Episode 5: The Parfait Predicament

Their walk out of the Herbalist's home and down the path was—except for the ambient sounds of the forest—silent. Ruby's team was still trying to understand what had just happened. Ruby herself was trying to get her duplicate's words out of her head, but each attempt just made them louder.

Everything all depends on you!

You're not a failure, are you?

Yang was the one to break the silence. "Was that…He was a kind of doctor, wasn't he? What if someone needs him?"

The cat, jumping between glowing mushrooms taller than Ruby, glanced back. "Many people sought his services, yes. Though his remedies started to become a bit monotonous, a real shame and little help to anyone. That should change now."

"Is he dead?"

The cat chuckled. "Herb? Maybe a little. Or not at all."

"What—"

"You know, Alyx had much the same reaction the first time she saw someone ascend. It's not how it seems; well, I suppose it is. But not the way you think, if you think like Alyx. Which it seems like you do!"

The cat jumped farther ahead.

Weiss pinched the bridge of her nose and then expelled her frustration with a heavy sigh. "Okay, enough of that. We were all affected by that…that smoke, right? Did everyone see things?"

Yang and Blake looked at each other and just as quickly looked away. Ruby set her jaw and said nothing.

Weiss drew in a breath—

Only for the cat to jump down onto the path in front of them. "Ah, would you look at that? The garden. The realgarden."

The trees and mushrooms parted to reveal a massive clearing. Within that clearing was a crystal-clear pond reflecting the night sky above. Lily pads several yards in diameter floated along the pond's surface, many bearing residents of the Ever After. They were all converging on the island at the center. On that island sat a large spiraling structure, at the top of which bloomed a brilliant pink carnation. Pillars wrapped in vines and lights supported each level of the spiral.

While they took in the view, someone else stirred and finally emerged from Ruby's hood with a grand yawn.

"You slept through all of that?" Yang asked Little in disbelief.

"Through all of what?" replied Little.

Yang's eyes cut to Blake and then away. "Never mind."

Curious Cat had leaped to a lily pad next to shore. "Better run," they called, as the pad had begun drifting away. Ruby jogged over the jumped on; the pad barely dipped under her weight.

The pad began to move, drifting like all the others towards the center. The cat sat. There was, it seemed, nothing to do but wait.

"So, cat," Yang said before Weiss could resurrect her earlier question, "care to explain how a giant caterpillar disappearing into a hole isn't how it seems?"

"Hm." The cat's tail flicked but they kept their eyes forward. "When we break or wear out or simply finish what we were made to do, we're called back. But Herb—his heart was too weak to listen. So I gave him a little bit of mine."

"Is he dead or not?" Weiss asked, irritated. "Sure, we were all seeing things, but that wasn't our imagination. It's a simple question. Yes or no."

Visibly irritated, the cat cleared their throat. "Now that Herb's properly returned, he'll be fixed up nice and made into the Herb he wanted to be when he was still Herb. Then he'll come back and find his purpose. Could be the same as before, or maybe not."

Ruby lowered herself into a sitting position. On an adjacent lily pad, a couple of green birds squawked and clicked their beaks together. The mice sharing the pad shuffled a little farther away. "When Herb comes back, will he remember anything?"

Curious Cat rolled onto their back to stretch and stared up at Ruby. "What would be the point of that? Just like Alyx, you lot. I know, I know, where you're from, things…die, but we're just not like you at all. We ascend. Herb will have a purpose again."

"You can't seriously be suggesting that things don't die here," Weiss said. "Only two people we know don't die normally, and they were cursed by literal gods."

The cat stilled and then pushed themselves up by the tail. "Gods, you say?"

"So things here never die," Yang muttered. "Great, that means if that weird purple thing comes back, we can't deal with it for good."

"Never is such a strong word. That creature is not the sort of thing you talk about in polite company."

Their lily pad docked smoothly against the edge of the central platform. They debarked and Ruby fell into step behind the cat. A bipedal blue bird in red trousers and red cap hawked his mud cookies at them. A puzzle piece advertised its sand paper. A figurine shouted about its pyrite. The din was jarring compared to the peaceful ambiance of the forest.

"So, what happened to Herb…" Blake mused from Ruby's shoulder. "Is that what happened to the king?"

"Mm," confirmed Curious Cat. "It was all very sad. The Red King couldn't cope when he lost to Alyx. A crying mess." The cat jumped behind a pillar and stuck their head out on the other side above a bright orange fruit. "Thankfully he was called back and fixed up." They ducked out of sight and reappeared even higher up amid some blue fronds. "And now he's the prince you met."

"Fixed up?" Ruby repeated. "The prince was worse."

"The prince isn't supposed to be nice." The cat moseyed along a cable supporting octagonal multicolored lights and Ruby had the hustle to keep up. "He's supposed to play the game and win no matter what."

Blake crossed her arms. "That doesn't explain why he reacted how he did when Ruby told him she was human. Ascension wipes out a person's memory, doesn't it?"

"While the prince may not remember Alyx's deception after ascending, the heart very rarely forgets."

Weiss adjusted her seat in Ruby's hood to better let her see the sights. The first level of the spiral was a vibrant pseudo-forest of pillars, mushrooms, lights, and plants of all colors and shapes. Mixed among all of that were various stalls and hawkers trying to solicit wares from pad-borne visitors. "What are you thinking, Blake?"

"There was nothing about ascension in the story. What else did Alyx leave out?"

The cat leaped off their ride and strode ahead. "I'd imagine all kinds of things. Exposition is terribly boring."

"Well, to make a growgurt parfait, one needs a bushel of grumpy ivy, one good size spicy potato, the lint off a griffin's sweater—Ethel's Dragons and More should have that, which is right next to—"

"I'll never remember all of that," Ruby cut in. Curious Cat chuckled and glanced back at her.

"Oh, I can procure those. But there's another ingredient we must have that's only available on the third level: some nose hair from a leprechaun."

Ruby leaned away in disgust in sync with her teammates.

"What if you retrieve that while I go get the rest?" proposed the cat to Ruby.

"S-sure, I guess so."

"Wonderful! Look for the teapot lady; she'll have it. Now off you go."

The cat made it all of six steps before a rustling flower being waved about at a nearby stall caught their eye. They flew up over to it one half at a time and batted at the plant with delighted trills matching the high-pitched excited noises from the seller. A handful of mice drawn to the show circled around the stall's base.

"Ugh." Yang rolled her eyes. "I'll go with the cat, otherwise we'll never get the ingredients we need."

"I am going nowhere near anyone's nose hair, magical or not," Weiss said.

"We're going to be eating it."

Weiss gagged.

"It's either that or stay small."

Weiss shuddered. "Right, well, I'm still going with you. The less I see of it the better. Blake, the cat seems to like you more than the rest of us. You should come too."

Blake glanced at Yang. Yang looked away.

"Well?" Weiss prompted.

"Yeah, okay."

"I'll stay with you, Ruby!" Little offered.

Ruby gathered her teammates in her cupped hands. They were so quick to leave her behind. Sure, she wasn't small like they were so they weren't exactly any more effective than her without Crescent Rose, but it still stung. Not that she was going to say anything. She was the leader. She was supposed to be able to take care of herself, of everything. Gross nose hairs or not.

"Nice try, kitty," Weiss called right before she leaped from Ruby's hands to the Curious Cat's face. She landed on their forehead. Their ears went back and they let out an annoyed growl, but made no move to stop her, Yang, or Blake from settling on their back. Curious Cat, resigned to their passengers, strode away, walking across the air as easily as they walked across the stall's table.

The merchant, a light blue star-shaped being with a leaf for a face, tried to offer Ruby the plant instead.

"Oh, no, sorry," she demurred, stepping away. In that moment of distraction, a handful of mice whisked away the cheese plants stacked up on the table. The merchant called after them but soon slumped over in defeat.

Ruby angled towards the ramp leading up the third level. Little scrambled up onto her head and assumed a hero pose with one paw held up. "Onward!"

Their declaration was immediately followed by a yawn. It was almost enough to get Ruby to smile.

Compared to the first two levels, the third was far more sparsely populated. Trees and shrubbery had given way to just pillars. Small stalls still flanked the wide path, but they were interspersed with larger pink tents and crates of goods.

"Teapot lady, teapot lady," Ruby murmured.

Little, barely awake and nestled on her shoulder, roused themselves. "Is that her?"

Ruby followed where they were looking to an ornate antique table bedecked in a violet tablecloth. A large white teapot with a flower pattern sat behind it, a single pair of vibrant magenta eyes floating within the blackness under the tipped-open lid. Various vases and bottles and knick-knacks adorned the table.

"Nice find," Ruby said, but Little was already snoring.

She walked up to the table, but the merchant was busy with a pair of soldiers bickering about how red a certain teddy bear was. One soldier was convinced the toy was red; the other declared with utter certainty that it was "rust orange."

Tuning them out, Ruby perused the items on display for anything that looked like it could be nose hair. Her eyes snagged on a small wicker basket of rainbow leaves.

A breeze blew through the garden, picking up the topmost leaf and threatening to carry it away. Ruby snatched it out of the air, but the moment her fingers made contact, they went tingly and numb. She put the leaf back and shook out her hand, blinking away a sudden pressure in her eyes.

The soldiers' conversation was no longer indistinct; it was gone entirely. So was the teapot lady, and the traveling bird advertising his mud cookies, and everyone else in the market. Dead, black silence had enveloped the entire place, leaving Ruby alone in a near-total void. Panic stole through her; she backed away from the empty table.

A hammer blow shattered the silence. She flinched and turned towards the source: an open-faced tent supported by stone pillars that had not been there before, she was sure.

Another hammer blow. Metal on metal. The faint roar of very hot flames. She squinted against the sudden surge of light and caught a gleam of green. Amid a display of hanging weapons at the opening of the tent rested Penny's sword.

She was rushing over and grabbing it before she even realized the impossibility of it being here. It was cool to the touch despite the heat pouring out of the tent. She held it close.

"Does that one interest you?"

The voice, soft and calm, nevertheless made Ruby flinch again. She looked past the hanging weapons to see a hulking figure standing in front of a wall of fire. The woman had her back to Ruby, a hammer in one hand, and some elaborate glowing bit of twisted metal in the other. A thick brown apron tied at her back and equally heavy leather gloves covered her hands, but everything else Ruby could see was metal. Big shoulder plates, exposed discs for a spine, chains and cables for hair.

"I," Ruby tried as she circled around the table to get a better look, "I thought this was lost forever. How do you have it?"

More weapons adorned the inside of the shop. Ruby's heels clicked against a stone floor split into even octagonal tiles.

"Nothing, no one, is ever truly lost."

Ruby looked down at Penny's sword. In the firelight, for an instant, she saw Penny's face reflected in its depths. The reflection moved and she jerked away.

"And what of you?" The strange metal woman turned around. Her face was a solid metal plate; her eyes were black pits; her mouth did not move when she talked. The metal shape in her left hand, Ruby now saw, was a butterfly wing, molten from heat. "Are you lost?"

"N-no," Ruby stammered, "I just—my friends went somewhere else. I could handle this on my own."

The blacksmith set the wing down on the anvil at her side. "You're doing this all alone?"

Little stirred and slowly rose, eyes going wide when they saw their surroundings. "Ruby? I don't think we're supposed to be here."

Hammer in one hand, tongs steady holding the molten wing in the other, fire roaring at her back, the blacksmith addressed the mouse: "Are you her guide, little one?"

Despite their trepidation, Little answered. "Ruby's my friend and I want to help her get home. Even if I don't know where that is or how to get there."

"Hm." The blacksmith turned to her anvil. The hammer came down with a clang Ruby felt in her teeth. Sparks flew and cast the blacksmith's face in harsh light. "You seem to be carrying a rather large burden with you."

Ruby curled one hand into a fist. "I'm fine. I can handle it."

The blacksmith regarded her, then indicated the other hanging weapons. "If you change your mind, you may choose any one of these you like and set your burden down."

She struck the wing again and the weight in Ruby's hands changed. Ruby looked down; Penny's sword was gone, replaced by a simple dagger with an unusually short grip fit for a child. She tilted it, and an unfamiliar face—a young girl with brown skin, thick curly hair, and a distinct scowl—stared back. Ruby peered closer.

"I…already have a weapon." Something about that face, about holding this knife that wasn't hers, made it hard to think. "I did."

"And yet, here you are. Searching for something else that you do not even know."

Ruby set the knife aside on a nearby table before it could get any deeper in her head, but a weapon hanging on the wall behind that table caught her eye. An oversized axe, rustic in style but modern in its rifle mecha-shift.

The blacksmith struck the wing.

She'd seen it before. She knew that weapon.

Struck again.

It shone in the firelight.

Again.

A face stared back at Ruby, a face so like her own, and smiled. Silver light bled from the reflection and grew blinding. The hammer's clangs shifted into the sound of Ruby's own name until she blinked and was abruptly back in the bustling market only a couple steps from the teapot lady's table.

"Ruby?" Curious Cat repeated. Their voice was somewhat muffled from the wicker basket laden with ingredients they carried in their mouth. Blake sat on one of the jars; Weiss and Yang were still on the cat. "Who are you talking to? Did you retrieve the nose hair?"

"Uh." Ruby glanced around, but there were no signs of the blacksmith or her forge. "N-no, not just yet."

"Ruby, come on," Weiss said. "We got everything else. How long does it take to get one thing?"

"I'm sorry."

"Mud cookies?" offered the blue bird man.

"No, thanks," Yang said.

"Are you sure?"

"Very."

"Suit yourself!" He strode away, calling about his cookies.

"That's the teapot lady right there, isn't it?" asked Blake, pointing.

"Yeah," said Ruby. "I was…I was waiting for a couple soldiers to finish. They're, um. Gone now, I guess." She took the basket from the cat and followed them to the table.

"Welcome to Bailey's and Things!" the teapot lady greeted while Curious Cat jumped onto the table. "How can I help you?"

The basket of leaves was empty now, Ruby saw.

"Looking for nose hairs," Curious Cat said while batting a fork off the table and knocking over a jar. "No, not the ogre ones." Their tail tipped a vase, and the teapot lady glared.

Distant booms cut off her reprimand. Lights shot up into the sky.

"Ooh, a festival?" wondered Yang. The trails exploded into fireworks that spelled danger. "Or not."

Screams erupted from the lower levels.

"Jabberwalker!" cried the mud cookie seller. "It's a jabberwalker!"

Panic spread like wildfire and the calm marketplace devolved into bedlam. The teapot lady began sucking up all her goods into her spout, but Curious Cat held onto a jar of hairs, fighting against that suction.

"Wait, please!" Ruby said. "We need those leprechaun nose hairs!"

"No time!"

The acrid smell of smoke washed over them all, carried by a frantic wind. The crowds were thinning, fled for their lily pads or higher ground, but the screams of those caught by the jabberwalker were growing louder. The beast was getting closer.

In the Red Acre, Jinxy hadn't bartered with money. The cat probably hadn't used money either. Ruby flexed her empty hands. What did she have that was valuable—valuable by the measure of this stupid world?

Her hand fell to her belt on reflex but the comfort of her mother's emblem turned icy in her veins. She swallowed it down, swallowed it all down, and yanked the emblem off her belt.

"Here, I'll give you this! It…it carries a mother's promise!"

The teapot lady abandoned the jar and sucked up the emblem instead. "Take it!" she said of the jar, and fled.

"This is exceedingly bad," the cat said, still clutching the jar and staring off towards the smoke leaking out from the bend in the path.

"What's a jabberwalker?" asked Weiss while the shrunken team gathered on the table.

"It's a truly terrible creature. If the jabberwalker eats one of us, we do not ascend."

"Then there's no time to waste," Yang cried. "How do we make the parfait thing?"

The cat yanked the stopper out of the jar. "Toss everything in here!" Ruby began to do just that, wincing at the pungent, bright smoke that poured out anew with each added ingredient. "But be careful! Eat too much and we'll have to shrink you back again, and that's a completely different potion."

When the last ingredient went in, the whole ensemble disappeared within a puff of bright pink smoke. That smoke cleared to reveal a perfectly done parfait in a simple glass cup with a dollop of cream and heart-shaped cherry. Blake, Yang, and Weiss ran for it and began to scoop it into their mouths one handful at a time. Each handful grew them by several inches.

"This isn't going fast enough!" Blake said between bites. "It's—"

A shadow blurred around the corner and crashed into a vacant merchant's stall. They all tensed. Curious Cat arched their back and hissed.

The purple creature from the cliff crawled out of the rubble, tail swishing, head vibrating.

Ruby stepped forward. You're not a failure, are you? You're going to save everyone.

"Keep eating," she ordered. "I'll distract it."

"Wait!" Yang called. "You're not even armed—"

But Ruby, heedless of her sister's panicked cries trailing after her, was already gone in a blur of red petals. The jabberwalker noticed them and broke into a sprint, roaring, "FOUND. WRECK. EAT. KILL."

Ruby flew around its outstretched claw and materialized to slam her boots into the side of its head. Even with her full weight and the momentum of her semblance, the impact only staggered the creature. She'd barely started to fall before its tail whipped around and slammed her into a nearby pillar. The breath burst from her lungs and she crumpled, winded but unharmed. The pillar was less lucky; broken fragments of the lanterns rained down around her, the twinkling lights winking out.

"DEVOUR."

She threw herself to the side. The jabberwalker altered its path at the last instant, hooked a claw into the pillar, and swung itself around with frightening speed. Ruby, though, was faster. She had to be faster. She flew down the path and rematerialized. "C'mon, I'm over here! Come get me!"

The jabberwalker stared at her, head twitching, and turned back towards her friends.

"I said," Ruby flared her eyes, "I'm over here!"

The creature froze and turned back to face her. "Seek. See. Know. Find. Extinguish." It lunged. "EXTINGUISH."

Ruby dodged its rush and wove between its follow-up attacks, leaning hard on her semblance to avoid the hits. Every rapid transition in and out of petal burst without time to recover left her a little more disoriented, a little dizzier, until what was supposed to be a smooth landing turned into a stumble. The instant it took her to reach for her semblance was the instant the jabberwalker slammed her into the dirt face-down. She gasped, tried to push herself up, and failed.

She reached again for her semblance, but the jabberwalker's hot breath on the back of her neck scrambled her focus. She reached for it with all she had, sloppily, recklessly, and shot out of the creature's grip—only to lose control of her semblance and get sent sprawling down the path.

Seeing double, she pushed herself up and swayed on her feet. The jabberwalker was approaching slowly; ever since she'd called on her eyes, it was treating her carefully. Like a threat, even though she had no weapon. Was it related to Grimm somehow?

The jabberwalker sank low in preparation for another lunge. Before it could move, a blue blur shot into it from the side: the bird man, now bereft of his cookies, and with brilliant blue light trailing from his eyes.

"Run!" cried Curious Cat, crouched next to Ruby with their tail lashing through the air.

"What's he doing here?"

"I gave him something new to do for the moment. Now go, it's not safe for you!"

"I can fight!"

The jabberwalker roared, grabbed the bird man out of the sky, and slammed him against the ground once, twice, before hurling him back the way he'd come. He crashed into a vacant stall and lay there, groaning.

"Ruby!" exhorted the cat.

The jabberwalker stalked closer.

"We should really run!"

There had to be something—

A black glyph spun up beneath the jabberwalker and lifted it into the air, where it thrashed helplessly.

"Now!" Weiss, Myrtenaster extended, called. "I don't have the Dust to hold this for long!"

"On it!" Yang, one end of Gambol Shroud in hand, picked up speed while Blake kept her en route to the suspended jabberwalker. Three shotgun-assisted leaps around more than half the circle and Yang was all but flying. Her hair lit up and she crashed into the beast like a meteor in the same moment Weiss released her glyph. The jabberwalker went flying back towards Weiss, who deftly stepped out of the way to let it crash into and through a pillar.

"How's that?" grunted Yang, tossing Blake's weapon back to her. "Is it dead? Or, ascended, or whatever?"

Forced to dodge the rubble, Weiss couldn't look immediately—but they all got their answer when the jabberwalker walked back into view. The jabberwalker that was now three times its original size.

"What?" gasped Blake.

"The parfait leftovers," Yang realized. "It must've hit that table. Ruby, stay back, we'll handle this."

"Stay back? Yang, I'm—"

"Unarmed and you've taken hits," Yang snapped. "Go! Take care of that bird guy, he needs help."

"I'm not going. I'm the leader."

"This isn't the time to argue."

"Yang—"

"Ruby—"

"Down!"

Both Ruby and Yang ducked on reflex. A yellow jackelope the size of a moose leaped over the two of them and rammed its antlers into the jabberwalker's face, knocking it away from Weiss. The jackelope landed and slid into a ready stance, giving the rider on its back plenty of room to assess the threat. That rider was a man in full plate armor edged in gold, although the silver metal was tarnished by rust and his drawn sword was shattered halfway down the blade.

"It's the Rusted Knight," Blake breathed.

Yang cocked her gauntlets and sprinted forward. "I'm not wasting this opportunity. Weiss!"

Helpless and frustrated and hating how useless she'd become, Ruby turned her back on the fight and sprinted for where the bird man had fallen. He was slowly pushing himself up, the light in his eyes flickering.

"Are you okay?" Ruby asked, helping him to his feet. "You need to get out of here."

He started limping towards the fight, where Weiss and Blake were crisscrossing around the jabberwalker's legs, wearing it down bit by bit with the aid of Weiss's white glyphs while the Rusted Knight used his jackelope's height to strike higher.

"I…have to…fight," he moaned.

"You need to get out of here. You're hurt! You're in no shape to fight." She glanced at Curious Cat. "Can't you, I don't know, undo what you did, or just get him to run? You're making him throw his life away!"

Maybe the severity of her desperation got through; Curious Cat jumped up and lightly pressed a paw against the man's forehead. His feathers rustled, his eyes rolled up into his head, and he collapsed with a faint number of blue and purple sparkles dissipating from around him.

"Step back," Curious Cat advised, and Ruby did just that. The ground opened up. In a single heartbeat, he was gone with no sign he'd ever been there.

"Did he…ascend?"

"Far too wounded to sell more cookies, yes. Now come on. Your insistence on putting yourself in danger will be the end of…you…"

Growls and thumping steps surrounded them. Ruby and the cat slowly backed up in horror at the sight of a dozen, no, dozens of jabberwalkers emerging from the water and clawing up from the lower level. They paid no heed to the Ever After citizens still fleeing on lily pads. Ruby spun on her heel and sprinted for her friends.

The first and oversized jabberwalker, stabbed through the mask by the Rusted Knight, was breaking up into a flurry of pink fragments.

"Neo?" Yang whispered.

"Guys!" Ruby shouted. "There are more coming!"

"What?" The Rusted Knight brought his mount around. His shoulders dropped at the sight of the beasts crawling through the market. "There's only supposed to be one!"

Yang stepped forward, fists up. "We can take 'em."

"With what ammunition?" snapped Weiss.

"She's right," said Blake, and Yang frowned at her. "The civilians have evacuated, we're down to our last bullets, and Weiss is completely out of Dust. The only thing we do by staying is put ourselves in danger."

"There's no time to argue," said the Rusted Knight. "There's an escape route in the top of the tower. Follow me!"

He took off, forcing the rest of them into a sprint to keep up with his mount. At the very top, they could get a good look at the panicked civilians still screaming and crying as their lily pads drifted with incongruous calm across the water. The smoke from below stung their eyes and forced them to hold their hands over their mouths.

The teapot lady and a few other afterans had gathered in the shadow of the carnation, crying and shaking. The Rusted Knight knelt by them and spoke words lost under the wind and distant cries. When they were calmer, he stood and guided them towards the tunnel hidden between the petals, gesturing for team RWBY to follow as well.

"Everywhere we go," Weiss whispered, gaze lingering on the destroyed market and monsters below, "we leave in ruins."

She shook off Ruby's touch and strode after the Rusted Knight.

Inside the tunnel—a cramped passage colored and textured like the inside of a plant stem but with glowing white puffs on stems sticking out of the edges of the floor—the afterans were already disappearing around the far corner. The Rusted Knight, though, had stayed behind. He'd dismounted and was gently petting his jackelope.

"You did good, Juniper," he said. Juniper closed her eyes and nuzzled him.

"If you're really the Rusted Knight," Blake said, "will you help us?"

He reached up and removed his helmet. Blond hair tinged with gray and gathered in a loose wolftail by a red ribbon spilled out over his armor. He turned to face them.

"Team RWBY," he said in a voice no longer distorted by his helmet. "You finally made it."

They stood frozen. Older, bearded, and with longer hair, Jaune Arc was still recognizable at once.