To better explain the extent and nature of changes you should expect in this story, think of this as a second draft of the script that won't "blow up the budget." In other words, no big new set pieces, new character models, etc. Things like tweaked dialogue, additional talking scenes in established locations, modifications to existing fight scenes, are on the table. You'd be surprised (or maybe you wouldn't be) at how much difference small-scale changes can make.

Episode 4: A Cat Most Curious

Catching the Curious Cat was no simple feat, not even for Ruby. For one, she wasn't trying to tax herself by using her semblance when it wasn't necessary. For another, despite the cat being so distinctly colored compared to the rest of the red acre, the long grasses were nonetheless excellent cover. And for the last, the cat kept splitting in half.

Ruby slowed from her latest sprint and bent over, dragging in breath. Aura or no aura, running hard for several minutes took its toll.

"Anyone see them?" Yang asked, peering over the edge of Ruby's hood and shoulder.

"No," Weiss reported.

"Nope," Little replied.

"I think…no," Blake finally decided.

Ruby let her head fall. "Great."

"Wait!" Little's cry had them all perking up. "I think I see…a cat's…hindquarters?"

Ruby followed their extended paw to see the cat's tail perked up over the grass. "Um, excuse me?" she called.

"You're excused."

The cat's voice coming from behind her made her flinch and reach for the weapon that was, of course, not there. The appropriately minified sounds of Blake shifting Gambol Shroud to a pistol and Yang cocking Ember Celica were not exactly comforting.

Heedless of their aggravation, the cat's front half padded out of the grass and across the path to unceremoniously reconnect with the rear half.

"Uh, hello…cat," Ruby tried while that went on. "Curious Cat? Which one do you go by?"

Curious Cat faced her and sat with an amused smile. "Oh, I don't go by, that belongs to the days and the years. But if you are asking me what I am, I do suppose I am indeed a cat most curious."

Weiss stood. "Do you know the way to that giant tree?"

The cat peered at her. "The tree?"

"We need to go there," Blake explained.

"The tree…tree, tree, tree, tree…Of course, that is most definitely impossible." The cat began to eye their own tail. "You do not go to the tree." They pounced for it, but of course, it slipped away. They braced on all four paws and looked up at Ruby with a gleam in their eye. "The tree goes to you unless, of course, you're me. You see."

"Not even a little bit," Weiss snapped.

The cat was unaffected by her tone. "Well, that's your problem. It's a matter of perspective, I'm afraid."

"Couldn't you take us there, though?" Ruby pressed. "You have this…perspective. You've been there before."

The cat turned away with a dramatic huff. Their eyes—though Ruby couldn't see from her angle—remained turned towards her, sharp and observant, so dissonant from their flippant tone. "Ugh, so why would I ever want to go back? Yes, I'm glad we understand one another. No sense in seeing a sight seen."

A yellow butterfly flitted past the cat's nose. With a remarkably feline chitter, the cat sprung after it. They both landed in the grasses, but the butterfly's fate was clear from how the cat wiggled among the red blades.

"Please," Blake tried. "You helped Alyx when she was—"

"Alyx?" The cat popped up, pupils dilated. "Alyx, Alyx?" They flew—flew—up to Ruby's face and hovered there. "How do you know her? Are you friends of hers? Lifelong nemeses?" They rolled. "Wait, don't tell me…" They grabbed Ruby's cheeks with their paws. "No, do tell me."

"Uh, well, we don't know her personally," Ruby said, and thankfully the cat pulled back just a little.

"She wrote a book," Weiss cut in, sick of the meandering back-and-forth. "About her time in the Ever After. It—"

"A book?" interrupted the cat as they spun around Ruby to hover over her right shoulder. "Is it well liked?"

"I don't see how that's—"

"It's a popular children's story," Blake said quickly. To Weiss, she whispered: "We have to answer or they won't help."

"Yes, oh please, I simply must know more," the cat said. Weiss crossed her arms, shook her head, and in so doing ceded the floor to Blake. But the cat wasn't done. "What did she write about? How was I portrayed? And…do I smell a mouse?"

Little, who had buried themselves deep in Ruby's hood, let out a quiet eek.

Blake cut between the cat's face and Little's hiding place. "Sorry, could you give us a minute, please?"

The cat's gaze flicked from Blake, to her ears, to Little's location. Then they shrugged as much as a cat could shrug. "Ah, so they're spoken for. Well please, please hurry. I have so many, many questions." They leapt from Ruby's arm with another chirp and went back to chasing another butterfly.

"Okay," said Blake, drawing their attention. "The Curious Cat was described as an ally with an appetite for information. They might not want to go back to the tree, but I think if we just head in that direction and give the cat what they want—information—we might be able to stay close enough to Alyx's journey that we still make it."

"And you're sure that following that story is actually the answer?" asked Yang. "Things are different here than they were."

"That's true, but it all rhymes. Mouse village, red royalty, the cat. We're on the right track, I know, I-I mean, I…"

"Blake?"

Yang and Weiss were looking at Blake with concern. Ruby, though, saw through the silence to the searing uncertainty beneath, the same uncertainty souring Ruby's own attempts at wayfinding.

So she did what she was good at: she covered for her teammate. She took charge. That was what a good leader did.

"It's the best plan we've got. I say we stick with the cat for now."

"Fine, got my vote, but that's gonna be hard to do," noted Yang, "since the cat's gone."

"What?" Ruby whipped around, but true to Yang's word, the cat's butterfly chasing had taken them out of sight. "No, no—"

A small eruption of sparkling butterflies that swiftly winked out alerted her to the cat's position down the path. She ran after them. "Hey, wait up! D-didn't you have questions for us? We'd be happy to answer them!"

The cat emerged from the grass. Or, half of them did. The front. "I sense a 'but' approaching," they said. As they moved to sit, their back half toddled out from the grass and reattached itself in perfect time to assume the seated posture.

"We do still need to go to the tree, but that'll take ages. Plenty of time for us to talk about all the things from our world that Alyx maybe didn't share."

The cat cocked their head. Ruby had their interest, but seeing a butterfly out of the corner of her eye, she scrabbled for a way to keep it—and her fingers found her scroll. Miraculously intact and alive despite the chaos precipitating and including her fall. "Look!" She activated the screen with a simple swipe gesture. "Ever seen a scroll before?"

The cat reached for it, entranced. "Luminous rectangle…"

Ruby let them take it and watched as they reclined on their back, scroll held in one paw, the other tapping at it. "Oh, what does this button do?"

They pressed that button and the screen flashed while the camera clicked. They froze, a surprised mrrp escaping them while their picture appeared on the screen. They started taking more pictures. Despite everything—despite her exhaustion, her stress, everything—Ruby couldn't help finding it cute.

"Why is it painting tiny flat versions of me? Is that what I look like smiling?"

"That oughta work for a while, right?" Yang asked.

"A while," Blake agreed.

A while, it turned out, lasted only about twenty minutes. From then on, their group fielded nonstop questions from the cat, who lived up to their moniker many times over. Folklore turned into society turned into geography turned into kingdoms turned into Atlas—

"Something else, please," Weiss said tightly, and so Atlas became Dust, and Dust became weapons, and that bought them all another ten minutes until the only one who hadn't shown her weapon was Ruby.

"And yours?" the cat inquired, winding around Ruby's legs. They did this every now and then, and Ruby was slowly figuring out how to keep going without tripping over them. "What is your absurd little hybrid of gun and blade? Or, I suppose, gun and fist? Though you don't look like a brawler."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Yang asked, only to go ignored by the target of her ire.

"Mine's…" Ruby started.

"Do you not have one? Oh, but you're the leader, are you not? What good is a leader without a weapon?"

"I—"

"Such a shame, to fall behind. Oh, you poor thing. But it's all right. Not everything can achieve its purpose."

"It's just missing," Ruby bit out through the drumbeat pounding of her heart.

"Missing? Not a useful tool, if it can't hit anything."

"She means it's lost," Blake explained, still weary from having to explain all of Gambol Shroud's intricacies. "We're still looking for it."

"What a terrible thing, to be lost." The cat floated up and, upside-down, stared deep into Ruby's eyes. "One has to wonder if it's ever possible to be found."

A chill ran up Ruby's spine. She put her focus on just putting one foot in front of the other.

Maybe sensing her distress, Weiss took over. "You were asking about the origins of Remnant, before."

"Ah, yes. So many of your tales start with the two brothers, right? To your credit, you lot certainly know more about the beginnings of Remnant than Alyx did." They chuckled to themselves while they lazily spun in the air ahead of Ruby. "That girl could barely see past her own nose."

"What do you mean?" asked Ruby.

"Oh, you know," the cat mock-walked through the air, putting their back to Ruby while their voice stayed light. "Just hilariously concerned with trivial things."

Blake and Yang exchanged a look. Yang shrugged.

"Well, she…learned her lesson in the end, didn't she?" Blake tried.

The cat chuckled again. "Yes, I'd certainly say so. Oh! Would you look at that?" They drifted ahead and swayed to the side so Ruby could see past them to the bridge ahead. "The edge of the garden's acre."

The red acre's stark colors dropped into the abyss that separated it from the next acre. On the other side, a dark blue forest stretched between them and the tree. Deep, dark, and old, it was utterly impenetrable from the outside. Only occasional mushrooms of various sizes provided light, glowing like vibrant lanterns of all colors.

A breeze washed over them from the direction of that acre—no, the tree. On its gentle waves came a small flurry of rainbow maple leaves. The cat absently played with one; Ruby caught another and stared down at it. Something about it made her eyes itch, so she let it go.

"This entire world is put together like a bunch of mixed-up puzzle pieces," Yang noted while they resumed their trek. "How does anyone make sense of this?"

"Each acre is made specifically for its inhabitants and their roles," the cat answered. "Is it not like that on Remnant?"

"N-no?"

"How strange. It never even occurred to me to ask that before." The cat seemed genuinely taken aback that they had left an avenue of inquiry unexplored.

"If you're in the mood to be helpful, I have one other question I'd like to ask," Weiss said. "How long until we're back to regular size?"

Now leading the way across the bridge connecting the two acres, the cat glanced back with a smile that was almost reassuring. "Not long at all. The garden is just down this path and is sure to have all the ingredients we need for a lovely growgurt parfait. Just be careful talking to anyone without me. If you're not…"

"Off with our heads," Blake surmised quietly. The cat's smile widened while their motley band passed into the shadow of the forest.

"Precisely. You Remnant folk are such troublemakers."

Trunks wider than they could get all their arms around even if they joined hands stretched up and the canopy blocked out the sky until the only light came from those glowing mushrooms and the errant patch of silver light that managed to slip through the leaves above.

Weiss crossed her arms. "We won't need to worry about trouble once we're back to normal size."

"Bah! I don't see what all the fuss is about. Some of my best friends are six inches tall. I'd be more worried about—gah, who was that scary sorceress you mentioned? Selime? Salem? Remind me, how many more relics does she need to end the world, again?" They chuckled and glanced back at Ruby with an open-toothed grin. "How are you even supposed to stop her now that Atlas is gone?"

Ruby's stride stuttered, slowed, and stopped. "I…"

Yang put a comforting hand on her cheek, the only place she could really reach. "Let's worry about getting us back to normal first. The rest comes later."

"Agreed," said Blake.

Weiss said nothing.

Little said: "Were you guys trying to follow the cat?"

"Uh, yeah," said Yang. "Why?"

"They saw a bug."

The spot on the path where the cat had stood a moment ago was conspicuously empty. Weiss groaned. "Can't we hunt down someone more helpful than a cat with the attention span of a goldfish?"

"Yeah, there were other characters that helped Alyx, I think," Yang said.

Blake ticked them off on her fingers. "The Lively Carpenter, the Rusted Knight, the Uprooted Oak…none of them appeared until later on, though."

"The story's changed, too," Ruby put in, breaking her silence just so Yang would stop throwing worried looks her way. "There's no way to know if those people even still exist."

Weiss sighed. "With our luck, they're probably, like…the Deadly Blacksmith, the Gleaming Scribe, and the Planted Shrub, or something."

In the silence following Weiss's defeated sigh, a new sound wound out from between the gnarled trees: low, rhythmic, and just off-key enough to send goosebumps prickling up Ruby's arms.

"Do you guys hear that?" Yang asked, raising her fists for all the good that would do in her current state.

"Blake," Weiss said, "what lives in these woods?"

"I…I don't know. The book wasn't exactly big on the small details."

"It's not the cat." Ruby started walking towards the source. "We should at least check it out—maybe it's that garden."

"A humming garden?" Weiss's skepticism was obvious.

Yang shrugged. "We've seen weirder. I agree with Ruby, let's check it out."

The garden—if this was indeed the garden—was a giant blue mushroom with a few square plots of other softly glowing flora arranged in front of it.

Weiss peered at the nearest rows of tall, stacked mushrooms that emitted a deceptively bright light from the edges of the tower. "This place looks more like some weird kind of house than somewhere we'd buy ingredients for a…a whatever parfait."

"But it does look like a garden," Blake said. "A weird, glowing garden, but…a garden."

"Where's that humming coming from?" asked Yang while Ruby's hesitant steps slowed. The sound was louder than it had been; this did seem to be the source. Something in this little clearing.

The pile of leaves stacked up nearby shook. Ruby tensed as three glowing blue eyes opened up within its shadows.

"What are you?" queried a raspy voice.

First Little, then the Red Prince, then Curious Cat, and now this…thing. Ruby sighed. "I'm getting really tired of that question."

The creature in the leaves blinked and then pulled back. The whole pile shifted as a large, buglike being rose out of it. His three eyes, the third in his forehead, glowed only a little less obviously now that he was out of the deepest shadows. What were just as noticeable now were his small green wings, four jointed arms, and the bag and staff he clutched in two of those arms. His whole body was covered in a neatly segmented dark purple exoskeleton, embellished here and there with lighter sections and what appeared to be silver and gemstone jewelry.

Ruby shrieked. She couldn't help it.

"What are you?" Yang demanded, as caught off-guard as her sister.

"Oh," the creature drawled while he worked its way clear of the pile, "that question." His lower half was that of a caterpillar, if a caterpillar were ten feet long. The staff, Ruby now saw, was in fact a rake. He'd been…tidying the path? "Isn't it obvious? I'm an herbalist." He straightened with a bit of pride. "The Herbalist. At least," he paused to start raking up a few leaves his emergence from the pile had shaken loose, "until I'm not anymore."

"Great, that answers everything," muttered Weiss.

Ruby swallowed her fear and set her shoulders. Sure, the cat had basically advised them not to talk to anyone without them around, but the cat was gone and their group had no idea where they were going. Besides, this bug man wasn't exactly calling for decapitations like the Prince. He was just tending to his garden.

"My friends and I need help getting to the tree," she explained as she walked closer.

"Help getting…to the tree," repeated the Herbalist, straightening. "Ah, yes. Everyone needs help these days. Everyone."

He finished raking up the leaves into the pile, added a few to his cloth sack, and then headed for the massive blue mushroom. Without any other option presented, Ruby trailed after him. The base of the mushroom, at his approach, neatly unfurled to reveal a simple arched opening that he promptly moved through. He set the rake and sack aside, but when Ruby hesitated, he glanced back at her.

"Well? You are coming in, aren't you?"

She swallowed, unable to shake the lingering fear from his first appearance. It was just nerves, she told herself. The cat had thrown her off. She shook her head slightly to clear it and stepped inside.

The opening sealed itself behind her.

"Ominous," Yang noted under her breath.

Inside the mushroom, the Herbalist's abode was simple: shelves attached to the walls supporting books, bottles, and baubles; thick rugs laid over the ground; some pottery and a tapestry by the far wall; and countertops here and there with food and other ingredients laid out, some sorted, some not.

The Herbalist stopped at the nearest of those counters and began preparing something with a mortar and pestle. "I must say, you all seem a bit…hesitant." He waved one arm. "What did you say you were, again?"

After the way the Red Prince had reacted to her earlier answer, Ruby chose a different angle. She tried to keep her annoyance out of her tone. "We're huntresses."

"And what, exactly, does a 'huntress' do?"

"Fight monsters, I guess? I'm sorry, I don't understand why this matters."

She turned to track the Herbalist as he shifted to a counter on the opposite side of the room, grabbed something, and moved back towards her.

"I don't understand how you don't understand," he retorted. He grabbed a scale and roughly set it on the counter in front of Ruby. "I am an herbalist. I make medicines and remedies to help others on their journeys. It is what I am. How do you expect me to make a remedy for an unknown journey?" He grabbed a handful of leaves from a nearby jar and neatly set them on the scale against a standard weight. "So, do you know what a huntress is, or do you guess?"

"Huntresses are heroes," Blake cut in. "We protect those who cannot protect themselves."

"Yeah," Yang echoed. "That's what we are."

"Thank you," the Herbalist drawled said, sounding as sarcastic as he was pleased to finally have an answer he found satisfactory. He took the leaves off the scale, set them on a bit of paper packaging, and folded them up. "Now, would you say that you're good huntresses?"

Ruby drew breath to speak but couldn't find the confidence to say what everyone expected her to say.

"Would you say you're a good herbalist?" Weiss returned in her place.

He stared at her, unimpressed. "Yes."

"Look," said Yang, "can you help us or not?"

The Herbalist put one hand to his forehead in exasperation. "I am trying. But you are making this far more complicated than it needs to be." He took his parcel and headed for yet another counter, where a dozen other parcels sat waiting for their recipients. "We all have our titles, our roles to play. But in order to help you become whatever it is you need to become, you should really have a better understanding of what you are now."

"Right." Weiss crossed her arms. "I think we understand enough. How do we open that door? We're done here."

The Herbalist heaved a sigh. "This is how a king winds up a prince." He pushed his way through the colorful bead curtain at the back of the room. "Follow me." And then, to himself: "My work is never done."

Lacking a door to the outside and any weapon they could use to make one, Ruby slowly trailed after him. Her guard was up, for all the good it would do now that they were trapped here.

The room beyond was purple and orange to the other room's blue. Vases and sculptures of all shapes and sizes lined the shelves taking up nearly every available space on the walls to her left and right. The Herbalist had assumed a position opposite the door amid a small pile of pillows and cushions. Between him and Ruby, a small fire flickered and crackled.

The Herbalist took a hit from a mouthpiece dangling down from the ceiling. He exhaled a cloud of smoke that smelled of sunflowers and left Ruby feeling lightheaded.

"Please. Take a seat."

"Um, actually," Blake said, "I think maybe we should be going. Right, Ruby?"

The look she shot Ruby was full of we'll find out own way out, but before Ruby could respond, the Herbalist did: "This won't take long."

Ruby turned to leave anyway. The door sealed itself so quickly the bead curtain didn't even make a sound as it was swallowed.

"Just answer the question," the Herbalist continued, pulling Ruby's gaze back to him. He took another hit from the pipe. He began to shift colors, and Ruby blinked, unable to tell if it was whatever had her feeling dizzy or something more. In his two lower hands, he held a small pile of the rainbow leaves.

"What. Are. You?"

He dropped the leaves into the fire. Thick purple smoke billowed out from the flames faster than it had any right to and in an instant invaded Ruby's lungs. Weakness stole through her and she staggered, hitting the wall before she tumbled to her knees. Yang, Weiss, and Blake were thrown from her shoulders.

"Are you sure you know?" the Herbalist asked, and his voice was everywhere, now, echoing and strange.

"No!" she protested, less against his words and more at losing her friends, reaching for them even as the smoke swallowed them up. It swallowed everything. Her friends, the Herbalist, the room, and then even her. She was alone in a smoke-filled void.

"You have to be sure of what you are," the Herbalist's voice began to fade, "and of what you're going to be."

She coughed again and again, but it wouldn't clear—until, all at once, a burst of smoke fled her lungs and pooled over the shifting floor.

Gagging, Ruby straightened in time to watch that smoke form up and solidify.

Into her.

Her Beacon self returned her desperate confusion with a bright smile.

Yang pushed herself to her feet and tried to wave away the smoke, but it was so thick she couldn't even see the Herbalist's room anymore. "Ruby! Blake!" She inhaled and Weiss's name stuck in her throat along with a lungful of smoke. She coughed and a taste like oil and grass slid over her tongue, prompting an even longer coughing fit that expelled even more of that noxious smoke.

Confused and a bit horrified, she watched what had come out of her drift across the shifting, smoke-covered floor, stop, and rise up to unveil…herself. Her younger self. Dressed for her first day at Beacon and as bright-eyed as she'd ever been.

Yang slowly straightened, horror growing. "What?"

"Don't you miss when things were simpler?" her younger self asked.

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't you remember?" Ember Celica deployed, she shadow-boxed against empty air. "Fighting to fight, chasing that high? Who cared about immortal witches and gods? We never had to care about that stuff."

Her younger self bounced from foot to foot and began to move around. "Life was so much easier that way. It was all about the adrenaline, the rush, until…" her younger self moved behind her. When Yang turned to face her, she was just standing there, smiling an empty smile.

"What does she see in you?"

That voice, low and mocking, froze Yang in place. Ice spread through her veins. Her breath rasped in her throat. She couldn't make herself turn around to face the source.

"Really. What does she see?"

The speaker circled out in front of her.

"You," she managed.

Adam Taurus stopped next to her younger self and mirrored her smile. "Me."

Blake stared at a version of herself she'd thought gone. A familiar face covered by that mask, like Adam's but bereft of red markings, stared back. An outfit she hadn't worn since Beacon.

"It's simple, really," her shadow said. "You could just…go back. Back to when things were simpler. When you didn't have to care about right and wrong."

"Not caring was the problem," Blake snapped. "Spilling blood like that just turned everyone against us. We hurt innocent people."

A low chuckle echoed from behind her. "Are you really going to preach your new ideals?"

Her skin crawled and she spun, Gambol Shroud in hand, to see Adam strolling out of the smoke. He wasn't wearing what he'd died in, but instead the outfit she'd seen him in the most: black coat, black pants, red shirt, mask.

"What is this?" Blake demanded. Some kind of dream? A hallucination? It felt real. The cold sweat dripping down her spine, the pounding of her heart…

"A conversation," her shadow said.

"One that's long overdue," Adam added.

Blake glared at him. "You can be angry I didn't do what you wanted, but that won't change what happened."

"Angry? My love, why would I be angry?"

She scowled at the label but furrowed her brow at his tone, keeping Gambol Shroud trained on him while he strolled around the smoky space, kicking up swirling eddies in his wake.

"Jacques Schnee," he said, "no doubt dead when Atlas fell. Atlas itself, destroyed beyond recovery. The SDC, vanquished with its home kingdom's destruction. You achieved more than I ever dared dream, Blake. I'm not upset. I'm grateful."

"None of that happened for your sake," she bit out.

The illusory Adam graced her with a wide smile. "If the ends justify the means, why not the intent, too?"

Her finger shook on the trigger. She took a breath to steady herself. "We did what we had to do to save as many people, humans and faunus, as possible."

His smile remained. "Of course."

"You really have a type, don't you?" asked her shadow self. Adam dissipated into smoke when that shadow strode through him.

Blake scowled. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, come on." Her shadowwaved a hand. "I could give you just one word to sum up a person, but we have time, so I'll offer more. Tell me who this is: strong, quick to use violence when they don't get their way, possessive of what they love. Although…that last one isn't totally fair to them, I suppose. You're the one who likes to chain herself to other people so it hurts them more when you run away."

Blake tightened her grip on Gambol Shroud against the verbal knife through her ribs. "What?"

"Think about it. First, Adam. You swore you'd always be at his side."

"He lost his mind."

Her shadow tapped her chin. "Now there's Yang."

"I'm with Yang because I choose to be."

"What happened to 'I'm not gonna break my promise, I swear'?"

Blake bristled. "That's different."

"No," her shadow looked at her with pity, "it's not."

"The Schnee name. Why bother anymore?"

Weiss recoiled from the clone of herself dressed in the same combat outfit she'd worn at Beacon. "You cannot be serious."

"Why can't I be?"

"I did not go through years of training, study, and pain just to toss all of that aside."

Her clone waved a dismissive hand. "Those years are gone. Your home is gone. Your company is gone." She rested a dainty hand on her chest. "You've done everything asked of you and more. You've atoned. Why keep putting yourself on the line to reclaim the legacy of something that's resting at the bottom of the ocean by now?"

Weiss's voice caught in her throat. Tears brewed in her eyes.

Her clone wasn't done. Her voice, so light and entreating, belied the agony inflicted with every syllable: "There is simply nothing left for you. Save the world, for what? You've already lost it all."

"Come on, let's fight him!" Yang's younger self danced back from Adam and assumed a boxer's stance. Adam, this…illusion of him, smirked and drew Wilt. The sight of that blade set nausea bubbling in Yang's stomach.

Her younger self threw some feints at Adam. They sparred in a way that was entirely unserious. No landed blows, just lighthearted swings. Each time her younger self struck with her right hand, she let it hang at the end of its strike just a moment too long, and each time, Adam's sword would just barely miss her bicep.

Yang swallowed down the taste of bile. Vertigo sucked at her balance.

"Come on!" her younger self exhorted her. "He's right here. Just join in, it's not hard! We do it all the time!" She slammed her fists together. Her hair ignited and she lunged at Adam, whose smile abruptly dropped into a snarl. A vague and smoky shape appeared at his feet. Blake.

"NO!" Yang screamed—

But her younger self effortlessly twisted in the air to avoid his slash. Her fist crashed into his face and he broke apart into smoke, as did Blake, and they both drifted away until only her younger self remained. She dusted off her jacket and turned her smile back to Yang. "See? Easy. All you had to do was stay focused on what you really wanted: excitement. You're not here to save people. You're here for a good time!"

Her eyes dropped to Yang's arm. "At least, you were. Back when things were better. Now you've made things way too complicated." She set her hands on her hips. "You know she's only with you out of pity, right?"

"What?" Yang whispered. She couldn't get that instant of Adam's sword arcing for her arm out of her head. Every time she blinked, it reappeared, and every time it reappeared, a surge of terrified adrenaline ripped through her anew.

"I mean, did you ever stop to think about it? Really think about what she saw in you? Every day after you reunited at Haven, she treated you like porcelain. Guilt and avoiding eye contact and trying to help even when she shouldn't. Then you put yourself on the line for her again when Adam attacked in Argus. She felt bad about killing him and bad about risking you."

"We were protecting each other."

Her younger self rolled her eyes. "Do you really believe that? What—"

"Yeah, I do," Yang interrupted. She raised her right hand up between her and the apparition. "I know she feels guilty about this. She knows that I know. She also knows I don't blame her for it. We're past that."

Her younger self went to speak but Yang was on a roll, now, her adrenaline pumping, the flashbacks—for now—receding.

"I went to help her because I wanted to. She accepted my help because she wanted to. At Beacon and at Argus, we were protecting each other because that's what we do. Yeah, I only put myself on the track to becoming a huntress because I wanted a thrill. But it's not like our reasons have to be set in stone. I'm here now to keep my sister safe. To keep my partner safe. To keep my friends safe. To do everything in my power to make sure we all have a world to live in tomorrow.

"If I get some excitement along the way, great. But protecting the people I care about and the people who can't protect themselves come first. After all," she curled her fingers into a fist, new resolve hardening her voice, "I am a huntress."

Weiss could endure the silence of this lonely place no longer.

"Abandon my team, my kingdom's people?" she repeated. She let one hand fall to Myrtenaster and took comfort from the cool metal. Even without Dust, it had always been her most trustworthy partner. Although, these days, it was far from her only one. She raised her head. "Why? Just because Atlas fell?"

"You're not much without it or the company. Why not take the opportunity to become a nobody? Free of the burdens you have been forced to shoulder all your life."

"I don't know who you think you are," Weiss said slowly as she unhooked her weapon, "but since you're so happy to tell me what you think I am and want to be, let me tell you what I actually am.

"I am a woman who left her family. I am a woman who had her beliefs thrown in her face. I am woman who broke the law to find her friends and broke it again to help them. I am a woman who lost her legacy, her home, her kingdom." Her voice shook. She closed her eyes, collected herself, opened them, continued. "I am a woman who is still here. Atlas? I will carry its memory with me forever. The Schnee legacy? I will be the one to define it now. And if you still insist on pretending otherwise, allow me to spell it out: I'm not an heiress."

She raised Myrtenaster at the imposter.

"I am a huntress."

"You like them broken, don't you?" Blake's shadow asked. "His face, her arm. Or, no. You're a huntress now, right? With them, you get to play the hero. The savior.

"But you're no savior. You couldn't even save yourself. Now you're here, thinking you can save the world? You're not a huntress, not really. You never were. You're a princess who played terrorist and ran away to play hero when that got too difficult."

Blake's hands shook. Her blood was so loud in her ears. This room, her old self, Adam…it was leaving her lightheaded. The scar on her abdomen throbbed with her heartbeat.

"You could go back, you know. You don't have to be all these layers on top of each other." Her shadow toyed with the mask now in her hands. "Remember how easy it was, in those days? You didn't have to care about right and wrong, a relationship with a human, the fate of the whole world…You could just follow Adam."

Crystal-clear lucidity crashed through Blake like lightning.

"No." She swallowed. "No. Never again." Each word gave her a bit more strength. "Nothing was ever simple, not even then. I was scared for my family. I couldn't believe in what we were doing when holding the ground we'd gained required constant killing. I barely slept from the guilt. Yes, I helped people. But I hurt just as many. With Ruby, with Yang and Weiss, I can help people and save the world instead of driving a deeper wedge through it. I am a Belladonna. I was a terrorist. Both of those facts are true, but right now, there's only one truth that matters."

She raised Gambol Shroud and rested her finger on the trigger. "I am a huntress."

"Well?"

"Well what?" Ruby responded. Her duplicate, hands on her hips and cape fluttering softly amid the smoke, tilted her head. She wasn't armed, but neither was Ruby, and nothing about the smoky walls or floor indicated an exit.

"Are you a huntress? Like the ones you read about in books?"

She thought back to Blake's words: heroes who protect those who couldn't protect themselves. Who was Ruby protecting now, exactly? She couldn't protect the civilians when Cinder struck. She couldn't protect Yang when Neo attacked. She couldn't even protect herself. Without Crescent Rose, she was a burden and nothing else.

She sank to her knees. "I…I don't know."

"They always saved the day, didn't they? Always knew what to do. Always won in the end."

"Life isn't like a fairy tail," Ruby protested, but her voice was weak even to her own ears.

"That's right!" her duplicate cheered. "It's up to you to make things better. Everything all depends on you!"

Ruby's head sank low.

"Your friends need you. Your sister needs you. The whole world needs you!"

Lower and lower.

"What am I supposed to do?" Ruby whispered.

"You can do whatever you want! Be whoever you want! You don't even have to be Ruby Rose."

"What?"

"You could be one of those heroes from the books. You could be Summer Rose!"

Ruby's breath caught. Her mother? What?

"Although…even she failed, in the end. You're not a failure, are you? You're going to help everybody. Save. Everybody."

Her duplicate leaned in close. "So? What're you gonna be?"

Ruby lifted her head but no words came to her tongue. She was the leader, she was trying to be a huntress, but every attempt made things worse.

Maybe, if she was someone else—

Blue and purple squares punched through the smoke. Curious Cat leapt through the distortion and the whole smoke room washed away while they spun to stand protectively in front of Ruby. "Get away from her!"

The Herbalist succumbed to a coughing fit of his own, pounding on his chest with one hand until the last of the smoke cleared. "Oh my. That's a bit much."

The cat's anger drained away to be replaced with pity. "Aw, Herb, look at yourself. You're done." They circled around the fire towards him and Ruby took the opportunity to gather up her teammates again.

"Everyone okay?" asked Yang, looking noticeably pale.

Blake's ears were angled back but she nodded. Weiss, too, nodded.

"You're supposed to be helping others find their way," the cat lamented, "but you've lost your own." They stopped in front of him. "Please, let me help. And take a bit of my heart." They placed a single paw on the Herbalist where they could reach. A blue and purple fragment rushed up and around the Herbalist's body to settle in his chest. "You'll feel much better."

The Herbalist dragged in a breath when the light from the fragment faded. "I…do apologize. I always was a bit of a workaholic. Huntresses, was it? Hm. Peculiar things."

His last word had scarcely left his mouth when the floor opened up beneath him like a maw. He and most of his pillows fell without a sound, the floor closed up, and the fire spit out a small spray of sparks while the cat stared at the abruptly empty bit of ground.

Ruby, with her teammates in her hands, stared in horror. Her team was likewise stunned silent. The cat, after a moment, stretched and then turned back to them with a smile and twinkle in their eye.

"Well? Shall we be going? The garden is only a bit farther."