Note: So, here is a funny story. A bit over two years ago, we started writing this fanfiction because we weren't particularly happy with the direction Volume 5 of the show was going (why we didn't just start at Volume 5? No idea.) We were typically fairly negative and critical about the show as a whole back then. Well, over the past week, we were feeling nostalgic, and we decided that we were going to rewatch Volume I, the thing we had been rewriting for, again, two years now. And you what's crazy? We enjoyed it! Like, quite enjoyed it! Does it have its problems? Yeah. It's still really weird that they try to have essentially 8 main characters with such little screentime to split among them, and we've never been super fond of Jaune, but it's weirdly charming and earnest, as people who have been actively trying to remove a lot of negativity from our lives, it's nice to see a television show that isn't trying to wallow in drama and despair and just have fun with its premise. And that's ironic as hell because all we do is wallow in drama in despair. You're gonna a whole lot of drama and despair later in this chapter. But it's just kind of funny to us how much both time and writing this story have changed our perspective on something so drastically. The truth is, the motivation we had to write the story in the first place is completely gone. Our new motivation is just making y'all happy. So, uh... yeah. That's it. We hope you're enjoying this. and we hope everyone can always strive to see the good in things. Okay, note over. Here's a chapter now.

"Okay. Okay okay okay," Yang said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "You can rewrite… your brain?"

"Essentially, yes," Pyrrha said. The three had been walking amongst the endless maze of crystals for perhaps a total of two minutes, but Yang had already grown frustrated with it all. She still had not the slightest clue where they were, or what was planned for them, and now she had to deal with Blake being overaggressive toward Pyrrha and Pyrrha—the toughest freaking Huntress in the school—not having any backbone to protect herself.

"Is that not, like, painful or dangerous?" she asked. Well, she figured, if Pyrrha was going to talk anyway, she might as well learn something too.

"Not that I've noticed," Pyrrha explained. "When my mind changes back to where it was before, I sometimes have this lingering anxiety, like something pushing down on my chest. But that usually goes away after a few minutes, and then I'm fine."

"Right," said Blake. "So when you alter your mind, what is that like?"

"It's like looking through a telescope," Pyrrha said unsurely. "First, I gather whatever information I have about the person I'm fighting, and that becomes my target. It takes maybe fifteen to twenty seconds of studying their movements for my mind to create a profile of them that I can reasonably trust. Then, everything else sort of disappears around me. I'm able to concentrate so much on that profile that I can expand it, use it to predict things I wouldn't otherwise know, react to its movements before it even knows what it's doing."

"That sounds ludicrously overpowered," Blake noted. "There has to be some drawback to it."

"I don't think that's how Semblances work," Pyrrha said hesitantly, but Blake groaned in disapproval.

"That's not what I meant. I meant like, it's unfair morally. A person shouldn't get such a powerful Semblance without a drawback. Even Yang's Semblance has drawbacks."

"Really?" asked Pyrrha. "What is it?"

A voice taunted her. "Yeah, Yang, what's your drawback?"

Yang grimaced and looked at the floor. "Cramps."

"That's unfortunate," Pyrrha sighed. "I'm thankful that my Super Focus doesn't—"

She froze in her tracks, jerking her head sharply to the left. She held out her palm, causing the others to stop behind her.

"What's wrong?" asked Yang. When Pyrrha responded, there was darkness to her voice that wasn't present a moment before.

"Stay here," she instructed, and suddenly, she bolted off, leaving Blake and Yang stranded as she rounded the corner of the crystal maze, disappearing completely from view. Once she was gone, Blake crossed her arms impatiently.

"Well, shit," she pouted. "Wish she was on our team. We'd never get bad grades again."

"Did you hear about what happened between her and Team CRDL?" said Yang. "Jaune once told me that they ganged up on her four-on-one, and she still kicked their asses with only one hand… in seconds."

"I think that's an exaggeration."

"Are you sure?"

"No," Blake groaned. "God, she's strong. Not all there in the head, though."

"What?"

"I mean, don't tell me you haven't noticed that she's a little… off, you know?" Blake said, nudging her.

"Oh. Right," Yang said uneasily. "I think she's just a little weird, that's all."

"Or maybe her 'Super Focus' does something to her brain whenever she turns it on," Blake theorized. "That would be a side effect: deterioration. Her brain can't handle it."

"You know Semblances don't always have downsides," Yang said.

"Yeah, no shit," Blake said mockingly. "Mine doesn't, but they have drawbacks more often than not, and I think that since her Semblance is related to her brain, and she has some weird behaviors, it's not too much of a stretch."

"Or she could just be on the spectrum. There's a whole mess of reasons, and honestly, I don't know how cool I am with psychoanalyzing someone."

"I'm cool with it."

"I know you are."

Blake softly put her hand on Yang's shoulder. "Hey, speaking of psychoanalysis—"

"I'm fine," Yang said bluntly.

"No, you're not."

"No, you're not," Blake said accusingly. "Aside from the general—"

"Voices in my head."

"Which, again," Blake noted, "you should see someone about that. Anyway, aside from that general problem, you're still incredibly mad at Ruby."

"Why wouldn't I be?" Yang asked with a sneer. "She flat out lied to us. If she had just been honest and said that Weiss didn't want us, we wouldn't be here."

"Well," Blake suggested, "it's not like you've been any more upfront with her."

Yang looked at Blake like she had been stabbed in the back. "Are you taking her side on this?"

"I don't remember saying that," Blake responded calmly.

"But you are," Yang said, stunned. "You don't think she did anything wrong."

"Look, Yang, I'm not the person to judge anyone for not telling the whole truth," Blake admitted. "I'm plenty mad at Weiss for, you know, everything… but I'm just saying it's probably not great that you're blowing up at your sister so often. Like, earlier when we were watching the Trials, I'm pretty sure you said you wanted to physically assault her."

"And your point is?" Yang asked expectantly.

"My point is that is not a great reaction," Blake stated, frustrated, "especially since she's at least partially right about you doing dangerous shit."

"I'm doing dangerous shit?"

"Again, not in the position to judge," Blake stated. "Heck, I'm the one responsible for you doing dangerous shit. But, I don't really want to watch you and Ruby tear yourselves apart over something so stupid. In fact," Blake took a deep breath, "if I can get personal for just a second—"

Suddenly, the crystal wall in front of them exploded, and a giant toad's corpse sailed through the air, landing dully in front of them. They covered their mouths as shards of Dust flew toward them, and when it settled, they saw Pyrrha crouched on top of the toad's body, breathing hard and covered in more blood with Blake's sword impaled through the monster's eye. She hopped down so casually for a woman who just slaughtered a mythical animal, and Blake sighed as Pyrrha approached her like she wasn't even impressed.

"Sorry," Pyrrha stated, her features softening. "I had to take care of that. What were we talking about?"

"You're sorry?" Yang asked, her jaw dangling open. "Shouldn't we be apologizing for not helping you?"

"That's all right," Pyrrha said. "You would likely just get yourselves into more danger. Anyway, we were talking about my Semblance, correct?"

Yang smirked. "Actually, yes. Blake wanted to know a lot about your Semblance. Right, Blake?"

"Actually, I'm good for now," Blake smirked back. "We should focus on saving Ruby. You know, Yang's sister who she loves very much and would never want anything bad to happen to her."

"Of course," Yang said innocently. "We would never want anything to happen to our sister."

Pyrrha, not knowing or understanding anything that was going on, gently brushed some of the toad's blood off her face. "Yes," she said slowly. "We should definitely save her. And my team as well."

"Right," said Blake, dialing back her snark. "Do you think they're safe?"

"Well, the three of us are together, correct?" Pyrrha deduced. "That should hopefully mean that God transported us in groups, and maybe the others are together as well."

"That would make our lives slightly easier," Blake said. "But then all we have to do is figure out where they are and how to get to them."

"Door."

"Yeah, and not get eaten by giant frogs. Again," Yang said distastefully. Pyrrha pointed firmly behind them.

"Door."

"What?"

Pyrrha squinted. "Was that door always there?"

Blake and Yang turned around not expecting to see anything resembling a door behind them, but they had placed a bit too much doubt in their new companion. There was, much to their utter shock, a door that had materialized spontaneously behind them. Wooden, faded and standing in the middle of nothing, there was a busy chatter coming from the other side of it, hurried and desperate. Yang scrunched her nose and hesitantly began walking toward it, though Blake quickly grabbed onto her arm. Of course, it was a trap, she reasoned. Something the Reveler placed in front of them to kill them, seeing as how ineffective its toads were at finishing the job. Only there was something distinctly unthreatening about it; it was worn and plain ad decidedly untheatrical, which seemed like it was against the Reveler's modus operandi. In the end, despite Blake's hesitation, they did not get to decide whether or not that door opened, because, after a few moments of bickering and a loud bang, the door flew open, and Nora came storming out from behind it, holding what could only be described as a makeshift wooden club.

"Well, we can't just wait for—"

She glanced forward and was suddenly overcome with a rush of emotions. She briefly glanced behind her, and Pyrrha, Yang, and Blake were able to see that there was a room in the void behind the door, seemingly carved into the world yet completely out of tune with its surroundings. There were white walls, and a grand piano that was missing one of its legs, and more importantly, the rest of their missing teammates, who were equally as stunned by their spontaneous appearance.

"Oh, thank God!" Nora screamed with relief, and without hesitation, she pounced onto Pyrrha, tackling her and giving her the biggest hug she could muster. "We thought it would take forever to find you—wow, you are absolutely covered in grossness."

"Yes. Good to see you, Nora," Pyrrha said awkwardly, patting her friend lightly on the back. The others exchanged bizarre pleasantries with Blake and Yang as they looked out from the safety of their interdimensional box. Nora pushed herself off the ground and then helped Pyrrha to her feet as the rest of the room's occupants filed into the maze, cautiously looking around them for any signs of danger. "We were just talking about how to rescue you."

"Rescue us? That's funny," Nora stated. "We're here to rescue you! Because you're about to be eaten to death."

"We are?" Yang asked. "I mean, I know we are, but—"

"What Nora is trying to say," Velvet claimed, "is that we just spoke to that creepy God… thing. It said that you three were being punished for what you did. This entire maze is filled with more of those giant frogs, and it said that if we save you, then…"

She trailed off, painfully looking back toward Weiss. The ex-heiress hovered in the doorway, wavering. She briefly scanned her environment, and then her eyes fell to Blake. They narrowed slightly, but she did not scream or throw a fit or so much as raise an eyebrow. If the situation was any different, Blake's reaction to seeing Weiss would have been to scowl, or to sarcastically mock her for her failures, or just express any general disappointment. But after reading Weiss's face for only a moment, Blake's eyes traveled down her body, down to the slight burn scars on her leg, and then back to her shoulder, pumping far, far more blood than she was comfortable with. Weiss wasn't showing any pain, but she knew that she could feel it. Blake sighed, walking toward the strange, magically appearing room, and when she got close, she reached out to place her fingers against the wound.

"Hey, you're bleeding—"

"Don't touch me," Weiss swatted her arm away and stepped out into the maze. The corner of Blake's mouth tensed and she followed her.

"Well you're—"

"Don't talk to me, either," Weiss said, her voice trembling.

Blake scowled. "Hey, I'm just making sure you're okay. Don't need to get all hostile."

Weiss froze dead in her tracks. The air grew still and the others silent, as she, very hesitantly, turned around, her face a mixture of confusion and disgust.

"O… Okay?" she said tensely. "Okay? You are asking me… if I am okay? Is… is that what we're doing now, Blake?"

Blake, caught off-guard by the accusatory tone of the ex-heiress, shrugged cautiously.

"I mean, yeah. Why—"

"No, no, no!" Weiss suddenly screamed before brining her voice to a whisper. "You… you shut it. This is your fault. The Reveler accused me of cheating because of you. Ruby was taken because of you. I failed the God's Arm because of you. You don't get to suddenly grow a conscience. You don't get to pretend to care about me now. That's not fair, and it's not nice, so shut it."

"Hold on a second," Blake said, trying to defend herself. "If I remember correctly, you were losing that Trial before the Reveler called us out. You were going to be eaten by a giant frog, so you know, you're welcome, I guess."

Weiss was taken aback. Her lip quivered, and her hands balled into fists, but she didn't have the strength to lash out.

"Is…" she stammered quietly. "Is this some kind of joke to you?"

Blake sighed deeply. "Look, I was—"

"Stop. Just… just fucking stop," Weiss said, her voice breaking apart. Her face grew red as tears welled in her eyes, and she slowly began approaching Blake, shaking uncontrollably, every word stinging. "You ruined me. You knew… you fucking knew that I didn't want you there. You knew and you knew and you still fucking went. It didn't matter what I did in that Trial because even if I won, I would have been disqualified because you showed up when I didn't want you to. Do you have the slightest idea of what happens to me now? What they'll do to me because of what you did? My life is over, and you're going to honestly try to justify it?"

Yang stepped forward. "Hey, Weiss, I get that—"

"Yang, shut up!" Weiss screamed. The words came out high and cracked, and Yang was quickly shunned into silence as Weiss lost control. "You do not get to fucking speak! You do not deserve to speak! We've known each other for what? Three months? When was the last time you ever even tried to fucking talk to me? We are nothing, so you don't get to tell me how I should or shouldn't fucking feel!"

Blake groaned regretfully. "Weiss, she's just—"

"No. Cut it out," Weiss demanded, turning back toward Blake and quickening her pace toward her. "I want to know why. Why did you do it? Huh?" Blake gave no answer, and Weiss gritted her teeth, shaking her head. "Why did you do that to me? Why? Because you were told not to? You hate authority, right, so you just… what? Ignored it automatically? Was it because you hate my people? Our traditions are evil, so who gives a shit if they get violated, because they deserve to be broken even if people get hurt, right? Or do you… do you just hate me that much? Is… is that it? You just had to do something because you wanted to hurt me? You went and ruined everything because you just couldn't stand the thought of me not being miserable, not even… not even for one fucking second?"

"I-I didn't want that," Blake swore, but Weiss had enough. She stepped forward until they were face-to-face, and Blake Belladonna—the infinitely cool, always unfazed Blake Belladonna, who had survived bullets and blades and Grimm of different kinds and had seen enough atrocities to forever numb her senses—was frozen stiff in fear.

"Yes! Yes, you did!" Weiss shouted, barely any power behind her words. She closed her teary eyes and slammed her fists down by her sides, screaming through her sobs. "You have always wanted that! All you have ever done, every single fucking day since we've met, is try to hurt me! You do nothing but mock me, and belittle me, and tell me how awful of a fucking person I am, and that hurts! It fucking hurts, Blake and… it's not even like there's a point to any of it! It does nothing to help anyone, but you just do it… over and over and over and fucking over again, and just… why? Because you think it's fun? It's fun humiliating me, and watching me fail, and showing that you're better than me? That's… that's why you did this to me? That's why you couldn't just fucking listen to one goddamn thing, because no matter how important it was for me, no matter how much I said that this God Arm was important, you still just went against me anyway, because you thought it would be fun to just ignore me and do whatever the hell you want! Well, you know what? It's not fucking fun for me, Blake! It's… not. It's fucking not fun to hear you constantly tell me how awful I am! It's not fun debating you! It's not fun arguing with you! It's not fun having you tell me that my Kingdom sucks, and my family sucks, and my religion sucks, and that I'm terrible and evil and anything like that! I don't have fun doing that with you, Blake, but you don't give a shit because you have never fucking cared about anyone other than yourself!"

Blake tried to step away, unable to meet Weiss's gaze. "I'm… I'm sorry—"

"Sorry?" Weiss shouted in disbelief. "You're not fucking sorry! You've never been fucking sorry! You always talk about how terrible I am for being Atlasian, and for following my Faith and believing what I do, but you… you are the worst person I have ever met. You want to know the difference between you and me, Blake? Because I know I am not a good person. I know all of the rotten shit I've done, but the difference between you and me, Blake, is that I am fucking trying. I actually feel remorse when I've done something bad. I couldn't stop myself from acting harshly toward Faunus, so I went away from them. I saw Ruby was trying to befriend me, and I made amends. When was the last time you ever felt sorry for any of the terrible things you've said about me? You've never felt that, have you, because I'm just a thing for you to mock and disrespect so you can feel morally superior to every fucking other person in this school. And you… you know what, Blake? Do you want to know the truth? If you were in my shoes, and you had to go through all this, and you asked me not to get involved, the truth is that no matter how much I hate you, I at least respect you enough that I would do what you fucking asked of me. That… that means something, but I know you don't give a shit. Why the hell would I ever expect you to treat me like a human being?"

A dull, pained smile crept onto Weiss's face, and she shrugged, broken and careless in front of her teammate, barely able to finish talking. "Well… at least you got what you always wanted, right? My life is in fucking shambles. I hope… I hope you're happy with yourself. Oh… and Yang?" She turned toward the blonde and let out a short, breathless laugh. "Fuck you, too."

Blake said nothing. Yang said nothing. There was such a heavy silence around them that they thought it might cause the ground to falter and break beneath their feet. Weiss looked around and, spent and bitter, clicked her jaw and smirked somberly and walked away, none daring to try to comfort her even as they all were aware they should have. Blake, considering for a just a moment to go after her, shuffled back away, bowing her head. She knew that apologizing again would be meaningless. The other stunned reactions came from Team JNPR and Velvet, who had the misfortune of being present for all that, watching worriedly from the sidelines. The same thoughts carried through them, though it was only Nora who dared to speak, whispering it softly to Ren by her side.

"So, I guess that rumor's true," she said mournfully. "Team RWBY does hate each other."

Ren nodded. "And they do love to curse, don't they?"

Velvet, sensing the tension amongst them hit a boiling point, cleared her throat and stepped into the middle of the circle. "Now, I get that we all have reasons to be upset," she stated calmly, "but let's try to remember that we cannot afford to be fighting right now. We have to figure out a way out of this maze."

Pyrrha nodded. "Right. If the Reveler intends for us to survive this, then clearly there must be a means to do so?"

"You didn't happen to walk into this maze, did you?"

"No. We just appeared here."

"Darn it," Velvet scowled. "They weren't going to make it that easy for us to just retrace our steps."

"Maybe," Nora theorized, "if we go back into the music room and shut the door, we'd be teleported away?" She was met with confused glares. "Okay, scratch that. Dumb idea."

"There has to be some way for us to deal with those toads," Ren pondered. "None of us have any weapons except for Pyrrha and Nora, technically."

"Wait a second," Jaune said, raising a finger. "Is it possible that we don't have to deal with those toads?"

"What do you mean?" asked Velvet. Jaune stammered, uncomfortable with all the attention and pressure placed firmly onto his shoulders.

"W-Well… what I'm saying is," he claimed nervously, "Gods love to play tricks, right? Like, weird, specific word tricks? All the Reveler told us to do was to save you three from your punishment. He never even told us anything about the maze or the frogs."

"So, you think we can escape our punishment in a different way, then?" Pyrrha said, growing more comfortable with the concept the more she considered it.

"But how?" asked Nora. "Like, what else would count as 'saved from punishment' if not getting out of this maze?"

Blake, having accumulated a safe amount of distance from Weiss's scorn, felt appropriate to talk. A horrifying thought entered her mind, one that in her present state, she was all too eager to accept. She shrugged, not looking up from the floor, and spoke only half-jokingly. "We could die some different way."

Yang shook her head. "N-No way! We are not testing that hypothesis."

"I mean, that would totally work, wouldn't it?" Blake said uneasily. "If our punishment is to get eaten by those things, dying differently would stop that. I mean, it's the God of Drama we're talking about. What's more dramatic than killing yourself to prevent eternal damnation? A noble sacrifice. Shit, it even sounds like something a playwright would come up with."

"Screw playwrights!" said Yang assertively. "And screw this asshole God for sticking us in here. Two of those frogs are enough, but hundreds of them? How the hell does it ever expect us to overcome that? Stupid Dust maze…"

Stupid Dust maze.

Dust maze.

Dust.

Oh.

Suddenly, Weiss's eyes flashed open. "Wait."

The group's attention turned firmly onto her, each filled with dread and anticipation.

"Wait what?" asked Yang.

"Blake is right," Weiss said. Her mind was moving too fast for her words to keep up with, which was unfortunate the previous words that had just come out of her mouth.

Yang immediately panicked. "Wait, what?"

"Not kill you," Weiss corrected her quickly. "But the Reveler, its desires. There's a trick to this. It's so obvious."

"Obvious how?" asked Pyrrha. Weiss didn't respond. She tried to think more clearly as Ruby would. Ruby was good at solving puzzles like that. She just had to think like her, and the more she did, the more perfect her solution became. The maze was made up of Trichon Dust Crystal. Untapped. Unpurified. A powerful narcotic and Semblance enhancer when ground up and breathed in, and a useful source of Biodust granulates, a pasty, energy-laden substance with more alternate resource uses than she could count. But neither of those were more useful bits of knowledge to her at that moment than what could happen to that Trichon Dust when certain actions were performed to it. She glanced back at the music room, and remembered the words that the God had spoken to her. Remember thy song, it said. There was a hopeful gleam in her eye.

She wasn't doomed yet; she just had to think in more dimensions—literally.