-ghunk gha-ghunk gha-gunk like the galloping of some great beast and its herd. Oobleck's ears perked up at the sound, not unlike how Zwei's nose perked up at a smell. His eyes twitched, a torrent of thought visible beneath the surface.
"That is…" his gaze drifted clockwise, tracking a pair of steel rails across the cavern floor. He squinted. "That is a locomotive. A…" he closed his eyes briefly. "Valeri Locomotive engine, sixteen core. But she sounds remarkably displeased— out of commission, likely stuck here, likely jury-rigged by underground cultists with no knowledge of or respect for freight engines or locomotive maintenance, likely abandoned at the terminal when—"
The train blew by, drowning everything else he had to say beneath a momentous flume of wind and the deafening bellow of its horn. An arm wrapped around Weiss' waist and, with a tug like being pulled into whitewater rapids, she was reconstituted somewhere else. Her arms flailed, seeking her captor.
"Woah, woah, Weiss! I just got us on—"
Weiss grabbed the back of her nemesis' head and yanked it into her chest. She pressed Ruby tight to her and buried her face in the taller girl's sweaty, greasy hair. She breathed deep, taking in the Florabel, and grunted. "Florabel, you god-damned idiot," Weiss growled into her crown. "How in the hell did this happen!"
"W-Weiss, you're siphoning— I— I'm gonna pass out."
Weiss relinquished Ruby's head immediately, pushing her out to arm's length and holding her by her safely clothed shoulders. Ruby frowned sheepishly. "S-sorry, princess. I… it was an accident. The ground literally opened under my feet." One of her feathered arms crossed over her waist, holding the other. "And I lost to Penny," she added with the same affect as 'I've been cheating on you.' "I'm sorry."
Weiss slapped her, drawing her hand back quickly enough that the siphon didn't have time to open. "That's my scorn for now. We will get back to that, you harlot." Weiss looked around, taking in the space: a box car, open on the sides and in very shoddy condition. "The others?"
Ruby blinked, but slowly came back to comprehension. "They probably made it on. If they didn't, then it's just up to us." She dared to meet Weiss' gaze, her blood-stained cheek now red with a handprint as well. She dared to gain a twinkle in her eyes. She dared to smile, the incorrigible bint. "I'm not worried."
Internally, Weiss grabbed her idiot heart and throttled it for its betrayal— for ceasing its beat, for simultaneously hammering, for soaring and sinking— while, externally, she said: "Be silent, Florabel."
Ruby laughed mockingly. "'Be silent,' you know you tell me that every time I—"
"I will siphon thee to death, Florabel."
Ruby snorted, but brought them both to stand without further banter. "We're in one of the middle cars."
"So observant," Weiss drawled. Ruby flicked her shoulder.
"We need to fight to the front, that way we can stop it."
"Why this vessel?" Weiss asked, drawing her sword.
"I dunno. Big train, hard to stop, pretty fast, can carry heavy stuff like personnel or cargo." Ruby scowled. "Or bombs."
"Bombs?"
"Weapon of choice for terrorists seeking to exploit chaos," Ruby explained, speaking with the ease of someone who wasn't aboard one such bomb-laden freight train. "Abandoned city, subway line probably goes back to Greater Vale. Populated area plus bomb equals a lot of bad vibes, thus, Grimm. And the tunnel…"
"Is likely festering with subterranean Grimm," Weiss surmised.
"Guess I accelerated their plans," Ruby mumbled. "If you hadn't come, a search party would've exposed them. Better to kick the plan off while they have the element of surprise."
"What're you going to do, then?" Weiss asked. "You've no weapons."
Ruby shrugged, lifting her wrench half-dismissively, half-indicatively— a 'this is what I've got' kind of expression. "I'll figure something out. You don't have a spare, do you?"
"If I had a spare, thou wouldst know."
"I'll make you something later," Ruby said offhandedly. Weiss froze, making Ruby jerk as she held the Faunus back by the hand.
"Thou wilt… what?"
"I'll make you something," Ruby said quickly, trying to get a move on. "Come on, it's not a big deal, you made me pants. When's your birthday?"
Weiss slumped. "May fifteenth."
Ruby waved it off. "Snowcrest, then. Or, er… nevermind."
"What?"
"Hearts… fest?"
"Heartsfest," Weiss repeated stupidly, then again, "Heartsfest."
"Y-yeah, since… y'know…" Ruby scratched the back of her neck, her fingers gently coming back together to meet indexes and thumbs, forming the shape of…
A heart.
"Be silent, Florabel."
Florabel smiled her disgusting, big-nosed smile, and it was so awful that Weiss' entire face curdled into something that a stupid, contextless observer might be tempted to call a smile as well, when in reality it was pure disdain that simply looked like a smile. Ruby took her arm— it was utilitarian to do that and made sense in a combat situation— to lead her out of the box car, swinging open the conjoining doors heading for the locomotive.
There were Fourths, of course. Why wouldn't there be? They came mostly from the way they were going, pouring from the forward sections as they advanced— only a few came from behind, which Weiss took as a sign of the rest of their team fighting their way up behind them— but they were dispatched with ease. Florabel was a monster with her wrench, leading the way with swings that sent dazed Fourths back into her partner's blade, her flanks unassailable with the space so tight and with Weiss guarding her from behind. It was actually a lovely experience— like a very violent promenade— which was a thought that Weiss had to incinerate as soon as it disgraced her innocent grey-matter. She focused doubly on Florabel. Helping her. Killing for her. Watching her.
How had she lost to some (allegedly) robotic ginger? The notion stung her. Even now, every body taking Ruby's blows was supposed to be her. She was the only one fit for Ruby. None of these brainless heretics could even fathom the beautiful hatred she wanted to exercise upon the lovely girl. None of them knew.
"H-holy… shit… Weiss," Ruby panted, stumbling. Weiss caught her around the waist and held her steady. "How many fucking guys can you stuff in a train?"
"Too many," Weiss agreed, supporting Ruby's gait to the next door. "On your feet, Florabel. Forget not thy nemesis."
Ruby laughed breathlessly. "Ha, haha, never."
Weiss' blush didn't rise above her exertion. "Next one."
"Open it."
Weiss opened it.
Ruby groaned.
"Of course," the Faunus whinged. "I was really hoping not to be right with the whole 'bomb' hypothesis."
Weiss gazed upon the thing before them: a great mass of metal and colorful wires, mismatched containers, and a bright red display that read 'ARMED'. Ruby sighed.
"Weiss, watch the door."
She didn't argue with that commanding tone, though she did keep an eye on the bomb as she gingerly stepped around it.
"Gimme your phone."
Weiss tossed the device.
"Code?"
"Ten thirty-one."
"Okay."
"..."
"Weiss, why the fuck is—"
"So I wouldn't forget."
Ruby laughed lowly. "Weiss…"
"What! I didn't want to—"
"I am gonna do terrible things to you later," Ruby promised, pressing the loud, textile keys of the ancient device. She put it to her ear. "Hey, Yang. Yeah. Yeah, it's up here too. Can you hustle up this way? No point in trying to disarm them."
Weiss was left to stand ramrod-straight and blush.
"Cool," Ruby said into the phone. "Yeah we're good. We're gonna keep pushing up to the engine. Yeah, that's all we can do. Sounds good. Love you too."
Ruby hung up. Weiss took her phone back. Ruby pecked her on the cheek.
"C'mon, prin-cess," Ruby teased, apparently keen on directing all the energy of her second wind towards flustering her nemesis. "Open the door."
Weiss, smartly keeping the flux in her chest shut tight behind her teeth, opened the next door.
"Bell-bell! There you are!"