Yang stood at the mouth of the giant cave, staring down at the sleeping Grimm with Shirone and Kuroka. Bobbing around it was a Seer, and teeming below it were Beowolves, Ursa and Griffins.
"We're gonna wake the horde doing this," Yang said.
"So we wait for Ruby?" Shirone asked, and Yang snorted.
"I didn't say that, this'll be fun," Yang cracked her neck, "Kuroka, you mind putting up a barrier, just to be safe?"
"I can put them up around the exits," Kuroka said unusually serious, "I'm not Ruby, I can't block the entire mountain off."
"Ruby's also spent 600 years studying barriers, you've spent less than twenty," Yang consoled her wife, "blocking off the entrances is enough. I don't plan to let the big guy get a chance to leave. Once he's dead, drop down and we'll start the butchering."
"I set up the barriers," Kuroka said, and Yang swept in for a kiss before stepping forwards. Touki flared around her, white and strong, then she added her Demonic Energy to the mix, staining the white energy yellow, finally, as she stepped off the edge of the cliff face to fall towards the Wyvern, the Celestial Dragon Supernova added her Aura to the mix, turning the whole thing a brilliant and crackling gold.
She shifted the entire mass of energy to her left arm as she came down on the Wyvern's skull and hit it with the force of the exploding star that was her namesake. The Demonic energy ignited, sending fire burning through the cracks and erupting out in bursts of fire. Yang flared her wings as the Wyvern did the same, launching herself so she could grab onto one of the bone spurs and twist it until the wing was in a half nelson.
A simple exertion of pressure and the wing broke with an unholy crack. Yang pulled back, grinning wildly, and drove Ember Celica into the Wyvern's spine. The Grimm slammed into the ground, causing dozens of others under it to die, and then Yang took off into the air, the Rook's grin became maniacal as she reached the top of the cavern and planted her feet on the ceiling. More Demonic Power and Touki gathered, creating a miniature sun in Yang's hand and Yang kicked off, folding her wings as she did so and falling like a bomb.
The pair of punches she delivered carried enough magical force to splatter the Wyvern across the floor and walls in a glorious explosion of fire, ichor and body parts. Standing from the crater she had smashed into the floor, Yang gave a red-eyed, Devil's grin to the surrounding Grimm as the black gore from the dead Wyvern evaporated off of her with a hiss.
"Now," she growled, as a glyph appeared behind her and she summoned Sunny, the golden dragon prowling out of the glyph and giving a jagged, tooth filled grin at the Grimm, "Who's next?"
— X Ruby/Satanachia X—
"Arthur Watts, the scientist?" Ruby looked at Goodwitch as the question came, and Ruby nodded, throwing the transfigured bishop piece into the air and catching it in a barrier, "I thought he died during the Paladin Incident?"
"Nope," Ruby popped the P, staring at the hovering piece, "He faked his death and joined Salem because he felt slighted that his ego wasn't being fed enough by Ironwood. That's a thing you need to learn about Salem's gang, every one of them I met, except for one, placed their own feelings first and foremost. And I can respect that, but I can't let them survive for it. Just like they can't let me survive. That's the way the world works, one desire meets another desire, they clash, and the stronger one wins."
"That's a morbid way to look at the world."
"Devils get stronger by fulfilling desires," Ruby shrugged, "'I want Tommy to notice me', 'I want to be brave', 'I want to feel', 'I want to be smart', 'I want to go home'! Everyone has desires, Goodwitch, and anyone who says they don't is a liar. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just the way the world works. And chances are, if you want something, someone else wants the opposite. That is why this war is going on, you want Remnant to continue to exist, Salem wants nothing less than its complete destruction. But you're lucky, because you have the devil on your side."
"I still don't like it being phrased in such a way," Goodwitch said softly.
"Anyways," Ruby shattered the barrier, catching the piece, "Watts is in charge of hacking for Salem, in our timeline, through the help of Jacques Schnee, he turned off the heating grid in Mantle and, later, installed a backdoor hack into Penny."
"How do you-?" Ozpin started, before breathing, "James, you didn't."
"Penny is the first fully autonomous AI with an Aura," Ruby said, fondly, "a modern miracle."
"I told him it was a bad idea-"
"Penny was not," Ruby snapped, "a bad idea, and I won't hear anything so much as implying otherwise near me. And I absolutely will not hear her be referred to as an 'it'. Am I clear, Ozma?"
"You love her," Goodwitch said, voice still soft.
"It hurts having someone you love taken from you," Ruby said, voice clipped, "it's all the harder when it happens twice. I refuse, absolutely and utterly, to have it happen a third time. Back on topic, now, next we have Hazel Rainart."
"Gretchen," Ozpin said, immediately.
"Gretchen. He wants you dead, personally, and he doesn't care who he has to hurt to get that done. Any casualties are your fault in his eyes "
"And I doubt this incarnation dying would satisfy his lust for revenge," Ozpin said.
"No," Ruby said, putting down the rook and picking up the Knight, which transformed at her will, "Tyrian Callow. He's insane. I never got a justification for what he was doing before we left Remnant, but he might just want to watch the world burn for the sake of it. Then, we have the pawns. Mercury Black, Emerald Sustrai, Roman Torchwick, Neopolitan, Adam Taurus and Leo Leonheart."
"Leo-"
"You're sure he betrayed us?" Ozpin asked.
"Yep. It's how we got our hands on Jinn, he opened the doors to the vault to them once the Spring Maiden sided with them," Ruby said.
"You know who the Spring Maiden is? We lost track of her-"
"Raven."
For the first time in the discussion, Ozpin's carefully schooled expression dropped for a look of anger, "It seems, we're going to have to have Qrow take me to have a talk with his sister."
"And that's it," Ruby said, leaning back, "the pawns will be crushed as needed, Cinder will die at Jaune's blade. Then we'll just have the rest of them to sweep up as they make themselves known until we put Salem in check, have Juka use the Kankara Formula on Salem and kill her permanently. Then we focus on wiping out the Grimm. Without a leader, they'll be easier to get rid of."
"If this Beelzebub can undo her curse," Ozpin said.
"When."
—- X Somewhat X—
"You're a Faunus!?" Somewhat watched Weiss hiss out the statement for the tenth time, sitting in Ruby, little Ruby's lap and nibbling some cheese as they did. Blake recoiled, her ears covered by a stretch of fabric.
"What's wrong with her being a Faunus?" Ruby asked.
"What's a Faunus?" Somewhat asked, causing everyone to pause and look at them. They looked around, "What?"
"You don't know what a Faunus is?" Blake asked, glancing at Weiss and stepping away from her, "but with me, and the other two…"
"Other two?"
"The white haired and black haired cat Faunus that were with you," Ruby said, "I think you called one… Shirone?"
"Shirone is a Nekoshou," Somewhat said, "a type of Youkai. Is that what you call Youkai on Remnant, Faunus?"
Somewhat would admit to being somewhat, hah, guilty of making assumptions in this case. Since thier reincarnation, they had lived with a pair of Nekoshou, they had assumed Blake to be a Nekomata, the Nekoshou's more common relative, or at least the Remnantian equivalent of one. It had made sense to them, cat ears, even without a tail, equaled her being some kind of Youkai in life, right?
Oh, "It's because Youkai, I mean Faunus, live by themselves isn't it? That's why you're angry!"
"Is that how it is where you live?" Blake asked.
"Youkai know magic to pretend to be human," Somewhat nodded, "and live separate from humanity whenever possible. Same with Devils, Angels and Fallen Angels, who live in the Underworld and Heaven."
"Do you live apart from humanity?"
"Well, I stay in the house and the Underworld because people like me," Somewhat gestured to their mousey body, "don't exist on Earth. But the rest love living with humans! Weiss is an idol, Blake's a writer! We all live in Chiyoda and love it!"
"Oh," Blake sounded mollified, "good. I wouldn't want to… to live apart from humanity."
"Well, maybe we want to live separate from you!" Weiss snarled, "Do you know how many funerals I had to go to because of your kind? How many friends and family we had to bury because you're kind-"
"Wanted equality, Weiss!" Blake snapped back, "We wanted to be treated as equals, not glorified work slaves in your company's mines!"
"I-!" There was a knock on the door, and all of them stopped. Yang walked over and the door swung open to reveal Ruby, their Ruby, who strolled in and shut the door behind them. A gesture of her hand and glass-like panes of energy appeared over the door and windows.
"There, now nobody can run away," Ruby said, "let's talk about Faunus, kiddos."
— X Blake (Younger) X—
Blake watched the older Ruby, Satanachia, walk into the room. She made a gesture with her left hand, laying the tip of her hooked index finger on top of the joint of her straight middle finger, and panes of glass-like energy appeared across the exits to the room. She fell backwards, stopping in the middle of the air like there was a chair there and stretched. Blake took the moment to compare her to her team leader, taller, more… womanly, given how her chest stuck out even while compressed by her riding coat.
"There, now nobody can run away," her voice was a hint deeper, not enough to take it away from "high pitched", but enough to make it more "adult", "let's talk about Faunus, kiddos."
"Run away?" Yang asked, "You think someone's gonna run away?"
"Blake," Satanachia tilted her head towards the faunus girl, "has a bit of a track record of running away when her past comes up. She did it twice in my timeline."
"She runs away?" Yang asked, looking at Blake like she expected her to bolt then, "Why?"
"The second time it was Adam," Satanachia said, and Blake locked up, "and the first time was because of the group he leads."
Crap. She didn't want to talk about Adam.
"Adam," Yang said, "did Blake make some sort of enemy from a gang leader before she joined Beacon?"
"Depends on your definition of gang," Satanachia said conversationally, "She probably won't like what I'm gonna do to him, if I get my hands on him."
"Adam… is a complicated person-" Blake started.
"He's a Faunus supremacist who has an obsession with you because you're former lovers, don't give him any power he doesn't deserve," Satanachia said, causing Blake to recoil back with a wince. Satanachia's features softened at that, "sorry, that was unnecessary. It took a long time for Blake, my Blake, to make her peace with Adam's ghost. Start doing that now, so that when we take him down you don't try to delude yourself into thinking there was some other way."
"There has to be," Blake said softly, "Adam, had a hard life."
"So did I," Ruby snarked, "so hard I tried to take my own life once. You don't see me trying to blame the world for it. The ones who were responsible for it being hard? Sure, but that's vengeance for you."
"You didn't," Yang said, voice aghast as she looked between Rubies, "you wouldn't- that's a lie."
"What benefit do I get for lying about that?" Ruby-Satanachia said, "it happened, I learned an important lesson from it, I moved on. Since I'm over six hundred years old, I think we can firmly say something I tried to do when I was seventeen was a one off thing. Moving on, Adam is Obsessed, with a capital O, with you Blake. He's taken the fact that you chose to dump his sorry butt incredibly personally and plans to kill anyone you're remotely close to as revenge. Considering that includes this team, but also your parents, and that he's signed on with an enemy of ours, we intend to kill him sooner or later because we care about you all."
—