No Such Thing as Destiny

Chapter Four

Running out of Time

"Welcome to the dance! The punch bowl is over there in that corner, and the dance floor is everywhere else. Enjoy your evening."

Ruby said every word with a smile, and she had repeated each of those words so many times she had them memorized. They had spent all week getting the dance ready for the school, and they only had to keep it going for a few more hours. Weiss was making sure the flower arrangements were still arranged, and Ruby was the Official Assistant Greeter, which meant it was her task to cheerfully greet everyone who walked through the double doors until they stopped coming.

Or until Yang finished her dance with Blake. She was the Official Head Greeter. Important role, that, lots of responsibility. After only a few minutes Ruby was already bored out of her mind.

"Welcome to the dance! The punch bowl is—hey, it's you guys!" She wobbled around the Official Greeter's Podium on her evil heels of evil when she realized it was Team JNPR who had just come through the doors. "Jaune, Ren, you're wearing matching suits, they look good. Pyrrha, it's great to see you!"

Pyrrha was practically glowing with a smile on her face. Even now, Ruby's heart broke a little each time she saw her, and she felt a twinge of guilt over not being able to save her back then—but now, Pyrrha was happy. That meant something, right?

"And Nora," Ruby continued, "you—"

"You!" Nora said, bearing down on her.

"Me?"

"You! I know what you did." Nora grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her smack on the lips.

"Bwaa!"

"Good job!" With that, Nora continued on with her usual spring in her step as though nothing odd had happened.

"What did I do?" Ruby demanded. She would have fallen over if Ren hadn't been there to steady her. "Because I can change, honest!"

"It's best not to think too much about the reasons behind her actions,," Ren said. "She's highly secretive by nature."

Ruby wiped her mouth on her arm. "She is?"

Ren hesitated. "Sorry, that was a secret. I shouldn't have mentioned it."

"Okay, I'll just hide behind my podium again." She stood there with a deathgrip on the mahogany framing until the song ended and Yang came back from her dance.

"Hey, Ruby, did I miss anything?"

"I just had the most terrifying bi-curious experience of my life."

"Neat. Go have another."

"What?"

"I'm serious. The night's still young. I can handle the meet 'n greet till you get back."

"But—"

Yang made a shooing motion with her hand. "Go."

Ruby looked at the crowd of people dancing in the center of the hall. Dancing. Ha. No, she had seen these people dance, all through the tournament. Eight, four, two people bound together by their will to win, fighting with their weapons, training, instincts, and dreams; past and future brought to bear in a single moment. That was a dance. This was a game with rules Ruby had never learned.

"Okay, but if I manage to have fun, will you help me take down a supervillain tonight?" Ruby asked.

"What?"

"Yeah, there's a supervillain attacking the CCT tonight. Wanna help save the future?"

Yang rolled her eyes. "I'll think about it."

Ruby turned away and stomped her feet as much as she could without twisting an ankle. "That just means no."

"Love ya too, sis!"

Yang was off the list. She liked fighting, but she liked a lot of other things too, and fancy dance parties were less common than climatic battles. Ruby peered through the crowd, looking for Blake. Blake had been kind of sour about the whole dance thing in both timelines, but once again, she had started having fun once the music started. Ruby could see her smiling and laughing, which she never did, and Ruby knew she didn't have a chance of dragging her away.

That left Weiss. Only Blake had come with a date, but unlike Ruby and Yang, Weiss had actually wanted one, and when Ruby spotted her, Weiss was doing her best not to look utterly miserable. Perfect.

"Weiss! Friend, bestie, how're you doing?"

Weiss adjusted a flower arrangement until it looked exactly the same as it did before she started messing with it. "Ruby."

"So, are you having fun? Because you don't look like you're having a whole lot of fun."

Weiss let out a breath. "I am having the time of my life. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. What do you need?"

Well, subtlety was overrated. "Yang says she won't help me beat up a supervillain until after I have another horrifying bi-curious experience."

Weiss blinked. "Another one? What was your first?"

"Nora."

"Ah. And so you came to me?"

Ruby shrugged. "Blake seemed like she was having too much fun—wow, those are nine words I never thought I'd say—so I figured maybe you'd want to save the future with me instead."

"Of course. On a completely unrelated topic, I just ordered a T-shirt online. I'm not really a T-shirt girl, but this one says, 'Please bother someone else with your silly games' in great big, friendly letters."

"Neat. So, is that a yes?"

"About beating up a supervillain or the horrifying bi-curious experience? Actually, it doesn't matter. No."

"Is it a maybe?"

"Again, no." She turned away from the table and faced her. "Look, Ruby. We all put a lot of work into getting the dance up and running this week, and while I admit it didn't work out as I had hoped, I intend to see this event to its bitter and disappointing conclusion."

"That doesn't sound like much fun."

"I didn't come here to have fun. I came here to—"

"Save the future?"

"To see this event to its bitter and disappointing conclusion. That's what formal dances are all about." She glared at the cheerful partiers with the fury of a frozen tundra.

"That doesn't—"

"Sound like much fun, I know."

Ruby slumped her shoulders and wandered off. Yang and Blake were having too much fun to help her save the future, and Weiss was determined to have no fun at all. If Team RWBY was off the table and on the dance floor, then next up was Team JNPR! Jaune actually believed her when she told him about their imminent destruction. Sure, Jaune wasn't the strongest fighter she knew, but he came with Pyrrha, and she deserved the chance to avenge her own death.

They were easy to find. Even when he wasn't crossdressing, Jaune was one of the tallest boys in the room, and Pyrrha was nearly his height. But when Ruby saw her, she stopped dead in her tracks. Pyrrha swayed in Jaune's arms in her red dress like a pair of trees in the wind, but Ruby saw golden embers in the night.

You have to save Pyrrha! Ruby could still hear Jaune begging her, and her job was not yet finished. Pyrrha wasn't safe—no one was safe—with that future still coming, and the last thing Ruby wanted to do was throw Pyrrha at the woman who murdered her.

She made her way to the edge of the dance floor and plopped down on a chair. She still needed to recruit someone to help her save the future, and heels made everything worse.

"You look like you're having a rough night," said a girl in a green dress. "Mind if I join you?"

"Sure," Ruby said. "Suit your—aah!"

It wasn't just anyone in a green dress, it was Emerald. Coco, Yang, and Pyrrha had hallucinated during the tournament, and in each case, Emerald had been present. For Coco, Emerald had been the only one present in that grove of trees, so that Semblance had to have been hers. Tall, tan, and with blood-red eyes, Emerald had never gotten her hands dirty, but she killed Penny all the same and had used Pyrrha to do it. What was worse, she was the only member of Cinder's team who came to them as a friend. Mercury had kept his distance and Cinder had been gone almost entirely until the end, but Emerald had always been there, smiling at them, hanging out, cheering them on, and Ruby had swallowed her act whole.

She was still smiling, playing the same game, but Ruby wasn't going to fall for it twice.

"Jumpy, aren't you?" She laughed. It even sounded sincere. "I don't know if you remember me, but I'm Emerald."

"Yeah, I know who you are."

Emerald hesitated, sensing something in her tone that suggested that Ruby wanted to be left alone. "I saw your sparring match with Mercury, which was amazing. Seriously, I would pay good money to have that on film."

Ruby looked at her. "Even though he's your teammate?"

She gave her a knowing smile. "Trust me, if you knew him as well as I do, you'd love to see him get knocked down a few pegs."

Ruby smiled despite herself. In two timelines, that was probably the first honest thing she had ever heard Emerald say. "You two don't get along?"

Emerald rolled her eyes. "I don't like to talk bad about my teammates, but Mercury? He's full of himself, and that doesn't even begin to describe him. Sure, he's strong, but he knows he's strong, and treats everything like a game."

Ruby nodded. He had been like that during their first fight too. Ruby had been fighting with everything she had trying to get past him to stop Pyrrha's fight with Penny, and he had been playing with her. There was no rage behind his actions, no passion, just cruel and distant fun.

"That's what I liked so much about his fight with you," Emerald continued. "He didn't lose because you were that much stronger than he was, he lost because he was playing and you weren't, and let me tell you, he has been fuming about that all week. 'Oh, I could have beaten her! She just caught me off guard!' Well, what was he doing with his guard down in the middle of a fight?" She laughed, shaking her head. "He's actually been glaring at you the whole night, in case you haven't noticed."

Ruby blinked. "He has?"

"Sure, he's right over there."

Emerald smiled and waved at someone in the crowd, and Ruby spotted Mercury scowling at her. There it was. There was the rage and passion he had been missing. Well, it was good that it was personal for him. It had been personal for her since his team killed her friends.

"So how'd you learn to use a scythe like that?" Emerald asked.

"Uncle Qrow," Ruby said before she could stop herself. Though, did it matter? It wasn't like it was a secret. "He taught me everything I know."

"Cool. Does he use a scythe too? Or is he just good at everything?"

Ruby grinned. "Yes."

Emerald laughed. "There aren't enough people who use scythes these days. Everyone wants weapons based on, you know, weapons, but swords and spears have never done it for me. Enhanced farming tools have always had more style, you know?"

"Exactly! I've always liked your sickles, too."

Emerald's smile never left her lips, but her eyes narrowed. "How'd you know about that? I haven't used my weapons since I got here."

Ruby blinked. "Yes you have. It was at …" At the Vytal Tournament, and earlier when Grimm attacked the city. Two event that haven't happened yet. "Oh, right. Well, a person's weapons are always the first thing I notice about them." Which was true, but she still needed to change the subject. "So I've seen you carry your sickles around, I've seen Mercury use his boots up close, but what about your other teammate? What's her weapon?"

Dust-created obsidian-glass blades, bow, broad-tipped exploding arrows. She had seen the scimitars once and the bow … twice.

"Oh, Cinder's a bit like your Uncle Qrow in that," Emerald replied. "She's good at everything."

NO SHE'S NOT. Ruby forced a smile. "Neat. Is she coming? I haven't seen her here."

"Well, don't tell her I said this, but she's a total perfectionist. She wanted to get her dress just right and had us go ahead without her. She'll probably get here at around midnight, give or take, so hopefully the dance will still be going on."

As soon as Emerald said perfectionist, Ruby thought, like Weiss, but she stomped that idea into the ground. That woman was nothing like any of her teammates. She forced a smile again, not sure how much longer she could keep this up. "Yeah, the dance doesn't end until one, and Yang was planning an after-party, so it's going to be great! I have to go now, and check on … flower arrangements."

"Great! I'll catch you later."

Ruby screamed internally (she hoped) as she hurried away. She didn't know if she had told Emerald anything she shouldn't have or if she could trust anything that girl had said, but the part about Cinder being back by midnight seemed reliable. Last time she had faced Cinder in the Communications Tower around then, and more than that, it was dramatic.

She checked the time, and a clock on the wall said it was six thirty-seven. But it was broken. Her scroll said it was eleven twelve, so Ruby had maybe half an hour to catch Cinder in the act, and less than that to stop her nefarious scheme. She still didn't know what it was.

Her only advantage this time around was that she knew more than she did before, and even that was nearly nothing. She knew who and what, but not why or how. What did breaking into the CCT have to do with bringing down the Beacon? Why someone would want to destroy an Huntsman Academy bothered her just as much, but Ruby couldn't exactly sit Cinder down and ask her why she wanted to be a supervillain without giving something away.

Here and now, she was running low on time. RWBY was out, JNPR was out, so that left … one of the teachers? She was trying to imagine a scenario where she managed to convince a teacher that she was from the future and not crazy in thirty minutes or less when she saw Penny.

Of course. Sure, Penny had lost to Pyrrha who had lost to Cinder, but maybe it was a rock-paper-scissors sort of thing? Besides, Penny had volunteered to help Ruby find Blake without even being asked. How hard would it be to convince her to run off with her to save the future?

Well, pretty hard considering the two armed soldiers standing next to her, but still doable. Though as far as guards went, these two didn't seem so bad. The blue one was as stiff as a board, but the red one was tapping his foot to the music. Penny herself was dancing in place—well, she was bobbing more than dancing, but she wasn't causing any injuries or collateral damage, so Ruby had no room to judge.

Ruby approached her as casually as she could. "Hey, Penny! Glad you could make it!"

Penny stopped dancing, and Red even stopped tapping his foot. "I'm sorry. You must be mistaking me for someone else." She hiccupped.

Ruby hesitated, then it clicked. Penny had connections all the way up to General Ironwood himself, so she always had someone watching over her. Her guards seemed to be protecting her more from her friends than her enemies, but from what Ruby had seen and from what Weiss had told her, Atlas seemed obsessed with military discipline and wanted everyone to act like robots. Penny, an actual robot, was one of the most human people Ruby had ever met, so, irony.

"Right!" Ruby said. "We are meeting for the first time. My name's Ruby. What's yours, Penny?"

"It's Penny, Ruby," Penny said. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Great!" She looked at Penny's two expressionless guards. "So, um, do you want to dance with me?"

Penny hesitated. "That is an excellent question." She turned to the pair of soldiers. "Do I want to dance with her?"

Blue shrugged, and Red said, "Go knock yourself out, kid."

Penny frowned. "After I regain consciousness, then will I want to dance with her?"

"He means go have fun," Blue said.

"Oh! Sensational!" She grabbed Ruby by the arm and dragged her onto the dance floor.

"I can't believe they fell for that!" Ruby said, hanging onto Penny until she learned to walk reliably with heels. "Okay, I'm not great at this, but we still need to make this look convincing. I know! We could do the robot." It was barely a dance at all, and Ruby could do it without ever taking her feet off the ground.

Penny froze.

"Oh wait, is that secretly offensive like when Yang got Blake a ball of yarn? Sorry. How about we, um …" Her mind went through the different dances Weiss had told her about. Waltz, jig, salsa, tango, polka, swing, cross-step … "We could start a conga line!"

"How did you know about that?"

"Easy. It's literally one of the only two dances I know well enough not to screw up. Do you want to start it, or do you want me to lead?"

"No, how did you know about the … other thing?"

"What other thing? Oh, you mean the beep boop bop? That thing?"

She nodded, looking away, her eyes wide and terrified.

"You told me, remember?"

Penny looked at her and shook her head, making her bow wobble. "No I did not."

"Sure you did. It was back in …" In an alternate timeline. Oh, crud, did I skip that? She looked at the clock. Six thirty-seven. Still broken. She put her hands on Penny's shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes. "Okay, I don't have time to give you the full version, but the short one is this: I'm from the future. In an alternate timeline, you told me your secret, and later on, a lot of bad stuff happened. Now I'm trying to stop all the bad stuff from happening, and I need your help."

Penny blinked. "I see. May I ask you a question, Ruby? Are—"

"No, I'm not crazy." Everyone seemed to think she was, but Ruby would maintain her claim on sanity until the day she died.

"Are we still friends in the future?"

Ruby's eyes widened at that. "Of course! We fought bad guys together, Penny! Of course we're still friends."

"Even after you found out that I'm … not real?"

Ruby inhaled sharply. Not real. She had used the same terminology before. "I remember you worrying about this last time, but you don't need to. You are a real girl, as real as I am. You might not have blood and guts in you, but that doesn't matter! You have a heart, that's what matters, and you don't need organs to have a heart."

"Because," Penny said, testing out the words as she said them, "the heart is not an organ?"

Ruby hesitated. "Okay, I was a lot more eloquent the first time around, but you get the point, right?"

"The point being … that we're still friends?"

Close enough. "Yes."

Penny smiled. "Sensational! So what do you need my help with, Ruby my friend?"

Ruby grinned. Finally. She just might pull this off. "First of all, we'll need to sneak out of here without being noticed." She looked around for an exit. "Follow me."

WWW

Red remained guarding an objective that had already left, and he was starting to feel redundant. Well, more redundant. He had a standard military assault rifle, while the P.E.N.N.Y. had enough firepower to wipe out a full legion of Atlesian Knights without breaking a sweat. If she could sweat. The P.E.N.N.Y. could hiccup, so perspiration wouldn't surprise him.

"Hey, Blue," Red said. Before the War of Color, soldiers traded their names for numbers upon enlisting. These days, they traded them for colors. Things got confusing when they were in groups of ten or more, but everyone knew each other's names on sight, so, progress.

"Yeah?" Blue said.

"How come she can hiccup?" Red had known other soldiers who insisted on assigning gender to machines like ships and guns. Red had insisted on calling them idiots, but it was hard to look at the P.E.N.N.Y. and call her an it. What could he say? Doctor Asimov had designed an incredibly convincing piece of hardware.

"P.E.N.N.Y.?"

"Yeah. I mean, she doesn't have any of the things that make you do that. Epiglottis?" That sounded right, but he hadn't cracked open an anatomy textbook in years. "Does she?"

Blue shrugged. "It makes her seem more human. You don't see someone hiccup and think, 'I bet she's secretly a robot.'"

Well, he had a point. "So I guess that's why she went into the bathroom too, right?"

Blue shrugged. "As far as I can guess."

"Because someone who never goes to the bathroom would look suspicious."

"Exactly."

"And girls always go in groups, right?"

"Usually."

"Because … timed bladders?"

"It's best not to think too much about it."

Red nodded. "Still, she's been in there for a while now."

Another shrug. "Girls are like that."

"Because … not thinking about it."

"Smart."

"Still, we're suppose to be keeping an eye on her, aren't we?"

Blue inhaled sharply. "You know, my last assignment was being a bodyguard for Winter Schnee."

Red's eyes widened. "Should I be impressed or sympathetic?"

"It was like being a lifeguard for a fish. Only the fish was a shark, and I was nursing a papercut."

"Sympathy it is."

"While I was working there, we had a rule. Well, closer to five hundred rules, but one of them was this: Winter Schnee gets bathroom breaks."

"Fair enough." Red looked at the clock on the wall. "But if she's not out by six forty, I'm going to knock on the door."

WWW

Ruby dialed her scroll and called down her locker.

"What happened in the future that you have to prevent?" Penny asked. She didn't call down her locker, but it crashed down anyway and she pulled on her backpack.

"Beacon falls," Ruby said. "Grimm attacked, the White Fang attacked, even the robot armies that Atlas brought turned on us." She kicked off her heels—finally—and changed into the boots she had stored in her locker just for this moment.

"Was I also hacked?" she asked.

"Oh no, you were, um, oh shoot." What could she say? There had been plenty of chances to tell her friends comforting lies about the future, and she had told the truth each time. "Okay, I don't know how to tell you this, Penny, but, um, you died."

Her eyes widened. "I died?" Then her face split into a wide grin. "Sensational! I never thought I'd get to die! I assumed I'd end up being destroyed, broken, or deconstructed." She looked up into the night sky, her eyes shimmering, and turned to her. "I know it's selfish of me to hope for this, but when it … happened, were people, you know, sad?"

Ruby pulled out Crescent Rose and strapped it to her back. "Of course! We were devastated!"

Penny breathed in deeply, as though tasting her glorious future. "Amazing."

Ruby stared at her, trying to comprehend what it would be like to have her greatest hopes be to end as a person instead of as a thing. To be mourned. Remembered.

Thus kindly I scatter.

"Penny?" she said. "The future was pretty unbelievable, but let me tell you something. I've been wanting to save the future long before I did the time traveling thing; I've wanted to make the future a better place since I decided to become a Huntress. So no matter how amazing the other future was, the new one's going to be even better. You're not going to die in the future this time, Penny. You're going to live, and keep on living, and you'll have more friends than you can count."

"That number would exceed the human population."

"I don't care." She pulled the last item out of her locker, more important than boots she could fight in or even her scythe. It was a simple red hooded cloak. Weiss had told her that it didn't match her prom dress, but style was about not matching right. She checked the time. Eleven thirty-one.

She wouldn't have another chance to catch Cinder red-handed until the Vytal Tournament. She prayed she wasn't too late already.

The night was too silent to hold the battle for the future within the next half hour, but it always was calm before a storm. Ruby wrapped her cloak around her shoulders with the flourish that storm deserved.

"Let's dance."

WWW

A/n And that, my friends, is chapter four. Thank you reviewers for reviewing, thank you Magery for Magerying—or, um, editing, that's what I meant, and hopefully the next chapter won't take so long!

On a side note, my original idea was for Cinder to talk to Ruby at the dance instead of Emerald. It was really funny in my head, with Ruby struggling to not blurt out anything incriminating or suspicious.

Ruby: "So, what's it like being a supervillain?" Dang it!

Cinder: "Is that what they say about us? We're a bit stiff at Haven, but we're not that bad."

Ruby: "Ha ha, yeah, that's … that's what I meant." Smooth.

But it didn't fit. That's the sort of thing Cinder would delegate, and Emerald's good at that sort of thing.

Now, I have one final announcement to make. I have plotted out the end of the story! Before I had a jumbled mess of disjointed ideas that would go on forever, but now, I have a conclusion.