Blaze1992: I thought Yang was a punner not a troller.
NeoNazo356: Maybe, but when I thought about the kind of friendship she'd have with Nodoka, and her own (borderline) Androphobia, this seemed like the most-natural response for her to take.
Oblivious IJ: Aww come on where's the badger?! Damnit now im quoting Nora! Seriously though kinda bummed that he aint here, Vincent kinda feels like an OC from DxD right now *cough* The power of the harem compels you! * cough* ... what an odd cough.I don't have much else to say tho.
IJ the oblivious one
NeoNazo356: The thing is, I don't want the world to "revolve" around Jack like it had in Volume 1 of Giant-Slayer. Sure, there were a few deviating chapters, but Jack was still heavily-present in the plot and its progression. Now that Volume 1, Giant-Slayer's "foundation" is set, I can build upon it and have other characters move the plot along, because one person going on all the adventures would create a lack of diversity if you all know what Jack is capable of.
As for Vincent, his presence will poke at the Harem Protagonist troupe, but he won't be purely a Gag Character, there will be more depth to him and how he influences the surrounding cast through his interactions with him. He's also going to be the Segue for some really fun story arcs that I don't see much in RWBY FanFics since people become dedicated to "rails" in this niche.
KitsuneDragon: Very fillery, but it's fine. Though I really don't understand your use of interspersed Japanese suffixes when you never did it, or at least not as often, in Volume 1.
NeoNazo356: The honorifics were a "cutesy" way of saying Nodoka's name. Or more-specifically, a cutesy way of Yang saying Nodoka's name.
"Harem-kun" is also a similar poke at the fiction-within-the-fiction troupe of the Harem Protagonist, similar to how the truck that sends people to another world has lovingly become called "Truck-kun".
*NEW WORLD*
Cue – Utawarerumono OST – Kimi ga Tame (For You) by Suara
"I… I don't know if you can hear me, but…" the bookish girl began nervously as she twit her thumbs, looking down at her slumbering face. "You… You looked really cool back then. When you saved me, I mean," she clarified.
Of course, the girl received no reply, instead greeted by the sound of hospital equipment in the background, the silver-haired teen's quieted breathing, and people passing by the room in the hallway.
"I'm… not really good with talking to boys… Not like Haruna and Yang are…" she said idly brushing her hair behind her ear. "So… I guess I'll just come out and say it while you're still sleeping," she muttered, her face heating up as she slowly leaned toward his sleeping visage. "Thank you… for saving me," she said in gratitude as she planted a chaste kiss upon his lips, sparks of electricity and warmth rushing up her spine. After a few seconds the bookish girl pulled back. "I'll… be sure to visit soon," she said headily, short, hot breaths passing her lips as they tugged into a beautific smile, eyes closed gleefully.
"Hey. Nice kiss."
Nodoka's eyes snapping open, orbs of blue went wide behind a curtain of hair as the silver-haired teen sat up, idly scratching his cheek.
"Y-You're awake!" the mousy girl yelped.
"Yup," the silver-haired teen replied. "Still though, that was my first kiss, you know," he hummed almost chidingly, his hands going to her hips and lifting her into his lap as though she were light as a feather. "I hope you plan on taking responsibility~" he purred, brushing some of her hair from her face before he leaned in and captured her lips, sparks of electricity rushing up the girl's spine anew as she melted into the embrace, hands fisting his medical gown.
*NEW WORLD*
"Hehehehe… Hehehehe!" a mirthful voice chuckled.
"I can't believe you're getting off on this," a second voice said flatly.
"Not as much as she is~" the first voice cooed.
"If you take pictures of this, I will hurt you," the second voice asserted.
At the moment, the two of them were standing over the bed of Nodoka Miazak in the dorm room they shared between the three of them, one girl turned away while the other heatedly watched as the slumbering girl moaned headily in her sleep, one hand roaming her body beneath the covers while the other drilled for "sacred water".
The girl watching rather enthusiastically was Haruna Saotome, a seventeen-year-old Japanese girl with a fall, busty frame, dark-green hair going down her waist with two "antennae" sticking up, red eyes, and red rectangular half-frame glasses. Since it was early morning she was clad in her pajamas.
"Can I sketch it? For research?" Haruna asked excitedly.
"No," Yue said flatly, slapping the sketchbook from the girl's hands. " . . . If she stays out-of-it like this, we're going to be late for school," she said casting a half-second glance Nodoka's way before turning her attention elsewhere.
"Don't worry, I know how to fix it," Haruna giggled, drawing a shiny coach's whistle from her desk she'd gotten after the funny story she'd heard from Yang.
"Well…? What're you waiting for?" Yue asked tersely.
"Wait for it…" Haruna muttered as the sleeping girl writhed beneath the sheets, her face flushing red as she slept.
"Ahnn~ Please~ Be gentle~" the bookish girl cooed quietly, the redness of her face visible even behind the curtain of hair concealing her face.
"Wait for iiiiiit!" Haruna said excitedly, eyeing Nodoka's every facial twitch before raising the whistle to her lips right at the climax. *FWEEEEEEET!*
"Eyaaaaagh!" Nodoka cried, eyes snapping open as she was violently roused from her slumber, the girl rolling over the side of the bed in a tangle of bedsheets and askew pajamas. "Whuh…? Wha…? What happened?" the bookish girl asked sleepily, her hair flaring out in every direction. Looking up to see the fox-like look of her friend, and realizing just where her right hand had drifted, the girl's face exploded into a bright crimson blush before she grabbed the nearest object and hit her bust friend in the face with it.
Said object was only a pillow, but it was the thought that counts.
*NEW WORLD*
"I still can't believe you watched me in my sleep," Nodoka moaned, having a snack at the dining hall after classes had ended.
Because she, Yue, and Haruna were going to Beacon for different courses, other than meal times they didn't really meet up in any classes. However, it was when they met up that she was subject to the most ribbing.
It had taken the girl all she had to convince them not to bring Yang into the conversation. She knew that Yang would find out about this eventually, but for the time being she could only weather two people knowing about something so… embarrassing.
"And what a sleep it waaas~" Haruna cooed, a 6-Hour Energy hanging off her lip as she worked on a manuscript for a school project.
"Nodoka, there's nothing wrong with having… that kind of dream," Yue said as-reassuringly as she could, the recipient of similar wet dreams as well.
She may not've watched Nodoka writhing under the bed sheets, but the rustling of the cloth and her moaning was enough to fill in some of the blanks.
"Please don't tell Yang about this," the girl pleaded.
"You know she'll find out eventually," Yue hummed.
"Yes, but I don't want her to find out now," Nodoka asserted. Or at least as-much as she was able.
"Don't worry," Yue said holding up a thick hard-back book. "I'll keep Haruna in line."
"So meeeeean…" Haruna whined pitiably. "Still though, you usually don't like boys, yet after only a day you're all hot-and-bothered by him. Why the sudden change?" the mangaka asked, genuinely curious.
Among their circle of friends, Nodoka's borderline Androphobia was a well-known topic not-mentioned in mixed company.
It wasn't that she was legitimately afraid of the opposite gender. It was more like because of her super-shy nature, she never developed the confidence to converse with them in a casual way without clamming up, hence why she grew out her bangs to cover her face; guys were less likely to hit on her if they though that she thought she was unattractive.
"Well… back when he saved me," she began, a fond smile tugging at her lips as the cherished memory came to mind. "He seemed like a real-life Isekai Yuusha, the way he swooped in when he did," she admitted wistfully, slipping back into her native Japanese for a moment.
"Isekai Yuusha… Hero from Another World?" Yue asked with a raised brow.
"Yes! Just like that!" Nodoka replied brightly before flushing in embarrassment.
"Well… that seems a little niche," Yue hummed thoughtfully.
Haruna's preferred literature consisted, unashamedly, of yaoi, yuri, and H Manga. For Nodoka, it was more fantasy and adventure-based with a splash of science mixed in; the more escapist, the better. In contrast, her own favored literature was history and/or philosophy, hence there wasn't much overlap in their interests beyond that invisible, magical glue that held their friendship together.
A love of books.
And Yang, but mostly books.
"Makes sense though, he has plenty of benchmarks associated with the genre," Haruna hummed as she worked. "Exotic hair, exotic eyes, elemental powers, artificial limb as-applicable, a hero complex, but most-important of all, an altruistic care toward those that'd be considered 'demi-humans' in fictional settings," she noted off-handedly, having heard how he'd throwing himself out a literal window to save a second-year Faunus girl from the fall after an altercation with some infamous first-year racists.
It wasn't any big secret that the treatment of "demi-humans" in fictional media was an allegory for Faunus discrimination IRL.
It was also why in Atlas, most Isekai-genre novels were considered "subversive"; because "demi-humans" actively rebelled against the Human social strata, sought to overthrow the Human-dominated regime, and because Humans were quote/unquote "framed" as the bad guys.
'There's also his magnetism with the opposite sex, but you know about that one first-hand, don't you, Nodo-chan?' Haruna asked to herself.
"Yes, that's exactly what I thought," Nodoka said excitedly. "In fact… I think he might be a real Yuusha," she said excitedly, a naive giddiness creeping into her voice.
"A real Hero? From Another World?" Yue asked, the shy bookish girl nodding enthusiastically. "Nodoka, I know there's a lot of 'magical' stuff in the world around us we can't really explain…" she said largely in reference to Nodoka, Haruna, and Yang's Semblance, as well as other recorded Semblance that completely defied or outright spat in the face of the laws of physics, "but this is real life. Magical portals to other worlds don't just open up and-"
The next moment a swirling green iridescent puddle with the consistency of radioactive sludge appeared above the table in front of them with a loud *VWOOP*, whirling limply with the slightest hum. Before anyone could ask just what it was, a pair of figures suddenly burst out of it like breaking water, the two frantically running across the long tables.
"RUN RUBYYY!" a tall, lanky, elderly Faunus cried as he ran. His complexion was dark with bags under his eyelids, a pressure fold above white-colored eyebrows, and laugh lines on both sides of his mouth. His messy bangs were colored the same shock white, the rest of his shoulder-length hair dark-gray with black tips that spiked out in all directions. His attire consisted of a white lab coat with a brown shirt underneath, green cargo pants, a black belt with a silver buckle, and black open-toed sandals that wrapped around his ankles. The trait that identified him as a Faunus were the small black weasel-like ears sitting atop his head, largely concealed by his messy mane of monochromatic hair.
In a weird sorta way he looked like a seventy year-old version of Jack Braxton of Team RWBBY.
"WHAT DO YOU THINK I'M DOING?!" a teenaged girl cried as she ran alongside him. She was fair-skinned with silver eyes and black, neck-length choppy hair that gradated to dark red at the tips. Her attire consisted of a red sleeveless hoodie, jean shorts, and matching red sneakers.
In a similarly weird sorta way, she looked almost exactly like Ruby Rose from Team RWBBY, only she looked a bit younger than the genuine article. Or rather, less-toned like she were "Ruby Lite".
A moment later a third party burst through said portal, so large it had to squeeze its way out, the table buckling under its weight as it slithered after the two runners.
Said third party had an enormous, round, slug-like body with a hard, rubbery exterior colored a deep bloody shade of red with a lighter underbelly, its body covered in orange light-reactive sensing orbs in addition to multiple long tentacle-like appendages, the principle pair whipping out in front of it whipping out not unlike those of the larger tentacles on a squid. Its gaping maw was radial and funnel-shaped lined with rows of razor sharp teeth, its throat distended outward into a hollow tongue. Despite its bulk and the whirl of whipping tentacles, the creature was deceptively fast for its size, the adhesive pads on their pointed tentacle tips allowing it to pull itself along faster than any tentacles monster had the right to on dry land.
"AAAAUGH! THE NIGHTMARE TENTACLE EAT-MONSTER'S STILL CHASING US!" the Ruby look-alike cried as she hazarded a glance over her shoulder.
"NO SHIT! I NOTICED!" the Jack look-alike bit back, drawing what looked like a grocery store barcode scanner from his coat pocket. Made of a polished white plastic, it was largely unremarkable apart from the transparent glass dome situated atop it, contained within a glowing green globule of energy with arcs of electricity randomly dancing against the walls of the dome not unlike those plasma balls that made your hair stand on end.
The Jack look-alike pulling the trigger repeatedly as they ran, similar green portals were suddenly spawned in the air in front of the shocked-and-quickly-growing-terrified lunch-goers. As the massive tentacle monster barreled after them, the glowing green portals began belching out a series of obstacles.
From one portal a huge plume of flame was belched out, filling the room with the rancid smell of cooking meat as flesh burned and light-sensitive orbs bubbled. From another, a swarm of hungry insects flew out, biting and stinging the "nightmare tentacle eat-monster" causing purple blood to spatter in all directions. The one after that summoned forth flailing tentacles that only managed to tear a few of the "nightmare tentacle eat-monster"s appendages, and another belted out a deluge of icy zastruga shards that sliced into it.
However, through this and countless other obstacles, the "nightmare tentacle eat-monster" continued the chase, the glowing green portals swiftly winking shut behind it like some kind of safety measure.
And a good thing too, because a massive flood of saltwater that never closed would've destroyed Beacon.
Eventually.
"WHY WON'T THAT THING DIE?!" the Ruby look-alike wailed as the wounded nightmare tentacle eat-monster spattered blood in all directions, angry roars causing the once shell-shocked students to scatter in all directions.
"BECAUSE IT'S HUNGRY! WHY ELSE!?"
"I KNEW I SHOULDN'T HAVE GONE INTO THAT CAVE!"
"NO! I KNEW THAT! YOU COULDN'T HELP YOURSELF TO THAT SHINY BLASTER THAT CAUGHT YOUR EYE!"
"THAT'S RIGHT! THE BLASTER!" the Ruby look-alike cried as she pulled out a black futuristic-looking blaster with an analogue scope mounted atop it. Even an amateur could tell it was heavily modified; maybe illegally-so. "WHAT DO I DO WITH IT!?"
"SHOOT THAT THING!"
"I CAN'T! I MIGHT HIT SOMEONE BY MISTAKE! ALSO, THAT THING'S RUBBERY SKIN IS RESISTANT TO BLASTER BOLTS!" she cried thinking back to her knee-jerk reaction upon first seeing that thing.
"UGH! AMATEUR!" the Jack look-alike said snatching the blaster from the girl's hand and firing upward at the ceiling. A moment later and a large chandelier suddenly came down right atop the nightmare tentacle eat-monster with a loud *CRASH*, pinning the ravenous beast beneath a wreckage of ruined metal and glass, this and its previous injuries finally stopping the creature in its tracks, allowing the two runners to escape into Beacon's grounds.
As the angry tentacle monster writhed angrily under the chandelier dropped atop it, purple blood pooling underneath it, the bystanders in the mess hall could only gape helplessly, whereas a certain bookworm felt extremely vindicated by what had just happened.
"So… What was that you were saying about how portals to other worlds don't just open up and let people in from other worlds?" Nodoka asked with a rare snarky tone, feeling extremely vindicated by what she'd just witnessed.
"That doesn't prove anything… That doesn't prove anything at all," Yue asserted. "I believe in fact. Hard evidence."
" . . . Does that prove anything?" Haruna asked pointing to the "nightmare tentacle eat-monster" at the end of the room, slowly bleeding out purple blood as those with weapons poked and prodded at the strange, foreign creature to see whether it was dead or not.
A tentacle wrapping around the waist of a student as the creature in its death throes flailed them around showed that it was not in fact, dead yet.
*NEW WORLD*
"So… When do you think the others will be back with groceries?" Blake asked looking up from her book, attempting to make small talk while Jack and Ruby were away getting supplies for dinner.
It wasn't that what the mess hall made wasn't good, but sometimes a nice home-cooked meal was what the team needed after a long day of classes.
"Depends on whether they get just what's on the list, or if they go rogue on us," Yang hummed, recalling her own trips to the store with her dad when what should've been a five-minute stop on the way home turned into something significantly longer.
*Creeeeeeak*
"Oh. Speak of the devil and he… shall…" Weiss said before trailing off. " . . . Appear…?"
"Uhhh… Jack…?" Blake hummed, rubbing her eyes, squinting, rubbing her eyes, and squinting again. "How… long were the two of you gone for?" she asked seeing the age on his face.
"And when'd you have the time to change clothes?" Yang asked toward her sister.
She looked like her sister, at least.
Really looked like her.
Yet for some reason there were two parts of her saying this girl was but wasn't her sister, yet still was.
" . . . Grandpa, why are we in here?" Ruby(?) stage-whispered as she leaned over to "grandpa".
"Relax, I know a guy," Jack(?) shrugged indifferently, popping a squat on Jack's bed like he owned the place and taking a swig from a flask he drew from his coat.
"Uh… Are we on a hidden camera show?" Blake asked looking paranoidly around the room.
"Yes, seriously, why and more-importantly how do you look that old?" Weiss asked leaning into Jack's(?) face and scrutinizing it. "This is… beyond a professional-grade makeup job."
Singing on-stage as long as she had under lighting that-bright, she knew a professional makeup job when she saw one.
" . . . Do you wanna tell them or should I?" Ruby(?) asked.
"Wait for it," Jack(?) shrugged.
"Wait for what exactly?" Blake asked confusedly, still searching for a camera.
"Grandpa, I'm freaking out here," Ruby(?) said as she and Yang eyed each other.
"Wait for iiiiiit."
"Wait for what!?" Weiss asked, quickly reaching her BS limit.
"Hey, Weiss! Jack and I are back with groceries!" Ruby greeted as she walked in through the door, everyone's eyes going wide as they snapped between the two versions of Ruby, nearly giving themselves whiplash before Jack, their Jack, walked in through the door.
"Jack…" Ruby, the real Ruby, said as she warily eyed her simply-dressed counterpart. "What's going on here . . . ?"
"Sup, me?" Jack(?) asked with a wave of his flask-holding hand.
"Ugh. All kinds of bullshit," Jack groaned tiredly as he hung his head.
*NEW WORLD*
"Alright, I'm going to try explaining all of this, a-gain," Jack groaned in the communal kitchen after once-again failing to get the rest of Team Ruby (and Juniper after they stumbled upon the two duplicates) to understand the intricacies of the Many Worlds Interpretation. A tutorial he'd given multiple times to no avail, Goddess damn them.
"Can I have my fries back?" Jaune asked with a raised finger.
"Alright, this fry here? It's our universe," Jack said holding up a crispy, delicious-looking fry that for all intents and purposes was perfect, poignantly ignoring Jaune. "This fry here? It's soggy, it's weird, it's gross. This fry, is their universe," Jack said gesturing to the doppelgangers as he flicked the soggy, weird, gross fry into Jaune's face with a wet *splat*
"Hey! Why're you being so mean to me?" Jaune whined.
"Because I've spent the last half-hour trying to explain the intricacies of multiverse theory to you idiots and you still don't get it," Jack bit out angrily as he ate the stolen food, nearing the end of his patience.
"Jack, it isn't that we don't get it, it's just…" Pyrrha said glancing between Jack and his elderly doppelganger, before turning to Ruby who was actively mirroring her own doppelganger, the two making faces at one another like a mirror. "It's just really hard to believe."
"What's so hard to believe about it? The evidence is staring you in the face right there," Jack groaned as he gestured to his and Ruby's doppelgangers, the prior of which belched languidly like he didn't give a shit.
"Well, yes, but, all of this talk about the greater multiverse? All of that has been just theoretical, completely unsubstantiated by the scientific theory," Weiss interjected. "And now we're meeting… this?" she said gesturing to "Old" Jack.
"Hey, don't get bent out of shape about it," Old Jack told his counterpart. "These kids back in my universe are kinda stupid too," he shrugged as he ate, Jack and his doppelganger mirroring one another's movements precisely as they ate.
"If I read more science fiction, I'd probably have an easier time grasping all this…" Blake hummed. She was used to Jack shaking her worldview, but this…? This was leagues above the whole Circle of Man thing and the true cause of the Faunus Rights Revolution.
She was still sifting through that can of worms to no avail.
"Hey! Old Jack!" Nora spoke up excitedly.
"You get a pass."
"You travel around the multiverse, right?"
"That's what this is for," Old Jack said holding up his portal gun. "Why do you ask?"
"A while back, Nora had a cup of coffee and went on for a week about how she experienced countless alternate versions of herself," Ren explained. "Obviously I ruled it off as a caffeine rush, but seeing… this… I'm not so sure she was making it all up anymore."
"Experiencing countless alternate versions of yourself, huh?" Old Jack asked as he tented his fingers in front of his face, a serious look on his face. "Why don't you tell me more about it," he offered, a genuine intrigued look in his eye.
"Well, first it started with the coffee that Ren said I wasn't allowed to have for some reason!" Nora said excitedly and energetically.
"Uh huh…" Old Jack hummed, seeing why.
"And then I fell to the floor having seizures!"
"That… doesn't sound too healthy actually."
"And that's when the visions started!"
"Yeeeeeah…"
"First, Ruby and Ren switched places! Then, Ren and Ruby's clothes swapped! Then, Ruby swapped places with Blake and no-one's clothes were swapped! Then, Ren swapped places with Jaune! Blake and Jaune swapped places with some ice cream girl and that Torchwick guy! Then, the ice cream girl and Torchwick swapped places with some blue-haired guy and some blond surfer boy Monkey Faunus! And then, the three of us had mustaches!" Nora said stroking her upper lip. "Then the blue-haired guy turned into some old guy and the blond surfer boy Monkey Faunus swapped places with Ren! And then the old guy swapped places with Ruby and Ren swapped places with the old guy! Then there were two old guys! Then the blue-haired guy and Jaune were taking notes! And then I turned into some chick in a recording studio named Sam who had a cup of coffee with a black mug with a red rose symbol and the word RWBY on it in her hand! Then she drank the coffee and I woke up," she summarized.
"Anything else you wanna add?"
"Oh! Right! Almost forgot! When I got back, for some reason Ren sounded like Ruby, and Ruby sounded like Ren, and I think Jaune turned into a monochrome Corgi for some reason," she tacked on.
"Uh huh…" Old Jack hummed, tapping a gnarled finger on the table.
"Did you understand… any of that?" Ren asked.
"Well… Sounds like your typical exchange of sensory information between alternate versions of yourself among parallel universes," the old doppelganger answered.
"Wait, typical?"
"I'm not sure what the cause was beyond the coffee. May've been just a fluke, like a random irradiated particle in the beans causing some kind of quasi-quantum entanglement. But the fact you were able to exchange information between yourselves when normally two timelines delineate from one another in milliseconds is… interesting to say the least," Old Jack hummed.
" . . . Huh?" Nora, and everyone sans Jack asked with a confused head-tilt.
"Theoretically, or mechanically as the case may be, it's possible to send not only information, but energy between different timelines because they remain briefly coupled to one another form their originating point," he said pulling a rubber band from his pocket and drawing it taut. "As they decohere, sending and receiving information would become more and more difficult until becoming largely impossible," he said slowly pulling the ends of the rubber band apart until it snapped in two altogether.
" . . . Huh?" everyone sans Jack repeated.
The next moment Old Jack pulled a small tin from his coat pocket before opening it up. Grabbing a pinch of blue-colored dust, the older Faunus flicked it out into the girl's face, a wide, confused look dominating her features.
"That's how it works."
"That's how what works?"
"Amnesia Dust," he answered causing eyes to widen. "You throw a pinch, guy forgets everything for the last few seconds," he said before lobbing another pinch. "That's how it works."
"That's how what works?" Nora asked, with the exact same inflection.
"Amnesia Dust. You throw a pinch, guy forgets everything for the last few seconds." And on-cue, he threw another pinch at the girl's face. "That's how it works."
"That's how what works?"
"Never gets old," Old Jack chuckled as he withdrew the tin, eyes going wide at what they'd just witnessed. "Picked up the recipe from one of the more tame dimensions a while back. Comes handy in a pinch," he said answering the unspoken question.
"Ha! I like this guy already!" Yang said with a laugh.
"So then… what's fictional in one world, might be another's reality, and vice versa?" Blake asked aloud.
"If you're asking, are the events of those smut-books in your room real in other universes, then yes," Jack answered with a shrug. "Infinite events happening in infinite timelines."
"That's… kinda depressing actually," Jaune hummed.
"Why?" Pyrrha asked.
"Because if everything is happening infinitely… then nothing we do really matters," he realized, feeling like all his struggles were so… inconsequential.
"Pretty much, yeah," Old Jack shrugged.
"Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's gonna die," Original Jack said plainly drawing their attention back to him. "In a universe without meaning, it's up to you to find meaning, in your actions in the world that you influence. I don't let knowing about the multiverse bother me because outside one isolated incident, I don't putz around outside my own observable universe having 'villain of the week' adventures like some kinda TV show."
"Wait, you've traveled to other worlds before?" Original Ruby asked with wide eyes.
"One time, and it was not pleasant," Jack said plainly.
"What was it lik-"
"Not. Pleasant," Jack repeated, the look on his face shutting down that line of discussion entirely.
"Still though, this is an amazing breakthrough!" Weiss said excitedly. "Armed with this knowledge and the cooperation of a denizen of another universe, the people of Remnant could establish a comradery with other intelligent life across the multiverse! We're talking the usherance of a new Golden Age-"
"Yeah, not gonna happen," Old Jack cut in unashamedly.
"What? Why not?!" Weiss asked angrily with a stomp.
"Because you idiots can't even get along with each other in your own universe," Old Jack said with a flat look. "What makes you think you could get along with people from another universe?" he questioned, Weiss raising her finger to answer only to fall short. "Yeah, I thought so."
"So, not that I really care and all, but WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU HERE?!" Jack finally raged at his doppelganger.
"Ruby here walked into a Rathtar nest because a discarded blaster caught her eye," Old Jack answered plainly, Alt-Ruby flushing in embarrassment. "In didn't have time to quadrangulate a portal to our home dimension, so I just hit Random on my preferred playlist," he said gesturing to his Portal Gun.
"Okay. Then why are you still here?!"
"Figured since I was in your nick of the woods, I'd get some of that sweet, sweet sauce from ya," Old Jack said, salivating a little.
"Uh… What?" Yang asked with a raised brow at the way Old Jack was looking at "Regular" Jack.
"He means teriyaki dipping sauce. You degenerate perverts," Jack said plainly. "I still don't see why the hell you can't make it in your dimension. Aren't you like, a bazillion times smarter than me?"
"First off, 'bazillion' isn't a real number. Second… It's something about the Szechuan peppers in this dimension that just hold the flavor better than in my dimension," he answered. "Don't know why the flavor of the peppers suddenly changed, but, you know how it goes. The multiverse works in mysterious ways."
"Okay, I know the McRonald's sauce in your dimension was discontinued… twenty years ago, but why the hell can't I just buy you the ingredients here, and then you make the sauce back in your dimension? This little shit-show has melted all of their brains and I'll probably have to erase their memories later."
"Wait what-"
"I would, but the ol' arthritis doesn't make my hands what they used to be," Old Jack said holding up gnarled hands, cutting Jaune off.
"Bullshit, you blathered on for an hour about how you keep Arthritis Antidote next to you Broken Leg Antidote," Jack bit back.
"Look, can you make the sauce or not?" Ruby's doppelganger asked. "If it makes you feel any better, you can teach me how to make this sauce, and then we won't have to bother you with this anymore."
"Well you're being really helpful about this," Jack appraised Ruby's double with a raised brow.
"Yeah, well, it was either this or having to disarm a drunkenly-improvised neutrino bomb later."
"Wait, those are real too?!" Weiss gawped.
"You're damn lucky I went out grocery shopping already otherwise I wouldn't even have half the shit to make this sauce," Jack grumbled as he began raiding the pantry.
"Um, what was this about you erasing our memories-"
"Ugh, enough of this bullshit!" Jack said as he finally reached the end of his patience.
Reaching into his counterpart's coat pocket, a familiar tin was pulled into the open before Jack raised it above his head.
"AMNESIA DUST!" he shouted as he threw the tin into the ground like a football at the end zone, smothering the others in a cloud of blue.
*NEW WORLD*
An iridescent green wormhole opening up inside a familiar garage next to a familiar house on a familiar island in a familiar world, Jack and Ruby returned to their home universe with nary a delay after concluding their business in the other universe. With a Tupperware of Szechuan sauce in tow and no "nightmare tentacle eat-monster" on their tail this time around, the two could truly relax.
"Whew. We made it," Ruby-365 sighed.
"Was there ever any doubt?" Jack-365 replied.
"Still, was it alright leaving those kids like that?" Ruby-365 asked as she adjusted her grip on the Tupperware and the detailed recipe that Jack-356 took down for her. "That Amnesia Dust he hit them with right at the end made them all goofy," she said thinking back to the goofy, wide-eyed looks on their faces as they stumbled around in circles bumping into walls and one another, even when Jack-356 had been done with the sauce.
"Eh, don't worry about it. Amnesia Dust'll wear off and if he's lucky, the dosage he gave them will make them forget all about the multiverse," Jack-365 shrugged. "If not, well… Not my problem."
"But wait, why not erase his memory about the multiverse then?" she asked. "From what I can tell, his only real memory of world-hopping was far from pleasant."
"Other than the fact that I won't be able to get any more Szechuan sauce out of him, all the brain damage he racked up from that universe's Killing Bites makes him uniquely resistant to mind-altering materials," Jack-365 answered. "That and other things," he tacked on. "Anyway, we got that Rathar off our butts, the two of us got home safe and sound, and we got some Szechuan sauce to boot. I'd say it was a pretty good day all things considered."
"Still…" Ruby-365 hummed as she looked down at her Scroll, which had been over-modified into a Trans-Dimensional Omni-Directional Tri-Corder. "When we were on Remnant-356, I picked up on a bunch of foreign dimensional matter. Aren't we going to do something about it?"
"Ruby, picking up after trans-dimensional incidents in other universes is a lot like being a dog-walker in a park," Old Jack began. "It's your job to clean up the shit, and you can pick up the trash everyone else leaves behind too, but at the end of the day it isn't really your job to pick up the trash, just the shit," Jack-365 hummed idly as he went to work on some kind of alien device on his workbench. "All that trans-dimensional matter your Scroll picked up? That's the litter. Only reason we stuck around was to see if any of it was dog shit. And to get more sauce," he tacked on.
"I'm still confused on the metaphor. If random bits of matter from other parallel universes that don't 'glitch' themselves out of existence is like litter, what's the dog poo supposed to represent?" Ruby asked confusedly.
"Basically stuff from the Macroverse."
"What, you mean like It, or Barbadook?"
"Yeah. Those guys," Jack-365 shrugged dismissively as a familiar red-haired clown materialized nearby, only to pale in terror at the sight of Jack-365 before aborting itself back to its home dimension.
"So… We're just going to leave all that trans-dimensional matter there? Not do anything about it?" Ruby asked without missing a beat.
She'd seen her grandpa chase off enough weird shit from the Macroverse she'd grown used to it. Probably as-used-to-it as Mordys were disarming drunkenly-improvised neutrino bombs.
Or at least the Mordys that could disarm the first drunkenly-improvised neutrino bomb they encountered on their adventures with their Ricks or Rick-equivalents.
If you couldn't do that, you weren't likely to get a second chance (read: not at all).
"That's Jack-356's nick of the multiverse. If there's a problem in his neck of the woods, he'll either fix it, find someone who can, or die. Infinite events across infinite timelines. I can't babysit all of them."
"But isn't that the universe where you get your Szechuan sauce? Isn't that version of Jack the only one who makes it right?"
"Yes. And the Ricks from the nearby arm of the multiverse hate me for it," Jack-365 chuckled. Even if anything happened to that Jack, he could always just find a neighboring branch of the multiverse where he could get identical sauce. Infinite events across infinite timelines meant "infinite sauce"; in essence. "Now, be a dear and hand me the screwdriver so I can finish my ionic difibulizer, would you?"
"Isn't this the thing that killed that one Rick and Mordy from the blooper reel?" Ruby asked looking at the alien device warily, wondering whether she should bolt to mother or not.
"Yes, except unlike that guy, I'm not an idiot," he said gesturing to the immaculately clean work space he used.
Turned out an errant spark from a loose wire on another piece of tech conducted by a puddle of oil was what had caused the demise of Rick-91610501272014 and his Mordy. As a result of this, the Jacks involved in extradimensional travel learned to keep an immaculate workplace.
Just because it was "infinite events happening across infinite timelines" didn't mean they all had to die because of a workplace-related incident.
"What does thing do anyway?" Ruby asked looking at the machine.
"I could tell you, Ruby, but that, is a story for another day."
"Hey grandpa! Look what I found out back in the woods!" Yang-365 said as she pulled a Dorito-shaped cyclopean statue with stick arms and a top hat into the yard on a little red wagon. "Hey Ruby! Take my picture so I can put it on Quickiegram," she said tossing her Scroll to Ruby before reaching for the statue's outstretched hand.
"WaitYangdon't!"
"Sdrawkcab egassem! Sdrawkcab egassem! Sdrawkcab egassem!"
"Ffffuuuuuck!" Jack-365 groaned tiredly before he set down his tools, smashed a glass case labeled In Case of Crossover Event, and walked out into the yard.
An asshole's work was never done.
*NEW WORLD*
Shouldn't be too hard to figure out what cameo was inspired this-chapter.
Also, there's a hidden cameo for those of you who pay really close attention.
Well, a few hidden cameos, but you get the message.
Review, bitches! Wubba lubba dub dub!