Here we go


Cover Art: Curbizzle

Chapter 36


All her life Ruby had believed in the goodness of huntsmen and the ideal that she would become a hero like her mom. Fighting to save the world almost certainly counted for that but she'd always held true to the belief that she would be fighting cruel, inhuman monsters unfeeling of pain and unable to think. Kneeling at the back of the confrontation taking place with Crescent Rose trained on someone who looked just like one of her best friends, finger ready to pull the trigger if he activated his Semblance, Ruby didn't feel like a hero.

Null's aura remained up despite his very much losing battle against Yang and Ren. He was pushed back at every stage, completely unable to handle either of the students in close combat. He tried, she'd give him that, but though she could see the beginnings of some boxing experience he'd probably picked up from someone in his world, it was like watching a fresh trainee go up against a world champion. Yang wasn't just beating him; she was manhandling him.

And yet that could change in an instant. One moment, one opening, one push of his Semblance and a flash of muzzle fire and Yang would crumply like a puppet with her strings cut. Ruby flinched at the thought and brought her cheek back down to rest against her weapon. Her finger wobbled on the trigger, uncomfortable from being held there so long, and she licked her lips to wet them.

Null didn't have to hold his own. He just had to wait for a mistake to be made. Ruby was used to that kind of sparring since her time in Signal where she'd always been too fast for people to deal with. Spars for her were like single-player games. Her opponents could rarely fight back and usually couldn't even defend, and she could land blow after blow. Their only solution was to make things as hard as possible and hope she made one mistake, because one mistake was usually all they needed to get a hold of her, prevent her Semblance coming into play, and pin her down.

Yang had become a master of that over the years, sticking out legs and arms during fights to create tripping hazards – Taiyang called them failure points. The idea being that instead of trying to fight someone who could move faster than you could react, you instead tried to give her as many different ways to mess up as possible and then capitalise.

When Null kicked off the floor and let Yang's sweeping leg hurl him away, Ruby angled her sights. When his gun came up in the brief instant where neither Yang nor Ren were close enough to attack, she squeezed the trigger. The crack of Crescent Rose was deafening in her ears and yet she had the concentration to see Null glance her way, scowl and refrain from activating his Semblance.

The dust round caught him in his left shoulder, spinning him out of control and knocking him down to the ground. His own shot bounced off Yang's forearm, aura flashing to protect her. If she hadn't taken the shot, it wouldn't have, and the round might have pierced right through Yang's arm to strike her in the neck.

It was terrifying.

Haunting.

Aura was just something you got used to as you grew up. Ruby didn't understand how some people could spend their whole lives without it. In Signal, she'd been shot at and had shot at her peers. Live ammunition was normal after the first two years using rubber bullets. Yang had, in numerous spars in the garden, unloaded the equivalent of a shotgun into Ruby's unprotected face. Ruby had aimed at Uncle Qrow's heart and pulled the trigger. Blake had choked Ruby with Gambol Shroud and unloaded into her back, and Weiss had more than once stabbed her in the gut with devastating thrusts.

To the outside world, they must have looked insane. There was a reason that revered and respected as huntsmen and huntresses were, there was an unconscious divide between them and civilians. There had to be for safety's sake. Ruby had sat through the lectures along with everyone else on how they should be very careful with civilian children because what might be roughhousing for her and Yang was outright murder for civilians. It was hard for someone raised in a full huntsmen family to understand. She'd always had mom, dad and Uncle Qrow, and most of their friends were huntsmen too.

Now, Ruby saw it from the perspective other people must have. The fight with Null had her cold and sweaty, anxious and afraid of every tiny movement of his gun. That simple weapon – not even mechashift! – could take all the years of Yang's hard training and conditioning, wrap them up and put them in a casket along with her body.

She didn't dare look to the other fights taking place. She knew Winter was holding Ashari back, while Jaune and Nora were facing down Emerald and Pyrrha, Weiss, Blake and Fate took on Cinder. Her biggest worry was that they might try and attack her and leave Null in a position to take Yang or Ren out.

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Fate had spent weeks stacking the deck in his favour.

Weeks of going around behind Team JNPR's backs, dodging Ozpin's knowing eyes and putting up just enough of a petty fight to Ironwood to not set the man off. Weeks in which he fought down his excitement at the thought of the wish, weeks during which he had to continue to look and act with lazy disinterest when ever fibre of his being ached to act.

The moment had finally come. Weeks of preparation and patience and planning leading to this moment where the strongest of the iterations were dead and gone, where the forces under Ozpin had no choice but to ally with him despite their feelings. All that remained between him and his wish were a scant few versions of himself.

It had not been fun despite the tone he put on.

After thousands of lifetimes, murder was something he was in some way used to but only ever murder of those who were problems. Adam, Cinder, Mercury, Emerald, the White Fang. The people he killed had always done something to deserve it, even if that something was as light as being fooled by Adam's promises of a better world. It wasn't hard to put your emotions away when the one you were killing wore a Grimm mask and wanted to kill you first.

Leviathan had been relatively simple. No aura, no defences but a combative attitude and a strong desire to claim the wish Fate needed for his world. He was a rival, plain and simple, and there was something so incredibly detached about a sniper rifle. May Zedong's had ben calibrated for her, but it hadn't been too hard to toy around with it after stealing the code to her locker. He'd made sure to place the rifle back in the Emerald Forest along with her locker before it was found, and to replace the round fired. Not out of any interest in keeping himself secret but to prevent her realising her weapon had taken a life. It was an unnecessary cruelty.

Barista had been where the difficulties began. A good man – an innocent man – and worst of all, a non-combatant. He'd been necessary both to remove a rival and to spark Ozpin and the good side into action. They'd have sat around in Beacon forever otherwise, and that would have curtailed his ability to influence things. Barista had needed to die but he hadn't deserved to die, and Fate had very nearly come undone.

Nearly.

His people, his team, his Weiss, Yang and Blake; they needed him. Team Jazzberry - the name still made him smile fondly – would cease to exist when he inevitably failed, died and reset. He'd put no time into training this cycle, no time into preparation, dreaming of a lifetime spent as a holiday refusing to play fate's game. Or the Gods' games, he now understood. They must have been the ones behind his curse. Either way, his world was fucked if he didn't win this. There would be no hope for them, no chance of survival, and that knowledge gave him the clarity he needed to push through the self-hatred and anguish and continue his plan.

Getting sentimental with Yang hadn't been a part of it.

He'd done a good job up until that point alienating and pissing off all his friends, playing with his past romantic interactions with Blake to make her feel squeamish, sleeping around like a whore to have Pyrrha – still in love with his dumb self – feeling cheated and hurt. He'd roundly mocked Ruby, needled Weiss, rejected Nora's attempts at friendship and ignored Ren. He'd taken every step he could to make them hate him.

He had to. How the hell was he supposed to betray them otherwise? It hurt already but seeing the shock and hurt on their faces as the man who befriended them turned into their worst nightmare would have torn him asunder. Things were easier this way because all he was doing was playing into their bias. Proving himself the asshole they'd all secretly known he was, even if that in itself was little more than an act. An act that Yang very nearly, and all too easily, forced her way through in that bullish manner of hers.

Oh, it had been easy to fall in love with Yang again. Not the romantic kind of love but the same love he felt for the Yang in his world and currently on his team. Hard-heated, stubborn but unfalteringly supportive, always able to tell when someone was in a bad mood and embarking on her own personal crusade to fix it.

He'd betrayed her in a way he hadn't wanted to. Seeing her face after he hardened his heart to try and kill Ruby was like a knife through his chest, and the only thing he could do was lean into it, grin and act like an unrepentant murderer. It was that or break down himself, try to explain his warped plan and beg her forgiveness.

He was a mess.

Though, mess or not, he was still the most experienced person in the vault. Experienced enough – especially in Cinder, an enemy he'd fought more than any other – to drift off in his own thoughts while still dodging attacks Cinder had yet to even make. He wouldn't call her predictable, but everyone had their little habits, and no one knew Cinder's like he did. The twitch of her left finger would mean fire, the way her right moved behind her back was to hide the summoning of a glass weapon. When she twisted on her left heel, it was to spin and drive her right foot forward to create space.

Step aside, drive his weapon down into her knee, then dodge back before she recovered and threw a ball of fire at him. Duck the second fireball, smile cockily to enrage her, let Weiss attack from the side and catch his breath. This was normally where things went wrong in his world as he'd have to rush back in to protect her, but Cinder wasn't the maiden here and Weiss had support. She and Pyrrha moved well together, proving that they really would have made a formidable team had he not intervened so many thousands of years ago.

Weiss would have saved Pyrrha on that lonely tower.

It was a sentiment delivered without much in the way of heat, guilt or misery. Little more than a fact. Jaune – or Fate, as they called him – had long since accepted that the worst thing to ever happen to Beacon was himself. Oh, Pyrrha liked having him around because he didn't see her for her fame, and he knew that. Accepting he was Beacon's biggest problem didn't mean he wasn't aware of the good he'd done. Being a burden didn't mean you weren't also helpful in some ways; it just meant that the amount to which you helped people didn't counter the many ways you dragged them down.

Pyrrha would have gotten over her issues in time and Weiss was also famous, so they could have found understanding. It would have taken time. Pyrrha never liked to talk about her problems and Weiss, for all her smarts, could be woefully slow on the draw at times.

That was the thing about living life over and over. You realised that as much as Weiss and Ruby made for an incredible duo, so too did Pyrrha and Ruby, or Weiss and Yang, or Blake and Ren. People weren't so limited as to only be able to thrive with a very specific individual beside them. No matter the combination of teams and friends surrounding them, people adapted and made the best of their situation.

They would have adapted without him in their lives as well – and likely for the better.

It was too late for the people of his world. The only answer now was to get them help, and if that meant accepting the intervention of the same gods who had cursed him to live this endless cycle then so be it.

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Headmaster Arc watched from the side lines and the shadows of the pillars as the two sides fought a battle he had orchestrated. Ozpin had once told him that he'd made more mistakes than any man before, and now he understood the weight of that responsibility. The doubt gnawed at him even now, making him question his plans and wonder if he hadn't made some terrible mistake himself.

What if Cinder killed them?

What if Null got a shot off?

What if Salem won and destroyed this world?

The questions bounced around his skull until he closed his eyes and forced them away. They were fair worries, each and every one, and yet a teacher had to think further. You couldn't just worry about whether teaching someone to shoot a gun would hurt themselves in the short term. You had to ask what results would come from not teaching them in ten or twenty years' time.

To be a student was to grow, and to be a teacher was to be like a gardener of sorts. You didn't prune so much, but you had to care for each plant, and it was incredible what little problems they could have. Some looked strong until you learned that there were deep, emotional problems beneath the surface. Some looked weak and frail, only to show incredible resilience in times of need. You couldn't judge anything on first inspection, and you could only do your best to nurture each and every one.

But most importantly, and the hardest to learn, was that a teacher taught. They did not wade in to fix problems. Because if you did that then you robbed your students of a chance to try themselves. Oh, you kept an eye on them and made sure nothing too bad happened – such as when he stepped in to present a first aid kit to Ruby on the docks or sent Xiong to rob Cinder of the maiden's powers – but you couldn't give your student an answer before they'd had a chance to try for themselves, or you risked not only coddling them but getting them killed later down the line.

Did a war like this count?

Right now, he would have said no, but that was precisely why he had to keep himself back. He'd always had a soft spot for his first students and seeing them again now had him feeling all nostalgic and emotional. They'd handled themselves well in his world however, and he was confident they could rise up again here.

More than anything, he was curious to see how his younger self would manage.

"It's not a mistake to want them prepared, Ozpin." Headmaster Arc said quietly. "You've had thousands of years to wage your war, and nothing has changed. It's time to let them have a go."

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Since the beginning of their existence, they had experimented. The God of Light chose the domain of creation, and his sibling entity had chosen the domain of destruction. There was no ethical question behind their choices, no compunction, merely a universe of emptiness and a curiosity. A deep, burning curiosity.

The God of Light created because he could.

The God of Dark destroyed because he could.

It became… not a game but a way of passing the time. Creation without conflict felt empty and destruction without creation was no better. Their experiment with Remnant had been distracting for a while – not fulfilling, never fulfilling, but distracting. A good distraction. The God of Light had created his latest toys with the capacity to think and act on their own, to better watch as they wriggled in the dirt he had also created. To better challenge the entity that had existed alongside him since his own coming into the universe.

The God of Darkness appeared to derive more satisfaction from destroying that which did not wish to be destroyed, and the God of Light felt a similarly inexplicable sensation within himself as well at watching them cling to the gift of life he had given them. To think that after giving them the gifts of life and death, those same toys would dare to turn on them was…

Incorrect.

It was an error. An aberration. The God of Light had given them the capacity for free will, but it had not been his will that they use it to do as such. It did not occur to the God of Light that such might have been his – or its – fault. Simple put, the fault was in the experiment. Free will had been interesting but led to undesirable side effects such as toys believing they had the right to be more. The solution had been simple. Abandon them, leave an overseer, and wait for their toys to call back and beg for their return.

The Brother Gods were above such concepts as anger, rage of resentment.

Or so they so fully believed.

The sentiment that came as a result of eons passing without contact and without being summoned as per the four keys they had left behind was… unusual. It led the God of Light to believe further errors existed within the life he had created, that it could not recognise how pointless its existence was if not for fulfilling its purpose as a distraction for the Brother Gods. Why did they not understand their place? Why did they not submit themselves for judgement? Why did they continue on as if their existence had meaning? Such questions might once upon a millennia have gripped the God of Light as a pleasant distraction from endless emptiness.

But for the resentment a God did not feel, that instead had it brimming with discontent and disappointment. Even now, as he watched with his brother entity, the wriggling and combative squirming of the pieces they had granted to the overseer flailed against one another.

Gods did not speak. Language was meaningless. Instead, they communicated silently and with concepts far beyond what the specks of life below could realistically comprehend. A concept such as FRUSTRATION for instance might represent any one of a trillion possibilities, each of which might be applicable in some form or another.

Frustration at the slowness of this experiment. Frustration at the impartial results and methodology. Had they not specifically instructed that piece was to face piece? It had been fair. Different pieces of the entity they had selected from alternate realities had undergone differing gestation, but they were all of the same worthless existence. No one had been greater than any other, at least in so far as two diving beings far removed from human scales of measurement could discern.

If one had seemed stronger than one other then that must have been an error in the calculations of the humans themselves. They had ensured the pieces were of the same flickering shard of creation. The concept that they might have grown differently, experienced different conflicts and changed as an individual did not occur to the Gods because the idea that the life the God of Light created could change without his will was anathema. Not even the God of Darkness could believe that. The Gods did, the mortals simply existed, and even then only at their whim.

One shard of creation would remain the same no matter its upbringing. After all, the God of Light had not willed the shard of life to change, and therefore it could not have. That had been a concern, of course, that the pieces selected would be so similar as to be boring. The shard of the Gods own power, named Jinn, had assured its creator that such would not happen. Humans grew, it had said. Humans adapted, learned, drew on experiences and grew into different people over the course of their lives.

It had been contaminated, it seemed, in its time separated from itself. The God of Light had consumed it back and purged himself of such objectively incorrect information. They did not grow or change or learn. They could not. For to do so would mean humans had no need of their creators, and that would mean that they, the Brother Gods, were not needed.

Such was inconceivable.

Even though they did not speak, the God of Light understood his sibling's feelings of CONFUSION radiating from their observation of the battle. There were limited pieces remaining now, who should have fought one another, and yet more than the pieces engaged in the battle. Many more.

Why? Had the rules not been clear? Had the humans misunderstood?

And why did one – two once, but one now – defy the two sides mandated by the Gods? Why did one of the pieces work aside and push the experiment in a direction they did not desire for it? It pushed the lesser pieces – irrelevant pieces – into fighting, fostered peace between the chosen pieces, and acted independently of Ozma and Salem.

DESTRUCTION?

The query came from the God of Darkness, and the God of Light considered the idea. The piece acting independently – designation: Headmaster – could be eradicated. Such would place the experiment back on track but would also mean direct intervention on their part. Though the God of Light was not above such, as his boon laid upon Ozma and his creation of the four keys showed, he was loathe to here.

To intervene would mean they had erred and needed to fix the problem, which would not only mean they had made a mistake, but that his creation – his toys – had somehow adapted in his absence enough to outwit them. The God of Light sent a blast of negative concepts to his sibling to denote his refusal. If his creations continued to stray from the course he had set, however…

That might change.


Any depiction of gods as monsters is not aimed at any religions. I mean, most religions already have it in their scriptures that their god (or gods) care deeply about them and encourage them in having free will, whereas the RWBY ones seem a lot less accepting of it given their cursing of Ozma and Salem.

I'm taking more inspiration from Lovecraftian depictions of cosmic entities, incomprehensible intelligences than any real world religions.


Next Chapter: 6th August

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