Chapter 9: Ruby vs Ruby
The night seemed to stagnate as the darkened skies were clouded over even more now. The fog had retreated to the deep recesses of the maze giving Ruby a clear line of sight to escape.
Dark thoughts spiralling out of control, her head was a mess of whys and hows, questions she already knew the answer to perpetuating her thoughts like an itch she just couldn't scratch. Digging into her mind and making its way through whatever little she had left.
As she broke through the maze, twisting and winding through the endless maze, not caring where she went. She just needed to leave.
How could she say those things? How could she just... blow up on her friends like that?
Seeing Penny's fake ghost die wasn't the kicker, it was the fact that she fell for it and proved once and for all that she just wasn't good enough. She could never be good enough.
But more than that... more than anything she was filled with rage. Anger against her friends who failed to see what was wrong, anger at the other team that seemed to treat them like children, and anger at the world for making her life a living hell.
She was halfway through her thoughts when she heard a fluttering behind her, spinning around she saw the red burst of petals quickly following in her wake.
Of all the people... it had to be her. Of course, it would be her... no one knew her better than herself, right?
She couldn't deal with this shit, not now. Enabling her own Petal Burst she flew faster and harder than ever, running as hard as she could, occasionally glancing back to see if she was still being followed, and sure enough, Ruby-13 was directly on her heels.
"GO AWAY!" she yelled, pushing faster as she zipped through the maze until she broke into a large clearing where the walls formed a giant square with two entrances. Realizing her Aura would run out if she pushed any further she skated to a halt, her boots dragging across the damp grass of the maze floor.
Ruby-13 appeared in front of her in a dispersion of rose petals, her red cloak gliding behind her gracefully.
The two stood about ten feet apart, staring down at each other as Ruby-13 pulled off her hood and gazed at her counterpart with a grave expression.
"WHY ARE YOU FOLLOWING ME?!" Ruby Prime screamed as she swung her arms in a wide arc, slicing the space between them as if to cut the invisible thread linking them.
Ruby-13 glared at her, "You need help."
"Help?" Ruby felt her blood boiling, "HELP?! IT'S TOO LATE FOR THAT! Save your breath and walk away. Just leave me alone."
Ruby-13 saw her state, thoroughly taking it in. There was only one way to handle this.
Taking a deep breath the older Ruby spoke, "I would... honestly it doesn't matter to me what happens to you...but you said some pretty nasty things back there and I have to make a point."
Ruby Prime felt her brow twitch, "So what? You want me to apologize for being right?!" she threw her hands up exasperatedly, "What more do you want from me?! What more does this world want from me?!"
"I want you to open your fucking eyes," Ruby-13 glowered.
Dragging her palms across her face, the other Ruby let out a strangled noise, "My eyes are open! You know what they see?!" she gestured to herself, "They see that Remnant is doomed because its fate is in my hands. All this weight is on my shoulders! I AM NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO DO THIS! I NEVER WAS! Just a stupid kid who thought she could be a huntress like her mom!"
Ruby began pacing back and forth, "I never asked to save the world. I wanted to be a hero but I didn't want this!" she gestured to the air as if it symbolized everything. "I just wanted to be the best Huntress I could be, but this whole thing with Salem and Cinder is just... I WAS NEVER READY FOR IT!"
The counterpart's expression darkened, "Not good enough? Prove it."
"What...?"
Ruby-13 glared daggers at her other self, "Prove. It."
As she spoke the system seemed to read the situation, as if reacting to the brimming animosity the sky above their heads cleared creating an eye within the darkened storm clouds. Bright moonlight shone down, illuminating the clearing and the stars were out in full display. A myriad of constellations none had ever seen before but the two were far too focused on themselves to notice the faint flicker of a silhouette standing high above the clouds, made entirely of stardust.
A flash of lightning arced across the sky as two Crescent Roses spun down from the heavens, their blades slamming into the ground next to their respective owners, facing opposite directions.
Ruby-13 smirked and let out a dry laugh, "Seems the system agrees." She then tapped the handle of her Crescent Rose, "Pick it up. We're going to settle this."
"I don't want to fight you..." Ruby Prime cautiously eyed the scythe.
"Hmph, you really are a coward... at least now I know..." she trailed off and let her fingers dance on the handle, choosing her words carefully she looked Ruby directly in the eye, "At least one version of us was just like our mother, running away when things got tough..."
That was it. The nail in the coffin, the words like vile poison flowed into Ruby Prime's ears and her anger had reached the boiling point. Like a bomb going off in her head Ruby grabbed hold of Crescent Rose and charged her counterpart with murder in her eyes.
Smiling darkly, Ruby-13 let go of her weapon, "Finally doing something right..." her Aura flashed red and expanded like an invisible wave, forming a small dome around her that Ruby Prime couldn't see.
As the Prime flew across the field, her scythe aimed at Ruby-13's head, the other simply stood there, folding her arms expectantly. The moment Ruby Prime entered her zone Ruby-13 was able to see every movement in slow motion, every muscle movement, every breath. She grabbed hold of Ruby's dominant hand mid-flight and spun her around using her own momentum against her and sending her crashing into the ground behind her.
"You know, ever since we got here you've been jealous of me," Ruby-13 said once again leaning on her Crescent Rose, "I mean, its understandable now that I see it. I have it all while you have nothing."
Inwardly Ruby-13 cringed at her own lines, but she had to play the villain to get through to her. Ruby needed something to vent her frustrations on before she took it out on herself.
"What the hell do you know?!" Ruby Prime got up and once again charged at Ruby-13, spinning her scythe violently like a disc.
As the whirling death came toward her, Ruby-13 kicked the ground hard and caused her Crescent Rose to spring into the air, interrupting the strike as the blades clashed and Ruby Prime was momentarily confused, Ruby-13 infused all of her Aura into her fist. It became clad in red aura that burst forward like a bullet made of rose petals that slammed into the younger Ruby, sending her flying back and crashing into the maze wall.
"I know far more than you, clearly." she said in a condescending tone, "Oh look at me, poor little red," she began to fake weep, "Caught up in a crisis when all she wanted to do was be like mommy. Little did she know dear old mom was weak and couldn't hack it, just like her!"
This time Ruby-13 didn't wait for Ruby Prime to get up, sprinting forward like a red blur, not even using her semblance and grabbed Ruby Prime by the throat, wrenched her out of the wall and tossed her to the floor.
"You thought the world would be sunshine and rainbows! You'd grow up to be a real Huntress and protect people just like mom, just like the heroes in the books you read as a kid, right?!" Ruby-13 walked up and rolled her over with her foot.
All she got as a response was a rage-filled Ruby staring back at her, "STOP ACTING LIKE YOU KNOW ME! I'M NOT YOU!" she swept Ruby-13's leg only for the latter to release her foothold and jumped into the air. The younger reaper grabbed her weapon and began firing shots at her counterpart.
Surprised at her tactic, Ruby-13 quickly expanded her Aura sensory field and dodged the bullets narrowly before landing on the floor.
"But the thing is, you and I are the same person at the core. There are a few minor differences but face it, I do know you, and you know I'm right." Ruby-13 picked up her Crescent Rose, "The world isn't a nice place. It's cold, cruel, and filled with danger. It will take every ounce of hope you have and crush it like glass. It will kick you into the dirt and keep you there if you let it... but you already know that."
"JUST SHUT UP AND LEAVE ME ALONE!" Ruby Prime petal burst forward, using her sniper to propel herself even faster.
Smirking, Ruby-13 did the same, spiralling in a deadly spin, the two blades met in the middle, steel against Incindium metal as sparks flew, the tension between both blades was palpable.
"I've lost EVERYTHING!" the Prime screamed, "I started off wanting to be a Huntress, then got thrown into this craziness. I lost Pyrrha at the Fall of Beacon, I lost my school, and a lot of the people I know! Then my friends left me! My teacher turned out to be an immortal liar! I knew we were biting off more than we could chew but I kept trying because it was the right thing!"
The two split apart, "Then when that stuff in Atlas happened, my own sister betrayed me! THEN SHE QUESTIONED MY LEADERSHIP! AS IF WE WEREN'T DIVIDED AS IS!" Ruby Prime tried an aerial attack but Ruby-13 blocked it easily. "Ironwood went crazy! Everything fell on MY SHOULDERS AND I FAILED! NOW PENNY IS DEAD AND IT'S ALL MY FAULT! I FAILED ENOUGH SO JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!"
"Not until you apologize and come to your senses!" Ruby-13 snarled.
"NO! I WON'T APOLOGIZE FOR BEING RIGHT!"
"Maybe what you said about your friends was right, but you have to take back what you said about Nova. I don't care about what you said to me, what you said to him was unforgivable..." Her teeth began to bare and Ruby Prime was struck for a brief moment when she noticed Ruby-13's teeth... were fangs... like those of a predator...
"W-What...?"
Ruby-13's Aura flared wildly as her cloak turned bright silver, her eyes glowing with the ever-familiar light but unlike Ruby Prime's it wasn't radiating. Faster than Ruby could ever react, her counterpart pushed her blade upward with enormous strength that disarmed her.
Crescent Rose flew into the air and the disarmed Ruby Prime didn't even see when Ruby-13 sliced widely at her torso, silver light like flames shot out in a brilliant explosion that sent her flying back.
"YOU IMMATURE, NAIVE CHILD!"
As Ruby Prime struggled to her feet she saw Ruby-13's tattoo glow bright red, her teeth were like that of a beast, eyes glowing amidst the darkness and just like her teeth they were beastly, like those of... a dragon. On her head, a pair of translucent horns made of silver light appeared.
It was a complete transformation, like... she'd become something entirely different.
"You don't get to just quit!" with that she dashed in and grabbed Ruby Prime by the throat and threw her into the air, Petal Bursting above her head she arced her scythe and slammed it into her torso so hard it sent the Prime crashing into the ground, shattering the earth and forming a crater that shot first and grass everywhere.
Ruby-13 landed slowly on the edge of the fallen Ruby Prime, the latter's Aura fizzling out.
Ruby Prime still had fight left in her as she struggled to her feet. She couldn't let her win, she might have given up on everything else but she couldn't let this one go... her pride wouldn't let her.
"Don't bother. Any more and I really would kill you..." Ruby-13 said darkly as her tattoo stopped glowing and her dragon-like features receded. "You think you're the only one capable of loss? Don't you think that I've seen it just as you have?!"
"I..." Ruby Prime faltered. She'd been accusing her other self this entire time... but... why? Why was she directing her anger at her?
The system suddenly flashed in front of Ruby Prime's face, "DISPLAYING RECORD OF PAST EVENTS: SUBJECT- RUBY ROSE OF UNIVERSE 13"
Ruby-13 didn't seem to notice anything as she continued, "On my first mission at Beacon, one of my closest friends, Nova, came back on the brink of death, bleeding from cuts that wouldn't heal. He was in a coma for a week!"
Ruby Prime then saw images appear in front of her like a movie, of Ruby-13 and the others fighting amidst a frozen landscape against Adam and a team of people she didn't know. She saw Nova coming out of the fight covered in blood and barely breathing. Then she saw Ruby-13 crying at his bedside in the hospital, barely sleeping, unable to eat as she sat there for an entire week waiting for him to wake up.
"His little sister Luna? She's like my little sister too! Imagine how I felt when we raided Mount Glenn and she came back with a broken body! She saved us all from dying!"
The video began to play of Ruby-13's team fighting on the train, Luna looking already broken after a fight using some strange power to slow down the train before collapsing.
"The Fall of Beacon? Oh... that was even worse! I watched the entire world crumble at that time!"
Now it was showing Ruby-13 rushing toward the arena, desperately trying to get to Penny in time but was just a second too late to stop it from happening. The scenes sped up as she saw Ruby-13 and Weiss-13 fighting Roman and the same team from before atop the Atlas flagship, when an eight foot tall bear-Faunus showed up with an army of heavily armed warships that decimated the skies. She watched Ruby try to save Roman Torchwick, her enemy, only to be forced back as the ship came crashing out of the sky.
Then it sped up again and Ruby-13 was at the top of Beacon tower, watching Nova with a shattered weapon and Pyrrha on her knees, Cinder Fall taking aim while the same grizzly man wielding a massive buster sword against Nova. Then the silver-haired boy, with fear in his eyes made a mad dash to Pyrrha, taking the arrow as it pierced through his chest and stabbed Pyrrha behind. Then with blood coming out of his mouth and his skin pale as a sheet, he saw Ruby-13 and their eyes connected.
At that moment, he uttered some words that Ruby Prime couldn't hear when the large man grabbed him by the neck, slashed Nova through the chest and threw his body off the top of Beacon Tower.
"T-This is... oh god..." Ruby Prime stuttered as she watched the images play while Ruby-13 was describing it.
"I felt like I had truly lost it all at that time... then I woke up and everyone's gone..."
Ruby Prime saw her counterpart kneeling at Nova's grave and crying her eyes out, swearing words she couldn't hear, but there was a deep rage in her eyes and determination to push forward. Maybe... that level of determination was in her as well...?
"And it just got worse from there..." Ruby-13 continued, "Atlas and Mantle... that was where my mental fortitude was tested to its limits. Do you know what kind of choices I had to make?!"
"I..."
"I had to choose between my friends and the greater good..."
The scenes now showed the moment the war started in Solitas. The first wave of Grimm was attacking the city and their team was in Weiss's dining room, with Nova staring at the window with a scroll to his ear and a dark expression on his face.
"We had to stop the Grimm, evacuate Mantle and as if things weren't bad enough we were being attacked by another army in the tundra. A village of Faunus that lived isolated, and Nova's mother's family were in danger from Onyx. Nova went off to help them, trusting me to ensure things went smoothly here... except... he never came back."
Now the system was showing Ruby scenes of her counterpart evacuating Mantle, fighting off types of Grimm she hadn't seen before and when the first wave died down and they had a moment, Nova didn't come back. The scenes sped up to just after Ironwood's fall, with their team planning to move forward.
Ruby-13 looked like she hadn't slept in days in the video, her expression was dark, and her movements were sluggish but she kept pushing herself.
"I fucked up... so badly there. I was consumed by everything crashing down on me at once, with Ironwood planning to send Atlas into the sky, abandoning Mantle, getting Amity back up and running, evacuating the people and to top it off Nova was missing."
The scenes changed and now Ruby-13 and the others, and some girl she didn't know were fighting the Ace Ops in the Atlas server room. The girl then turned out to be Neopolitan and with her help, they barely escaped, with Nora hurt by absorbing the electricity. It seemed things were so similar to her experiences... yet so different.
She then saw Ruby-13 getting yelled at by Weiss-13, the two arguing back and forth until Ruby-13 lost the argument and began crying.
"W-What happened...? To Nova...? How could he just leave you to suffer like this?!" Ruby Prime found her voice and asked her other self.
Ruby-13 chuckled darkly, "Oh that's the best part... the whole time I knew he was in danger... I just didn't know how bad it was..."
"What do you mean...?"
"He was beaten and captured, tossed into a jail cell more than a mile under the ice, strung up from the ceiling and starved of food and water while his father tortured him. This... went on for days..."
The scene then shifted to Nova hanging from the ceiling by chains, he looked covered in bruises and cuts, his eyes were blue-black and his body was malnourished beyond belief. Then it showed a humanoid-looking robot clad in black carbon fibre armour walking into the cage and beating Nova, breaking all of his bones and carving his body in the most painful way. Ruby Prime had to look away from the gruesome scene. Just as Nova would collapse from the pain, the robot would inject some strange liquid into Nova's body and forced him awake, healing his body in the most painful way possible before restarting the process. Then... she saw Oscar being dragged into the cell as well...
Ruby-13 began to chuckle darkly, "And while he was being tortured to death I had no idea. Then Salem shows up and offers us a choice. To save Nova and Oscar I had to bring the Winter Maiden and the relic to her! BUT IRONWOOD WAS THREATENING US TOO!"
The scene showed the giant image of Salem looming over the city and the ASHNRWBY Team looking up in horror. Then Ironwood issued his threat, breaking into the Schnee Manor and holding Weiss's family hostage forcing them to give up Neopolitan.
"Now here's the best part... we had a team at Amity trying to launch it and they were also being attacked. I had to choose between helping the team at Amity, saving Neo, saving Nova or saving the people of Mantle, or stopping Ironwood. WHAT KIND OF CHOICE WAS THAT?!"
Ruby Prime felt visibly sick after seeing and hearing that. It was a decision she couldn't make, or rather she didn't know if she had the strength to make that call. All equally important objectives and she couldn't see a way to fix all.
"What... what did you do?" she asked hesitantly.
Ruby-13 smirked, "I realized something very important," she knelt down to Ruby Prime's eye level and sat with her on the grass, taking her hands in hers she stared her in the eye, "I realized that I didn't need to do it all alone. I don't have to be the one to take the world on alone because there were other people with me to help. This burden isn't yours alone to deal with."
Ruby Prime stared at her wide-eyed. It was a simple answer, an answer she knew, a reality she knew... but she couldn't see it clearly.
Ruby-13's expression softened, "I might be stronger than you, I might have done more and seen more, but that doesn't make me god. At the end of the day, I'm just like you, a scared girl in way over her head trying her best with the little she has... but that's the beauty of it. You have others to help you. Weiss, Yang, Blake, Oscar and whoever else is out there. You're not fighting alone so you don't need to be good enough..."
Ruby Prime felt the tears well up in her eyes as everything crashed down all at once. She'd been trying so hard to be the perfect leader the world needed, the perfect leader her team needed.
"Then... what do I do...?" she asked with a shaky voice.
Ruby-13 smiled and clasped her hands in hers, "You just need to be the best you, that you can be, so that your friends can make up for what you can't."
"But... what if they rely on me too much? What if I am my best and they can't pick up for that?"
"Then that just means you need to let them know how you feel. Stop trying to be the only pillar of strength and tell them what they need to do to be better, but I'm sure that's not necessary. Your team is just like mine, they know what they need to do, you just need to trust them."
Ruby Prime sniffled and buried her head in her counterpart's arms, "I messed up..."
Ruby-13 smirked, "Nah, you were right about a lot of things, you didn't mess up. You didn't fail. You did your best, it's not your fault for what happened. If anything it really is theirs if things are as you say. But... like I said before, people like us don't just get to quit. We have to keep moving forward because if we don't no one else will. You and I both know that we're not the type of girls to do nothing when we can do something. Right?"
The younger Rose chuckled, "Yeah... you're right..."
The system peeked out over Ruby-13's shoulder and Ruby Prime saw the system now displaying some new scenes. "VIEWING CURRENT EVENTS: UNIVERSE PRIME"
It then showed Ruby Prime a brief fleeting series of scenes of Shade Academy, like a rising monument amidst the desert sands, the refugees of Atlas and Mantle entering the city, Oscar, Winter, Nora, and Ren were all there. She didn't see Jaune but, never the less, it was still reassurance that she had done something right. They had done something right.