A/N: We've had seven chapters of fun. Oh, where did those chapters go? Well, at least there are ridiculous time shenanigans to look forward to, I suppose.

Also, the cardboard thing is a reference to RoosterTeeth.

._.

It was natural for the heart to ache in the absence of a beloved one.

And, of course, she waited through the time that went by without that person. She wasn't going to mope around as she initially had after her anger and confusion died down. Moping around accomplished nothing for anyone.

Even so...

In the time that her sister had been gone, Yang Xiao Long had managed to cover for Ruby's absence at school. That- much to her surprise- hasn't been very difficult. Not many people even noticed the difference, which was worrying. Yang wasn't about to complain about that, but she felt some resentment towards those who couldn't tell the real from the fake.

When this had all started, there had been a panic. After an evening of half-assed group-therapy, three people had gone missing. The first being Ruby Rose, who had run out of the room in an attempt to prevent their Headmaster from escaping the Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Looking back, Yang felt terrible that she hadn't treated the situation seriously as they should have. Back then, they had only wanted to have their fun while they still could. How could they have known that their frivolity and negligence would have resulted in that sort of situation? There was no way they could have guessed that their failure to address the issues before them would lead to not one disappearance, but two more.

At the same time her sister vanished, both the Headmaster and another professor mysteriously dropped off of their radar. For two months, Glynda Goodwitch had been forced to run the school and take on the responsibilities of Professor Ozpin. As if that wasn't bad enough, the increase in crime during that time frame put pressure on the staff to keep the campus safe. With this, Glynda was under considerable stress as the academy began to receive threats from the very criminals behind the Dust Robberies. It seemed as if she would snap with the troubles that piled up one after the other.

Then, for some reason, those two appeared out of the blue as the third month began. Preparations for the upcoming Vytal festival were just beginning, and suddenly- after yet another Dust heist- Ozpin and Peter Port had materialized in Vale and returned to the school. Honestly, Yang hadn't cared that they returned. Because when she asked where her sister had gone, there hadn't been any answer.

With that, Beacon Academy had burned down a second time by Yang's hand. She didn't regret anything.

There was a knock on the door. Yang, who had been hiding her face in her pillow as she had no desire to face her teammates, looked up to see if Blake or Weiss were willing to answer.

They shook their heads and went back to what they were doing.

With a sigh, Yang got out of her bed and shuffled towards the door. At this hour- nine o'clock at night precisely- there was only one person who this could possibly be.

"Jaune, I already told you that you shouldn't be seeing my sister," Yang said tiredly.

Jaune smiled sheepishly.

"Sorry, but things have been hitting off so well. I had no idea Ruby was such a good listener," Jaune told her while reminiscing their previous 'dates,' which were all actually one-sided and didn't make sense at all to anyone. "She gave me such good advice, too!"

It was at that point Yang side-glanced at the cardboard cut-out of Ruby standing in the corner and on top of her bed which had been sealed off on all sides from the rest of the beds (still in the corner) by wooden planks. Weiss face-palmed with both hands as she suppressed a groan, and Blake rolled her eyes as she turned away. Neither of them wanted to deal with this level of stupidity so late at night.

"Uhhh, Jaune, did you know..." Yang nearly confessed that he had been duped, but Jaune's innocent expression guilted her into not saying anything. "Never mind," she averted her gaze. She walked over to 'Ruby' and picked her up. "Remember, Ruby's still playing the 'Floor is Lava' game, so don't let her touch the ground. Also, don't let the wind blow her away again."

The story was that Ruby was playing a game which would give her an excuse not to walk anywhere because of flooring. As for her weight- which was noticeable when others carried her around- they claimed that her weight was spirited away by a demon or something along those lines. Despite this, they claimed, Ruby tried to remain positive by constantly smiling and not blinking at anyone. They also claimed that she was very quiet, and that the entire world would have to go quiet in order for anyone to hear her speak.

Though that was complete nonsense and anyone who believed it was lacking in the common sense and intelligence departments.

That turned out to be almost all of Beacon Academy, including both the teachers and students. Those who did realize that 'Ruby' was simply cardboard didn't care enough to say anything because it wasn't worth the effort trying to comprehend this farce.

Jaune nodded as he acknowledged his responsibility for the night. "I will, don't worry."

Weiss sat up from the edge of her bed, though her hands were still hiding her face. Whether she was holding back a laugh or a frustrated shout, her face had turned red from what they could see. "How is Pyrrha doing?" she asked the leader of team JNPR.

Across the hallway, there was a terrified shriek belonging to none other than Cardin Winchester. Then Jaune shrugged in response to the question, not knowing what to make of the situation.

"I think she went on a weird candlelight hate-date with Cardin," he answered slowly, cringing as there was a loud crash and another shriek. "And by that, I mean that she's still trying to get revenge on him for being a bully."

There was an explosion seconds later, likely Pyrrha on her "hate-date" or whatever. None of them were sure how that worked, but they did know that Pyrrha resented Cardin to an extreme degree. Yang handed her 'sister' over to Jaune, who gave the cardboard cut-out version of Ruby a piggyback ride. Weiss sat up properly, watching with a forced poker face as team JNPR's leader left with theirs. The door shut behind him on his way out, and seconds later the poker face collapsed. Weiss started to laugh.

Blake glared at her. "It's not funny, Weiss. I know Jaune just walked off with a cheap cardboard imitation, but Ruby is still missing. This is serious."

"Serious?" Weiss mocked her teammate's words. "More like stupid," she barked out with a ghastly laugh. "It's so, so stupid. The girl gets her own team, and then she disappears."

"I know you wanted to be a leader, but you really are spoiled and insensitive aren't you?" Blake sneered. "At any rate, having no leader is better than having someone like you in charge."

Yang looked between the two with worry. Ever since that incident, their team had deteriorated into this mess. Suddenly they were all dealing with their own problems and with no one to bring them together as they did their best to fall apart. They needed a leader, but none of them were qualified. Or rather, two of them didn't want to take charge, and they didn't want the other girl to either.*

She slumped against the wall and sat on the ground with her arms around her knees.

Things fell apart so easily, and the time that passed proved enough to let such a thing happen.

Her scroll alerted her to a new message at that moment. Without changing her expression, Yang read it without checking to see who it was.

Need more supply. Stock is low, it read.

But really, Yang didn't feel like doing anything right now. She turned off her scroll and crawled back in bed, burying her face in her pillow as she waited for the lights to go out.

So she waited.

And she waited some more.

Then, when the lights didn't go out, Yang decided to burn down Beacon for a third time.

Because why the hell not.

._.

Penny turned out to be quite an eccentric girl.

Ruby, with nothing else better to do at the moment, let the orange-haired stranger lead her around Vale randomly. They looked around as the decorations were set up and visited a couple shops as they roamed the streets, with Penny pointing at everything that looked even the slightest bit festive. She gushed over a set of colorful balloons and- upon Penny's insistence- they bought some.

Immediately Penny had popped all of the balloons and cheered as the sound surprised nearby civilians. Ruby didn't know what to do, but she went along with this as they went to find something else to do.

"So, Penny," Ruby said to catch the girl's attention. They had stopped in a park and currently Penny was luring birds with the promise of food, only to terrorize them as she chased them away. Ruby sat down on a bench, watching a nearby family rush by to avoid making contact with the girl scaring the nearby birds. She cleared her throat to get the other girl to at least put a pause to what she was doing. "Er- when exactly did we first meet?"

Quite frankly she didn't understand things like time travel very well. If Penny had gone into the past- to a point where she met and made an impression on Ruby- then wouldn't she create a paradox? She had stated that they became friends in the future under different circumstances. If Ruby was acquainted with Penny already, how exactly was their "first" encounter going to play out?

God she hated time travel. She didn't even know if this was how things worked.

"We met just before the tournaments," Penny answered simply. "We bumped into each other in the street and you called me your friend despite having just met me."

"See-" Ruby frowned, "-that's the problem." She stood up from the bench, walking over to her friend before she could start terrorizing the birds again. "You say that's when I first meet you, but now that can't happen because one- I would have remembered if that happened in the past when it could have happened. And two, if I met you later when you didn't know me, that means at some point in my future- from my perspective- I either forget about you, or I'm lying."

Penny nodded slowly as she took this all in. "Perhaps something happens to make you lose your memory?"

Ruby didn't like the sound of that. "I hope not," she said. Then after a few moments, she asked, "You don't think we traveled to an alternate timeline, do you?"

The answer was instantaneous.

"No."

"Nope?" Ruby sighed. "Well, I suppose alternate timelines are a bit of a stretch..."

"Of course they are," Penny continued off of that in a matter-of-fact tone. "We simply traveled from one point in space to another over a certain span of time. We didn't hop over to a different timeline because that would have taken too much energy. And anyways, there isn't a way for us to do that yet."

I hate time travel, I hate time travel, I hate time travel-

"GAH!" Ruby shouted in frustration. "Why can't this be simple?"

"Because potato," Penny explained.

"..."

"I was told to say that," Penny told her. "I don't actually know what that word means."

"Uhh, Penny," Ruby started, but stopped. She didn't want to embarrass her new friend by letting her know she had been deceived into saying something foolish. "Never mind," she muttered. "Who gave you those instructions?"

Penny didn't have that knowledge as it turned out. According to her, the word had been left on a note back in the time machine- the same note that had started this mess. There was no way they could look over the message because Penny proceeded to rip it into shreds and scatter it with the wind, completely destroying the evidence. Why in the word she had done this, Ruby would never know. She asked if that had been part of the instructions, but Penny didn't answer that in favor of harassing the birds again.

She watched the shreds of paper be blown away with the breeze. The sun was starting to set and soon they would have to return to their homes. That made Ruby think of her team- and more importantly, her sister. Ruby wasn't too sure how this worked, but she did know that if she had skipped a few months then she wouldn't have experienced that time herself. She wondered if her future self went back to live in that time with them.

Then she realized that barely made sense. If she had been gone for this amount of time, the damage had already been done. Even if she went back, she doubted things would go the way she wanted them to.

At that time, as Penny was scaring away the birds and Ruby watched the setting sun, there was an explosion that caused the ground to shake. Ruby turned towards the source of the disruption, just in time as smoke went up in the air just buildings away.

Then she looked to Penny, who was chasing the birds carelessly. She showed no signs of alarm, or wanting to check out the violence not too far away.

"Hey Penny, I'm going to go do something," she called out. "Do you have a place to stay?"

She wasn't too sure how Penny's guardians would react to an exact replica of her. That might freak them out too much, and Ruby wondered if Penny needed a place to stay.

"I don't think so," Penny answered. "I shall follow you, then!"

Penny abandoned the birds and followed after Ruby, not caring where they were going.

Just a few buildings away was a Dust shop with its door broken down and the windows broken with the glass shattered outwards. There was shouting coming from the inside of the store, while civilians fled the scene to get to safety. Normally Ruby may have done the same, but today she felt like defying common sense. She had traveled through time and space for crying out loud. If she was able to do something like that which couldn't even be explained, then she may as well go bonkers and do whatever the hell she felt like doing.

So, with that fickle intention, Ruby entered the Dust shop with Cresent Rose in hand.

"Hey!" she shouted. "What's going on here?"

And, for the second time, she met Roman Torchwick. This time however, he looked... different.

"Your hair is white," she murmured to herself.

He didn't appear to have heard that part as he looked over his shoulder to see who had entered the store.

The criminal known as Roman Torchwick stood at the counter with a terrified store-owner loading Dust gems into a case. He wore the same outfit from the last time she had seen him, and he had the same weapon. He didn't even seem to have aged physically, but his pure white hair made him appear so much older.

"Oh, it's Red," Roman blinked at her entrance. "It's been a few weeks I think. Do you have any more of that orange hair dye?"

It was official.

She was about to lose it with this weird time crap.

"Don't 'oh, it's Red' me!" Ruby mimicked his voice. "That's not my name."

Roman corrected himself. "Oh, it's Miss Red."

"Misread what?" Penny echoed in misunderstanding.

"Sorry, I misspoke," Roman said dryly. "Let me try that again."

Ruby was about ready to lop his head off.

"Oh my, it's Little Red Riding Hood," Roman pretended to be "surprised" by her arrival.

"Don't reference things so blatantly!" she retaliated.

Roman claimed not to know what she was talking about.

Ruby stuck out her tongue at him.

He fought back with an equally absurd face.

"Oh, it's Miss Big-Shot," he tried a fourth time while being completely insincere.

"I'm not Miss Big-Shot," Ruby frowned. "My name is Ruby, and you're not even trying now."

"Sorry. I forgot, your name is actually A Virgin," Roman apologized, this time sounding like he actually meant it.

Predictably, she fell right into that trap as her irritation got the better of her.

"I'm not A Virgin, my name is Ruby!" she screamed.

Then she realized what she said and covered her mouth. Everyone was staring at her for her outburst, including the authorities who had arrived at the scene.

Roman started laughing as he packed up his stolen goods. "Well, thanks for the banter, Red. It was fun. And good luck with that thing you and the others were planning to do," he called out as he motioned for his goons to follow him out in their escape.

But Ruby wasn't about to let him escape. Not after he had embarrassed her like that, oh no.

"COME BACK!" Ruby chased after Roman, pushing the authorities out of the way as she ran past them. "What did you mean you saw me a few weeks ago?" she called out, "I just got here!"

The white-haired villain turned a corner. His goons went another way, likely thinking that splitting up would increase their chance of escape. With a glance at Penny, Ruby continued to pursue Roman while Penny chased the henchmen in the other direction.

Roman ran down several alleyways until he came across a dead end. With Cresent Rose in hand, Ruby managed to corner him.

"Well." Roman looked around for a possible escape, but found none. "This is awkward."

"You mentioned that we met a while ago," Ruby reminded him. "When was that, from your perspective?"

Roman groaned.

"Oh god, this is when you first start time traveling isn't it?" he pulled a face. "If I could smoke right now, I would."

"Don't you usually have a fancy cigar or something?" Ruby asked. Now that she thought about it, it wasn't just the hair color that was off. She wondered what else had changed in her absence.

"I used to," Roman nodded at her inquiry. "I really don't want to explain this again, but the combination of Vitamin B-12 deficiency, heredity, stress and smoking caused my hair to go white, so I quit."

That was surprisingly easy for him to admit.

"So... later on, from my perspective, I'm going to give you hair dye?" she couldn't think of a single reason behind this. Maybe she pitied him later on... in the past? She really wasn't good with this time travel stuff. "Argh, whatever," she shook her head, annoyed by it all. Since when did things have to become so complicated? "Just tell me when that was so I can do that or at least figure out what to do from here."

Roman thought about that, and seeing no harm in giving her the knowledge, he revealed the exact date.

Ruby noted the day for later. "Well, since we have nothing else to do, I think I might let you go."

"Really?" Roman couldn't believe this. "Will I owe you later? Because I'm already in debt to both you and that old man."

She didn't respond to that, keeping in mind that apparently this criminal felt as though he owed her for something she (and someone else) had done in his past. "You just have to answer a problem for me."

"Anything."

"Multiply the following binomials: (2x−5)(3x+1) without a calculator."

Roman made the face of a man who deeply despised mental math. Nevertheless, his answer was immediate.

"6x^2 - 13x - 5." **

Ruby let him go free.

._.

The two time travelers regrouped shortly after that. Rather than reporting to the police as they should have, they avoided being detected as they weren't sure what would happen if they were interviewed after they had been missing for so long. Instead, they walked around some more through Vale while avoiding the authorities. It was decided that they would return to that time traveling machine, but not after they thought things through first.

As they discussed their next move, their stomachs began to growl. They had been walking for quite some time and were getting hungry, and a shared look between them confirmed this.

"Since we're going to be awake for a while, do you want to get coffee?" Penny asked.

She nodded.

Ruby remembered the coffee crisis from a while ago in her time. It had been months for Vale, however, and she realized that by now most of the coffee should have been replaced. She didn't know if the culprit had ever been stopped, but she didn't ask anyone as she lead Penny to a nearby cafe. It was the very one that the headmaster had robbed, and when they arrived they saw that the building had gone under remodeling.

They stopped to admire the cafe from the outside. Ruby told Penny about their fake initiation into Beacon, but as she glanced at the cafe's menu through the window, she caught sight of someone familiar through the glass.

It was at then that Ruby discovered that perhaps Vale was in a worse state than she had left it.

Because sitting inside at a two person table was an older-looking Jaune Arc and a cardboard cut-out of herself.

"..."

Penny refrained from saying anything as Ruby's eye twitched.

There were no words to describe how she felt about this scene.

"What is he doing?" Ruby finally asked.

"It looks like he's out on a date," Penny reluctantly answered. "Err, Ruby-"

At that moment, Jaune excused himself from the table. Based off his interaction with the cardboard, he appeared to believe that the imitation was indeed the real thing. Ruby took her chance.

"I'm going in."

Penny, with nowhere else to go, followed after her.

The first thing Ruby did was remove the imitation and hand it over to Penny. She ordered her to keep it as a souvenir, or better yet as a token of friendship. Penny reluctantly accepted the gift, and put it under a table close by that she sat at so no one would see it. Then, Ruby claimed the seat across from Jaune and impatiently tapped her foot against the ground as she folded her arms across her chest.

When Jaune returned, he smiled at her but as he came closer he stopped in place.

"Woah," he said with surprise. "Ruby, you suddenly look more... three dimensional."

"..."

"Did you go through a character development or something?" Jaune questioned as he sat down across from her. "I mean, in the three years that I've known you, no offense- but you seemed rather two-dimensional, kind of flat," he confessed. "But sometimes you seem three-dimensional, kind of on and off."

There were several things wrong with that Jaune had just said.

And first of all, the most concerning:

"Jaune, did you just say three years?"

He didn't even hesitate in his reply.

"Yes," he verified, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. "Time sure does fly by, doesn't it? After all everyone has been through, it seems as if we all came together just yesterday."

Ruby looked Penny's way, and saw the same uneasy expression on her face.

Knowing that they had gone too far into the future, there wasn't anything they could think of to say to the other.

Uncomfortable, she broke eye contact and kept her gaze fixed on the table she sat at.

"Yeah," she quietly agreed, "time sure is funny like that."

._.

*In this timeline, the team never does any bonding (and as a result, view each other differently) because their circumstances have changed. Weiss and Ruby aren't as close as they are in the series, Blake technically did tell them she was a fauna so they don't really care (but they don't know about her connection to the White Fang), and Yang is still Yang only she isn't as friendly with her teammates. [Out of curiosity, what is your favorite character interaction/relationship so far in this story? You don't have to answer this if you don't want to]

** I told you there would be FOILing of plans.

I honestly hesitated in posting this chapter. I felt that something this might be like a slap across the face, just like in Puella Magi Madoka Magica at the end of Episode Three. Certainly not as severe as that trauma, but still somewhat shocking given the past mood of this story.

Next Chapter: The Qrows and the Bumblebees

In which I claim that chapter title because I can, the ghost of the narrator's future/past returns to haunt Ozpin, and the word "Bumblebee" means more than meets the eye.