Ruby's next month with the Xiao-Long Rose family was pretty similar to her first couple of weeks, she spent most of her time by herself, training with her new weapons especially Ember Celica, most of Ruby's training with the boot shotguns came from watching Mercury of all people, but his prosthetic legs were the closest thing that Ruby had to a basis.
But Ruby had gone out to Vale several times during the month, always under the cover of night. A few of Ruby's escapades led her to visiting from Dust Til' Dawn, and buying several different rounds of dust bullets for both Crescent Rose and Ember Celica. But most of the time that Ruby had gone to Vale she had done it to kill, usually just petty criminals and gang members but occasionally she would hit a White Fang apartment if she knew she could get away with it. Like with her previous murders the police simply stopped investigating when they saw WHO Ruby killed.
Ruby herself could scoff at Vale's police, so racist and prejudiced that they would simply give up once she saw that the people murdered were faunus and criminals, though Ruby supposed in this instance it would continue to work in her own favor.
During the last month Ruby's conversations with Summer and Tai had been clipped and tense, clearly Yang had told them about what she had admitted to that she wanted to die. It was a truth that Ruby wanted to keep a secret but it had come spilling out when she talked to Yang.
Ruby herself was fine with the distant relationship that she currently had with Summer and Tai, they weren't HER parents, never were, and she wasn't lucky enough to have either of them as parents. Ruby personally was frustrated, despite her sharing what she knew about Salem and the relics, the Xiao-Long Roses kept dragging their feet. Summer had insisted that she discuss it all with Ozpin before they did anything and after several weeks of debating the headmaster had reluctantly agreed to allow Ruby to inherit the other portion of Amber's power.
So Ruby currently found herself staring at the comatose Fall Maiden. Ruby walked closer to the comatose maiden and placed a single hand on top of her life support tank, the Fall Maiden didn't deserve this fate, stuck with half of her power, siphoned away by Cinder. Ruby growled under her breath and her other hand clenched into a fist at the very thought of Cinder Fall, Cinder was a leech, a parasite that needed to be exterminated before she could do any more harm.
"Are you positive that you want to do this?" Summer asked gently, placing a hand on Ruby's shoulder.
"..." Ruby said nothing as she just continued staring at Amber. Ruby followed Summer a few steps back as they examined Amber's condition. Physically the maiden was perfectly fine, her aura was at a hundred percent, but without the life support system Amber would die. It just didn't make any sense.
"You can still back away Miss Rose." Ozpin tried to reassure the older Ruby.
"No" Ruby decided, her mind already having been made up, "This is the first step to take."
"The first step of what?" Summer asked as she knelt down to stare Ruby in the eye.
"The first step to make things right again." Ruby looked down at her hands, for once she didn't smell fresh blood on them, "Besides." Ruby continued before giving Summer and Ozpin a small smile, "I won't let any of your students carry this burden."
"Very well" Ozpin nodded and the headmaster and his combat instructor led Ruby to the aura transfer machine, "I will warn you Miss Rose." Ozpin's voice was deadly serious, "We do not know how this will work, or what the side effects will be."
"You may never be the same again." Summer admitted to Ruby, "This process has never been done before, giving someone's aura to another person, it could kill you."
Ruby looked over her shoulder to where the spirits of the dead were watching her, each had an expression of vague interest in their cold eyes. "Death doesn't scare me." Ruby decided as she stared the ghosts dead in the eye, "I've experienced it too much to be scared of it."
Ozpin didn't say anything, instead he directed Ruby to the machine. Ruby climbed in, feeling the tension in the room, everything that she had done on this world, everything that she planned on doing later down the road would ride on this moment, if she could inherit the rest of Amber's powers, she could stop Cinder before Beacon was invaded, the school might not even fall this time around, and they could finally take the fight to Salem.
Ruby closed her eye and took several deep breaths from inside the aura chamber, Ruby muttered the words of the aura unlocking ritual like a lifeline as she opened herself up to her own aura once again. Ruby felt the force wrap around her like a comforting blanket.
Ruby stared at Amber, who was currently resting in the adjacent chamber, Ruby sent her own aura out in a small pulse, and latched onto the fallen maiden's own aura, "For it is in passing that we achieve immortality." Ruby whispered to the Fall Maiden, "Through this we become a paragon of virtue and glory ro rise above all."
Ruby had a small face as she thought about her friends and family, each of their faces flashed through her mind as she continued the chant, "Infinite in distance and unbound by death." Ruby nodded to Summer and Ozpin and the two fired up the machine, "I release your soul!" Ruby's voice rose to a scream as the pain of countless battles, friends, memories, and losses came to the forefront of her mind, but they weren't any memories that she knew of, "And by my shoulder I protect thee!"
Ruby continued to scream, as more and more memories of joy, and happiness, loss, and sorrow, grief and anger overcame her mind. Overwhelming feelings that she didn't even understand, associated with people and places she didn't even know. Or maybe she did know it and Ruby was the one who couldn't understand them?
Ruby or was she Amber? Was positive that she had blacked out from the pain, because the next thing that she could remember she was staring at Summer and Ozpin, the two teachers quickly released her from the chamber, and the girl stumbled out of the chamber and would have fallen to the floor if Summer hadn't caught her.
"Did it work?" Summer asked Ozpin, the headmaster rushed to the adjacent chamber only to find it empty.
The headmaster rushed to grab his scroll, and quickly approached Summer. Ozpin wasted no time in scanning Ruby's vitals before he looked up with a grim smile, "It worked."
"How do we know for sure?"
"Look at this." Ozpin gestured to his scroll, "Her aura levels are higher than any I have ever seen in my life, it is almost double the amount most people have."
"I feel weird." Ruby or Amber admitted, her head felt like it was throbbing, and her body almost felt too small, her limbs too thin. "Who am I?"
"What do you mean?" Summer demanded as she knelt down and grabbed the half maiden's shoulder.
"I don't know which one I am." The maiden admitted, "Am I Ruby? Or am I Amber? Or something in between?"
The Fall Maiden didn't miss the way that Ozpin and Summer exchanged similar looks of dread.
"Can you describe it to us? Miss Rose?" Ozpin asked, his voice pleasant.
"Not here" the maiden insisted, "Please in your office, I don't want to be here."
Ozpin nodded and the three stood in the elevator, all three seemed calm but the Fall Maiden especially was going through an internal crisis, 'I don't know who I am anymore.' Ruby or Amber realized, 'All these memories, whose are they?'
The maiden practically ran to Ozpin's desk and sat herself down in the chair before burying her hands in her face, tears fell out of her eye. 'Wait eye?' the maiden looked at her reflection on her scroll's camera only to wince, 'Since when did I only have one eye?' the maiden sighed as she realized her slip up, 'Ruby and Amber's memories keep colliding, I'm both of them now.'
"Please Ruby tell us more." Summer practically begged the uncomfortable half maiden who looked lost and conflicted.
"Amber's memories keep overriding my other memories." Ruby, or was she even Ruby? Definitely felt weird as she talked, no name seemed to fit, they were both her, but she was more than just the memories as well. She knew that she wasn't Amber, but at the same time it felt like she was, and now it felt like she was more than Ruby Rose.
"I don't know who I am now." the maiden admitted to Ruby's mother and Ozpin, "I know that I'm not really Amber, but I don't feel like I'm Ruby either."
"So what are you?" Summer asked frantically.
"I'm something more." the maiden answered with a sad smile on her face, " I know it doesn't make any sense at all, but I'm not Ruby, not anymore." the maiden winced when she realized that Ruby herself had said an extremely similar thing to Tai, only a month ago.
"So who are you." Ozpin asked, and the maiden was split between her two parts, Amber's trust for the man, and Ruby's distrust of him, but who was she now?
"I always will have been born Ruby Rose, just like I was Amber the Fall Maiden." The new maiden stated as she pondered who she was now, not Ruby, not Amber, and certainly not Lily, the previous two made up a fundamental part of who she was, but she was more than just Ruby or just Amber now, "I'm-I'm Autumn." The maiden decided.
A/N: So another chapter more about the plot than the characters, and Ruby goes through another major event in her life, her own aura was merged with Amber's and now she has the major debate of who she really is, because she didn't just inherit Amber's power, she merged her aura with Amber's this means that she got the maiden's power, aura, and semblance. But she also has to deal with two entirely different sets of memories, skills, emotions, and experiences. Finally she goes through another name change, Lily/Rose was always a temporary name even all the way back when I was originally revising the story, this plot point was always going to happen, and Ruby always was going to become Autumn.
Merendinomiliano: Thanks, I got most of my school stuff done over the weekend, which led me to be able to write a chapter today.
Hirshja: Ruby distracted Summer and Tai with something more important than her own issues, they are talking about Salem here, and even weakened she is a major threat.
Jack the Sparrow: I was most definitely inspired by Remnant's Reclaimer, personally I think that it is one of the best if not the best RWBY fanfic I have ever read, and even being compared to Remnant's Reclaimer is a massive honor in my opinion. But I huess my nitpick with stories like Remnant's Reclaimer was that despite all the stuff the characters went through in those stories they all escaped relatively unscathed, So I decided to write my story about a Ruby who lost everything and didn't escaped unscathed, someone who was deeply effected for the worse by the events that she lived through
ARXENIX 2.0: Yeah Ruby is forgetting that the rules of this universe may not be the exact same of her own, it all depends on WHEN her world diverged from this world, I've had this part of the story planned out since the very beginning, the two worlds diverged at a very specific point, and they diverged because Summer lived in this world, the how is going to be explained later on. Team RWBY, Summer, and Tai, don't know what Ruby has been through and she wants to keep it that way. The way I personally see it Ruby's isn't justified in what she's doing because it's wrong for her to judge people based on future crimes.
Metacllica: Ruby probably shouldn't have been granted the power that she received, because yes she is reckless and unhinged to be properly trusted, and even the changes that she had undergone because of the aura transfer won't change that, if anything it made things worse because Ruby's aura is back and stronger than ever, but Ruby receiving these powers gives her an incentive to stay alive, because if she dies they go straight back to Cinder, and Ruby won't let that happen. Dimitri from three houses was my main inspiration for Ruby, along with Remnant's Reclaimer.
Firewyrm2: Thanks, I'm really not sure if I'm going to have any romance at all, I'm still undecided about the idea of romance.