Prologue: One Life Ends...
Disclaimer: I. OWN. NOTHING!
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Ruby Rose, leader of team RWBY and a Huntress of Remnant was on the ground on her knees looking up at the sky, tears threatening to fall from her eyes.
"We failed." Ruby uttered, barely louder than a whisper.
Her teammates, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long were right behind her looking up at the sky as well.
The sky had nothing notable about it at the present time. Dark clouds and nothing more, but what made this sight so notable to them in particular, is that after all they've done to this point since the fall of Beacon.
Traveling to Haven, fighting Grimm, getting to Atlas, fighting off the nutjob James Ironwood had become and saving the citizens of Mantle, even getting off that weird island they'd fallen onto through the void alongside Neo and Jaune…
This would be the last view of remnant's sky they'd ever see.
Words echoed inside Ruby's mind, words from a pair of higher beings, a declaration of Remnant's end.
"Upon the end of Remnant's current day, all that you know… will cease to be." The gods of Light and Darkness declared to all of Remnant.
Ruby stopped thinking about those words as her head snapped back slightly as she screamed to the sky in anguish and sorrow. "WE FAILED!" Ruby collapsed onto the ground as she cried her heart.
Yang and Blake's hearts ached at the sight of the usually optimistic Ruby Rose crying on the ground, but they couldn't bring themselves to say anything.
Weiss however, gulped down whatever woes she was feeling and walked up to Ruby. "Ruby." Weiss softly said.
"Don't bother trying to say something Weiss." Ruby flat out ordered her partner, halting Weiss's advance. "I was supposed to stop her, my power was meant to stop Salem, and we- I couldn't!" Ruby told Weiss after facing her, showing the tears on her face and how red her eyes were from crying.
"Ruby, it's not your fault, it's because of people like Cinder, and Tyrian, and Arthur that's the cause of all this." Weiss tried to tell her leader, in an attempt to get her to cheer up, even if it wouldn't amount to anything.
"Weiss's right, it's not your fault at all." Blake told Ruby.
"Ruby, I'm not going to say that everyone will be fine, but-" Yang was going to throw in her two cents, until…
"Everything will NEVER be fine, Yang." Ruby told her sister with venom in her voice. "Salem got the relics together, the gods made their verdict, THE WORLD IS GLUED TO A TICKING TIME BOMB, AND THERE'S NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT!" Ruby finally yelled at her teammates, making them take a step back at the rage Ruby was exuding.
"And do you guys honestly think that telling me all this is going to make me feel better? I'd feel better, if the whole damn world wouldn't vanish from existence upon you saying those words." Ruby told them, getting Yang agitated.
"I know it's not going to make the world better, but if crying about it won't solve anything, then what's the point in doing it?" Yang told her.
"Yang's right, I'm broken up about the fact that Remnant is doomed, but I'm happy about the fact that you guys are still here." Blake said, looking at what little positive side there was to their situation.
"Ruby, I know you're frustrated right now, beyond frustrated even, but…" Weiss teared up as she spoke up. "Can we just be glad that we're still here." Weiss begged Ruby.
Ruby's expression lightened as she saw the begging faces of her teammates as she realized all she'd done up till now was be negative to them. She sighed before speaking. "If the world is doomed anyways, could we…" She rubbed her eyes clean of tears. "Can we go somewhere, we're on Patch after all." Ruby asked them.
"Whatever you want." Weiss said without hesitance as she walked up to her leader.
As Ruby and Weiss walked off, Yang wore a raised eyebrow on her face.
This surprised Yang as she knew where Ruby wanted to go and was going to agree with her younger sister's request, but Weiss agreed not even knowing that as far as she knew, but Yang brushed that aside as Blake held her hand.
"Blake?" Yang looked to her partner.
"Let's go, shall we?" Blake urged her partner, Yang smiled as did Blake.
"We shall." Yang agreed as they went to catch up with Ruby and Weiss.
(A few minutes before midnight…)
Ruby and Weiss were standing over a gravestone that was on the side of a cliff, one with the words "Summer Rose. Thus kindly I scatter." embedded onto it as the broken moon's light shone down onto it, and illuminating the area around them.
"Is this…" Weiss softly asked Ruby.
"Yep, it's where my mother was put to rest… at first." Ruby said with a sad expression on her face as she walked up to the gravestone. "Hey mom, sorry I've been gone for so long, I was trying to do what you always taught me to do. To help people…" Ruby sorrowfully said.
"Even if I didn't do a good job in the end." Ruby said with an empty smile on her face.
"And I'm here to definitively say that that's not true." Weiss said strongly as she walked up beside Ruby. "Ruby, with me, Yang, and a good friend and teammate of ours as witnesses and people that believe in her, has done many things you'd be proud of." Weiss then took Ruby's hand into her own, making the cape wearing huntress blush slightly. "She traveled to Haven academy from Vale alongside the greatest friends I could've asked for on foot, she saved Haven Academy from imminent destruction, she helped save countless people from both Mantle and Atlas, and…" Weiss blushed as she spoke the next part. "She saved me, by giving me the courage and tenacity to break away from the burden placed onto me by my family." Weiss said with a genuine smile.
"Weiss…" Ruby softly said.
"And because she did that, I realized I…" Weiss's closed eye snapped open as she faced Ruby and gave the girl herself the most passionate kiss on the lips she could muster.
Weiss then broke the kiss as she looked at Ruby in the eyes. "I love you Ruby, I genuinely love you, and nothing, not even the end of the world, will change that." Weiss declared to Ruby.
Ruby blushed and had a single tear of happiness fall down her face. "Weiss, I…" Ruby didn't know what to say, but decided to go the direct way of responding. "I love you too, Weiss." Ruby admitted before returning the favor and kissing Weiss on the lips, which Weiss happily returned as she caressed the side of Ruby's face and wrapped her other arm around her waist with the cape wearing huntress doing the same.
"Heh, looks like there's a new couple in town." Yang's voice jokingly said.
The two girls broke the kiss and looked to see Yang and Blake walking towards them while holding each other's hands.
"Was it that obvious?" Ruby jokingly said as well.
"Kind of." Blake smiled, as team RWBY got together to look up at the moon.
"You two aren't the only ones who made a little confession." Blake smiled as she hugged Yang close to her.
"Oh really?" Weiss asked as she and Ruby smiled.
"Yeah, it was on our way here, kiss and everything." Yang said before chuckling.
"Care to prove it?" Weiss asked.
Blake and Yang looked at each other and shrugged before passionately kissing each other on the lips for a solid thirty seconds before breaking it. "That enough proof for ya?" Yang asked.
"More than I'll ever see that's for sure." Weiss smiled.
"We're happy for you two." Ruby smiled. "I guess it's only fitting we go down the closest we can be to one another."
"Mhm! Guess you could say we're... going out with a Yang!" Yang smirked as this caused a sigh from her teammates before… they burst out laughing at the joke.
"It really IS the end of the world, huh?" Weiss said as tears fell from her eyes, not from laughing too much, but from rather her dormant sadness bubbling up to the surface.
"What makes you say that?" Yang asked, a single tear sliding down her face.
"This was the first time you've made someone, let alone all three of us, laugh with that dumb pun." Blake told the love of her life before looking down.
"Same as ever, huh sis…" Ruby chuckled as tears of her own began to leak out again.
"What can I say, except that I always try." Yang smirked.
Blake looked over the horizon as best she could and saw the world beginning to go darker than the night itself. "I guess midnight struck." Blake said, sad that the end was now upon them.
Ruby fell to the ground, tears falling from her eyes, but not crying, as her teammates joined her instead of helping her up as they soon hugged each other tightly.
"It's alright, Ruby." Weiss said with an empty smile on her face and her eyes closed.
"Yeah, we're still together." Blake said with a broken voice.
"We don't have to be apart from each other now that it's here." Yang said as they all looked at each other one last time.
"You're right, now that the end actually is here, I'm glad that…" Ruby and her teammates tightened their group hug and closed their eyes one final time, as the world was now completely blacked out aside from the patch of dirt they were on.
"I'm glad that… my end was alongside you guys." Ruby finished as the final few shades of color on Remnant were at last blacked out...
And just like that, Remnant was gone.
...
Here it is.
The start of the story that was eluded to in the trailer from before.
I admit this prologue might be kinda cheesy to some degree, but it's an idea I got from reading a story from Freedomwriter's "My RWBY Academia Chapter 0: The End", where what went down in this chapter happened... and made me cry inside admittedly, it's thanks to his permission to use this premise that this chapter came to be, and I'm glad that I could make this chapter, even if it's not what some people expected.
But regardless, I'm hoping that some people find this enjoyable, and that I can get the next chapter for this story out... sometime this year, hehe...
Wish me and my Co-writer luck.