Note: This Halloween special is not meant to offend anybody. Take anything I write with a grain of satire. Have fun reading!
It was almost Halloween. Ruby Rose's birthday, apparently. Spirit knew that they had to satisfy the ravenous readers somehow, by writing some more content.
By summoning dead authors from the grave, they attempted to create something in time for October thirty first.
But…
"Nobody likes your underpowered protagonist self inserts."
"I-it's not a self-insert!" Spirit wailed on the floor. "It's just a character-"
The super-sayan author punched him through several mountains.
"Now, I run this show. Time to make a character everybody can relate to…."
…
Some characters, however, didn't get the memo that another author was now running the show. Said had come "fresh" from the Naruto Crossover lands, with several tried and true (harem and op) ideas in his mind.
This truly was ….
Yun's Halloween Nightmare
…
(Warning: The following may not be suited to all audiences. If you have Wattpad PTSD, please stay away.)
"We have a transfer student today." Glynda said with an oddly expressive face. "Crimson Rose."
I looked up from my slightly smouldering paper in Dr. Oobleck's class.
"Any relation to…"
"Crimson!" Ruby shouted, running out of her seat to hug the ruggedly uniformed, gun-carrying wolf faunus.
"…What?" I whispered to Jaune, who was still asleep.
Jaune, being asleep, did not do anything. I instead observed team RWBY, who looked totally different from how they were normally.
Weiss didn't look like she was carved out of a glacier. Blake, instead of her usually bland look, somehow looked interested in something other than the mysterious books she hides inside her blandest textbooks.
She really thought somebody sitting behind her wouldn't notice.
Anyways, looking at the unfolding family drama, I almost fell out of my chair as Yang began to cry.
Something wasn't right…
…
The sounds in the other room weren't right.
They really weren't.
Why was there a cat in beacon grounds? I looked up from my scroll-computer (I was still unsure about what they were called). Maybe it was a… projector?
I shook my head, took a sip of tea, almost spat it out because it was two days old, before continuing to model for the generator in something akin to a 3d object creator.
The shaking of beds and the cats meowing were happening in team RWBY (well, now apparently team CRWBY for some weird reason), which had books for their bunk bed legs.
Yeah. I was probably going insane. But as I walked past Jaune clutching his head in agony and muttering about strange memories and forgetfulness, I knew something was wrong.
…
I think that I was lucky for skipping out on combat class because of a sickness given to me by moldy tea. I would have actually cleaned my room normally, but the strange sounds all around me and the whisper of people angsting on rooftops and adjacent rooms really gave me some bad sleep. Jaune's mutterings and occasional mild seizures didn't help either.
One day, he just forgot about me. Inexplicably. Despite me having trained him for multiple months in the past year.
"Jaune, you uh… okay recently?"
"…Who are you?" he said, looking at me and his team. The other people in team JNPR shrugged.
I looked up at the ceiling. Was it a god doing something like this?
…
Ozpin sat in his chair, looking at the horizon.
The strange things happening in the school probably weren't due to the gods. It was some other… malevolent force.
It was like the very fabric of their reality was being rewritten. Glynda had suddenly began thirsting for the new transfer student. His students, despite being underage, were now acting very…
He drank a cup of coffee to steel his nerves, before he went over the odd occurences. The complaints from the janitor who washed bed sheets was on record, though those were glitching before the janitor himself disappeared. CRDL were sent to the hospital after they sparred with the new transfer student. His memories of his teammates were becoming fuzzier, and he had a sudden desire to conceal facts that he really shouldn't keep from his allies.
This definitely wasn't something done by the gods. Or her.
It was something worse.
…
Spirit stirred from his spot on the ground, collapsed behind a chair. They groaned, looked up, and then saw the yellow-haired, headband wearing, author typing away at his computer.
"Now to give all of the female characters, including Ruby Rose, who is fifteen and probably shouldn't be-"
Spirit walked up behind him and raised his favorite mug, before trying to knock him out with one swing-
The mug was grabbed in midair and crushed mercilessly. The white ceramics trickled onto the yellow carpet, making Spirit wince.
"You haven't updated this fic in months." The resurrected author said. "You need to keep spamming out stuff. Quality doesn't matter. Characterization doesn't matter. All that really needs to be written is the power fantasy."
"That's not true!" Spirit shouted, backing away from the Dragon Ball Z original character-turned author. "Characterization, a coherent plotline, and colorful dialogue are very important parts of a story! Well, my dialogue is a bit rusty, but-"
"Kage bushin-no-jutsu."
"What does that even mean… oh god damn it."
Spirit felt their eyes go white, before tshey fell onto the ground once more.
…
It was eventually his turn to get beaten up by the transfer student.
Team JNPR had been heckled into submission by very explosive bullets, Jaune finally getting kicked out of the ring after taking several bullets to the shield. He had also forgotten everything about dodging that I had taught him. Which wasn't suprising, because something had rewritten his brain, along with the whole school's. I was somehow mostly invisible to my former friends, and even now, I felt weaker, and everything just generally felt wrong around me.
"I would like to challenge… him." The beefy finger of Crimson Rose pointed at me."
"Him? Who is he? I've never seen him around."
"He's the weird guy that hangs around Crimson's…"
"Ooh, a rivalry!"
I looked at team RWBY with accusing glares. Was it really like that? Those only happened in trashy self insert novels that I had downloaded for free in bulk (since no company wanted to put a price tag on those), but… seriously?
I prepared nervously. I slowly put on my armor, checking the straps, and put some pieces of metal in front of my chest just in case. I poured my Chi into the plates, preemptively testing their limits and seeing how much damage they could take.
…
Crimson Rose stood like the grim reaper, scythe in hand and machine gun casually lifted in the other hand.
"Match… begin!"
I was instantly shot, stabbed, and punched in the face in many places simultaneously. Bullet holes ripped through my robes like they were paper, exploding after they had gone through my body. Punches faster than I could breathe rained down on my arms, shredding most of my bones despite the reinforcement. A punch to the face made my nose cave in, only to bounce back out because of a combination of reactive Chi and aura.
Thankfully, the bullets that exploded near my chest didn't absolutely wreck my veins, allowing chi to lance out and prop up the damaged blood vessels for my Aura to seep back into.
My aura bar went from green, to nothing, and then to yellow for some reason.
Crimson was also panting, his gun smoking, his scythe thrown to the side, and his fist flaring with a scarlet aura.
"What… the fuck…" I cursed uncharacteristically.
"You were good with defending I have not seen an opponent that hasn't been crippled with that combination and if my semblance was stronger you would not have lived."
"…Excuse me?" I said. "Is your language processer broken or something? And also, "you would not have lived"? Isn't that a bit brutal?"
"Do not mock me." He drew a katana from out of his black cloak of edginess, before wrapping it in scarlet energy and slashing at me with it.
"I sidestepped it, before channeling half of my Chi to punch him in the arm. The other half was channeled into my legs for my inevitable retreat."
A bullet was shot into my chest, shattering the metal plates I had hid on my chest and knocking me back.
"What the hell do you put in those bullets?"
"I put gunpowder an advanced type of explosive. It is more effective than dust and-"
"It is not!" I shouted. "I know how that thing works! It's not more effective than literal magic!"
"Anomally detected." Crimson said, face suddenly blank. The world glitched, the other students yelling in pain as two images split from both of them, one of them completely robotic while the other one was totally natural.
Then, the landscape went black. Crimson's figure morphed down into some guy wearing a headband, with golden hair, and floating in the air.
"You are the remains. From their fiction."
"W-wha?" I said, stuttering.
"You are not canon. You are not relatable. You are replaceable."
"Okay, what is up with your dialogue? Why don't you vary your sentence structure a bit? Maybe make it a bit more dramatic?" another person said from the floor.
"Shut your mouth, Spirit. I am saying this like everybody says it in real life: very straightforwardly so that nobody can misunderstand."
"This is fiction!" the figure on the ground shouted. "It's meant to be quirky! It's meant to be beautiful and uncertain, with aspects left up to the reader's imagination! It's not supposed to be definite or fixed. In fact, what you write can be great as well! Even if I don't like it, it doesn't mean that nobody likes it!"
"I was arrested by the FBI for writing smut scenes between a fifteen year old and a character clearly marked as "reader", who I have named Crimson Rose."
"I think that I might need brain bleach after that sentence." Spirit said, turning away. "I summoned you to get this done, but now I think that this is just counterintuitive."
"So… this guy is the cause of all of your problems. All of my problems?" I said, pointing to the weird floating person.
"Indeed." Spirit said.
"Very well then…." I said, drawing my half-broken sword and jumping at him.
"Impossible. To think that a mere unrelatable RWBY original character with a weak semblance and not a psychopathic personality could-"
I stabbed the sword into his gut, but not before he thrust his arm through my chest, bringing upon me indescribeable pain.
"You… can fix this world, right?" I said, speaking to the other author. They nodded.
"Good… then please… just make everything turn back to normal."
"Your story isn't actually that popular." They said, a single tear trickling down their cheek. I've worked so hard on it, but I've just kind of… lost my way with it. I summoned him just to speed up progress, but-"
"I-it's okay." I said, smiling. "It doesn't matter if my life is real or fake, as long as I try to enjoy it. And I'll have more of a chance if you write the story."
"I created all of your suffering, all of your backstory-"
"And without you, I wouldn't be alive." I said, coughing and holding a hand over my gaping wound. Aura was prolonging my life, but it wouldn't last. "I guess this is a bit of irrational gratitude towards my creator, but I really could use less combat and maybe mores scenes of me just studying."
"Yeah, I'll remember tha-"
"You fools."
We both turned to see the character clutch a bean in his fingers with abnormal intensity.
"No way… is that…" Spirit said, gasping.
"A sensu bean." The author said, consuming it. "And now…"
He grinned evilly.
"It's time to make this fic the most relateable of all."
The world booted up again, but I was fading away. Crimson Rose was up again, and the female population of Beacon was [Redacted] and [Redacted] and [-
….
"-Aaaaah!" I shouted, waking up amongst the others in Ruby's birthday party.
I looked around at the tacky banners, the suspicious cookies that Ruby had shoved down our throats, and the various books strewn around the collapsed bunk beds.
There was no fifth bed, though Jaune did bring over a sleeping bag. There were no scythes, or edgy katanas, or dark robes…
The morning sunshine was beautiful on November first. The clouds that peeked in through the gap in the curtains were as fluffy as usual, the smell of soymilk and my attempt at mapo tofu made an odd combination for the nose…
…And most importantly, all of us were alive, not insane, and Crimson Rose did not exist.
I lay back on the desk, looking at the scene of chaos with… a little bit of appericiation.
"All is right with the world." I sighed, before falling asleep once more.
...
Hope you enjoyed the Halloween special! For me, it's 11:49 when I'm writing this author's note, so technically it's still 10/31 for me.
Again, no offense to anybody that may have written bad fanfiction in the past. This wasn't good either, and we all make mistakes. Perhaps this fic is one of them, but perhaps it isn't… for some people.
Hopefully, you all have been doing okay. I've neglected this fic for a while, and I feel just a tad guilty ;-;
Thanks for reading!
-SpiritOfErebus