Penny had her weapons.

Her disc, her wires, even her gun.

Penny had stolen her things.

'No child of mine will commit such crimes of cowardice.'

'Thief. You little thief. Did you think I wouldn't catch you?"

'Hold out your hands.'

'Your mother will hate me for this.'

'I hate you!'

'Stay still. If you move you might get hurt.'

'It already hurts!'

'So you want broken fingers?'

'No!'

'Then stay still. I'm already gonna be in enough trouble with Summer.'

"Penny."

"Bell! Are these all your cool things? Monofilament wire? Scary!"

"B-Bell— ngh— Give me my things back, Penny. Now."

"Nnnnnnope!"

"I'm going to— Be-nng-agh!— kill you like I killed all the other Fourth scum."

"Oh, except that one."

Penny pointed to Weiss, who was staring at Ruby with a look of unmistakable concern. "I'm biased," Ruby grumbled, locking her glare back on the robotic ginger.

"I don't see what your sexuality has to do with any of this, but a degenerate can degener-ate however it wants, I suppose. After all," Penny dropped anchors from Ruby's gauntlet, their silky wires completely invisible without light to glimmer off. Ruby's disc was in her other hand. She had Ruby's tool/gun belt strapped over her hips. "The blessed do not concern themselves with the sins of beasts."

"That is literally all you do," Ruby growled. "Bell."

Penny smirked as if she'd won the argument.

"Give. Me. My. Things."

Penny laughed. Ruby looked at her nemesis.

"Well?" she muttered expectantly, tipping her head towards Penny. "You gonna defend your claim or what?"

Weiss blinked hard. "R-right. Of course. Er, shut… whatever." She aligned her sword with Penny, raising it high. "Clamest thou my Florabel's honor? The faithless Fourth thou art? Ha! Test thy mettle against a true Fourth, heretic!"

Ruby rolled her eyes. "I'll draw her fire."

Weiss nodded. Penny started opining on some holy monologue that neither Weiss nor Ruby listened to.

"I will defend thy honor, Florabel, it is mine to take."

(You think you can stop us? Some Second spawn and its mate? The mantle of the Fourth is—)

Ruby snickered despite how much she wanted to rip Penny's jaw off and break her hands with it. "Sex joke."

Weiss let out one airy laugh. "Did you just say 'sex joke'?"

(—children will be spawn just like their mother! Feathered, amalgamated beasts! What kind of Fourth would permit such defile—)

"I couldn't think of anything in time for it to be funny," Ruby admitted, getting another little laugh. "Maybe, like, 'my v-card, my honor, let me have something, dammit!'"

"That was not as funny as 'sex joke.'"

(—Director will deliver us unto a new era of retribution! Where the beasts are beasts! Where those who lie with beasts are—)

"Wanna try to kill each other when we get back to Beacon?"

"God yes, Florabel, please."

"Then… cafe date?"

"After a shower."

"Together?"

"Uh… no. Not…"

"Not comfy with that?"

"No?"

"That's okay."

"Not… not yet. I just…"

"You don't have to explain yourself or promise anything to me. It's cool."

Weiss stared at her, a little speechless for whatever reason. She stared at Ruby like she'd offered her a stack of solid gold— disbelieving, slightly distrusting, but altogether awed. Ruby's cheeks warmed.

"Quit staring, babe. She's almost done."

Weiss shook her head and focused on the other Fourth's speech— entering its denouement, judging by her tone.

—open Vale to the world their degeneracy invites, give them a taste of true fear, show them what comes from the reign of beast-lovers and spawn!

Ruby scowled anew. "This is your last chance to give me my weapons."

This is your last chance to sacrifice your sinful form to the truth!

"Okay." Ruby sighed, watching Penny. "Weiss, if I disappear, get to the engine. Stop the train no matter what, okay?"

"I'll not—"

"You will," Ruby asserted, her gentle tone smashed beneath an anvil of cold, hard iron. "I'll be fine; I wouldn't let some other Fourth beat me again."

"You—"

"I swear."

Weiss went quiet. Ruby went quiet. Penny, even, went quiet. They stared at each other for a bit, not moving, not doing much of anything. Penny's anchors dangled from invisible wire. Weiss' dust-enhanced arming sword ebbed a dull, hot orange, her pommel close to dun. Ruby had a wrench.

Gha-gunk gha-gunk gha-gunk.

BWOOOOOOOOOM BWOOOM-BWOOOOOOOM

Ruby flinched at the loud horn. Penny blasted towards her.

Weiss caught her charge on her sword and wrenched the blade back towards herself, ripping the hot edge along the other Fourth's emerald Aura before the briefest, thinnest glimmer of silver had her ducking back and swinging blindly, catching wires on her sword as the anchor spun around the blade and slapped her in the cheekbone, its wires cutting shallow, parallel rifts into her face.

Ruby grabbed her arm and tried to pull it away, forgetting (because she was an idiot) that Penny was a literal robot with steel muscles, and she would not at all be swayed by Ruby's shitty strength. The Fourth thing didn't budge, so Ruby started beating her over the head with her bulky wrench, forcing her to finally turn and raise the disc she'd stolen as a shield, making its creator wince with each clunk of her wrench.

Penny blocked three wrench-blows before she tried pulling her wires from Weiss, but the ghoulish Fourth tugged back with her sword. Penny's strength made Weiss faceplant onto the boxcar floor, but it kept the girl from recalling the weapons she'd taken, and the brief moment of pause for Penny to process that gave Ruby an opportunity to get her claws on the disc's rim. Ruby wrenched the red buckler aside and lashed back out with her wrench, bashing across Penny's eyes and making her stagger. She tried to tear Ruby's wires back again, but every scraggly ounce of Weiss fought her for it, and if one was stuck, they were all stuck.

This wasn't true, of course— she'd designed the gauntlet with a failsafe to clip stuck wires— but Penny wouldn't know that. Such was the way of cowards and thieves.

Ruby fell back, her Aura stuttering as her own disc drove into her chest like a battering ram. The shield of her soul-self kept her sternum from exploding, thankfully, but the force of the blow still knocked the wind out of her and left her seeing stars— a whole universe— glittering over her vision like radiation exposure on film. Ruby tried to push up from the floor, but her head drowned in the airless headrush, only made twice as bad as she instinctively sucked in air and found the feeling of her body washing away beneath bloodless tingles.

"Sh-shit—"

"Florabel, up!" Weiss shouted from somewhere. "Florabel!"

That scratchy voice could lull her to sleep. She could almost feel herself in Weiss' lap again. Warm— too warm— but too content to care. Ah man, she's gonna take Weiss on a date. That's… oh, that's gonna be fun. And bad.

"Flor—"

Ruby shifted her head, just enough to see past the, laying her eyes on the beautiful, snow-haired…

Ugly, skinny, wretched, racist, stupid, useless, talentless, skillless little Fourth! How dare she be losing to Penny! And right after Ruby did, too! It put shame on their rivalry, who did that pasty bitch think she was!

Ruby threw her wrench, clocking the ginger bitch right in her ginger bitch face. She looked at Ruby like she'd vomited in her stupid hair again, hatefully watching the Faunus stumble up to her feet, collapse on one knee, then shakily get back up. "H-hey, dick," Ruby stuttered, teetering on the edge of consciousness. "She's mine to kill… you… thief."

Penny, who had been holding a prone Weiss up off the ground by the collar and looked about a second away from finishing the job Yang had (accidentally) started, unceremoniously dumped her skinny victim. She stood straight, turned her body towards Ruby, and lifted both hands. The palms glowed green.

Ah. Shit. She might not be able to dodge that.

Penny yelped, kicking wildly with her left leg— her left leg which was tight in Weiss' grip at the ankle. The animavore was tossed around like a ragdoll by Penny's inhumanly strong leg, but by the grace of what must be the Fourth's favor, she managed to hold tight. Her good eye started to glow brighter as she siphoned. Her bad eye started to smoke.

Weiss wailed and thrashed like she was being possessed by the ghosts of all the world's dead electricians, her limbs all flailing out and twitching as her skin started to crack with branching red marks. Penny seized, her eyes bouncing in different directions. The scent of smoking flesh thickened in the boxcar, and a sense of oddly pervasive calm replaced all the blood that Ruby didn't have. She didn't have the blood to keep fighting. Weiss was being electrocuted (in the soul. Somehow). Her remaining options were singular, thus exceedingly easy to make.

Charging at Penny felt like skating on ice. Taking the limp wires off the ground was almost a second thought. Plotting had never been easier.

Guys: 0. Pennys/Pennies: 1. Weapons: not enough. Disposition: who cares. Affiliation: dead Fourths.

Rubys: enough. Weisses: as many as she needed to stop the train. Weapons: whatever. Disposition: okay. Affiliation: dead Huntresses.

She needed three points. After loading Weiss on her Semblance, she knew how it'd retaliate by trying it again. There were two ways it could shunt her out of the boxcar: through the vent in the back and between the slats in the floor.

If she got shunted out the back, she'd survive. If she got shunted through the floor, she'd die. Knowing her Semblance, which would it pick?

Ruby found herself on the underside of the train, her Aura blazing bright crimson as she slammed against the ground at speed. She yanked on the wires, scrambling with her legs, her Aura petering out in a second. Her useless bird-foot briefly re-struck the ground, but it was more than enough to shatter all the phalanges of her left foot on impact. The wires started splitting their way through her hands as they went taut against the weight on the other side. She could picture Penny pinned to the floor, wires trying to pull her through the boxcar's shitty floorboards, scratching at the monofilaments cutting into her synthetic neck.

Ruby cried out at her broken foot, but managed to get the other wedged in a crossbrace, supporting her lower body as she dangled parallel to the racing railway just a foot below her face. The wires were halfway through each hand, sawing into her carpal bones and making her rings and pinkies go limp as they sliced through the tendons. She didn't need to hold on forever. She just needed to hold until Penny died. Weiss would heal. She'd stop the train. The bombs wouldn't reach Vale. Ruby would get a cool memorial. Or something.

Warm fluid seeped through the floorboards— black blood, Ruby realized— draining into the back of her hair and dripping past the sides of her head. Penny was either dead with her neck sawed open or dying with her neck sawed open. She could feel the wire slipping between the carpals of her left hand, pressing into her middle finger's tendon like a saw on a string.

Shit, she wasn't gonna get to take Weiss out. Oh well. They had a weird thing, anyway. This would be easier for everyone.

No, wait, oh shit this was gonna destroy Weiss. Oh god, she was an asshole! Shit!

The peace shattered. She didn't want to do this anymore. She didn't want to hurt Weiss like this. She didn't want to hurt Yang or mom or mum like this, they deserved better, they deserved better than her, sweet fuck was this really the best plan she had? She didn't want to die.

She couldn't burn tissue for her Semblance— she'd black out as soon as she dropped from the line, then tumble off the train and die. She couldn't blink off to the side, that'd burn her body and make her pass out, then she'd be left behind while the train speeds by, left to die alone in a cave whether it be by bomb or Grimm or stray falling rock. She was fucked. She'd fucked herself. She was gonna die and it was all her fault—

Ruby's chest exploded with pain as a sword slipped between the floorboards and slammed into her back, breaking through the front with a gush of red— the bloody herald of a familiar sword, its blade glowing bright with steaming cyan energy. There was a loud crashing sound, then an exponential multiplication of the cold pain in her chest— an unbearable amount of pain, honestly— but she didn't have to bear it for very long at all. Because she stopped living.

For a bit.

Then she started living again.

"Fucking FU—"

Her whole entire face was pressed into a burdensomely endowed chest— her sister's, judging by the fact that she recognized the crying. "Ruby! Oh, Ruby, Ruby… god, you— jeez, Ruby! I thought you were dead!"

"You're welcome," gloated another voice.

"You stabbed her through the chest!"

"Saving her life!"

It was Weiss' shrill, awful voice. Ironically, it sounded like heaven.

"I am just as happy as ye," she continued. "I don't like stabbing Florabel from behind— it's wrong."

Blake barked out a laugh. "Lmao. That's—"

"Sex joke, yes, whatever," Weiss grumbled, coming to kneel within Ruby's field of view. "Florabel? Hast thou any brains left? I know there's not much, but—"

Ruby punched her in the face. Weakly. Fondly, one might even say. "How the fuck?" was all she could think to ask.

"Ice dust froze you to the boxcar," Weiss explained. "Then came Yang, I explained the situation, and she ripped the floorboards out with her bare hands. I'll admit, it was rather attractive."

Ruby punched her again. Less lovingly. "Don't you fuckin'... the bombs!"

Blake audibly snorted. "Still here lmao."

"H-here?"

"On the train," Weiss explained, this time patronizing. "Where you are. You're on the train. Did you think we'd taken you home?"

Well, she'd been hoping this was just a particularly shitty nurse's office or something, but she wasn't allowed to have nice things. She tried pushing herself up, but she had about as much luck as anyone with a broken foot, four working fingers (total), and who'd very recently been breathing a good few inches of sharp, icy steel. Thankfully, Yang was there to help her to her feet.

"My—" she hacked out a thick glob of old blood and cried out at the pain in her chest. "My stuff?" she wheezed more weakly. "Penny?"

Weiss motioned over across the boxcar, indicating the large, dark pool of viscous blood— distinctly lacking in dead Pennys, Ruby noticed. Weiss handed her disc over. "She disappeared while I was busy saving your useless life— you're quite welcome, by the way— though I can't imagine how, what with her head hanging on by a thread. Your red thing was all she left." Bitterly, she added: "Thank god. If we ever get those godforsaken wires back, I'm throwing them in the sea."

Ruby's argument for keeping the wire gauntlet didn't even leave her mouth. No defense she made would overpower the fact that she could only move her index and middle fingers, plus her thumbs. She'd just have to keep it a secret once she got it back. "Yeah…" she falsely agreed, stretching her shoulders back (to her chest's chagrin). "And Oobleck?"

Weiss nodded towards the other-other side of the boxcar, where Oobleck was studiously poking and prodding at the live bomb they were all standing beside. "Uh… pro—"

"Doctor," he corrected in a snap.

"Doctor Oobleck," Ruby obliged. "What exactly are you doing?"

"Unsure," he answered, waving over the bomb. "Other devices lacked in digital display or any such electronics, implies unseen activation or explosion via dummy method— leaning towards the latter, making this—"

"The first domino," Ruby surmised. "Okay. That's… that could be good. We just have to disarm this, right?"

"I do not know how to disarm this," Oobleck stated bluntly. "You are the engineer, Miss Branwen-Rose. My Doctorate is in Panhistorical Studies."

Ruby couldn't even feel worried about someone calling her anything other than a Huntsman-in-training— no fear of retribution from her parents or Ozpin struck her, nor even a questioning of why he would think that specifically— it was too nice being called an engineer for her not to beam at the man. Internally, she vowed never to disrespect his Doctorate again. She took cautious steps towards the device, her smile fading as she approached. It was as if the bomb's presence slapped her with a sense of rationality.

"Uh… I'm good at making weapons," she verbalized. "Defusing bombs doesn't fall under that."

"Correct answer, Miss Branwen-Rose!" Oobleck announced, making her wish she hadn't just vowed to respect him. "Any better ideas?"

"Stop the train?"

"Excellent idea! Then what? The coupling here is welded, and I would much rather not die by horrible explosion-slash-cave-in

Ruby scowled. "Shit."

"No need for cursing, spend that energy thinking instead."

"Wait, where's my dog?"

Oobleck lifted his stupid safari hat, under which was the extremely malleable form of her beloved corgi. Without any further discussion, he put the hat back and lunged into Ruby's personal space. "No time for dogs, Miss Branwen-Rose! WE ARE GOING TO DIE!"

Ruby flinched. "Sh—sh-oot, uh… okay, uh…" she flapped her hands as if it would cool her overclocked brain. "Bomb on train, about to kill us, no Penny, can't stop train— can stop train, just not— whatever—" she started frantically looking around. "Boxcar, shitty boxcar, terrible awful stupid fucking boxcar, stupid fucking boxcar made of stupid fucking wood— wood! The floor! Floorboards! They're shit! They suck! Rip them out and throw the fucking bomb off the god-damn train!"

Oobleck ignored how she had failed horribly at not cursing. "How?"

"Yang! Punch the floor!"

Yang cocked back a fist.

"No!" Ruby shrieked. "No, no, not— not yet, I mean— I just mean you punch them out after we're out of the boxcar. How many cars left?"

Blake held up four fingers. Ruby blinked at them. Maybe it was the AOE of logic that the bomb seemed to have, but did she not think Blake was hot anymore? Or was it something else? Whatever. "Four cars," Ruby repeated, flicking her disc to SSWD. "Alright. Cool. Uh…"

Yang nodded, completely understanding Ruby's unvoiced request over the telepathic link of their sisterly bond. She passed Ruby's broken, bloodless, pierced body to her nemesisfriend (girlmesis), who supported her weight with an exaggerated grunt of exertion. Ruby glared at her. Weiss smiled.

"Kill yourself," Ruby politely requested, rolling her eyes.

"Kill me yourself," Weiss snarked in return.

Ruby sighed. Four cars to go.