Chapter 100: Epilogue
In which life will never be the same again, and that's not a bad thing (it's not a good thing either).
A happy ending would have been extra mega super special and warmed the cockles of Cinder's heart, but this was the real world, and she was old enough to know that happy endings weren't guaranteed. Actions had consequences, and an action like an all-out inter-kingdom war that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths tended to have the greatest consequences of all. If Cinder wanted something heartwarming, she'd use her semblance to spontaneously combust.
Mantle was so immensely damaged by the rampant destruction that the city had to be abandoned altogether. While some building still stood, none were safe enough to live out of for the risk of structural collapse. It was only made worse by the fact that the concurrent battle for Atlas was aerial, so the wreckage of downed warships (the largest of which Cinder had scuttled herself) rained down on the crater. Atlas itself was mostly unaffected, though, so the people of Mantle could rise up and live with them. Incidents were frequent as the two similar but markedly distinct cultures clashed, or so she'd heard. And some might have called it an abuse of power, but Cinder had used her new position as headmistress of Haven to inquire as to the status of The Glass Unicorn and its administrators. Apparently, that gorgeous eyesore was abandoned but still standing, as were her horrid step-family members. Perhaps if the universe had been kinder, the three of them would have been casualties of war instead of the innocent people Cinder had killed, but she'd already established that this wasn't a happy ending.
The fallout was devastating to the other three kingdoms as well. Vale's hunter population had fared the worst, making up the most casualties of any other member of the Vermillion Alliance. Menagerie's losses were smaller in total, but higher in percentage, so much so that the White Fang was essentially being disbanded. Summer Rose had spoken on their behalf, though, and endorsed the Faunus island from which they hailed to be acknowledged as a fifth kingdom. Apparently, such had been their price for fighting in the war against…Salem? Ozpin? Sides had become blurred by the end, but none doubted the courage of the Faunus forces. Either way, with the support of one of the prime coordinators of the former Vermillion Alliance, Menagerie was on its way to becoming a kingdom. A prosperous alliance with Vale was being written up as they spoke.
Mistral's forces had done okay, most likely due to the fact that its hunters had been taking it easy for years while some horse-man Grimm did most of their job for them. As she looked back with the knowledge she now possessed, Cinder wasn't entirely sure how she felt about her predecessor. Leonardo Lionheart's deal with Salem had apparently saved her comrades-in-arms by making them well rested and fresh for a fight, and it was now clear that Salem was something of an anti-hero the whole time, but Lionheart had only worked with her out of fear of harm to himself. It had been decided that the world would not benefit from the truth of his betrayal, and he was being commemorated as a martyr. Cinder had been elected as his replacement by the incompetent council of Mistral, and complete control and management of Mistral and Haven were hastily thrown at her. She'd been reluctant in her acceptance of it; they had called her a war hero instead of the title she deserved, war criminal.
Vacuo, somehow, had fallen and needed to be abandoned as well, even though its losses of life had been only moderate. Their tribes had scattered like the sand dunes in the winds, and the peaceful congregated cities of humans and Faunus in the desert soon became a thing of the past. It wasn't the war that crippled them, but the economic aftereffects.
Dust exporting was no longer an industry. All of the Dust that had previously supplied Vale, Vacuo, and Mistral was now being redirected to the rebuilding of Atlas. The SDC was under the control of one Whitley Schnee, but Atlas had closed its borders and shut out most foreign communications, both in and out. Apparently, no number of apologies and explanations could justify a brutal, bloody massacre, especially when it was fought on Atlesian soil.
Mistral had the best relations with Atlas, as they'd formally apologized for their hostility, but despite this, Cinder herself had a hard time getting details on what was going in within the frozen city. The other kingdoms (or what was left of them) were giving it the cold shoulder. Almost everyone who knew about Ozpin and who knew why the war had been fought was now dead, so the hand-wavy explanation of a reincarnating boy seeking magical objects for his own personal and religious gain was not so easily accepted. Vale and the remnants of Vacuo did not want to admit culpability, so their councils staunchly refused to own up to their actions. They'd said that Atlas had forced them to attack by violating their treaty in some undisclosed manner that was too classified to reveal publicly. The new alliance with the kingdom of Menagerie was likely made in part to spit on Atlas, who'd historically been at odds with the all-Faunus island. Soured relations between the two sides would likely be the norm for now, or at least until future generations who had not personally been embittered by the war took over.
The SDC had been the largest distributor of Dust worldwide, so now kingdoms had to rely entirely on local underground deposits and Mom-and-Pop refineries. What had previously been a quotidian commodity was now a sought-after luxury. It wasn't all bad, though; two events had helped to prevent energy riots from breaking out in the streets.
First, an anonymous benefactor had donated a large volume of purple Dust crystals to the Vermillion Alliance War Victims' Fund. The total estimated value was approximately six hundred and thirty billion lien, so it seemed like the survivors of the war would probably be set for a while.
Second, the Grimm were gone.
Researchers, hunters, and the public alike were baffled, but they could make neither heads nor tails of the mysterious disappearance of humanity's age-old adversary. Conspiracy theorists had posited inane explanations for the vanishing monsters, including divine intervention, Grimm body-snatchers infiltrating humanity, and even the wild idea that the Grimm had a new leader who was ordering them around. Crazy stuff. Naturally, Cinder had refused to dignify these theories by commenting upon them. After all, no one knew the truth.
No one knew.
…Cinder knew.
Ozpin, Salem, the Brother Gods – dear little Ruby Rose had told her everything. With the other headmasters dead, Cinder was probably the last person on Remnant besides Team Stark who truly understood the full truth. Cinder remained Rose's contact in Haven, though their missives were growing less and less frequent as the kingdoms stabilized.
The truth was a burden, and that burden was absolutely immense. And it was only getting harder as time went on.
"Headmistress?"
Cinder swiveled away from the window overlooking her school to see which student was…oh.
"What can I do for you, Miss Sustrai?"
A pair of arms crossed. "Well, for one thing, you could call me Emerald."
"We've been over this, Miss Sustrai. As headmistress now, I'm required to treat all of the students under my authority with suitable propriety befitting the dignity of the office of headmistress."
"But I'm boooooooored!" whined Emerald, little brat that she was. "Screw the rules; let's have some fun."
"Shouldn't you be in class? I may have had my graduation accelerated due to extenuating circumstances, but you haven't."
"Professor Gelb's stupid combat class? Cinder, we literally brought down a battleship and fought in a war with a god-boy! What could that skinny old man teach me?"
"I brought down a battleship and fought in a war with a god-boy. You got captured two times and blinded one-half times. And it's Headmistress Fall."
Emerald tried to seductively bat her eye, but it probably was one of those things that seemed hotter in her head. The eyepatch scrunched up, and it looked more like she was squinting. "Aren't chicks supposed to dig scars?"
"Detention, Miss Sustrai."
Emerald frowned, then perked up. "Are you…are you going to punish me? During detention?"
Cinder sighed and buried her face into her hands. "Yes, fine."
"Give me proper discipline? Put me in my place? S-Spank me for being naughty?"
"Yes, Emerald. But go back to class right away, or I'll have Professor Gelb sit in instead of me during your detention."
Emerald saluted. "Aye-aye,Head…mistress."
Cinder probably should have said something about Em's tone, but it was hard to take the moral high ground when she'd slipped up and called Emerald by her first name just seconds ago. And also when she was vigorously boning her own student on a nightly basis the second she clocked out of work.
"So, I'm thinking Magpie for a girl and Chough for a boy."
"No. You already named one of our children after a bird. I refused to let you subject another to the same. It'll start a trend, and the next kid will be Chicken."
"I would never! Birds are cool and mysterious! They're literally dinosaur – that's an actual fact!"
"Don't you remember Qrow being bullied for his name back in Beacon? Team Blueberry teased him mercilessly for being the only kid on the roster whose first name started with a Q!"
"Oh, this coming from Mister 'I'll name my first daughter after the last four letters of my own name!'"
"Yang loves her name!"
"Because it rhymes with bang, and she likes to make puns! Naming a kid after the end of your own name is not a real naming strategy – if I did it, our kid would be fucking Aven! And don't pretend you didn't insist on calling naming our second daughter frickin' Rhubarb!"
"S-She shortened it! To Ruby, which is a perfectly good name!"
"Yeah, a perfectly good name that you didn't originally give her because you named her after a stem. A stem, Tai!"
Taiyang crossed his arms and frowned. "We won't name our next kid after a bird."
Raven mirrored his stern pose. "You got to choose Roo…Ruby and Yang's first names. It's my turn."
"I…darn. That is a good point," he conceded. "But Magpie? They're thieving little shits. Why not a cool bird, like Falcon?"
"Cause then I'd be Mother Falcon, and that sounds too much like motherfuckin'. Besides, the Branwen family tradition is supposed to be corvids."
"You're a corvidiot."
Raven shook her head. "Yang's already hopelessly addicted to lame puns. Do you really want to start with that on little Magpie, before she's even born?"
"I-It could be a boy," Tai stuttered, taking a few steps back. "It could be Chough."
"Tai-Tai." Raven wrapped her arms around her husband. "Only the father could donate a Y chromosome, and I'm fairly certain you barely have enough of those for yourself."
Tai scrunched up his nose. "I-I'm plenty manly."
"Sure. Of course." Raven played with his blonde hair. "Although you did go down first when we fought Oz, and I stayed awake for the whole thing, so I'm probably manlier than you."
Tai wiggled his eyebrows seductively. "Oh, I'll show you just how well I go down."
"Don't try and distract me with oral sex. We were in the middle of having a very pleasant argument about baby names."
"Fine. Magpie or Chough. You win…but I reserve the right to choose their middle name."
Raven kissed him. "I knew you'd come around. Now, I think you and I have a patrol to do."
Now that the Grimm had disappeared, most hunters, especially those who had specialized in slaying monsters, had retired and hung up their weapons in favor of a civilian life. Others joined the tournament scene to entertain the masses and make a pretty lien chip, but Raven and Tai decided to trade one career in civilian defense for another and form a Sheriff's Department on Patch. The island was mostly clean, but the surrounding forests were occasionally plagued by enough banditry to keep them busy. Actual banditry, not the pussy shit that Raven had done with the Branwens.
She'd made sure to check in with her old tribe before leaving all that behind. The power vacuum she'd left behind had led to many a black eye and split lip as they fought for control, but eventually a new leader had risen to the top and claimed the title. Raven couldn't remember their name or any identifying details, likely because Vernal was dead and no other Branwen tribe members were named in canon except for some 'Shay D. Mann' bullshit guy, and you all know I hate OCs.
Taiyang laced up his boots. "If we get started now, we might have enough time to bake some cookies for Ruby before Team Blacksheep come over for dinner."
"And by we, you mean me," clarified Raven.
"Oh, definitely."
Dust, it's still tough getting used to calling my little fledgling Ruby. It was Rook for years, and occasionally Rhubarb in a pinch. Ruby…Ruby Ruby Ruby. It'll take some time before that sounds normal.
Raven had suggested that the new team refer to themselves as Team RSY, or Rosy, but Ruby had been adamant that she include her new last name, Branwen, in the name. To be fair, Team BXS, or Blacksheep, was quite aptly named. It consisted of Ruby Branwen, her partner Yang Xiao-Long, and their third teammate Weiss Schnee. Their original name, Team Rainbow, had too much dark history to be kept, in part due to the unfillable empty seat. Raven knew that Yang and Weiss had offered the spot to Penny, and Ruby had as well to her ex-ex-boyfriend Dave, but both had died in the battle of Mantle, so an entirely new unit of three, Team Blacksheep, was born.
And black sheep they were. Ruby, as the Queen of the Grimm, was not accepted in any kingdom save for Atlas. There, she was a folk hero whose control of the Grimm with her mystic semblance had beaten back an invasion. In Vale, Mistral, Menagerie, and the ruins of Vacuo, she would be seen as a monster who sold out humanity for power, even though the truth was the opposite – she was the world's savior, from the eternal threats that were Ozpin and the Grimm.
Patch was her one safe haven outside of Solitas. Raven was unsure whether Ruby was welcomed because she'd grown up there and would always be seen by the townsfolk as the adorable chocolate chip cookie-scarfer from down the lane, or if it was the fact that Raven had threatened to gut anyone who criticized her baby. Maybe both.
Without the dragon and her bird form, Raven had briefly thought that intercontinental travel would be a challenge for Team Blacksheep. Oh, how foolish she had been. Their first visit home had disabused her of that notion.
Ruby had been on a video call, showing Raven and Tai how Weiss had, quote, 'an adorbs baby brother who looks like a malnourished teddy polar bear.' Raven had smiled along and nodded, and then Ruby, Yang, Weiss, and the runt brother were all standing next to them, knee deep in rose petals. Raven had nearly dropped her scroll in surprise, and Tai had screamed like a little girl. Ruby had apparently used her semblance to run the four of them from Atlas to Patch in less than a millisecond, including over the ocean.
With such fine semblance control, Raven had been forced to begrudgingly accept that she was no longer the strongest huntress alive anymore. At least she could take solace (and pride) in the fact that she and her Tai-Tai had raised the young woman who now was.
"On the count of three. Alright – three, two one!"
Ren tried not to develop a headache as Nora swung him around by his ankles and hurled him up the waterfall. She'd decided that going the long way around the cliff would take too long, so throwing her teammates up one by one was the crazy 'Nora' action of the day. It would have been futile to point out that the spelunking gear he'd packed could be used to scale the face of the rock wall instead – when Nora had seen the waterfall, he could tell that she'd instantly decided to throw each Castle up it.
When he arrived at the top, Ren was dripping wet and quite cold. Sky seemed no better off, and Cardin had experienced the misfortune of landing in a particularly muddy spot. Wringing out his clothes, he felt a surge of pity for the two armored boys who could do nothing but wait for the natural sunlight to dry their metal shells.
"How is Nora going to get up?" asked Sky. "She gonna throw herself or something?"
Ren counted down in his head.
Three, two, one…
The explosion probably traumatized all of the wildlife in the forest for the rest of their natural lives. Nora ascended at least thrice as high as the waterfall. Magnhild was smoking from the fresh explosion it had just produced, and Nora was beaming. When she reached her zenith, she threw up a peace sign with her free hand and fell back down to Remnant. Upon landing, she took a bow.
"Tadaaaaaa!"
Cardin thunderously applauded, while Sky and Ren clapped enough to be polite but not explicitly approve Nora's reckless usage of the increasingly rare resource that Dust had become. They were on a budget, after all.
"Remind me never to do that again," said Professor Branwen, as Nora retracted the arm she'd wrapped around his waist.
"Poor Professor Branwen," said Cardin. "So much time spent as a bird, and he's still afraid of flying."
"Hey, I'm injured here," he said, pointing to his rigorously bandaged stomach. "Forgive me if I don't want to be shaken around like I'm a teenage girl's ass when she's going through a rebellious phase."
"Six hunters fight Ozpin, and only one gets grievously wounded," said Sky. "Really paints a picture of who's the weak link on Team Stark."
"Malarky!" barked their berserk leader. "You can insult our wilderness guide later. Team Castle is on the clock, and we can't afford to dawdle. Operation COCKSUQERS isn't going to take care of itself!"
The Castles collectively groaned. Ren had half a mind to simply abandon their mission and let Remnant be damned if Nora continued to call it that. The memory of their assignment was still fresh in his brain.
"Operation Capture Ozpin Carefully, Keenly, Speedily Under Qrow's Experienced, Respected Supervision," Nora had announced when they'd started their quest. "It's important, so we can't afford to blow it!"
"Capture Ozpin Speedily Under…that quite a mouthful," Ren had noted, before realizing why that wasn't the right thing to say.
Ruby, as an all powerful deity and the de facto ruler of the world, had tasked them with taking her uncle, who had more experience dealing with Ozpin (or apparently Ozma, as he was truly known), and scouring the four corners of the globe for the immortal wizard. She had killed his current incarnation after an extremely brutal clash that nearly resulted in the near-death of Professor Branwen, but Ozpin wasn't going to stay dead for long. And since Team Rainbow was –
"Team Blacksheep," corrected Nora.
– since Team Blacksheep was busy rebuilding Atlas, the duty of ensuring the world's safety had fallen to the second most powerful hunter team. Ruby had impressed upon them that this would be no easy job. Ozpin could show up anywhere in the four and a half kingdoms (Menagerie and Vacuo were 0.75 each), and the only clue that they would have as to who his next host would be was his gender and that he would be 'likeminded.' That didn't really help that much, but since hunting Grimm was out of the picture, at least it gave them all something to do.
"I got a question," interrupted Cardin, toweling off his armor with – hey! Ren snatched his mucked up pink apron out of the uncultured brute's meaty paws and threw him a scowl.
"Go ahead, Cardy."
"When we find Ozpin, what do we do?"
"Kill him," offered Ren, knowing that the simplest solution could be the best. "I mean, he did nearly destroy the world."
"But that will just mean we need to hunt down the next one," said Sky. "We'd accomplish nothing. It's like Mercury and Morrighan – it'd just start the cycle over again."
"Plus, we'd kill some innocent boy in the process," explained Professor Branwen. "He doesn't usually merge immediately like he did with Oscar Pine. That one was accelerated since Oz wanted complete control during the war."
"Not very innocent if they're likeminded with a religious fanatic who goes around chopping off good men's legs," remarked Cardin, removing his prosthetic foot and draining out the river water.
"Jaune was likeminded," said Nora.
That quieted Cardin down quickly enough, and all five of them were forced to look away from one another.
Team Adventure was truly and entirely gone this time. Dove, the last survivor, had died in Atlas. Ruby had refused to say how, but it wasn't hard to fill in the blanks after what he'd been doing. Jaune, Pyrrha, Russel, Dove – all of them were unwilling victims in a war that Ozpin had tricked them into fighting. Operation COCKSUQERS may have been poorly named, but Ren decided that he would do everything in his power to see it completed.
"So, what do we do?" asked Ren. "Capture him? Contain him?"
Nora looked to Professor Branwen for advice, but the older huntsman simply shrugged.
"I ain't got a clue. The host's control over magic increases as Oz' control over him increases, so he probably won't be as dangerous as he was in the Atlas vault when we find him."
"Can we split them apart?" asked Sky. "That would be the easiest solution, and the most ethical."
"No idea," said Branwen. "S'never been tried."
"We'll figure something out," said Nora. "We're huntsmen and huntresses. Our job is to save everyone we can, even if they're just random people whose minds get taken over by inhospitable brain-ghosts."
There were other questions to be asked – who would take up the presumably eternal mantle of Ozpin-hunters when Team Castle retired, what had happened to the knowledge-granting lamp that Ruby said she'd lost in the wreckage of Mantle, where they were even heading if Nora had no idea who the next host was – but Ren would have plenty of time to ask all that later. For now, he simply removed a pair of towels from his rucksack and offered them to Cardin and Sky.
One step at a time.
Salem hadn't been a good queen.
She may have been a kind person doing her very best in an impossible job, but she hadn't been a good queen. A good leader, be it for a team of four huntresses or an army of trillions of Grimm, always makes an effort to understand her subjects and tries to learn more about who they are. And not just because it's nice; the more you know about the people beneath you, the better suited you'll be to motivate them to work harder and do a good job.
To Salem, the Grimm were tools. She clearly bought into the philosophy that they were mindless beasts who were completely disposable. Ruby actually made an effort to understand them, so everyone – her, the Grimm, the Atlesians – benefitted from it.
Ruby had cracked the code. Grimm weren't mindless; their trains of thought just arrived at a different platform than humanity's did. Just as people saw the Grimm as nature-defying abominations, the notion of biochemical matter being a form of life was an absurdity to the Grimm. They were much simpler creations of the gods, far less refined and made only of thoughts, concepts, and emotions without inherent physical forms. That was why they were entirely black and semi-unphysical – they weren't made of matter and didn't interact with the visible spectrum. Light would not reflect off of their skin because they weren't composed of any of the element from the periodic table. As emotions come to life, the Grimm perceived human negativity, the most dangerous and painful emotional state, as a direct and potentially lethal attack on them. They weren't drawn to anger or fear; they were believing themselves to be acting in self-defense themselves whenever they sensed it and lashed out.
Once she understood how Grimm interacted with the world, it was simply a matter of convincing them to not eat people, instead of ordering them like Salem had. A changed heart was a changed mind, and so far her subjects were receptive. That made for a much more long-term solution, as it lasted far longer than easily forgotten commands that the Grimm were willed to obey. As much as Ruby cared for the Grimm like her very own children, she could not deny that their minds were simpler and less developed than those of people. Grimm were about as sentient as animals, so the first step was to impress upon them an understanding of why people weren't actually trying to murder them every time one got slightly upset in their presence. It wasn't easy, but they hadn't had any accidents yet. If it looked like a Grimm was about to forget her rudimentary explanation and attack some poor Atlesian, she'd simply act as its queen and demand it stop whatever it was doing. They didn't mind having their wills overrode.
Having the Grimm on Ruby's side changed everything. The SDC was able to mine ten times as much Dust with zero human casualties by sending some slightly less squishy workers into the Dust mines, and monsters like Goliaths and Tempests turned out to be super useful in the rebuilding efforts. Atlas had even begun to expand outwards, making some small settlements in the frozen wastelands. The Grimm weren't affected by physical forces like exposure to hot or cold (temperature was just molecules vibrating, and Grimm didn't have molecules), so they could venture out into the wildlands and do much of the menial labor – set up foundations, level the grounds, report on the terrain, even do some preliminary building. Grimm may not have been exceptionally smart, but they did possess Herculean strength.
Nobody would ever dare to accuse her of it, but Ruby had felt somewhat responsible for the war. Mining the Dust around Salem's castle that hadn't exploded and sending it to the ex-Vermillion Alliance parties had done a decent job to assuage her guilt-riddled conscience, but that hadn't been enough. But all the work she'd done with the Grimm – disarming them, putting them to work as beasts of burden, giving them lives beyond roaming the lands and killing anything and everything they couldn't understand – that made a difference. A real difference, one that would last beyond her.
And when Ruby got old and died, she could pass on her maiden powers to a new host, if she could find a willing one. The magic would hopefully be enough to insulate a new girl from the toxic effects Grimm pools long enough for her to drink some or bathe in it or whatever it took to succeed Ruby as Queen of the Grimm. It would have to be someone special, someone Ruby could take the time to train in the ways of talking to her Grimm
Maybe Magpie!
…unless Magpie is actually Chough.
Maybe Chough's babies! Ruby and Yang's nieces!
…if Chough ever has babies. I'll put some more thought into it.
Team Rainbow was back together again. Er, Team Blacksheep. It was the first time that Yang, Weiss, and Ruby had all gotten back together and been on the same side since Blake had…you know. Atlas was the only country willing to accept Ruby, so that was kind of where they had to be from now on. Yang and Weiss could go if they wished to, but not Ruby. No other kingdom would be caught dead harboring her. Atlas was pretty okay, though.
Oh, and Patch! Patch, where Mom and Dad and Magpie/Chough were! So, that was nice…yeah…
Okay, fine. She would admit it: things were actually kind of, eh, let's call it tough right now. Nora and the gang had assured Ruby that they would back her up if she ever decided to come back to Beacon, and Headmaster Port (heehee!) had gone as far as to offer to step away from his post as Grimm Studies professor and allow her to replace him (he'd said she, in her current state, was probably more of an expert than he ever could dream to be), but Ruby knew that it would never work. She couldn't even fly over and spend time disguised as a bird, with that aspect of her very nature entirely gone when Ozpin stole it back to weaken her during their fight. Vale was lost to her, for good. It had been since she'd tripped and dove headfirst into the Grimm pools. She'd been so distracted by the war and her own adrenaline that most of that stuff hadn't sunk in until more recently, but with time aplenty now, she had no more time to deny the truth.
Life was going to be very different now.
Don't let your thoughts fray down that path. Remember what Mom and Dad said. Focus on the positives…
Mountain Glenn was fixed. That was a nice treat that Ruby had learned off the Grimmvine. Now that her beasties were no longer continuously laying siege to it, the Faunus slums, a.k.a. Greengrocer Lane, had been rebuilt and were doing better than ever. Actually, between that and mega-adorbs cutie pie Whitley's reforms, things were looking up for the Faunus.
For Blake…
Ruby liked to think that she would have been happy with this. Ruby had loved Blake in her own way – not in the same way as Weiss and Yang, but it had still been love – and, although she didn't talk about it as much as the others, Blake's betrayal had hurt Ruby. A lot. It made her feel a little bit better knowing that Blake's all-consuming dream of fixing the world for her people had mostly been accomplished.
"Hello! Remnant to Ruby!"
Yang slammed her arm into Ruby's back, causing her to stumble forward in a very undignified, not-queenly-at-all manner.
"Sis, we gotta go if we want to make it in time."
"The trip from here to our cabin is less than 1 picosecond, Yang. There's no 'make it in time'," she jeered at her sister sarcastically.
"Yes, but you'll play with your Grimm weapons all day if we don't drag you away from them by force," sighed Weiss. "Besides, you still need to get out of your clothes –"
"Weiss! I'm not that kind of girl!"
"– and into something more formal. We're having dinner with your parents. You can't show up in those Grimm splattered work rags."
Ruby put down the Grimm enhancement and let it meld into a modified Seer that she'd created to keep her toys fresh. Contrary to Weiss' suspicions, the Grimm she was making wasn't actually a weapon, but a prototype Grimm arm for Yang that would have all the same features her old robotic one Amphitere had and more. Ruby didn't say so, of course. Yang wasn't allowed to know until her birthday, when the arm was fully armed and operational. Right now, it was in the early stages of construction and couldn't survive on its own, hence the need for the Seer. The silly Grimm looked like a pincushion with all of the other half-formed weapons and experiments sticking out of it.
"Fiiiiine! Geez, you guys never let me do anything…"
"And remember to wash your hands," chided Weiss sharply. "Before we leave this time, please."
"I'm a Grimm, Weiss. Bacteria and viruses die instantly if they get into my body. Sicknesses should wash their hands so they don't catch me."
Yang shook her head disapprovingly. "You need to set a good example for the baby."
"The baby hasn't even been born yet!"
"And it won't be, not with that attitude."
"That makes no sense!"
So, yeah. That was that. Ruby was forever exiled from most of the world after she'd turned into a demonic monster queen that caused and also ended the bloodiest war in modern history. But she had her parents, and she had her Uncle Qrow, and she had her Weiss, and she had her Grimm, and she had the Castles, and she had her sister, and she was about to have another brand new sibling.
Maybe her life was going to be different from now on, but Ruby Branwen would never be alone again.
And that might just be enough.
Author's Notes
That's all, folks.
This was my first fanfic written, my first one posted, and my second one finished publication. I knew it would end eventually, but with 100 chapters, I never thought I'd see that day.
It took me a while to figure this out, but The Empty Seat was essentially my sandbox – I could put whatever cool idea I liked in here and mix it together with other cool ideas and just let things go wild. In everything else, there's a single central premise (White Fang spies, auraless Jaune, Neo-Ozpin joining), but here, it's just sheer and utter chaos in whatever form I could choose to make it. In some ways, that made it overly weird and borderline crack, but in others…it was still weird but also fun.
I hope you all enjoyed it. Keep an eye out for my upcoming works.
Happy rats, and don't do crime!
