…. Salem's castle
Ruby awoke tied back to the chair she was in when she first arrived. Even though it seemed the room was empty except for her she felt this overbearing presence that was directed towards her. She struggled in her bonds testing their strength before slumping inwards accepting her fate. Suddenly, Salem appeared behind her resting her hands on Ruby's shoulders, this caused Ruby to tense up in fear.
"Don't fret my dear Rose you're merely paying the consequences for your failure."
Ruby shook her head side to side in a vain attempt to lessen the impact of Salem's words. After she had settled down Salem lent down so her head was against Ruby's and she spoke quietly into Ruby's ear.
"I could sense the uncertainty in your voice when I demanded you kill your friends. I realized that perhaps I made a mistake by giving you so much free will, while you demonstrated your loyalty to me the way how you spoke to me clearly showed how your heart wasn't in it."
Salem straightened and walked around in front of Ruby while keeping a hand rested on her shoulder.
"But I'm able to recognise my mistakes and more importantly I'm willing to fix them."
As Salem stared down at her Ruby averted her gaze, opting to maintain her silence in fear of saying the wrong thing.
"What's that old saying? Winning hearts and minds? I'm sure they never really imagined it in this sense, but you have to take what is useful."
Salem continued walking around until she was back behind Ruby resting both her hands on our shoulders again.
"So here is what's going to happen. Your punishment for failing me is I am going to be taking some of your memories and we're going to work together to create a much more docile and useful Ruby."
Ruby's eyes widened as she realized what Salem was going to do, turn her own memories against her. In response to Salem she restarted her struggles to break her bonds and twisted her neck painfully around, so she could look at Salem and begged her to stop.
"no, no, please you can't, anything else but please don't take them from me. I've been nothing but loyal to you, I'm sorry I couldn't kill them, but I wasn't ready I promise next time I will be."
Salem just shook her head dismissively at ruby before staring at her silver eyes piercing straight into Ruby's soul.
"Begging is unbecoming of you Ruby, I expected better. If anything, this proves my point even further, now sit tight and prepare yourself for your punishment."
Slowly the room darkened as the lights dimmed making it harder for Ruby to see Salem, suddenly Salem's hands grasped Ruby's head eliciting a scream from Ruby as it felt like her whole body was on fire, she struggled fiercely to escape Salem's grasp but as she tried to blink the tears out of her eyes she found herself back at the Battle of Beacon as she took in her surroundings she heard the faint words from Salem.
"let's start backwards, somewhere recent."
Running towards the half-destroyed Beacon Tower with Weiss beside her she gasped at the Dragon Grimm that was creating so much mayhem. As they came up to the tower they saw Jaune standing there seemingly doing nothing.
"Jaune, where's Pyrrha? Is she okay?"
Jaune spun around clearly surprised at their sudden appearance.
"Pyrrha is up their trying to fight the person behind this."
Ruby collapsed Crescent Rose and put her hands on Jaune's shoulders shaking him gently.
"Why aren't you fighting with her? You should never abandon your partner?"
Jaune pushed Ruby back as he pointed towards the carnage around them.
"FIGHT! Look around Ruby Beacons fallen and if she chooses to throw her life away then that's her choice."
"THROW AWAY! You're her partner and team leader it's your job to keep her safe, if your too much of a coward to go up there then me and Weiss will, isn't that right Weiss?"
A moment of silence stood as Ruby waited for Weiss' answer however as it failed to come she spun around to look at her partner who only looked away in shame.
"Weiss?"
Weiss held her hands behind her and took a few steps back.
"Jaune's right Ruby look at that thing, it took all eight of us to beat a Nevermore during initiation there's no way we can take on that dragon and who ever is behind all this with just us."
Ruby looked at Weiss with shock.
"You promised to be the best partner ever and you're just going to let Pyrrha die defending us."
Weiss took a step forward and grabbed Ruby's hand.
"Yes, your right and it's my job to look out for my partner and I'm telling you that if we go up their we're going to die, is that what your mother would want?"
Ruby yanked her hand free from Weiss' grip and pushed her back.
"HOW DARE YOU USE MY MOTHER AS AN EXCUSE! JUST CAUSE YOUR BOTH TO SCARED TO GO UP THERE."
Ruby spun back around and began walking into Beacon Tower.
"I'm just not going to sit back and let our friends die."
Before either of them could answer Ruby used her semblance to jump up the elevator shaft bouncing her way up of the walls unto she reached the top. Bursting out of the doors she landed and fully extended her scythe expecting to aid Pyrrha in her fight, instead she saw Pyrrha towering over Cinder who was attempting to crawl away from Pyrrha in fear as she had been disarmed, her crawling stopped as she hit her back against the remains of Ozpin's table. As Pyrrha raised her spear seemingly to kill Cinder Ruby shouted.
"Pyrrha what are you doing?"
Pyrrha maintained her stance and refused to look at Ruby instead ensuring there was nowhere for Cinder to run to.
"She's the one behind all this Ruby besides she has the Fall Maiden powers, she can't be allowed to keep those, Ozpin promised them to me."
"MAIDENS? We're supposed to be Huntress Pyrrha we don't just kill people."
Pyrrha spun around turning her spear into its rifle form and pointed it at Ruby who took a step back in worry. Before Pyrrha could answer however an arrowhead appeared through her chest, her eyes widened in shock as she grasped at the wound slowly falling to her knees. Ruby ran and lent down to her.
"PYRRHA! You'll be okay, why did you do that?"
She looked over to the still collapsed Cinder who weakly held her bow in her hand before she slowly stood up and stood behind Ruby as Pyrrha's body slowly turned to ashes.
"Think about who Pyrrha was Ruby. She was selfless, compassionate and a hero. Then Ozpin summons her to his office and now she's willing to kill me to gain power for herself."
Ruby's eyes blurred with tears as she turned to look up at Cinder.
"Ozpin? What do you mean? What did he do to her?"
Cinder looked down at Ruby with compassionate eyes and rested a comforting hand on her shoulder.
"What he always does, he takes innocent children and turns them into weapons, he did it with Pyrrha and he would've done it to you to given the chance. Or did you really think he chose to move you up two years out of some altruistic act?"
As Ruby looked back down at the remains of Pyrrha she finally disintegrated leaving little left, as Ruby picked up Pyrrha's circlet her mind was overcome with emotions. The idea that Pyrrha was willing to kill someone for some Maiden powers, how Ozpin was turning people into weapons, the fact that not only Jaune but Weiss just abandoned their partners to keep themselves safe.
As Ruby continued to process everything her eyes slowly started to shine until she screamed and was blinded by a white light.
… Menagerie
Blake was sat down resting and processing the fact that the White Fang were both on the island and still after her. She stared at the contents of her mug, the still long cold tea forgotten as she was deep in thought. Sun had recovered from his recent injuries, but Blake felt like she was still being punished for her actions as everyone around had been hurt. First, we failed to protect Yang from Adam a failure which cost Yang her arm. Second, she couldn't stop Weiss' father from taking her back to Atlas despite her desire to stay and continue searching for Ruby. Thirdly, she abandoned not only her team but turned her back when they needed her most, with Ruby missing it mattered more than ever they stayed together to find Ruby but after a few days her resolve broke and she did what she always did and ran from her problems, running to the only place left where she could feel safe, Menagerie, but the presence of the White Fang meant that even here didn't calm her nerves.
Slowly her grip on the long-abandoned tea tightened as she found herself trapped in a vicious cycle of thought, there was a sudden shattering sound as cold water covered Blake's lap and pain spread throughout her hand, gasping in reaction she realized what she had done. Rushing over to the sink she gathered a towel for herself and one for the table and chair, as Blake ran back to her spot the door slides open revealing the presence of her mother who rushed over to aid her.
"Blake darling are you okay?"
Kali grasped her daughters inured hand as she tended to the wound.
"Forget about the mess, we can clean that up later."
She slowly led her daughter by her hand to a nearby sofa sitting in the centre and leading Blake to sit next to her. As her mother tended to her wound Blake timidly began to lean her head against her mother's shoulder, as she did so the last barrier broke and she broke out into a fit of tears, Kali was quick to comfort her as she rested her spare hand on her daughter's head with small strokes through her hair alongside quiet words of comfort. As her crying slowly died down and they fell into a regime of Kali stroking her hair and Blake silently whimpering, Kali finished tending to her daughter's hand and lifted Blake up and next to her slowly turning her to look face to face.
"so, you want to tell me what cause this? Cause I strongly doubt you had gained such a strong level of attachment to a clearly long abandoned cup of tea."
Blake offered a weak laugh as she rested her head in her mother's lap.
"It's just I'm nothing but a failure and everything I do ends in someone I care for getting hurt."
Kali scoffed at this as she continued to rest her hand on Blake's head while running her free hand through her own hair.
"Blake, one of the most important life lessons is to learn from your mistakes, but what is even more important is to remember that even if something ends in failure it doesn't diminish the success that came before it."
Blake turned so the back of her head rested on Kali's lap, so she could look up at her as she spoke.
"While you may have left the White Fang after us you nonetheless succeeded in seeing it as an organisation that needed to change as we did. You succeeded in getting into Beacon not because you were a Faunus but because you deserved to be there. You succeeded in making friends with not just humans but a Schnee of all people, you gained the trust of your team and you trusted them. Just because you are home doesn't make these meaningless, the Fall of Beacon was a tragedy that nobody could have prevented and I'm sure that just as you're here to move forward, they're doing what they need to move forward as well."
Blake sat up and looked towards her nodding slowly as she wiped the tears away from her eyes.
"Your right. You're always right, I just feel so useless sometimes."
Kali embraced her in a hug before she stood up and turned to pull up her daughter as they turned to leave the room.
"So Blake, what's the plan?"
