Chrysalides

by TheVermilionRose

Breaking the laws of physics had twice over consequences they couldn't predict as they draw the ire of the Two Deities sworn to non-interference, regardless of their previous agreements. Some laws are too fundamental to break and the team is forced back to the time where everything made sense, still unsure who their enemies are. (Sequel to Butterflies)

30. Rise

Chapter Thirty

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- Memories -

Rise

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Vacuo was a unique Kingdom.

In terms of population and landmass, it eclipsed the other three with ease, but these were the only categories the Kingdom could claim supremacy.

Originally the birthplace of Qrow and Raven, the desert paradise offered only a few opportunities to escape the slums. Chief among them was joining the enormous Hunter system responsible for overseeing the protection of the citizens in their care.

Other opportunities revolved around entering the highly profitable but cutthroat gambling scene where the wealthiest of Remnant went to blow through millions of Lien and add to the festering corruption within.

It was the primary reason why Vacuo had to boast the largest Hunter population, having to not only keep the ravenous Grimm hordes from tearing into the flimsy slums of the outskirt districts but also to maintain order when the underfunded law enforcement system couldn't.

"I'm surprised the Grimm haven't overrun this cesspool yet." Summer voiced her thoughts aloud, utterly overrun with the emotions of despair, desperation, and haunting hopelessness as they passed into the first districts of the country after making the run across the Sanus Sea. "There's nothing but misery here."

She stroked Weiss' hair, the woman having had fallen limp on her lap after their emotionally-charged hug. She nuzzled fiercely in her hold, prompting Summer to start up her petting again. "How bad is it down there?" Weiss sluggishly yawned out.

"Dark." Summer stated, her senses spread thin to brush along the top of the landscape as their bullhead roared down towards Haven Academy. There was little light against the miasma of pulsing lust, greed, and envy; pinpricks of virtue lost in the sea of sin.

A ball of pure white slammed into her outermost shell when they made their final approach into the Academy, pointing her to the source of an extra-mortal Aura. She winced in Weiss' hold, overwhelmed by the utter pureness coursing through it, untempered but bound to human form.

But that was only one of the reasons they were here and she forced down a growl at the assumption she based her search on: that Raven would ignore a part of her life that held prominence for over a decade. Of course, she'd make her base of operations near the Academy and CCTS Tower, for how else could she continue to live as a protector?

Her people needed her, but Headmaster Kaldwin wouldn't hesitate to use the only S-rank in her territory, trading away the vaunted protection status of a Hunter for the prestige of commanding her.

Quantity over quality was Kaldwin's approach, so it made sense she wouldn't advertise Raven's presence for Summer to locate. She took what she could get, attempting to bring order and protect her people in a lawless place so, despite Raven being wanted in Beacon, she'd keep her hidden for her country's gain.

She'd be having words with the Headmaster the moment they touched down and she was going to abuse her nightmarish eyes to ensure her cooperation. She pulled down her blindfold as Yang set their ship down, tightening it down to rest comfortably around her neck.

Weiss instantly fidgeted on her lap and almost leaped up to a stand, a glyph materializing between the pair of them on instinct. The spark and hum of energy didn't surprise her and she used the constructed barricade to pull herself up. That omnipresent and magnificent pressure returned when she finally opened her eyes, filling the enclosed compartment and pressing down on her teammates' cores.

Yang's cores took the pressure and turned it back into itself, generating more Aura to throw at the user's defenses and her core parts actually resonated in return to amplify the pressure, the sense of dread and terror rising and forcing the other two cores to coalesce onto themselves.

It wasn't fear that drove them down but the automatic servitude when faced with their superior. Their cores still fought against the effects in their own way, Yang's fragment releasing pulses of blistering warm scorch spots, Weiss' creeping out biting cold in piercing cracks, and Blake's corrupting shadows tinting any area left.

Ruby's just refused to budge.

The blunt end of a knife put an end to the oppression, pinging off a crimson glyph when it tried to impact Summer's forehead. Her new and far less taxing method of shielding got a raised eyebrow from Weiss, the familiar design of her protection method evident. Another glyph asserted itself on top of Rei's gem, shimmering away into invisibility after connecting back to Weiss.

"Trying to take my job?" Weiss chuckled and resheathed Myrtenaster to her back. The long rapier didn't exactly have a comfortable position to rest on while sitting, forcing her to remove it. She could hang it on her waist but then it would bang around when she ran so that left either a top or bottom draw.

The job she spoke of was her role as team support and overwatch, never engaging in direct battle but protecting them with glyphs from above. She was responsible for chaining glyphs around their limbs, like plate metal, but infinitely more durable and lighter.

Their flying little guardian, or midget if you asked Yang.

Their Angel.

She was charged with one job when on the field: to make sure she kept a single glyph on the back of each of her teammates, an anchor for her to track where they were when in her field of influence and a spawning point for any further glyphs that needed to be spawned.

Without the first one then she'd have to not only manage both the field and the position of her teammates, which already strained the breaking point of her mind when trying to manage only one other person but also have to react to anything her teammates depended on her for, such as walls and traps.

It was like trying to play Starcraft without the function keys and the minimap.

Those critical glyphs allowed her to extend the reach of her Aura to the constant three on the fields, Yang acting as the primary node because of her ability to move Aura between combatants and Ruby and Blake dancing in the backlines, further allowing her to wreak havoc with her Semblance.

Though now with her new Semblances she could further make any battlefield inhospitable, able to lock it down and tear and/or blow it apart depending on which she needed. Her railgun combination still needed to be condensed and the control fine-tuned.

Yang didn't let her hear the end of that one, especially not after a patrol over the Sanus Mountains when she'd declared her control over her Semblance was nigh perfect. That boast promptly ended in a cataclysmic explosion after she'd imbibed one beer and lost control of her Semblance after pushing her upper limit of two-hundred.

That mountain had lost a couple of meters in height after the dust settled, and she'd resolved to get her control up to par for anything after that, only to have a Ruby shaped wrecking ball come through and split up her Aura and tear away her pride and joy.

She shoved aside that memory after it started to resemble melancholy, crumbling it up into something resembling a cross between a scribble and an LCD screen. "I could never replace you." She left a caveat up in the air for them to interpret, choosing not to bring up the Chimera Project where each of them could easily replace her on the field.

Her Semblance, at the basest level, was easier than their originals. If all they wanted was to 'go fast', then the Semblance almost wanted to let them loose. It was only when it was deconstructed for use with neurons and nerves that it tended to implode and fry cells, that is, if no shielding was applied around the individual cells to protect it from its own increased bioelectricity.

And wasn't that a doozy to figure out the first few times she tried it.

Weiss stepped around Summer and pressed her fingers against the glyph hovering just above her skin and the embedded gym. It briefly flickered back into visibility, passing a warm hum back to the original manipulator.

She continued to hold her fingers against the magical construct, finding it odd and almost disturbing to see a glyph made of her unique Semblance that wasn't her own. The hum increased when she pressed her palm against it, fullying bringing it into visibility. She filed away an oddity about the increased vibration.

A part of Summer was thankful the obvious observation was cut off by their slightly bumpy landing of their craft, knocking Weiss off her stance, the glyph fading away again. The answer wasn't definitive just yet, something about the combination of the four Semblances forcing her glyphs to vibrate at high-speeds.

If they vibrated at any higher frequency then she could make them invisible without worrying about how she made them invisible in the first place. Part of the fundamental substance the glyphs were made of was a wavelength of light that, when combined with the Aura behind the Semblance, allowed for constructs made of 'hard' light.

That misnomer made both Yang and Weiss groan whenever she or Neo brought it up, the Schnee Semblance conveniently ignoring the physical impossibility of creating an object made from photons. It annoyed the engineer because it relied on the same concept of maintaining an Aura shield where energy was made physical, and it annoyed the scientist because her own Semblance defied classical physics.

That dead god must've been laughing at them from wherever dead gods went after they died.

The closest it fell to conventional physics was along the electricity and magnetism field where she could trap photons temporarily to make her glyphs, but it also wasn't the entire story. Something in her Semblance let her perform an impossibility to not only make incredibly strong constructs but also make them lightweight and thin.

She dealt with enough requests for more funding for Weiss' research to know they weren't serious anymore and she took a vindictive glee when shredding it. It was unlike this peculiar request she was making to Headmaster Kaldwin, practically demanding she hand over one of her resident S-ranks.

A sigh ripped its way out of her, a restless and beating sense of tiredness settling down on her chest. This was a different job once, focused on protecting people from Grimm and Grimm alone. It wasn't supposed to be a political battlefield, the entire charter written to ensure they never could. But she was reaching beyond her bounds now.

And she didn't know how to stop.

Haven Academy was an enormous sprawl of buildings that stretched across the desert wider than Atlas' Hearth Academy burrowed into its mountain. She practically stalked across the landing site with her team nipping at her heels. All the buildings around her were low and painted pure white to keep them cool, not that she noticed the colors, making an assumption more than anything.

A twisting ball of navy streaked with pure gold and silver strands grabbed her attention first, placed at the start of the path into the main building. It didn't warp like a ball or weave together like silks but spun like fine particles in a mist, the different colors bound together. The two balls of Aura by its side weren't worth mentioning other than their presence. They were taut in anticipation as her group approached them.

"Commander Rose, what an unexpected and unwanted surprise." Kaldwin certainly didn't mince words with her, her acerbic greeting disguised with banter many would take as an insult. But Summer wasn't anyone and she was positively grinning at meeting another instance of the famed Shadow of Vacuo.

She'd only ever met her once, during the signing of the Treaty at Cassus, but her Semblance had left her calling card for ages to come, a beautiful symphony of quiet and demure Aura designed to make her unnoticeable. Her scarf didn't help this in the slightest, obscuring her face and only revealing her tarnished and memorable gold eyes.

Not Blake's bright amber but a sturdy brass tested in the battlegrounds that were the Vacuoan streets.

She didn't let either affect her reply. "Headmaster Kaldwin, a pleasure to see you in person after so long. I've only heard the stories of Vacuo's unorthodox society but the flight over was enlightening. You've done well." Kaldwin's posture and Aura didn't change at her words but she could assume there was a raised eyebrow on her visage.

"Your correspondence was worrying Commander, to say the least. I attributed your want for more S-ranks under your wing as a growing pain of your new position, and I still question Ozpin's decision on that, but..." She stepped forward from her entourage and met her halfway, inspecting her like a merchant would wares, or a brothel-keep a whore. She traced a finger along the temples of her blindfold, eliciting a possessive growl from Blake. "May I?"

She nodded near imperceptibly, Kaldwin loosening the layers of the blindfold and carefully pulling them down over her nose. Her team waited with bated breath as the power behind them grew with each blocker removed until Kaldwin dared look at the unholy void with her own eyes. She gave no reaction other than tutting piteously and bravely staring at them for a few seconds before rewrapping the silken bands.

"No child should have such eyes." It was her turn to tut piteously. Kaldwin looked past her to look at each of her teammates, again meeting their stares evenly but no longer judging by making sounds. She amended her statement just as quickly. "No children should have such eyes, but then again, you're all S-ranks in your own rights."

There was a hint of threat behind that statement, no Headmaster, at least in this dimension, ever having to deal with an entire fireteam of overpowered Hunters on their soil. While technically they were all on the same side, Vacuo was perpetually balanced between the forces of the Hunters against the plutocracy that was the Council.

She wasn't going to insult Kaldwin by stating she didn't need Raven because Vacuo needed strength just as much as Raven needed the lawlessness to get away with her violent and absolute methods of justice and protection. She took after her aunt in those aspects.

"Raven Branwen." She stated shortly and getting a nod of recognition in return from the Headmaster. "I know she's been hiding away in this country but I'm not here to drag her back in cuffs." That got a raised eyebrow from the other woman and she had to glance over at Blake, the Faunus slowly spinning a knife on her finger. "I'm here to requisition her for the Amity Colosseum security team."

"Don't try and attempt to swindle me with your honeyed words Commander. I already have to deal with my subversive Council and I don't need it from an equal" That got a smile from her, knowing the buzzing annoyance that could be the collective Council. More often than not their actions were benign in the grand scheme of the war between the Hunters and the Grimm, but every so often they made things worse.

But such was the cost paid with the Charter, a complete split between the Hunters, an independent force meant to defend from enemies outside, and the Council, the governing body with which all decisions were made.

"Raven will be free to return to Vacuo once the Vytal Tournament is concluded, on this you have my word as Commander of Beacon along with five witnesses to confirm them. I don't even need her to return immediately, but I do need her to return soon." Summer placated, easing off on the language of her original message.

"I will need her back, you understand?" Kaldwin fixed her with a stern gaze that would make Glynda proud, her Aura flexing up against her own, the two titans of their forces squaring off. She acquiesced to this little demand, finding no fault in keeping Raven in a place where she didn't want to be. "You're making a collection."

"You know what Raven is, don't you?" The older woman's Aura stopped pulsing for the briefest of moments before it gained a malevolent overtone. "I know the balance between the four must be kept, and I will not be responsible for our fall because of my pride."

Kaldwin released a breath of air she didn't know she was holding and let her Aura calm down from the storm it wrung itself into, her shoulders dropping from their rigid stature and a slight smile growing on her face.

"Then you understand what is at stake when you take her on as your responsibility. Raven will be granted permission," Kaldwin stopped when Yang abruptly laughed at the notion of Raven being controlled by anyone, "to leave, and yes Xiao-Long, I know your mother has no respect for authority." She turned back to her fellow Commander. "And Ruby, you have one day as a sign of respect before I want you gone. You and yours are bad omens."

She turned away from their group and walked down the path towards her school, not even deeming them worthy of a look back.

"And have a good day too Emily," Ruby replied after Kaldwin disappeared from her view, turning to gaze down at the sprawl of districts from her viewpoint at the top of the plateau Shade was nestled on. Even from up here she could easily tell where Raven was located.

"Are every one of your peers as succinct and paranoid as you?" Yang joined her in gazing down at the city. If she could see, she would remark on the odd quality of life the people seemed to find in this shamble of a society. They survived where most wouldn't dream of settling down, choosing the hardy life over the easier ones their brethren in Mistral did.

"We don't have time to deal with what the world attempts to throw at us." Kaldwin had been alive for far longer than she looked to most people, holding Vacuo in her tight grip. Somehow she'd managed to remain as the one and only Shadow of Vacuo, despite reports stating she looked to be in her early twenties.

None of them noticed the inflection she placed on a certain word but only Blake noticed her press a palm against her leg pouch and grip it tightly. Her wife was too astute to not notice these tiny things and she could do nothing to stop the leaking pain from her mindscape.

Pain was what made the Commanders who they were, a shared suffering that saw them defend their countries with their lives, leaders that had to sacrifice their Hunters because they alone weren't infallible.

But this was close to her end, Ruby almost permanently silent as she held back the oncoming storm of their original persona. She occasionally whispered words of sympathy or status updates but her primary role was to stave off the terrible conclusion to their past torment, at least until they were safely away from one of the largest population centers on the planet.

"Come along. We still have to get to meeting with Khan after everything." Her core almost automatically reached out for its other parts and started the process of moving them across the rooftops. She let them freefall immediately after they dropped from the plateau, enjoying the wind as it flew threw her hair perhaps for one of the last times. Ruby beamed back what little positive emotions she could scrounge up from the cesspit that was Re'iyah, ignoring the backlash from the great doors that creaked.

The metal of them, while still structurally stable, looked incredibly corroded. Spots of light-colored metal tainted the edges, worn thin from the overwhelming force beating its way out, intentionally or not. Most of the chains that secured their way around from points in the imaginary wall were already shattered and strewn about, Ruby unable to muster the willpower to banish them away.

All of her current willpower was still latched to the remaining seals plastered around the door, flimsy paper to the eye and touch but inscribed with words of power: the names of those most important to her, the names of her team written absolutely everywhere the most followed by every single member of Vale's Hunters.

But they were starting to fray, memories unable to prevent them from peeling apart.

Rei happily feasted on the emotions as she returned them, the feeling of the wind abating to nothing more than a physical sensation. They continued their journey forward, bouncing off of white glyphs this time as they moved over the roofs. She screwed her eyes shut as a seal got torn off in a flurry of white light, Ruby running damage control over the rest of them.

She chose to focus on something else, noting the pools of darkness under her feet, the sounds of industry and social life, the smell of dry heat, and the taste of city smoke. She could ignore it for now, Ruby even partially repairing a seal as Rei happily bounced around, avoiding all the light rays but pulling in everything else with her ravenous appetite.

Blake watched her from the side, observing everything she could from her limited sightline. She was suspicious as was her nature. Worrying about her was the second nature of Prune right after the first stage of worrying that came with being her wife. Her heart was in the right place as usual, and it would shatter into a thousand pieces upon her end.

The bright ball of Aura that represented Raven encapsulated just about every other form of life, the fragmented soul of a god being the paragon of all that represented what was good and just. Or at least what she suspected represented what Ozpin was, a figure for the defense of humanity, of morality, and order, and interdependence, and logic.

That was at least how her sonar interpreted it. She chose to interpret them in these shades of grey, her morality changing the shades depending on her programmed virtues and vices. The Grimm were denoted with black, Rei a black hole nestled in her silvery core, and everything else ranged between pure and dark.

The tiny pinpricks on the edge of the large sphere of Aura of the Spring Maiden were easily avoided on their way into the compound. She was forced to diminish the closest parts of sensor ability or be rendered blind to everything else. Funny how Ozpin could maintain a silvery veneer of a human, but Raven was a fiery pulsar that refused to be hidden.

Standing next to her was another story. She couldn't see anything and had to rely on her radar shells only at that range. Her aunt was just as tall as she remembered, rivaling Yang in height. The Branwen genes bred true from that trait all the way down to the typically impassioned eyes and voluptuous hair.

"Niece brat." Typical Branwen response as well when dealing with unwanted family members. Not a surprise at all. Yang got a similar response. "Daughter brat." Said woman took offense to that dared step up to her elder, her Aura coalescing and turning her eyes bright crimson.

"Mother bitch." She couldn't quite register the shock of the return insult before Yang slugged her heavily and sent her careening into the nearest building, the wall crumbling down in an ear-splitting crack of clay and brick. "Been waiting to do that for fucking years! Woo!" She flung her hands up and turned around to stare at them in jubilation.

The rubble shifted as Raven dug herself out of it, brushing dust from her hair and spitting out sand. A purple sheen of Aura crackled over the injury to her face, the rough patch job making it scar over. Hmm. So that was where Yang got the nasty habit of searing her wounds shut rather than waiting for a field patch job.

Still couldn't quite figure out whether she enjoyed the scars, Weiss enjoyed them, or they both enjoyed them.

"Fucking seven layers of guacamole dip." She brushed the last of the dust from her shoulder and inspected her weapon for any dents and scratches. "Beacon taught you well. Glad to see Ozpin got off his ass finally and started training you rookies."

"Seven layers of guacamole dip?" Weiss asked getting a few blinks from Raven as if she was just noticing her. "And I thought you were creative."

"Who's the midget Schnee?" Weiss almost, almost rose to the bait, her Aura catching in what she could only call a hiccup. She was getting rather good at this, guessing what her teammates were going to do or what their facial expressions were. Angela had a field day with that one, her use of Aura deformation instead of facial cues to communicate pioneering a new field of study for her.

Neo would sue for royalties.

To countermand Neo's imaginary lawsuit, she'd bring out a point of necessity on account of not being able to function even close to an inept and spastic monkey. Neo could rant and rave, or do the mute equivalent of the two (waving picket signs with all the force of a chibi) all she wanted but she wasn't the blind one in this case.

"Your daughter-in-law." The brisk reply threw Raven worse than the earlier punch. She shook off the surprise with ease though, not letting it get to her more than an annoying mosquito.

"You should really reconsider marrying into the Branwens midget, but I hear your family's more screwed up than mine." A slight bend of the truth because not all of the Schnees were bad apples just like all of the Branwens weren't vicious tribal leaders. "Maybe it'll work out."

"One, only Yang gets to call me a midget and that's only because I let her." Yang positively beamed at the praise. "Two… uh…" She stopped and looked up into the corner of her eyes as she knew she would, sticking out her tongue as she grasped for an idea. "I don't actually know, oh wait, hold up, I know. I didn't marry her. We married each other. Got that?"

"Hmmm, you're the daughter of Willow Schnee, aren't you." That brought a wry grin to her strategist's face. "Same dirty mouth and fiery spirit before they got crushed by that asshole Jacques. Good job on that by the way, very... Kylo Ren."

"Yeah, except I didn't kill him, and neither am I an angsty teenager that thinks edginess and dark colors are suitable substitutes for therapy." She wore enough white for the color to actually radiate back to the sensor. Blake wore mostly purple on another note. Weiss finished off her rant by flipping Raven the bird.

"Whatever you say kid." Raven dismissed her for now, turning her attention back to the reason why she was outside and waiting for a mysterious guest in the first place. No Commander could ignore the need to mess with their subordinates and, because Raven stayed here under Kaldwin's protection, she was almost obligated to listen.

S-ranks, while unpredictable in combat, mostly led boring and predictable lives. Any mystery and potential excitement made them investigate.

"So where's Ozpin?" It was her turn to frown at the question until she realized she had sent the initial request to Kaldwin and not Raven directly. It wasn't her fault Raven chose to cut off all contact with Vale after her initial leaving, not knowing or not caring of the internal affairs of Beacon.

"Ozpin no longer commands Beacon. He stepped down a few months ago." Re'iyah growled a few times at the mention of the man's name. Enough semi-corporeal meetings with the progenitor of the Silvereyes made her wary of him, and if she still had her original eyes then perhaps she'd get the same treatment.

"Please tell me Qrow isn't lost somewhere in a brothel and we have to go look for him." She pressed a thumb to the bridge of her nose to alleviate the brewing headache. Enough interactions between the two made her annoyed with him, to say the least, but she still considered him family.

That much she knew.

"No, Qrow is currently handcuffed and overseen by Glynda to make sure he turns in his paperwork. I'm sure you remember her riding crop better than I do." Raven winced as memory after memory of her time at Beacon played, remembering the many spars she'd lost to the dominatrix before she gained control over her Semblance. "I command Beacon."

"Pull the other finger." The response was immediate and instinctual. She attempted to stare her down for the boldfaced claim but her blindfold deflected it. She wasn't aware of the human notion anymore, her world a haze of different Auras and lumpy shapes.

A howl of wind tore through the courtyard and Raven found her niece suddenly standing neutrally in front of her. She blinked a few times to make sure the dust hadn't gotten in her eyes to suddenly trick her sense but had to eventually conclude the mirage was real.

"Neat trick." Her intrigue rose when Ruby pulled apart the bow keeping her blindfold in place and shook her head. The ribbon cascaded down through the strands of her hair until the entire piece settled loosely around her shoulders. She could feel Blake tense from behind her, Raven unable to blind the other side of her vision. "Training inju-?"

Her words died in her throat when Ruby opened her eyes and pinned her in place with a daunting pressure she could taste. There was a sick pleasure that made her smile cynically. It was a rare occasion she could put Raven in her place, the haughty woman not used to bowing down.

Quite literally with how rigid her spine was practically singing in strain. Salem had ushered in a similar sense of utter despondency combined with the daunting pressure of being several kilometers underwater when they'd faced off the one time, making it near impossible to stand or even breath in her presence. It alone made her an S-rank with people able to resist it numbering in the single digits.

Sometimes it made people run in fear and other times they collapsed in a dead faint, but by far the most common effect had people unable to move.

Raven's Maiden core started to resist the pressure after only a few spare moments and further saturated the area around them with pressure enough to have glass shards form under their feet. She could feel her own shells begin to warp as her Aura deconstructed under the immense force and she silently resolved to both abuse the method using Yang's core fragment and devise a method to counteract it more than brute power.

Especially given the amount of Aura the rest of her team were expending to prevent the pressure from affecting them. Their primary shields rippled with enough energy to short circuit Vale's power grid, on top of being thick enough to taste and feel with her radar.

If she ever lost her sense of taste then maybe she'd figure something out with them. Took twenty years to lose one sense so she'd probably lose another before the next two decades came to pass given her luck.

Not that she'd live to see the next week.

Funny how luck seemed to find its way back to her at the eve of her end when before she didn't know it existed, casting aside the faith many kept in their back pocket. She was created without the concept existing, designed to rely on herself first rather than on chance.

Something terribly loud and metallic echoed through her head as the last of the chains shattered from the weight of the doors pressing against them, sending tiny shards of steel flying across the mindscape and injury the two occupants. Rays of lights plunged the constructed environment into a shade of grey, and any more beams would whiten it completely.

And spell their end, but that was less of a worry with the absolute certainty of it. And she could scratch a week from the list. At this rate, she wouldn't make it out of the meeting with Sienna, much less escape Vacuo. Yang could, as a last resort, throw her into the desert, but she'd probably eclipse half the continent with the ensuing clash.

The current stand-off between the two ascended beings would've ended with Yang and Weiss smacking both of them, but her idiot of an aunt didn't back down from the challenge of her now commander officer, daring to stare into her eyes and ignoring the call of her instincts to not do that exact thing and instead obey her.

Her vision shells collapsed before she knew what was happening and her hearing shortly followed, overtaken by the sound of silence. The last thing she remembered was the sound of Blake somehow piercing the veil around her ears and calling her name.

---

She came to with a banger of a headache and wasn't that a kicker after realizing she was in her head. Somehow, though she really shouldn't be surprised anymore, she was feeling pain while inside her own head, a place that didn't have pain receptors. She sat up abruptly enough for vertigo to make her head spin and she blinked at the odd sensation of being able to see again.

No matter how accustomed she'd gotten to her new vision shells, the return to her inner world still blinded her due to the sheer lack of anything, as counterintuitive that sounded. Her situation wasn't a disability in her opinion, just an alternate sense to the one she lost.

She observed her hand for a few moments and noted the scarring across the creases of her fingers and palm. Years of work she could only view because her mind remembered the injuries and nicks sustained. For all she knew her hands were even more scarred than their representation in the imaginary world with the times she'd accidentally sliced open her flesh when cleaning Crescent Rose.

But despite the absolute power granted to her in her own domain, she could do nothing to remove the partition, Ruby having already deleted any adjoining rooms to solely concentrate on maintaining the environment around the Doors. If she faltered in any way, then all hell would be let loose in the middle of one of the largest population centers on Remnant.

She brushed off flecks of dust as she wobbled to a stand, this constructed body feeling weak due to some underlying reason she had yet to identify. Was it the confrontation with the Maiden of Spring, or was it the clash of Auras afterward that had forced her into this place?

And why in all things Neo was Raven inside of her mindscape? The older woman no longer blazed with the strength of their sun, feeling remarkably normal to her senses, her sensors able to pick out the purple miasma that was her natural core when previously it was eclipsed entirely.

Something had pulled Raven into her mindscape, and she couldn't help but remember the old saying that the eyes are the windows to the soul. Probably originally written as a piece of romantic fluff because of how intense staring into another's eyes could be but the same definitely applied here.

Weiss had remarked how often she couldn't hold her gaze because the feeling behind them was too much to bear, fearing losing herself to the call of the void. At least her team was smart enough to listen to the part of their brain that yelled at them to not do exactly what Raven had done.

Raven's Maiden core also probably had something to do with it, the strength behind it letting her fight rather than be subsumed by the enormous power behind the void. Yang would have to coin her eyes as a new Semblance once she was gone to add to the myth of her, right after she finished the rest of the tasks on her ever-growing list.

Like figuring out how to make Serenity run on a miniaturized nuclear reactor without weighing down the craft or killing them through radiation. Or somehow creating a stable and tiny arc fusion reactor without blowing them across Remnant. Or using her own Semblance to somehow catalyze energy from the environment to create a pollution-free and infinitely sustainable method of travel.

The first would make Serenity absurdly large due to the shielding alone, and the second would still have to be housed in something at least three meters wide. Engineering nightmare for sure, but it'd give her something to do while mopping. The fact it would revolutionize the energy industry didn't occur to her.

Raven's opening words prompted her to help her to her feet and let her get her bearings before dropping the massive anvil that were her plans on her, and she actually had to banish the metal weight from crushing her as it appeared above them. So some control, but not all. "What hit me?" She staggered on her feet for a few moments, carefully prying her eyes open to take in the fuzzy form of her niece. "Brat."

"Pulling you into my mindscape was not my intention." She felt nothing at the term of endearment directed her way. "You did stare into my eyes after all."

"Kid, you're going to have to do a hell of a lot more explaining." Raven braced herself on her knee with one hand and threw another on her shoulder, her familiar crimson eyes drilling into hers before she looked away to the side. So, her black marbles were a permanent feature or was it because she accepted them as part of her body now. They certainly didn't evoke the hellish pressure as they did in the outside world.

She could make them silver again, probably, but another time perhaps. For now she had to deal with a treasonous S-rank of an aunt and also force her back to Beacon for the duration of the Vytal Tournament, and perhaps just before that.

She forced Raven to look at her again by redirecting her chin, Raven flinching only slightly before relaxing as the pressure behind her nightmare orbs never appeared. "You looked into my eyes, and we both appeared in my mindscape, and no," she cut off the immediate and predictable question, "I haven't figured out how."

Raven took this lull in the conversation to fully stand up and survey her surroundings. Behind her and to the sides she knew there was nothing as nothing but the Doors could exist in this plane. "Your mind sucks." She gestured behind Raven and chuckled dryly when she noticed the colossal and dilapidated doors towering over her. Odd how they didn't cast a shadow.

"Why are there two of you here?" She comically fumbled while rapidly staring between the two of them. While there were two of them, the difference between them was staggering to say the least. Assuming she looked healthy, or Blake would've smacked her for not taking care of herself better, Ruby looked close to death.

Her hair fell limply to the side of her head and clung almost desperately to her skin through the light sheen of sweat. And her eyes, surprisingly a gleaming pink, glowed with the strength of a dying match, barely moving. Dark shadows clung to the skin underneath them and her cheeks were gaunt with the rest of her skin sallow and pale. What strength she had left to fight against the Doors was waning incredibly quickly if the slumped over kneel she was in was anything to do by.

She rushed over to her side as quickly as her Semblance allowed her to and joined her on the floor, pulling her across her body to let her rest. Her other protested with murmured words that didn't reach her ears before she thrust the weight of the Doors onto her and collapsed limply, snuggling into the crook of her neck.

She could only take half a breath before the pressure emanating from the Doors slammed into her, blindsiding her for a few precious seconds and allowing half a dozen seals to tear apart in a flurry of light before she mustered Yang's core and practically threw the entirety of it against the imminent collapse.

They held if barely, the metal screeching and groaning at the loss in momentum.

Re'iyah, the little rascal of a Grimm, patiently sat by her side and keened balefully, nudging her with a cold wet nose. A black pool of smoke coalesced around them until she grew to the size of a wolf and lay down at her knees. Smiling sadly, for how else could she feel about the burden she had placed on herself, she pressed a kiss to the crown of her other and lay her gently down on Re'iyah.

A small smile graced Ruby's face while she dreamt, the toll of the last few days knocking her unconscious the moment her other came to relieve her. She couldn't keep doing this, putting herself through the weight of their previous self. Something was bound to break, and only the question of 'when' remained.

She could take up the burden herself and meditate over the Doors to prevent them from opening for another few days if Ruby could maintain her persona enough to take back control of their body, but already she was a flickering mess, her body glitching out in places as the need for her abated. With their real self knocking, and knocking with the strength of a few nukes, her body faded and wasted away, her own will overriding her own creation.

She could only imagine how Raven was taking this, standing almost directly behind her and watching her care for a younger and more innocent version of herself. Maybe more innocent wasn't the proper term with how invested Ruby was as the Hunter Commander and she definitely held the edge to interacting with her team on missions, but she, her own creation, was steeped in her own blood and pain to become the perfect Hunter.

"What are you?" The proper question finally came from Raven and was promptly answered by a piece of the Door disintegrating with an ear-splitting rend. Her core took a pounding as Yang's fragment actually struggled to catalyze enough Aura and had to resort to cannibalizing Blake and Weiss' fragments. Her arms started to shake with the effort this battle was taking and she prayed to whatever god could hear her call to have Ruby wake up.

She wasn't built for this, and neither was Ruby, but her sister was stronger in ways she couldn't fathom, daring to hold back this might for several weeks when she was about to fail in the first minute.

"I am High Commander Ruby Rose of Beacon of my failed dimension and one of four Commanders trusted to lead the Unified Remnant Hunter Forces." Raven didn't immediately react to that, choosing to take a seat in front of her to keep the terrifying Doors out of her vision. "I am the last of the Silvereyes in this world, and there will never be any after me."

She spent the next few hours, or was it minutes or even seconds, answering her aunt's questions, ranging from how she came to be in this dimension all the way to the nature of her coming death in a few scant hours. She stewed in the typical Branwen stupor as she digested this overload of information, able to ask follow-up questions about the Grimm in her mindscape and the slowly fracturing Doors, receiving the clean and unadulterated truth.

Something had brought Raven here for a reason and while she wasn't going to give destiny any more tally marks (lest Weiss find out if destiny could be personified and launch a campaign against her for her slights), it let her move Raven far more easily than simply threatening her into submission. Coincidence, she thought not.

None of the Branwens had submission kinks to begin with and the fight Raven would've demanded to have her leave Vacuo for Beacon would've leveled at least her home and the surrounding district.

"You're not lying to me, that much I can tell." Raven kept her in her sights for a touch too long now that her eyes weren't emanating the void. Why that was was still a mystery she wouldn't get to answer, but it was nice to have someone talk to you eye to eye again rather than look away from her blindfold and feel pity. She scratched her head before sitting back much more erect and pulled her sword from her sheath to lay it across her lap.

Interesting note that weapons could also travel into her mental realm, but whether this was because both of their weapons were forged with their blood or because she allowed it to be there would also remain unanswered, much to her growing chagrin of things left for her to do. Not for herself but for her team and her successor.

"What are your orders," She visibly and audibly swallowed a ball of spit before she proceeded with her question, "Commander Rose?" If it wasn't a serious request then she'd comment on the sound of her pride bending but she didn't want to jinx anything with the Doors ready to collapse onto them.

"Return to Beacon where you'll have a pardon waiting for you. Ozpin will never let you become Commander with your track record, but you will advise whoever succeeds me well as a Hunter that led others through a war already." Raven nodded with the slowness of a rusted machine. "My time here grows short but you have my authority to negotiate with Sienna Khan of the White Fang."

"Would you rather not have one of your teammates do it?"

"Blake will have a clone with you as a representative and you'll have a full copy of the proposed ceasefire, but it is up to you to finalize it before handing it over to Ozpin." Raven knew her home territory better than Blake ever could, and potentially had dealt with the leader of the Fang already as equal powerhouses. "I will need them all to…"

She didn't finish the sentence but Raven got the gist of it, knowing what would happen once she left the compound. "I'll light a candle for you on my return." She only got a single head nod in return but no tears dared streak her cheeks.

"Why are you helping me?" She finally asked after slamming a majority of her Aura into the Doors and sealing them shut with a ring of glyphs around the edges.

"Because your mother would've wanted me to." She stood from her seiza and bowed formally to her. "And because it's your last wish." That got a mirthless laugh from Summer, the implication of her securing her loyalty because she was dying not lost on her. It was entirely possible that in another universe, Raven would be a cold-hearted bitch that masked her cowardness with her attitude but it was good to know that she still cared for what little family she had left in this world.

And as long as she didn't have to fight Salem directly...

"You have your orders Raven Branwen of Beacon. Yang will give you a copy when you leave here." She stood up this time and presented a hand for Raven to shake, choosing to mark her as an equal rather than a subordinate in this case. The slight widening of her eyes was all she betrayed before she started to fade from her view. "I have an alter to wake for her final watch."

---

She woke to Blake running her fingers through her hair and let loose a rumble of a purr at the feeling, ignoring the weak protests from a freshly awakened Ruby that only exacerbated their accelerating condition. She quickly clammed up though once she sent the same feeling to her.

Over the din of the pleasure she could hear Yang and Raven conversing as if nothing had ever been wrong with them, but both knew the former had already had her revenge against the other in another dimension. It was only her logic that this was a slightly different Raven that prevented her from getting torn a new one, but it still prompted her earlier flight into a building.

There was a hint of unmasked pride in her voice.

She felt Weiss off to the side because of the death grip she had on her hand, tears practically spilling onto the bed she lay on. Her fears had apparently jumped to the worst one, that the previously mentioned end had appeared early. Better for her to cry now than collapse into a ball of useless and mushy emotions when her team needed her. A choked sob of relief tore from her when she squeezed back and she buried her face into the crook of her neck.

"I assume she told you." She felt Weiss nod against her neck. She held the older woman tight to her and shifted her to sit on her lap as she moved to sit on the edge of the bed. Blake's answer was a sharp pain of claws digging into her arm but nothing more. She had been ready for this moment for years.

"I'm wasn't going to lie to them after you remain collapsed," Raven answered partly this time and subtly glanced enough away from her daughter to complete the rest of it. Yang could be terrifying when she had cause to be. Greatly contrasting the Branwen matriarch, Yang was a mess of overt twitches with her Aura rapidly shifting between purple and red almost sentiently. "And I'm not sadistic enough to leave them in the dark for the next few hours."

That was the problem with Raven, to a certain degree. She took loyalty to a level above the norm, be it to her tribe or to her family, but would instantly crush any lingering feelings if she believed another cause took precedent. Her subjective sense of morals and justice made her cruel Hunter and an even crueler mother.

At least she had left Yang with Tai instead of in a cardboard box in an alleyway. If she had a kid, somehow, that kid would've been left at the nearest orphanage. That was her brand of moral and right, that she could serve humanity better than slaving away as a parent to an infant. And as perfect a facsimile Ruby was, she also agreed.

She smothered a chuckle before Blake could hear it and worry about her, barely allowing a grin on her face. Raven would make a suitable and terrifyingly competent Commander if Ozpin let her, but Beacon didn't need another wartime Commander after her if her plans succeeded. Sure, she'd be out of the picture, but her team would end Cinder before she could become a threat.

Qrow, with his annoying compassion and ability to work for the Council, albeit in a limited form, would succeed her, and with Ozpin's help, you restructure the Hunters to work together with the other factions instead of in a mutually agreed upon ignorance. Her totalitarian regime would end today, with none of the Hunters wiser they had even served under one.

Technically.

"A few hours is what it'll take for us to get to the middle of the Vacuoan Desert." She reached for Crescent Rose, adjusting for the weight of the clinging koala that was her little princess. The egregiously large scythe hummed with the power unknown, a sheen of vermilion traveling along the many different components.

None of her team members knew how to react to that, Yang and Blake predictably looking at each other in worry emanating from them enough for her to taste it. Weiss just shook her head and tightened her arms and legs around her as if that could somehow prevent her from leaving them.

A glyph could theoretically anchor her soul to this plane, assuming humans had souls and they weren't just infinitely complex matrices of electrical impulses. Well, that was also assuming glyphs could somehow be made from ethereal material rather than from part of the electromagnetic spectrum. An experiment for another time perhaps.

"Is this it then?" Weiss shifted her weight to sit on Summer's hip and stare deep into her eyes, resting her forehead against hers. Climate change ran its course on the icebergs of her iris, the deep blue of the hidden underpart receding to the melting ice of dying glaciers. She tried to warn her of the danger, not willing to subject her angel to the vision of the Doors, but she found the words caught in her throat when she realized Weiss didn't care.

She'd already accepted the horrific reality coming to take her and maybe that was why her eyes had no effect on her.

She'd already given up hope.

The Doors creaked dangerously when all of Weiss' seals tore to shreds, Ruby stifling a scream of unadulterated pain. Re'iyah provided what little comfort she could in her larger and more huggable form by letting her dig her fingers into her malleable form. Light ray after light ray bounced around the artificial mindscape and the two of them did their best to shield each other from the effects.

Blake and Yang had all but one seal each left positioned across the two doors with the remains of Weiss' clinging weakly to the metal in the imaginary breeze.

She betrayed nothing on her face and pressed a soft kiss to Weiss' lips. The gates between her conscious self and mindscape slammed shut before she could torture Ruby any further, getting a wave of gratitude in return. The feeble link between them would only allow soft whispers until the Doors finally shattered open.

Yang snapped a photograph of them for her ever-expanding collection of blackmail, but she had a sneaking suspicion her gallery contained more images of them hanging out together than any real incriminating material. Though most if not all of them were of them in questionable situations that involved questionable morals with even more questionable answers.

Good collage or slideshow material.

Ruby felt Weiss shift her weight to better grip her collar in desperation. Tears ran unabashedly down Weiss' face and traveled all the way down to the blindfold around her own neck. She couldn't muster any tears of her own, but Weiss more than made up for the both of them.

Weiss greatly deepened the kiss and ravaged her mouth with the thirst of a woman in the desert. That irony wasn't lost in some corner of her mind that was still operating beyond the gateway of information the pain encompassed.

"I thought she was supposed to be married to you?" She caught the tail end of Raven's whisper to Yang, getting a chuckle from Weiss as she broke the intimate kiss and rested her forehead on hers again.

"It's complicated." Came Blake's clipped and raspy answer, her voice barely inflecting anymore. Her Aura core was barely moving now, a despondent ball of still watery energy that refused to ripple more than a lake on a still day. She still noticed the shy smile on her face that was there because Weiss loved them all true.

But it wasn't forced or fake as she might've expected it to be.

It was as she expected of her best soldier; loyal to the end and always ready to perform her duty as was her prerogative as a weapon and as her wife. But was the latter one bound to her in such a way, or was her warped perception tricking it? The duties of a wife were ingrained in her from Ruby's creation: to love and care for her spouse.

But were euthanasia and murder bundled up with those?

Would a good wife force her spouse to go through with it?

Ruby chimed in helpfully with an answer she could barely understand through the portcullis of her mind gate. No, no a good wife wouldn't force her wife into such a divisive decision, to make her choose between love for her and love for their people. Another helpful chime from her other told her she also shouldn't have locked lips with another person but that was a difference in marriage laws and their limitations.

She wasn't the poster child for upholding laws if they didn't fit into her needs after all. Democracy faltered under her dictatorial reign, the rules of law and justice cast aside for her greater good when the Council or Jacques dared interfere, for her vision.

Her greater good.

Maybe once she'd have been revolted at the idea of it. When she'd been a child just entering the brutal world of the Hunter administration when she'd first been trained at the age of five to take up the mantle of Headmaster due to her ancestry to follow Ozpin's greater good. To become the future Headmaster with Ozpin by her side as an advisor.

But her greater good was different. It didn't matter if the enemy was human or Grimm, terrorist or law enforcement, ignorant or malicious politician. The species didn't matter to her in her greater good, just that they weren't threats to the innocent population of Remnant. And even that definition haunted her in the dead of night.

Sure was a wake-up call to the population that thought itself safe because they were human. Ozpin would've raised hell if he'd been alive to scold her when her war bled over to the White Fang and the Kingdom militaries when she'd been forced to rip armies apart as her prerogative demanded of her.

Before her creation, the original Ruby would have been content to sit back and let the countries tear themselves to shreds until Commander Qrow witnessed the terrible effects even a small skirmish had on the growth of the Grimm. It wasn't long after that that she'd emerged as the guardian her Hunters needed rather than a sweet summer child.

Both of them had been idealistic, but only she understood the brutal reality of command through fear. Beacon would've loved Ruby as their Headmaster, a kind and loving child with a heart of gold and set on fighting Grimm with her all, but they didn't need her. They only wanted her because of what she represented.

What they got was a nightmare that refused to ever have anyone else be on the field if she herself couldn't be there first. Any resistance from the countries within her sphere of influence was crushed without mercy as messages to the reigning Councils to not test her patience or the power she seemed to effortlessly wield. Her Hunters had learned to both respect and fear her for her ire wasn't limited to the military and Fang alone. They were subject to the same strict guidelines she imposed, that they were there to protect rather than to wage war.

Her team would have to learn to do without her reputation and forge their own methods of command. Respect and fear worked for her because she had no concept of rule through love, her code written to protect first and lead second. That was the way her team had rebuilt the shell of their leader those many years ago, all culminating in the failed defense of Remnant against the Primordials.

And they would succeed because the trust they imparted on her as their leader and Commander returned to them twice over. She mused idly at the unforeseen effect of her restructuring. Three of them had trusted in her, but now she left the future of Remnant to the three who'd built her up in the first place.

They were on the right path as Blake picked Weiss up from her place and threw her to the recently vacated bed, eliciting a cry of shock and surprise at the rough treatment. Any further thoughts were drowned out as Blake first pressed her Aura core against hers and then immediately followed with a kiss.

Their intermingled cores sang out in harmony but she ignored the wonderful high it elicited in her when it started to affect the mind gate she imposed. She instead focused on the other wonderful feeling of physicality Blake evoked in her, the carnal pleasure she enjoyed so many times because it was the only feeling her body let her feel.

Or was it the only feeling this persona could feel?

Was it because of her torture or was it because this was how she was constructed? All of her feelings for Blake and Weiss and Yang could've well been created to facilitate a need for their approval and trust as a way of controlling her, but it didn't matter in the end. She had her job to do and she'd been given three extremely proficient and talented Hunters to accomplish it with.

So was her reality so terrible?

She happily returned the kiss and tightly wrapped her arms around her intelligent and primal wife. She was still as beautiful as she could remember, she thought, some deep and undisturbed memories resurfacing from the pit. The scars she traced along her waist and shoulders were as remarkable as ever, memories trapped in physical form.

Their matched heights made for an equal battle as Blake attempted to remove her tonsils, abusing her heritage to wrestle through her tongue and viciously nip at her lips with her sharpened incisors. She felt both of her cores significantly rise in heat from their battle until her aunt roughly cleared her throat.

She was also dealing with some pent up arousal if the way she rubbed her thighs together was a sign to go by.

Her blood sang with fire for the first time since their initial time jump, perhaps from Yang's infernal core fragment or the fatality of her future. The juggernaut found herself pulled sharply from her side and into her hold, her fingers daring to entangle themselves in the gold threads of her cousin's hair.

A guttural growl erupted from Yang at her impudence and she again found the ire of a teammate turned on her abused lips. Only now did she notice how neither her glyphs or personal glyph defense system activated at the bodily threat presented to her. The eternal warmth her Yang perpetually emanated did nothing to cool her down, Weiss' Aura fragment strangely quiet.

Yang traced the scars this body still possessed, slipping under her shirt to tickle the Lichtenberg figures spread across her abdomen. Her dragon continued to press her advantage as she brushed a thumb against the underpart of her breasts, using her height and weight to pull her into her form.

She tokenly fought against the loving prison, a few precious strands of precious metal left on her hand when she ravenously returned the love bite and forced her to disengage from their battle. Her Aura, and no doubt her eyes, glistened a frightening crimson to match the trail of red trailing down her lips. Yang wiped it off with the pad of her thumb and made sure she heard the delectable sound of her licking it up.

An abrupt and terrifying laugh echoed around the room and she briefly wondered who made the delicious sound until she felt that everyone was staring at her in a mixture of horror and sorrow and she realized she had produced the noise. Yang's grip on her waist only tightened at the loss of control over their shared life, her Aura rapidly shifting back to a vivid amethyst she knew her eyes now reflected.

"It's time," Yang spoke her thoughts out loud exactly and she could barely feel the pain of her seal exploding in her catastrophic namesake. Despite her mindscape reacting to her acceptance of the death, Yang still smiled dangerously, her Aura tinged with flecks of her usual battle crimson.

If only she knew how terrifying a monster hid within her caring and loving older sister.

She could still smell her own blood on Yang's stained teeth as her tongue worked furiously to remove the protein stains from her pearly whites. Yang dragged her out of the bedroom and out the front door with the rest of her team dutifully following along at a sedate pace. She called out a good-bye to her thoroughly confused aunt before she got out of range, trusting she'd do the duty bestowed on her.

Just like Yang would do, with Blake and Weiss dragged along for the ride.

She again spread her Semblance across the team and accessed her decentralized core network. The familiar thrum of her full power forced a grin to her pale visage and they rocketed off into the Vacuo desert, leaving behind a trail of multi-colored petals. She conveniently forgot to raise the wind shield, letting it buffet against her shields and tear at her skin and hair until she felt alive.

She didn't think her team begrudged her the feeling.

---

Her vision shells remained partially active as she retreated into her mindscape for the last time, taking careful note of the many Blake clones that surrounded the valley she sat in. A large and relatively flat sandy area had been located as they neared the western edge of Vale's redwood forest.

She'd taken a seat in the widest part and almost immediately a dome of glyphs was snapped into existence around her. When her initial radar scan finished, she also learned Weiss hadn't stopped at a dome but encased her entirely in a sphere that cut her off from any underground escape.

It wouldn't do much to stop her once she turned her strategy against her, but she got brownie points for trying. The original whiteboard she kept in her mindscape for such things was gone, but the spirit of it was still there, scattered somewhere across the theoretically infinite space until she held enough will to reconstruct it.

Unfortunately the last of her will was running painfully thin, forcing Ruby to flicker almost constantly.

"Are you ready?" She asked herself, getting a weak smile in reply.

"Are you ready?" A scratchy voice repeated her question right back to her and Ruby made to stand, shifting her weight from her knees. She barely got off the balls of her feet before she collapsed into her waiting arms. Her appearance could be barely described as alive.

Deep veins crawled across her skin but these weren't Salem's characteristic scars of corruption. Instead, lines of pure white cracked across her body, emanating light so pure it hurt this manifestation of her. "Because, because I'm not." The whisper of her voice barely made it to her ears.

She ran her fingers through Ruby's short hair, testing the familiarity and strangeness of her own but also not her own body. Blake had an intimate understanding with her own body, but she, she never cared about her body other than a need to improve it, and then after her blindness, cared even less about her appearance.

Her breathing was shallow now and trailed across her neck, tickling the sensitive skin there. A few more breathes had her collapse heavily and entirely. Her fingers grasped weakly at her shirt and failed to find any purchase until she grabbed her hands and held them tightly.

"I think, I think I'm scared," Ruby admitted and she continued to pet her, interspersing shushes here and there. Her breathing leveled out until she couldn't feel it anymore and she brushed the back of her hand against her cheek, causing Ruby to close her eyes at the soft caress. "I don't want to go."

"I know." The Doors loomed over them, in the final stages of completely falling apart.

"Good luck." She whispered out one last time with her breathing falling silent. Her own eyes closed as the weight of her alter's death rested on her shoulders. There should've been something more in her heart of hearts, some sorrow or pain at the passing of her friend, or herself, but couldn't muster anything.

Did her rational mind explain her away as a tool for her use or was it simply a good-bye because of her odds of survival? Was it an assimilation of herself or a change in thinking, finally able to think for herself without another voice chiming in with both good and bad ideas.

So who was the voice contemplating these thoughts with no verbal reply coming forth? She couldn't remember the last time she heard her own conscious, that primeval part of her brain free of the mental block and boost that was Ruby. Her thoughts were now her own and that terrified her more than whoever waited for her behind the door.

She didn't have her team to rely on anymore, their physical bodies stuck outside and unable to help her. With their mental reconstruction of Ruby now all but gone save for her still warm body, she was left truly alone for the first time since her internment. She dared to look down at her sister, forcing a frown to maybe trick herself into feeling something.

A dull ache formed somewhere in her chest and started to constrict her breathing, a familiar reaction to one of her own falling in battle. Too many times had she knowingly sent her Hunters out on certain suicide missions, the same feeling weighing her down whenever a Blake clone reported the success of the mission but the death of the team. Entire districts had been evacuating or defended at the cost of four brilliant lives. Duty had made them accept the mission, knowing they likely wouldn't make it out alive, and duty had made them refute the option to leave without saving everyone they could.

But this ache intensified every second it dared wrap around her, a cold she couldn't attribute to Weiss' fragment chilling her down to her bones. The many lessons from her team almost refused to be cast aside now, and she could identify this as grief and sorrow, and perhaps a taint of rage.

Irrationality wasn't supposed to be a part of her, but maybe this assimilation let her feel what she'd had stripped from her those many years ago. Sorrow at the loss of a piece of her psyche, and rage the being behind the seals. The familiar pressure of the Doors slipped off her shoulders before the responsibility could settle, her refusal to fight the oncoming storm resounding deep.

Flecks of light grabbed her attention, the weight in her lap disappearing ever so slowly as Ruby's body disappeared. She tried to catch the light, only managing to push them around as her subconscious burned the psychological construct away with it no longer needing to sustain the false mask. A cataclysmic clang of the Doors slamming open with enough force to send them flying at them, both parts sliding around her.

The last thing she noticed was the smile of acceptance plastered to Ruby's face before her mindscape exploded into pure white, scattered her bodily form into infinitesimally small pieces. Her conscious thought process followed directly along and she could think of nothing but white, the color and feeling of pureness wiping any malicious ideas until her body reformed some distance away with Crescent Rose materializing already unfolded in her ready hands.

Absolutely nothing remained of the Doors with not even a blast point to denote where the explosion of light had originated. Remnants of chains and paper seals lay strewn about around the blast zone where a familiar figure sat in a ball with her knees pulled together. A traumatic cloak wrapped around her shoulders and pooled around her figure.

Neither she nor the figure moved for what seemed like an eternity but couldn't have been more than a heartbeat. She dared move after the figure didn't, Crescent Rose humming vibrantly in her hand and glowing her usual ominous crimson.

Forged with blood, the weapon refused to change form no matter how much she willed. She would follow her through death and into the afterlife, if such an abstract construct existed for such was the power behind a weapon. The figure also possessed a weapon, similarly strapped along her back, but this was the first version of the weapon she carried, the one she wielded when training, the one that didn't know the taste of human blood and absolute duty.

The one tinged with naivety and the pure ideal of protection and all that encompassed a universal good. That was who she was before her internment, and that was who sat in front of her, curled into a tiny ball of insult and remembrance.

She flash stepped towards the figure before she could realize she did in the first place. Rose refused to calm down, pulsing a vermilion so black she failed to locate where the weapon ended and where her body started.

The author is entering an existential crisis about the discontent between his mind and his body, wondering whether reality is pure and absolute or whether reality is what his mind is what it makes it.

Switching back to Summer's perspective. If the latter, then how did she know whether it was real and if the former, how did she her know whether her mind was absolute or whether her mind just defined what absolute was.

That certainly required a redefinition to what absolute meant to her and the world around her. Her own absolute version of the world meant nothing to the arbitrary justice that defined the outside world.

The figure raised her head to look at her, silver orbs of justice and lawful good glaring into her endless marbles of the void. The figure flinched upon meeting her gaze, burrowing herself into her cloak to avoid her gaze.

She reached out and forced the figure's chin up to meet her halfway, the other's eyes widening when taking upon the visage of an intimately familiar visage she'd seen in many mirrors before.

"Mom?" A feeling of déjà vu washed over her from the last time she'd been asked that question. An image of herself, nestled in a pool of crimson with silver Aura so bright it made her realize how blind and arrogant she must've been to ignore the many warnings and urges of Neo for her to more quickly develop her sensing abilities.

Oh good, her self-reflection capabilities were still online.

She must've known her Aura resembled a fragment of a Maiden after having to endure the insult of living with two deities that believed themselves superior to her. No, Neo was far above both Ozpin and Salem in power level, that much she was aware of now, and she wasn't sure whether they just ignored her out of principle or really did believe she was beneath them.

Her abilities stretched out to reach the afterlife, a realm she hadn't seen Salem or Ozpin touch in her short life.

"I'm not your mother." The smaller figure shrank into herself upon taking note of her impossible eyes that meant she could've never been related to her. Her hair and vague similar dress sense meant she could fool the odd acquaintance, but not anyone that knew her well. "What's the last thing you can remember?"

This was a necessary but insidious question. She didn't need to have herself relive the last traumatic memories before her sealing, but she also selfishly didn't want to die without ensuring that was the last and only option. Leaving her past unmolested in this mindscape only ensured another trigger would do the same on the outside.

Still refusing to meet her gaze, she answered. "Um, not much. There was the mission Uncle Qrow took us on against the Council House and… then… " She chose to close her eyes this time to spare her younger self from her own future, a blindfold materializing itself at the mere thought. "But, who are you, and where am I? And where is my team?"

She sat down in front of the other being, pulling Crescent Rose from her back and resting it on her lap. Her guest eyed her warily, glancing between the ribbon of a blindfold and the familiar but insanely large and murderous scythe. Her fingers danced across the alloyed metal, crimson pulsing under her touch and eliciting a smile from her.

"Your memories are incomplete, or rather everything after a certain point doesn't exist for you since you were sealed away." A warm liquid suddenly erupted from her fingertips when she strayed too close to a serrated blade. She forcefully pulled back her Aura before it could rush down and heal it, the rush of endorphins more than making up for the slight pain.

"What do you mean?" The first questions came out in her usual shotgun manner, excitement tempered with careful consideration. "How much time since I was 'sealed' away? What about my team?" Her silver eyes sharpened dangerously, the familiar glint appearing whenever something dared threaten her own.

"Two or three years, maybe four." She sucked at the blood flowing from her finger, relishing in the taste of copper. "It appears part of your memories were retroactively redacted since the moment of my birth. And you can't tell me you don't at least have an inkling of who I am?"

"You said 'since the moment of your birth', like you were born during my 'sealing'?" The other reached forward to brush across her Crescent Rose, the same pulse of crimson rippling across the weapon. "What was this 'sealing'?"

"There came a moment, probably repressed down somewhere deep in your subconscious, where your memories stop. A traumatic memory filled with failure that leads to nowhere good, just after the Council House." She cursed herself inwardly, almost hating what she had to do here.

The figure hissed in pain and withdrew her hand as if burned, streams of Aura leaking from her fingers like trails of light. Instantly she curled up into a tight ball, her teeth gritting so hard she could hear the enamel straining. She gripped her hair tight as the starter memories slammed into both of them.

She dealt with it much better, her breathing barely hitching as the first memories of her life ran through her faster than her Semblance. Fear was probably the first emotion that stood out for her in the flashback. That primeval and raw form of emotion that lead to helplessness, fright, inferiority, and exposure. Dozen of other more specific ones danced around in the black-tinged memory, but against her, they stood little chance of embedding their microscopic teeth into her.

It was her function after all, the primary directive of her creation. To walk through the crushing weight of frivolous feelings and emotions and be the perfect weapon Remnant needed in her darkest days, even if it meant casting aside what made her human to begin with.

Like an old film reel from far before the digital revolution, the memories played with a significant portion of something abstract missing from them. She knew she was watching herself in a peculiar third-person detached view, but nothing that happened made her wince or cry.

Every cut, every burn, every wound filled with salt, every shock, every beating, and every rape washed over her, leaving nothing behind but the permanent scars her body bore. Most of these memories she had had no access to before the Doors fell, only snippets falling through the cracks.

But even now they were tolerable. She understood her body was nothing more than a tool for her mind to use and as long she held that her will would be indomitable. It was a stark reality she held deep down to her core, one the figure across from her couldn't fathom.

The warning she got wasn't enough for her to clear the area in time, a blast of silver light blanking out her vision and singing her shields. She released Rose fully as a counterweight to stop her uncontrollable tumble through the air, slamming the scythe into the ground to completely stop.

"Why… what… happened…?" The rest of her sentence was lost as an almost guttural roar tore across the landscape. No longer curled up with her knees drawn to her chest, the other figure stood hunched over on all fours. Her crimson cloak fluttered violently in the non-existent hurricane, pieces ripping out to join the protective shell of rose petals amassed around its owner.

The little girl representing her younger self was mostly gone before she even had a chance to exist. She held one hand almost permanently over her right eye, rays of black light leaking out through fingers. Similarly colored vein etched over the skin of her face, not quickly, but slowly and consistently spreading further to her neck.

"Why… didn't… Yang…?" Another spine-tingling roar of immeasurable pain ripped from her chest, but she already knew the ending to this question. She had never blamed Yang for failing in her prerogative as Sacrifice. On paper, she was first and served to ease her mind in ensuring her survival, but she knew she would always be the first to die as a leader.

"It wasn't Yang fault we were captured." She idly removed one of her artillery magazines from her leg pouch and slotted it in with a resounding click. "It was bad timing and luck."

"She… could've tried harder… They could've tried harder getting me back!" Her other yelled back at her with enough force to send a shockwave careening towards her. She let her shields tank it, idly wondering exactly how much of her mindscapes power wasn't her own anymore if she could do this instinctively.

"You're getting irrationally angry." She repositioned her Rose and aimed down to thick barrel to locate her enemy in her sights. "They spent six months searching for us through the most dangerous terrain across Anima and Sanus, and even then, it was by luck Blake found us."

"Us?" Her younger self finally managed to stagger to a stand, only to stop and growl at the artillery cannon pointed her way. "You're nothing but a fragment of who I am, already set on taking me out."

"That isn't a lie, no, not entirely." She carefully considered her next words, staring down at one gleaming silver eyes, white trails of power misting off into the ether off of it. "You're a threat to everyone with how mentally unhinged you are right now."

"And you aren't?" Her shadow retorted snidely, her Crescent Rose opening fully until it rested in her hands. "My memories stop only halfway through my torture, which means you bear the same brunt as I do."

She closed her eyes at the words of truth. "Yes, I do, but my creation was meant to incorporate the torture rather than have it scar me. Already it's having an effect on you." The black veins now reached her clavicle, spewing dark light. A mist of Aura also congealed around the hand she used to cover her eye, leaking a corrupt Aura into their shared mindscape.

"You survived the process. I should get a shot at living my life as my own, not as a puppet to this, this fake me. My team is out there, waiting to reconnect with their real leader, the real Ruby." She couldn't deny the shot of pain at those words. She'd done her best as Ruby's replacement, but there were always rumors she wasn't the same after her internment.

How true they had been.

"I'd happily let you leave here and take over our body but…" Her Aura pressure exploded into the air, weighing heavily on both of them. Ruby stumbled under the onslaught but held her, silver tinged with a hint of black joining to counter her transparent one. "it's not a chance I'm going to take."

She depressed the trigger on Rose and their mindscape shuddered.

---

They were all on edge as they watched their leader meditate in the middle of the desert. Glaringly bright white glyphs hung solidly in the air and offered limited light to reveal dozens of Blake clones scattered among the dunes, but Yang still couldn't help the shiver that ran up her spine, and it certainly wasn't because the desert was supposed to be freezing cold at sunset.

She watched for what felt like hours, sitting on top of a dune and resting her chin on her folded hand. Blake sat to her right, looking as if she gave no quarry to the world while she read her book, but her pretty ears betrayed her calm. Weiss sat to her left and didn't bother hiding her worry as she nibbled on her nails in a cute but albeit disgusting habit of anxiety.

The steadily increasing ball of Aura trapped in Weiss' sphere grabbed her attention almost immediately, eyes narrowing at the familiar yet unfamiliar Aura of her leader. She could still identify her Aura fragment among the chimera, and to a lesser extent, both Blake and Weiss', but the fourth remained elusive.

Ember Celica snapped into ready position before her conscious mind could realize it, the tips of her hair lighting in smoldering embers with her eyes bleeding into crimson at the prospect of Prune fully activating. She stifled the urge with a growl, violet peeking back through until she determined Ruby's status.

Blake and Weiss were in similar ready positions with hands gripped tightly around their weapons.

"Where am I?" A quiet voice asked from the center of her prison, completely wiping away any hostile intentions. She knew this voice and so did her teammates, all of them exchanging looks of fear and terror at the potential prospect of striking her down. "Why can't I see?"

"Who are you?" She was in front of the glyph sphere in mere seconds, flying across the dunes using her gauntlets as a propellant. She stared down onto Ruby, the girl blindly seeking out with her hands for purchase of something but finding only sand, sand, and more sand.

"Yang? Is that you? Why can't I see?" She gulped down the grapefruit sized ball of terror and found her mouth drier than the desert around her. She couldn't do this, she couldn't look down at the face, couldn't hear the voice of the leader she failed those many years ago and kill her.

"Who are you?" She repeated the question after a light prod from Blake.

"What do you mean 'who am I?'?" The imposter stood up too eagerly, failing to consider the enormous weight of Crescent Rose Mk. II and tumbled back down on her butt. "It's me. It's Ruby. Why can't I see?"

That crushing realization helped nothing in any way, shape, or form. This wasn't the Ruby of Remnant, High Commander of Beacon and one of the Four Horsemen of the Second Great War. No, this was Ruby of Beacon, Commander ascendant to Qrow, lover of cookies, leader of RWBY, and innocent of torture.

"You can't see because you sacrificed your eyes in a ceasefire about a year ago." Blake chose to answer this time, devolving into a coughing fit seeking to dislodge a lung. She bent over and pulled her into her side for support, getting an ear to tickle her cheek in thanks.

"Is that Blake? What ceasefire?" The rapid-fire questions came one after the other. "And do you mean the other me sacrificed them? Then how come it's affecting me?"

"So you know about your alter ego." Weiss chose to speak this time, her voice dropping low enough for snowflakes to begin appearing around her. "Is she okay?"

"Is she okay?" Ruby replied back mockingly, voice rising in hysteria. "I'm the one that's been trapped for apparently three to four years by this imposter, and you ask if SHE'S okay? I thought you were my friend Weiss!"

Though she didn't physically recoil at the acerbic words, Weiss still flinched at the verbal backhand. She similarly pulled her into a side hug and pet her hair, murmuring loving whispers only she could hear. This wasn't how Prune should've progressed. It predicted a monster hiding behind the facade of Summer, not this tortured and hysterical child of a leader.

"And I'm fine, thanks for asking." Yet even this version of Ruby felt wrong. She wasn't one for sarcasm, even in the worst of her moods, usually stuck being passive-aggressive or even patronizingly and sickeningly sweet. "Not like the other me is trying to kill me or anything."

"She's what?" Yang heard all of them ask at once, Blake tearing herself from her coughing fit just enough to utter those two words.

"Yeah, she has this enormous version of Crescent Rose pointed at me and is talking about not giving me the chance to take control and…" She could fill in the blanks as Ruby curled into a tight ball and whimpered, her bright silver Aura congealing into physical clouds of mists around her.

"Okay, now what do we do?" She almost didn't hear Weiss' question with how caught up she was staring at her imprisoned Ruby. "Which Ruby is this? What does Prune say about this?"

"I don't know." She admitted after a tenuous silence. "Somewhere in her psyche are two versions of Ruby battling for control. One is Summer, the nightmare that survived her torture and the Ruby we served with for the last three years. The one who activated Prune just before she started meditating." She took a deep breath to steady herself.

"The other is the Ruby we once knew. The one that knows less hardship and isn't blind. The Ruby from before her torture, but still corrupted by it if her little outburst is anything to go by. Someone is going to win, and depending on which one of them asserts dominance, we have to make a choice."

"But isn't this a good thing?" The optimist in Weiss chimed in. "Ruby, our old Ruby, is coming back. Sure she's not the Ruby we served with, but it's still Ruby."

"We still have our orders sweetheart." She chastised softly.

"But Prune only takes effect is Ruby is a threat to humanity. This is Ruby we're talking about. She cried when she accidentally killed someone on the field. She couldn't hurt anyone even if she tried." Weiss argued well, but she didn't quite understand the danger sitting nestled within Ruby's form.

"Kill her." Blake rasped out and stepped forward, placing a hand on one of the many glyphs of the constructed prison. The entire sphere flashed a violent purple as she wrested control from Weiss, the heiress shuddering at the takeover. Despite the control she wielded, Blake still looked to her for the final signal.

Weiss, however, mistook the plea for orders as a farewell and acted, screaming out at Blake and materializing a glyph to fling the Faunus violently away. Her outstretched hand was instantly grabbed by an irritated Yang, control of the sphere falling to her as it turned a virulent yellow.

"Enough!" She barked, a blast of sand erupting around her as her Aura responded to her turbulent emotions. Weiss recoiled as her eyes no doubt flashed their terrifying crimson, reminding her who exactly held command of the team when Ruby was incapacitated.

Another Blake appeared by Weiss' side and slapped her lightly upside the head with no real malice. She didn't need to turn around to know the Blake Weiss had sent to eat sand was a clone, or if she was real then she had enough skills to make it look as if it was. Annoying pest of a Hunter had earned her nickname well.

"This isn't my choice in the first place because it was always going to be Blake's choice. But if she at all values my opinion then she will kill her!" Weiss blinked owlishly at the already seemingly concrete decision, a quiet 'huh?' escaping her lips.

"Whoever that Ruby is, whoever comes out of that prison isn't the Ruby I served with. Summer's not making it out in one piece, and neither is the old Ruby, not if we follow Summer's last orders."

She held up a hand to cut off Weiss' next words.

"I won't serve with a Ruby I no longer know. A Ruby that doesn't know how to lead or hunt or be a soldier. A Ruby that you and I don't know or love the way we do now, a Ruby that Blake isn't married to. A Ruby that is more liable to hate us for our failures just as much as she is liable to love us as she always did."

"We can always learn to love her again, to teach her the same way we taught Summer!" Weiss protested, ripping control of her glyphs back. "Ruby never hated anyone!"

"Is that a chance you're willing to take? To fight Ruby at her most powerful when you and I both know we don't have the guts to really hurt her?"

"You weren't there," Blake whispered, again stepping forward to place a hand on the glyph sphere but not asserting control. She coughed once to alleviate the pressure building in her chest before switching to her more usual form of communication. I never put it in the report, but Ruby was gone. I'm sorry Weiss, but there's nothing left.

Blake had cast her vote and Weiss now looked to her for the deciding vote, baleful blue curtained by a few stray locks of white she'd let grow out just a little too much. She couldn't look her wife in the eye though, her decision already made the moment Summer had trusted her as the next leader.

"Detonate it." Weiss let a tear fall from her eyes but didn't move to stop Blake, handing over the reins of the glyphs completely. Blake didn't follow the order immediately, waiting for some, for any sign from her.

"Do it." She finally spoke, her voice cracking painfully. Blake only nodded and asserted control, the dozens of glyphs again glowing a vibrant purple. All but the ones protecting then pulsed an eye-watering violet as she funneled Yang's Semblance into them.

With a sharp increase in her Aura pressure, the sphere detonated, blasting out a shockwave strong enough for them to feel it down to their bones. Tons of sand erupted into the air from the explosion and they only remained on their feet due to Weiss snapping in a platform at the last moment, the mage still having her wits about her.

She had to wipe some sand from her precious hair and her eyes to discern the damage done, a small part of her hoping there wouldn't be a body left or she might lose it and accidentally go supernova on the continent and leave it split in twain, or worse, start a nuclear winter. That might've killed the entire point of Prune in the first place if she accidentally killed a large majority of the population because she couldn't keep her emotions in check.

There was nothing left when she checked the location of the prison, save for the vast crater below them. Nothing could've survived that explosion, nothing should've survived that explosion, but at least one of Blake clones glowed enough of a silver to have Ember Celica shift into a ready position.

A slow clap echoed across the blank landscape, prompting Weiss to snap into existence a partially complete dome with interspersed glyphs to illuminate the bleak desert. The slowly rotating aerial glyphs hung impossibly and exposed the many Blake clones crouched and ready, along with a familiar figure standing on the other end of the valley.

"I didn't think you had it in you." Their condemned leader stopped clapping once she got her dramatic fill. "I always knew Blake had it in her, but you, you I didn't expect to be the deciding vote. Here I thought you'd veto my decision, just as you'd done in the past, so why didn't you now?"

"Hmm," Yang observed her from her position on the glyph, moving to crouch and gaze down over the edge. "My leader's wishes pertained to ending her suffering on top of protecting her, yet she isn't here right now, is she?"

Ruby smiled, making all of them stand uncomfortably and shuffled on their platform. It wasn't the smile she used to endear herself to people and neither was it her bloodthirsty one where she made men flee in terror. No, this one terrified all of them as it was cruel and capricious, a smile found on immoral sociopaths, a smile of wanton destruction.

"No she isn't, Summer and the girl once known as Ruby are trapped in a physical battle of wills to see which of them will gain control over the body, but while they fight up here," She tapped her head, "they left their combined subconscious to assume control. Me."

"To survive above all others, though I'm going to have to survive the three of you first." Crescent Rose opened before they noticed it move, a full magazine already slotted in with the hammer armament ready and in position. "Both of them have this… insipid need to sacrifice themselves. Don't get me wrong, we're all good people, but they take their oaths with a zeal beyond what their instincts tell them otherwise. So many times they've flaunted about and almost gotten themselves killed, but not anymore. I come first this time!"

Yang didn't utter a sound for a long time, taking in this selfish new Ruby that was so different from the Summer they served under or the Ruby their memories could piece together. Never had she been so callous to her oaths, and never had she ever considered herself above another life.

She didn't know how to warp Prune into this directive now, several odd bits and pieces of a puzzle fitting into place. If what she understood, and she wasn't going to kid herself that she knew little, this was just another part of Ruby, which only meant Prune could activate fully since this was nothing more than just another part of Ruby.

Oh how far a god had fallen, to go from perfect and indomitable to selfish and cowardly. To watch as she succumbed to her wounds from years ago, an almost unpredicted outcome which could've turned out far, far worse if she hadn't seen it coming. To see her torn apart as different aspects of her psyche tore her apart.

Perhaps this was the true injury she suffered, to become so fragmented she only truly lived in parts and never as a whole. To have entire pieces locked away behind a wall and only just now were they vying for dominance and control.

"I have my orders, Ruby." She fired her weapon, overcharging it until it was more explosive than metal. The slug glowed a violent orange and the air screech as it tore around it until it impacted where Ruby stood and made another crater to join the larger one.

A chill crawled up her spine and her gut told her this fight was far from over. A bare breeze tickled her ear and she almost chalked it up to the desert until it spoke. "And I have mine."

---

This fight wasn't going her way.

Despite her few years of training and immeasurable experience on the battlefield, her younger self just had more raw talent and early training. Taught since she could walk, Ruby danced around her with an audacity unseen. When she wasn't taunting her with polite barbs, or devolving into quiet giggles as her mind snapped under the weight of her memories, she cut her up with scary ease.

It wasn't even the experience gap anymore, her Aura shields unable to manifest anymore as more and more of her mindscape slipped from her control. Already her movement was slowing as Ruby figured out how much power she could exert over her.

Her shields had fallen first and she bore the mark of her arrogance across her chest. Her Aura refused to work on the wound or rather her injury refused to be healed or seared shut, a sucking chest wound pouring blood across her front.

Fortunately, she had enough control over her mindscape bodily construct to ignore the pain and not let the debilitating wound distract her. As long as she could simulate breathing just fine, she could still yet come out on top, but as soon as Ruby understood the true lengths of control over their mindscape, she'd be lucky to breathe let alone stand tall.

She sidestepped a lance of wind and returned a shot, Ruby slapping the bullet aside with childish ease. That one move meant far more had changed in the short time she'd been lost in thought. Her artillery shells weren't the little toys fired out by soldiers but bleeding-edge rounds capable of shredding top of the line Atlesian naval craft.

"You can't win this lesser me." She suddenly found herself sequestered behind a rock among hilly terrain and felt like a mouse trapped in a maze with a puma. Anything she did, along with her location, was inconsequential with the coming of absolute control in Ruby's hands.

Any move she made to exert mental control over Ruby was met with a wall so tall and thick she was reminded of the Doors she fought so hard to maintain in the first place. She didn't know whether this was because Ruby was just so much older than her or whether her strength was fading the longer she fought.

"You're right!" She called back, a spray of bullets slamming against the rock she hid behind. "But I wouldn't be you if I didn't at least try and stop you."

"Stop me?" Her protection suddenly disappeared and she was forced to book it as Ruby smashed her scythe where she just stood. "I love our team just as much as you do you psycho, but the difference between you and me is that I'm real and not some fake!"

"No, the difference is I'm sane and you're a liability I can't afford to let loose on the world."

"Liability?" Ruby devolved into hysterics, laughing wildly with her hair waving erratically under her unleashed power. "I would never hurt my team." She followed this up with a mad cackle, not quite enforcing her statement.

"It's not the team I'm worried about." She mumbled under her breath, her form scattered into rose petals as Ruby attempted the bisect her.

"You're weak." She reappeared a short distance away, clutched her side at a feeble attempt to stem the rivulets of blood seeping through. "How you ever survived is a mystery."

"I know." She wiped a trail of blood from her mouth and spit out a glob more. "Still, you lost."

"Whaddya mea-?" Both of them gasped as a sudden and immense pressure slammed into their chests.

Summer accepted the fate of ceding control of her mindscape for a shred of control over their physical body, collapsing weakly onto her knees. The shock kept her blood pumping, somehow, despite her obliterated heart, able to discern Ruby wasn't taking their end well.

The girl raged with a fury only seem in Salem, waves of corrupted black Aura tainted with silver lashing across the mindscape violently and erratically.

She barely registered getting slapped and tossed across the mindscape. She groaned pitifully, pushing up to a seat with a shaking arm. The earlier chest wound stung now and the abdomen injury made it only more agonizing. Her lungs spasmed under the effort of taking a breath, getting just as much blood into them as air.

"What did-" Ruby gasped out, clutching her chest. No physical wound scarred her body and she'd never been injured in such a grievous manner. Experienced in battle she may have been but experienced in pain was her forte. Even now she could feel her body rapidly dwindling in strength as her will faded. "What did you do?"

"I knew, I knew I could never beat you." She collapsed her weapon and used it as a crutch. Her weapon vehemently disagreed with being used for such a paltry task, shocking her with a pulse of crimson. Idly she wondered whether her weapon would follow her to whatever afterlife existed if one even existed. "So I did the next- the next best thing."

It wouldn't be long until her consciousness moved on. Already her vision darkened around the edges, periodically cutting out entirely and leaving her bereft of the one sense she had an advantage with over her real self.

"Why?" Ruby hacked up an enormous spitball of blood. "Why couldn't you give- give me a chance?"

She barely heard the question among the din of nothing that threatened to blank out her mind. The fleeting memories of her team flashed by quickly, only to disappear the moment later: slapping Weiss for an impulsive action, a searing kiss with Yang after a mission, a tryst in bed with Blake as a reward for both of them.

Ruby hissed as the shared memories washed from her to her. This wasn't the Yang she knew and grew up with, the lover and engineer rather than the sister and hobbyist. Still, she was their older protector they knew and loved, just a different sort of love.

"I have a- I had a mission, and I- saw it to the end-" She gasped out a final time, her vision going completely dark as silence overwhelmed her senses. A blistering cold rushed into her limbs, chasing away the last remnants of Aura with her core flickering, each time it did a painful spike ramming into every nerve.

Her last living thought before the darkness claimed her was how she wouldn't ever get to see her team again, or tell them she cared for them.

---

This fight wasn't going their way.

Whoever this demon in Ruby's form was refused to be captured or put down. Weiss' glyphs were more liable to be turned around on them as Ruby flexed her control over them and forced them to disintegrate. It left their mage a mess and essentially useless in the greater scheme of combat.

Ruby alone had a martial prowess only she could remotely match, her shields absorbing punch after kick and scythe smash. Whatever energy she could catalyze from the impacting kinetic blows was instantly blown diverting the massive weapon strikes that were Crescent Rose.

Blake was running across their battlefield with enough clones to dismantle a naval cruiser but none of them could survive the rose petal hurricane that wrapped around her and protected her from their less resilient bodies. Her crimson glyphs prevented any surprise attacks and effectively blocked knives and jabs at her most critical pressure points.

"You know," She ducked under a vicious scythe slash, catching Ruby with an uppercut and sending her flying into a sand dune, "I figured the three of us could pretty easily take her down."

"Yeah, well it's not exactly easy when she's using my Semblance against me!" Cue a sarcastic and petty Weiss sticking her tongue out childishly only to cringe as one of Ruby's artillery rounds impacted against her primary glyph defense and instantly smashed one to pieces, sending her zipping out of her view.

She could barely spare a thought for her safety before Ruby smashed into her again, hundred of rose petals slicing into her thicks shields. None of them came close to piercing into her skin but the constant assault didn't let her regenerate the Aura lost in ensuring she lasted. Blunt force, as annoying as it was the shield against, offered the best return on energy. Piercing, not so much.

"Blake." Her other teammate swapped out with her, instantly blowing up in a series of explosions as the fire Dust of the nearby clones reacted to Ruby's attack. Yang tanked the explosions and let them carry her away from the clusterfuck of a fight, greedily eating the power behind it and restoring a fraction of the energy it took to redirect the weight of Crescent Rose. Her enormous Aura was already at half, but considering she only had three-fourths to start with, the rationing was going well.

Just as long as she didn't-

Something inordinately heavy slammed into her stomach and she tasted sand. A groan from her side told her she'd landed next to Weiss, her gorgeous white hair streaked with clay and sand. She lifted her head and opened a glacial eye, already tired from the fight from having to use Myrtenaster over her preferred glyphs.

"We're not going to win this, are we?" Weiss slurred out, rising to a seat and snapped a glyph into place in front of them for protection while they caught their breaths. She was stupidly beautiful with most of her clothing shredded and a few scratches just about everywhere. She smiled wickedly at the cute thought despite their situation.

"With how many times we've fought it's not really a surprise anymore, but I'm not looking to win anymore. Ruby just has to lose." Bright fiery veins crawled across her skin, her eyes glowing a glaring orange so hot it approached white. "I need you to leave and get as far away from here as possible."

The real Blake chose to crash the moment by literally slamming into their protective glyph, moaning weakly.

"You think yourself immortal with your clones, but even we have limits to Aura." Ruby stalked through a cloud of smoke and carefully observed the ticking bomb sitting behind a glyph. "You wouldn't. Not even to kill me."

"No, you're right. The Supernova is a little overkill for you." She staggered to a stand with Weiss' hand grasped tightly in her own, fire burning across every extremity. "But this isn't."

Ruby turned as something stepped into her closest radar shell, eyes widening as another Yang slammed a palm thrust into her chest and poured a massive quantity of her own volatile Aura into her, disruptive her precious control over her radar and Semblance.

She stumbled from the blow, tripping over Blake and into the glyph wall, hearing only a faint boom escape her wife's lips before she was sent careening into the air, her shields flickering faintly. A sphere of glyphs snapped into existence around her, Yang joining her after a brief moment with her own colored rose petals trailing behind her.

Three Blakes followed them into the air, hovering just behind Ruby as they remained motionless in the air upon more of Weiss' glyphs.

Another glyph repositioned her in front of Ruby, a coil of fiery Aura wrapped around weapons. Ruby glared down at her with those nonexistent eyes, but her face softened imperceptibly after a moment.

She knew her mistake the moment she moved, ignoring the incredibly loud voice practically yelling at her to stop, to think more about the consequences of her actions, to remember who she was fighting.

It was a terrible movie in slow motion, her arm outstretched to pummel Ruby to the ground. Her eyes widened and slipped into ethereal amethyst when Ruby closed her eyes, her shields visibly flickering off and allowing her to close the gap.

She couldn't stop her momentum, crying out Ruby's name as her arm smashed through her sternum, her burning Aura cauterizing the further she dug through her body. She only had ears for the sickening crunch of bone and the disgustingly wet squish of her heart exploding, her pleas lost in place of them.

Immediately, Weiss' glyph field collapsed around, letting them freefall and impact the ground. She wiped away the buildup of sand while screaming Ruby's name, frantically attempting to pull her arm from her leader. Ember Celica acted as a catch though and she collapsed to her knees, cradling her body to her instead.

Her teammates landed beside her, Weiss unlatching Ember Celica in her bid to free her leader from Yang's arm. She almost reverently released Yang's fingers from the death grip she had on Rei's gem before prying the fractured backplate from Ruby's back.

Ruby released a soft and final cough when she finally managed to release her. The gaping hole where her heart once beat was nothing more than a charred mess of burnt tissue and muscle, nothing bleeding from the intense heat used to vaporize it.

None of them spoke after that, kneeling around their fallen leader in shock. Yang, however, couldn't bear to look down at her, trapped in a guilty loop by her bloody arm, specks of the heart she annihilated tainted her skin.

Another cough ripped her attention to the finger slowly encroaching into her space. She went cross-eyed as Ruby gently touched her nose, the younger girl smiling infuriatingly all the while.

"Boop." Ruby murmured weakly, her hand falling slightly before moving to pressed another nose boop to Weiss who put on a weak smile and choked back a laugh. Blake got the last of the nose boops, grasping Ruby's hand almost desperately and pressing a kiss to her knuckles, a stray tear sliding down her cheek.

"Finish the fight…" Ruby trailed off and fell limp, a chilling howl erupting from the black gem nestled in Weiss' lap. Weiss leaned forward and gently closed Ruby's eyes, muttered in denial over and over again until she ended up screaming it to the skies above, a blast of Aura sending sand scattering everywhere.

Yang pulled her wife into her side, caressing her hair and picking out the many specks of sand in it. Blake nestled into her other side, grabbing one of Weiss' hands in solidarity. She stroked the back of her hand with a thumb, the worked skin telling of the many stories those hands had wrought, the lives they'd ended, the lives they'd saved.

Only this time, they had helped take a life more precious, more pure than anything else could possibly ever be.

And she wasn't sure if any of them would survive that.

---

Why have you come here?

Neo collapsed under the weight of the being's words, sweating rolling off her in beads when she fully stepped through the portal. She knelt heavily, refusing to gaze upon the being in front of her despite knowing there was nothing there in the dark and bleak dimension.

She swallowed the ball of fear sitting in her throat. "I've come for a favor." A small burst of pride soared in her chest before instantly evaporating under the pressure of her master.

A favor, hmm? The being laughed heartily but Neo refused to join in, keeping her gaze firmly locked to her feet. Her blade hummed dangerously, the ripples of its metal gleaming every color ominously. What is this favor?

She was satisfied it hadn't immediately denied her request. "A delay in collection."

The being sounded like it was deciding, hemming and hawing softly. She disliked these moments, knowing it enjoyed playing with her with how little entertainment it received. She knew its decision had been made instantly. She wasn't asking for an injunction or a reversal, but only for a delay, a simple non-request for this being.

Granted. She released a breath of air she didn't know she was holding, moving to a stand to leave this hellish dimension until she froze. But it will cost you. Her throat became dry at the change in terms yet she still drew her weapon, holding the blade tightly in her hand.

Blood stained her blade as she drew it across her palm, the being naming the terms she'd have to comply with to achieve her wish. She hid the flinch well, but if the being had a face it would smile ravenously.

The price was steep, but in her eyes, it had been worth it.

Even if her soul had been cast in damnation.

---

AN: Happy Holidays! Been waiting to release this chapter for a while so forgive me. The end of the semester has destroyed me and I haven't had the time to respond to all of your lovely reviews. Gave this chapter all of my love so please enjoy and let me know what you think!