Prompt: Jaune and Pyrrha's future daughter travels to the past and tries to make everyone better in whichever way possible.
Like most things with Aunt Nora, it went from suggestion to planning to execution so quickly that Ruby didn't really have time to think about it until the point of no return was twenty miles behind them. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" Ruby asked, two hours after the answer would have been useful.
"Of course. Have I ever steered you wrong, Ru?"
"Yes. Dozens of times!"
"Okay, but have I done it lately?"
"You did it two months ago. I haven't seen Midnight since."
"I wouldn't worry about it, Ruby. This can't go wrong because it can't possibly work." Mrs. Schnee said from behind her. "Now, if you'll come over here, we can get this over quickly. I have significantly less insane things I need to do today."
Ruby nodded, walked over to Mrs. Schnee, and activated her semblance. Mrs. Schnee twisted her wrist and black glyphs appeared all around Ruby. They started spinning faster and faster, and Ruby began feeling like her entire body was being slowly stretched apart. The feelings only intensified until the black glyphs around her exploded into white light and she snapped back to normal.
She was momentarily blinded, but when her eyesight returned she felt like she could barely breath. She was standing in the exact same room as a few seconds ago, except the decorations and beds were completely different. She heard footsteps approaching the door and keys being put into the lock. She panicked and rabbited into the closet right before the door to the room opened and several people walked in.
"I'm just saying, it would have been better with more explosions. Maybe a Grimm invasion or a massive ninja robot attack." Ruby recognized the voice as Aunt Nora, but she sounded younger than Ruby.
"Nora, it was a romantic comedy." Said a voice that was clearly a younger Uncle Ren.
"Exactly! What would be funnier than a robot demolishing the city?"
"Not really the tone of the movie." The voice made Ruby gasp. That was unmistakably her dad. "Personally I loved it. Nice suggestion."
"Thanks Jaune. I enjoyed it too." Very clearly Mom's voice.
"Meh. It would have been better if they expressed their love without the drama. Don't you hate it when someone keeps their love a secret, Pyrrha?" Nora said.
She heard a nervous laugh from her mother. "Uh, yeah, that's the worst." Ruby grasped onto that little detail for all it was worth. If her parents weren't dating, it must still be sometime during their first year. Which meant that one of Aunt Nora's crazy ideas had actually worked. The potential implications of her current situation hit her like a truck, and she grabbed the sides of the closet to brace herself. And, when she did, her arm hit a shelf, and something fell to the floor with the sound of shattering glass.
"Is someone in the closet?" Her dad asked.
"Ooohhhh, I bet it's a ghost! Let's get it!" Ruby heard someone skipping towards the closet and she panicked. She had absolutely no idea what might happen if they caught her hiding in here. She closed her eyes and desperately wished she was back in her room.
"Ruby, what happened? Did it work?" Mrs. Schnee asked her. Ruby opened her eyes and saw that she was standing in the exact same place she had started. Ruby, too stunned to speak, simply nodded.
"Told you it would work! I'm a genius!" Aunt Nora yelled.
"How about we hear what happened before saying that? Ruby, if you would." Ruby took a deep breath to calm herself and told them exactly what happened.
"Oh, so you were the closet ghost? I thought we killed it with that exorcism we did!"
"Setting fire to the closet was not an exorcism!" Mrs. Schnee yelled. Her tone made it clear this was a topic that came up fairly frequently. Which, since Ruby had never heard it before, didn't make a lot of sense.
"Wait, have you told me about this before?" Ruby questioned.
"Yes, because it's Nora's suggestion anytime something weird happens." Mrs. Schnee said right before a look of understanding crossed her face. "It never happened for you. Going back changed things."
"Hah! A complete success! Team Nora one, Time zero."
"We can't just play around with time like that! We have no idea what could happen. We could lose the war with Salem, we could all die, Ruby might stop herself from existing!" Mrs. Schnee chastised. She had a fair point. There was no telling what could go wrong if they weren't careful.
"Sure, if we change major things. But minor things won't make that much difference! Aren't there small things you wish we could change?" Aunt Nora replied.
"Well, yeah, a few things."
"Great. All we need is for Ru to go back and carefully change some things. Starting now." Aunt Nora started rattling off things to change, and they all got to work.
"The fire alarm ran out of batteries and started going off in the middle of the night. It took an hour of constant beeping to find a replacement." Aunt Nora said.
A small and easily fulfilled request. It took less than a minute to replace the battery, and Ruby felt incredibly good about herself. A tiny act of kindness that wouldn't affect much beyond giving her parents a few more hours of sleep.
"Ruby's bed fell onto mine and shattered both of them. We needed to sleep on the floor for a week, and I never stopped mentioning it until, well, you know." Mrs. Schnee said.
Two extra ropes added around the bed fixed that potential problem.
"The Breach damaged Ruby's favorite bakery, and she ran out of smiley face cookies three months before it reopened."
A short trip to the bakery and a quick climb to get to her cookie stash later, and Miss Rose would never have to run out of smiley goodness.
"Your dad wasn't used to the hard beds, and he still complains about how it messed up his back sometimes."
A mattress pad under the box spring took care of it before it became a problem. That one she was particularly happy to deal with. It came up a lot more than one would think from a veteran Huntsman.
"The curtains touched the floor, and a nameless person who definitely wasn't at fault may have been playing with fire dust and burned them down."
A pair of scissors were fixing the issue, but they were stubbornly refusing to be easily cut. She was just beginning to wonder if she should come back with her sword when the door opened, and her parents' team walked in. Before she could say anything, she was slammed into the wall by her mom's semblance.
"Who are you and wh-" the words died on her mom's lips as she got a full look at Ruby, and her face fell into confusion. Looking at her dad, he was wearing the exact same expression.
"Why, uh, why do you look like me?" Pyrrha asked hesitantly. Ruby was always told she looked remarkably similar to her mother as a teenager but staring at her a few feet away drove that home more than any picture. Ruby realized she wasn't getting out of this without some kind of answer, but she also couldn't tell them everything. Not without potentially ruinous consequences.
"Well, I'm your daughter. From the future."
"My dd-daughter?" She asked, clearly stunned.
"Yep! I'm Ru-" she said before stopping herself. She suddenly realized she couldn't tell them her name. Not without explaining why she had it, and that could go terribly wrong. "I'm Joan. Joan Arc." Okay, so maybe she wasn't the best at improvisation. Fortunately, none of them seemed to notice her slip. They were more focused on her last name.
"Arc? You mean, like, me Arc? Like Pyrrha and me Arc?" Her dad spoke for the first time as her mom started blushing beside him. Uncle Ren's face remained, as always, passive but Aunt Nora's lit up in a manic grin
Well, clearly she should have stuck with first name only, but it was way too late now. She would have to hope it didn't change too much. "Uh, yeah. Surprise?"
Her dad went over and collapsed onto his bed. "Yeah, that's one way to put it."
"If that's true, how are you here? Why are you here?" Uncle Ren questioned.
"Mrs. Schnee's time dilation glyphs and my semblance."
"Which is?"
"I can charge up other people's semblances while I'm near them. Apparently time dilation plus supercharger equals time travel."
"That's cool." Her dad said from the bed.
"Sometimes." She acknowledged. Of course, other times it led to Aunt Nora levitating in the air shooting lightning out of her hands, but she felt mentioning that was probably not the best idea.
"That's the how, what's the why?" Uncle Ren asked.
"Well, we thought we could help make things better."
"Isn't that dangerous?" Her mom asked.
"Big stuff, sure. Little stuff is fine, though. Probably."
A look of realization appeared on her dad's face. "You're the one who made my bed softer! I was wondering about that."
"And presumably you put those extra ropes on Ruby's bed." Her mom said. Ruby nodded.
A contemplative look suddenly came to her dad's face. "If you are changing small things, what about messages from our future selves? Surely there's some things we'd like to tell ourselves."
"I'm not sure that's the best idea. That's something that could change lot."
"Only if the messages are too specific, which I'm sure they won't be. Don't you trust future-us's judgement?"
"Uh, I guess." She answered.
"Great! I'll go grab RWBY and you can go home and get messages for us all." Ruby still wasn't sure this was a great idea, but if it might be helpful then she would try it. She willed herself home, called everyone, and, after explaining the whole time travel thing, got messages for their past selves. When Mrs. Schnee sent her back to the past, the room was filled up with the two teams. Someone had clearly filled in RWBY because the room, besides a few brief gasps at seeing her, remained silent.
She relayed each of the messages to them all in turn. She had made sure none of them were too specific, but the entire room was still rapt anyway. Once she was finished, everyone stood with a contemplative look on their face.
"What about me? What was my message?" When she heard that, Ruby's mind froze. She had completely forgotten about Ruby Rose. She mentally kicked herself for being so stupid. How could she possibly have forgotten about her namesake? She couldn't tell her "Nothing, because you died a long time ago.", right? Or maybe she could. Maybe if Miss Rose was warned, things would turn out for the better. Or maybe they would be catastrophically worse. There was no real way to know.
Logically, she shouldn't do anything to massively change the timeline. Her world might not be perfect, but they had survived. They were rebuilding. But her heart was telling her something else. It was telling her that Ruby Rose deserved the chance for something better. It might not be the smart thing to do, but it was the right thing to do.
"You asked it to be private. Let's go into your room". Miss Rose nodded and followed her into the other dorm room. "You need to know something important. There's a war going on with Salem, the queen of the Grimm. At her directions, Cinder Fall, the White Fang, hacked Atlas military, and Grimm attack Beacon." It was clear from Miss Rose's expression that she was bursting with questions, but Ruby raised her hand to stop her. "Just listen, okay?" Ruby waited for her to nod before continuing. "Beacon falls, but you stop the Grimm and Cinder from taking over Vale. And you jump in front of an arrow meant for my mom and die in her arms. My name is actually Ruby Arc. I'm named for the hero who willingly sacrificed herself for her friend."
"What happens next?" For the first time, Miss Rose's voice came out cold and serious. Understandable when talking about her future death, but hearing that voice coming from someone like Miss Rose was jarring.
"Salem loses eventually, but at high cost. Atlas, Menagerie, Haven are all devastated. So many people died that recovery has been hard. It took almost a decade to reclaim Haven, and Beacon was only rebuilt a few years ago. Atlas and Menagerie are still so overrun with Grimm we might never take them back."
"But we did win, right?" Ruby nodded. "Then you shouldn't have told me. If I let it happen, we win but at a terrible price. If I change something, we might lose. What am I supposed to do with that?"
"I'm not sure, but you deserved to know. My parents trusted you to always do the right thing. You'll do it again." Miss Rose didn't answer; she simply stood there, a contemplative look on her face. Ruby closed her eyes, hoped she hadn't made a terrible mistake, and willed herself back to the present.
When she opened her eyes, she was surrounded by Teams WBY and JNPR. She very clearly interrupted them in the middle of a party. Looking around, they were the same age as when she left. She was definitely back in her present.
"Joan? We haven't seen you in forever! Why did you come back here?" Her dad asked. It took her a few baffling seconds to process the question. Why would her dad think she was coming back when she was in the present? Then it clicked. Dad didn't think she could be from now because she hadn't been born. Her final warning to Miss Rose somehow changed her existence. She felt a really weird itch working its way up her left foot, but she ignored it.
"She didn't come back, Jaune. This is where she's from." Ruby recognized the voice and turned to see Miss Rose coming through the door. She was a few decades older, but it was unmistakably her. She smiled, sad and sweet, and Ruby felt relieved that someone else figured out exactly what happened. The itch intensified, and Ruby looked down to see that her leg was slowly dissolving into golden light. Once she saw that, she knew she was dying. Whatever cosmic entity that controlled Time was correcting the mistake that was her existence.
Everyone else noticed it at about the same time, and a cacophony of alarm and confusion came from all around her. From everyone except Miss Rose, that is. She just stood there, the same sad smile on her face. "We stopped Cinder's attack before Beacon fell, and that helped us rally the four kingdoms together. Our combined forces beat Salem without too much destruction. The five kingdoms, now that Menagerie has been recognized, are healthy and prospering. All thanks to you."
"I can't believe it worked!" Ruby yelled. She knew the fact that her hands were currently dissolving should probably terrify her, but she was too ecstatic about everything to really concern herself.
"What worked?" Her mom asked. The terror Ruby should probably feel for herself was etched into her face.
"I made everything better." She said, the wonderment shining through her voice. And, with those last words echoing around the room, Ruby Arc died.