SURPRISE BITCHES!
Oh wait I like you guys.
Uh, surprise, gents.
No, you haven't entered into an alternate reality, I have actually updated the story within a week. And I have good reason for that. I didn't want you guys to have to wait a month for the confession, and...
Last week, we passed the one year mark on Ira Lupus.
What the fuck.
Time really flies. Consider this chapter as a sort of thank you for sticking with this story for so long. I appreciate it more than I could put into words, which probably doesn't say good things about my abilities as a writer lol.
Regardless, I hope you like the chapter!
Crue was surrounded by women on all sides. And for once, he wasn't complaining about 'Harem Protagonist Bullshit'.
Ruby was on his right, clutching onto his arm like he might disappear again. Weiss was presumably doing the same on his left, not that he could feel it. Neo was on his lap, wrapped around his torso with her head nuzzled into his neck and, judging from her grip, had no plans on letting go anytime this century.
Life was good.
They had returned to a house Qrow was renting for their time in Mistral, and it was obvious it was not built to accommodate four teams worth of people. The room alone contained Teams RWBY, JNPR and SSSN, along with Crue, Neo, Qrow, and the weird kid Crue had yet to be introduced to.
All in all, it was quite cramped. And the only reason there weren't more people trying to kill Crue via hug after only just getting him back was because no one else would fit on the sofa.
Across from him sat JNPR, Blake and Yang, both members of RWBY sat at opposite ends while the partners of their sister team sat together. SSSN stood behind the sofa, Sun himself looking a tad upset he didn't get to be a part of the massive pile-on-group-hug earlier.
The kid had an armchair all to himself, with Qrow leaning against it. "I'm glad you're alive, kid." The man in question spoke, a smile that had never faded since finding out Crue was alive on his face.
"And I know everyone else here is too. But, we've got a lot of questions."
"Yeah, and I've got a lot of answers for you all, don't worry." Crue smiled reassuringly. "But, uh, before we start... Who's the kid? Should he be here for this?" He looked at the boy in question. He wore a dirty and scuffed white shirt with orange suspenders that held up olive pants.
He looked like a farmer. The boy blinked in surprise, suddenly feeling everyone's eyes on him. Save Neo, who's face remained pressed into the crook of Crue's neck. "He's trustworthy." Qrow answered for Crue, but the Faunus still stared at the kid, waiting for him to speak.
"Uh, I'm Oscar. Oscar Pine." He introduced himself with a small nod, an awkward smile on his face that showed he didn't quite know how to talk to a man who had just recently come back from the dead.
"Oscar Pine. Oscar. Pine. OscarPine. OsPine. Ospin." "Are you related to Ozpin by any chance?" He asked.
Nearly the whole room save SSSN, Blake and of course Neo, shared an intake of breath as they all looked between Oscar and Crue. "W-What?! Uh-No. Why would you say that?" Oscar answered much too quickly.
"Ok so you definitely are." Crue's face was flat but amused. "What, are you like his secret lovechild or something- wait. No. That would imply Ozpin had sex."
Several people snorted, though Oscar looked as though he just suffered the mother of all migraines. Which Crue considered a normal reaction to the idea of your parents doing it. "I think I should tell him." Oscar said, one eye closed as he winced.
"Not sure if that's the best idea right now." Qrow replied, nodding towards SSSN.
"Oh, they already know a fair bit." Crue said, as nearly everyone's eyes widened.
"We do?!" Sun gasped, looking at his team with shock.
"Ok, three quarters do." Crue amended. "And I doubt they're not going to tell Sun." He didn't even need to look in their general direction to know that Sage, Scarlet and Neptune nodded in agreement. "So, whatever other magic secret bullshit you've got will probably be small potatoes."
His words clearly left some questions, but nearly all of them were gone once Oscar spoke up, taking a familiar cane from behind his back and holding it between his legs. "Mr. Cullen."
Crue's eye narrowed immediately at the sudden change in speech and demeanour. "While I am glad to see you among the living, I will thank you to not make up any theories in regards to my personal life."
The tone and timbre were eerily familiar, along with what Oscar had just said and what he was holding left only one person in Crue's mind. "Ozpin...?" He looked the boy up and down, before focusing on his eyes.
Oscar's eyes had an outer ring of forest green, with an oblong circle of hazel in the centre. Yet the way they looked at Crue was so drastically different to how they did moments ago, it felt like he was talking to another person entirely.
"Well, you caught onto that fast. You did always excel at those kinds of things academically." Oscar... Ozpin... one of them, chuckled as he turned to look at the few who apparently were not aware of this. "Miss Belladonna. Team SSSN. It is good to see you all again."
Those mentioned dropped their jaws faster than Ruby dropped all her Lien on a new weapons magazine.
"You're actually Ozpin?" Crue himself was shocked, more so that he had never found out about this from another source.
"Yes." Ozpin nodded. He glanced around the room, hesitating upon seeing SSSN. But, regardless he continued. "I am cursed."
He stated it so confidently, so calmly, that no one found themselves able to interrupt. "For thousands of years, I've walked the surface of Remnant, living, dying and reincarnating in the body of a like-minded soul. The Professor Ozpin you all knew was not my first form, and clearly wasn't my last."
"So it's like Avatar?" "Like what?" "Fuckin-" Crue sighed, hanging his head as he did. His forehead rested on Neo's shoulder, and he snuck a glance her way. One pink eye looked back, listening carefully, but more focused on who she was holding than any world-shattering discoveries.
"I don't suppose you can prove it?" Crue asked, bringing his head back up and meeting Ozpin's gaze.
Ozpin sighed. "To prove it to the others, I performed a rather acrobatic feat that Oscar could not perform on his own. Yet, given the strenuous battle we have all endured, I find it would be best to simply say, I owe you a favour."
The term unlocked a memory in Crue's mind, and he knew in that moment without a doubt it was Ozpin. "Right. I told some politicians to fuck off and you were ridiculously happy about that."
"That you did." Ozpin smiled, clearly recalling the memory in question as happily as he did when he lived through it.
"Alright. It is you." Crue accepted, looking to Blake and SSSN as he did so. The five were clearly as in the dark as he was about this part, and seemed to only believe it once he had confirmed it.
"Yes. It is me." Ozpin agreed. "And I would very much like to know what you mean about Team SSSN knowing a fair bit about 'Magic Secret Bullshit'." The term was so far out of Ozpin's vernacular it distracted Crue for a moment.
"Yeah I'd like to know that too." Sun held up a hand, looking to his own team. Crue frowned softly, but nodded.
"I'll explain. Everything." Crue said softly, but there wasn't a chance that anyone could have missed his words. "But before that... You three might want to go to the other side."
For the first time since sitting down on the sofa, Neo lifted her head from Crue's shoulder to stare at him in confusion. The expression was mirrored by Weiss and Ruby, neither of whom wanted to leave his side.
"You'll want to be on that side, trust me." Crue tried to keep his breathing steady as he spoke. Reluctantly, his arms were released and Weiss and Ruby made their way over to the other sofa, Ruby sitting on Yang's lap almost instinctively upon seeing there was no more room.
Weiss, who may or may not have also wanted to do something like that, ended up sitting on the arm of the sofa next to Yang. Neo still hadn't moved, and Crue felt his conviction waver. "Neo. Please." He whispered.
The last time he had said that, it was going up against a Dust infused mountain of a man who had survived getting his neck snapped. This was a decidedly less dangerous situation, but it still left Neo with a sour taste in her mouth.
A soft frown on her face, Neo extricated herself from Crue, giving him a small kiss on the cheek before walking towards the side of the sofa that Blake was sat on. She leaned against it, her gaze never leaving Crue's form for a moment.
Crue wanted her back immediately. He wanted Weiss and Ruby back. He wanted their warmth, reminding him that these people were happy to see him alive. Instead, he was left in the cold, the few feet of distance between them feeling more like a ravine.
Crue took a deep, shuddering breath, and spoke.
"I'm sorry."
The tone of the room shifted immediately, setting everyone on edge. "I, I haven't lied to you. But I haven't been entirely truthful with you all either." Crue swallowed once, his one eye flicking between all his friends, yet not making eye contact with any of them.
"At some point in the time you've all known me. You've probably heard, whether from myself or someone else, that I have no memories of my time on Remnant before waking up in the Emerald Forest."
"That's true," Crue said, and a communal sigh of relief seemed to sweep through the room.
"But I'm not from Remnant."
And like that, any sense of relief was gone, replaced by a deafening silence.
There wasn't even a quiet 'What?' from anyone there, which Crue hated because at least it would have given him something to go off of.
There was nothing, so Crue had to fill the void himself.
"I, am not from Remnant." He repeated, as though there was any doubt his words hadn't been heard clearly the first time.
Still, not a person spoke. All of them were shocked into silence, staring at Crue with wide eyes. The only exception was SSN, who remained quiet only because this wasn't their place to speak.
"I was born on a world called Earth, where I had lived for nearly eighteen years before waking up in the Emerald Forest." The more he spoke, the more the eyes watching him widened. "I didn't know how or why I ended up there, all I knew was that I woke up with a new name and a weapon, away from everything and everyone I had ever known."
"And then I ended up in Beacon. After everything that happened, I didn't tell anyone because…" He took a breath.
"I was afraid."
"I was afraid you'd think I was crazy, and that you'd toss me out. Lock me away in some asylum where I'd be unable to help. Where I'd have to stay and watch everything around me burn down." His blue eye hardened.
"I had to do something. And then, Ozpin said I might have amnesia." He managed to glance in Oscar's direction, meeting his eyes and seeing it was the younger boy at the helm, his eyes no less wide than anyone else's.
"So I ran with it. Used it as an excuse. I never lied about who I was, or my past. I did lose my family. I was left alone." His breathing hitched as he brought up old memories. "But I never pretended to be someone else."
The gauntlets on his hands suddenly felt extremely heavy. "Well, except with these." The metal creaked as he formed a fist, trying to keep his composure. "I was always… me."
"But-" It was Yang who finally managed to speak up, her voice catching as she tried to make sense of what had just been revealed. "But that still doesn't explain how you knew what would happen to Beacon."
"You're right." Crue nodded, swallowing as he did so. His one eye briefly glanced to SSN, and they each gave a small nod of encouragement. "And that's where this gets… weirder."
"It gets weirder?" Someone, it might have been Nora, stage whispered.
"On Earth, there is no Aura. There are no Grimm. There's no Dust." With each statement, the looks of shock only grew. "And because of that, we have a lot more stories. Movies. Shows. Fairy Tales…"
The mention of fairy tales caused a few shared glances among the group. "And one of those shows…" Crue took a deep breath, psyching himself up.
"One of those shows is called R. W. B. Y. Or…"
"RWBY." The four members of team in question spoke as one, eyes never leaving Crue as the rest all turned to stare at them in disbelief. Crue found himself shrinking under their gaze as he continued.
"I know, this sounds insane. And I don't blame you if you don't believe me." He sighed. "But I said I would explain everything, and I'm going to."
"Not to throw them under the bus, but I already explained this to Sage, Scarlet and Neptune. And they took it about as well as you are now." Heads spun to stare at the boys in question, Sun especially.
The three simply nodded. "It took a while." Neptune told them. "But, he's got proof. Proof you may not like, but still."
"Phrasing, man." Crue winced as everyone whipped back round to stare at him. With a soft sigh, Crue retrieved his Scroll and held it up before everyone. "Scrolls don't exist on Earth." He said, opening and going to his gallery.
"We had phones. Same general premise. But, when I woke up in Remnant, my phone was gone and this was in its place." He opened a folder called 'PROOF' he had made after explaining everything to SSN in Kuchinashi.
"There are pictures on this Scroll of things that exist nowhere on Remnant. Buildings. Technology. Just, different places." There was no one immediately close to him, so he looked towards who he figured was the most travelled.
Qrow had the same disbelieving expression as everyone else, yet his eyes blinked into focus as Crue made to throw his Scroll to him. "I don't know if it will be enough, but it should hopefully be a start."
He threw it, and Qrow caught it without issue. "But for the love of God stay in that folder. There's some other stuff I… would rather you not see." His eye met Neo's. White and Brown. Upset, shocked and disbelieving. But listening.
Qrow held the Scroll up close so there was no chance of possibly misinterpreting a picture. Everyone's attention was on him as he swiped through them, his red eyes growing wider and wider as he did.
"I've never seen anything like these. Anywhere." Qrow looked up from the Scroll at Crue, still sceptical, but unable to deny what he had seen. Crue didn't sigh in relief, as it was one out of thirteen he had only started to convince.
"Pass it on." He requested, nodding to Oscar as he did so. The young boy took the Scroll carefully, and clearly it was more than just him analysing the pictures. While that was happening, Crue continued his truth.
"Have I ever said something that didn't make sense?" He asked. Nearly everyone's attention returned to him. "Or known something I had no right knowing?" He knew the answer to that question, and clearly so did those before him as they shared knowing glances.
"Yeah. That's because I watched that show. I knew what was going to happen. I knew-" His voice caught, and he glared down at himself. "I knew Beacon would fall, and I failed to stop it. The only thing I did right was stopping it from being worse."
The Scroll was still being passed round, but Crue couldn't think of much more to say on his own. He took a breath, raising his hands above his head. "So. Questions?" He asked, immediately putting them down over his ears as a veritable shockwave of sound suddenly assaulted him, nearly pushing him further back into the sofa.
He didn't tell them to stop, he knew they needed to get a lot of it out of their systems. And Crue could still vaguely hear pieces of what was being shouted, having only covered his Faunus ears.
Eventually, they realised how loud they were being and managed to hold off long enough for Crue to feel like it was safe to free his ears. "We weren't that bad, were we?" Scarlet asked.
"There were less of ye, but you were a lot closer." Crue answered with a sigh. "I'll answer everything, just, one at a time. Please." Everyone looked ready to shout, but held back while trying to figure out what it was they wanted to ask him first.
Out of the corner of his eye, Crue saw a hand being held up. He glanced at Oscar's form, seeing him waiting patiently as though he were in a class. A few others noticed him, and quickly copied, holding their hands up as high as they could and shaking it like they were trying to get a teacher's attention.
"Ozpin had his hand up first." Crue looked to the man in a child's body. He appeared surprised that Crue knew it was him before opening his mouth.
"Mr. Cullen." He started. "This, is clearly a lot to take in and a lot of claims you are making that are, to most of us, coming from nowhere. Yet I must ask, if this is all true, why did you not tell anyone this at some point after you had joined."
"Surely you must have realised we would not throw you out on the streets due to some spurious claims of being from another world." Crue found it amazing how Ozpin managed to say it with a straight face despite the fact he'd sooner believe the sky was green.
"The same reason as before." Crue looked to the ground, ashamed. "I was afraid you'd throw me out at the start, but then…"
"I ended up caring about you. All of you." He managed, for the first time since he started this confession, to meet their gazes head on. He refused to look away from them for this. "I cared- I care. About every one of you."
"And that made me more afraid. I wasn't afraid of you kicking me out, I was afraid of you hating me for what I knew. What I was. For keeping these secrets." He couldn't hold the their gaze any longer, instead turning to face Ozpin.
"I tried to help behind the scenes. Why do you think I made The Wolf- wait." Crue had tapped his head, before looking around in confusion. "Where's my helmet?"
"Oh." Yang looked up from the Scroll, where she and Ruby were both swiping through pictures. "Uh, I might have threw it at Cinder's head and she deflected it into an abyss. That she soon got knocked out into because of it."
Crue blinked once. Clearly having mixed feelings in regards to the worthy sacrifice his helmet made of distracting Cinder. He remembered using the same tactic the night on the tower. To no avail, his eye twitched in pain to remind him.
"And while you're on me I've got a question too." Yang stated, causing a few complaints, but Yang's lilac eyes stared at Crue. "Did you tell Raven all this?"
Crue inhaled sharply, before letting out a short sigh. "Yeah." He admitted.
"WHY WOULD YOU TELL HER?! AND NOT US?!" Yang's voice raised, her eyes flashing red as Ruby slapped her hands against her ears from the volume.
"Because I didn't care about her!" Crue barked back, frowning as he did. He hadn't intended to get angry during the confession, but him telling Raven was a mistake that he would never forget.
"Raven was a cunt of a human being who I would sooner chuck in the Liffey than spend any sort of time interacting with her." Crue's fists clenched, as he let out a sigh. "I didn't know a lot about her, but she threatened me to tell her what was going on with me."
He looked to JNPR. "That day she attacked us. I let on more than I should have and she told me that if I didn't return there that night she'd kill you all." They remembered the day clearly judging from the expressions.
"I couldn't let that happen. So, I told her. I hoped telling her Beacon would fall would make her get off her ass and actually help, but she didn't give a damn and we nearly got into a fight."
"So you stabbed her in the eye." Yang stated, eyes still narrowed with a deep scowl.
"That was actually an accident." Crue clarified. "One I don't have much of a problem with considering what a massive bitch she is, but still." The casual way he insulted Raven clearly won some points back in Yang's book, but there was still a ways to go.
Ren put up his hand, and Crue nodded to him. "While these pictures may prove that you are from another world," He looked down to the Scroll currently in Nora's hands. "And while I still find that hard to believe, you've given no proof as to your other claim of us being a… show."
The expression on Ren's face could be described as somewhere between complicated, constipated and confused. "You're not a show," Crue said quickly. "You are real. But, due to some one in a trillion fluke, my world happened to make a show that nearly perfectly copied everything here."
"But as for proof…" He sighed. "This was a show. Which meant that sometimes it showed things people would rather not be shown. Secrets, private conversations, moments of weakness." The more he described, the paler some faces got.
"I, I know things. Things that I shouldn't. But, I've kept this knowledge to myself the entire time I've known you. These things weren't my secrets to tell." He sighed, seeing how uncomfortable everyone was, before glancing over in Oscar's direction.
"This would be another reason I didn't say anything, by the way."
"I'm not going to reveal anyone's secrets," Crue promised. "And even then, it's only things that might have happened at Beacon. I don't know everyone's most intimate fears or, that time they stole from the cookie jar when they were twelve."
"But, I only showed up here at the start of the second semester. So, that means I shouldn't know anything that happened before that."
"But I do." His head suddenly rose, an idea forming. "I could tell you how your initiation went."
Such a thing wasn't a huge secret, and RWBY, JNPR and Ozpin all knew how it went.
"That… could work." Blake said slowly, clearly as confused as everyone else. The others all shared the sentiment, giving Crue the go ahead.
The Faunus nodded, swallowing once and opening his mouth to speak, before pausing. "Uh, Jaune. Could you…" He made a 'come here' gesture. Jaune looked confused as he stood up, relinquishing his hand from Pyrrha's.
Crue stood up as well, if only so Jaune wouldn't have to bend down to reach him. He made another gesture as Jaune turned so Crue could whisper into his ear. Several people leaned in to try and hear what was being said.
Whatever it was had Jaune's eyes widening as he leaned back, staring at Crue in shock. "How do you know tha-" He stopped, remembering everything that was going on when he saw Crue's expression of 'what did I tell you'.
"Oh. Wow." He turned round, his blue eyes holding a thousand-yard stare. "Uh, I believe him now." He returned to his spot on the sofa, slotting in between Pyrrha and Ren, both of whom looking at him with concern.
Before anyone could question what it was he was told, Crue started speaking.
"So. Everyone was flung off a cliff."
"I know that's common knowledge, seeing as I was also flung off a cliff." He spared a moment to give Ozpin a side-eye. A few huffs of breath were let out, the closest to a laugh he'd gotten since telling the truth.
The man in a child's body grew a faint smile but that was about it. "And Jaune had absolutely no landing strategy, and the only reason he didn't go splat was because Pyrrha kabedon'd him to a tree."
"I what?" "She what?" The questions were immediate, and Crue paused, realising some words wouldn't translate well.
"She pinned him to a tree with her spear." He clarified. A small gasp left Pyrrha, being well aware of her own actions during the initiation.
"After that I think it showed Ruby running through the forest desperately trying to find Yang, and wound up running into Weiss." He glanced at the two in question. Weiss held a sceptical frown, and Ruby…
Ruby was looking at him with an expression he couldn't quite understand. "Weiss didn't want to partner with Ruby because of everything that happened the day before, like how she sneezed and exploded her."
"But, after she walked off she ended up seeing Jaune in a tree and went with Ruby." The Heiress' blue eyes widened as he described exactly what she had done. "Lesser of two dorks."
"After that, I think it showed Yang fighting two Ursa. You were just kind of toying with them until they cut your hair and you went ballistic." Yang tried not to show a reaction, but her jaw tightened at the reminder.
"You knocked one through like, twenty trees and… I can't remember if you killed both and then another showed up or you killed one of the first two, but you asked the other if it wanted some, and then it keeled over dead because Blake stabbed it in the back."
The girl in question winced at his description of the attack, despite the fact it was true. Crue couldn't help but notice the amount of people separating them. "Then it showed Pyrrha and Jaune walking through the forest and Jaune got a smack off a branch."
"It actually hurt him and because of that, Pyrrha unlocked his Aura."
"Pyrrha unlocked your Aura?!" All of SSSN turned to stare at Jaune, as Crue suddenly looked horrified.
"You said they knew!" He met Jaune's eyes, the boy sighing as he nodded.
"Sorry. I meant my team and RWBY. I, kinda forgot you guys didn't know." He turned to face them.
"So I'm guessing that means you knew as well." Crue stated, looking to Ozpin. That seemed to cause a ripple of realisation as several heads turned to stare at him.
"Yes, I was aware of Mr. Arc's Aura being unlocked during initiation." Ozpin nodded. "However, I did not know it hadn't been unlocked beforehand. If I did, I would not have let you take part."
"After that, I took a closer look at your transcripts." His eyes stared at Jaune as he sipped from a mug that seemed to come out of nowhere.
Instead of looking embarrassed or ashamed, Jaune scowled. "But you let me stay anyway." His tone was accusatory, and took the room off guard.
"Yes." Ozpin answered, looking surprised at his attitude. "You turned into a fine Leader and Huntsman."
Jaune's gloves creaked as he balled his fists, clearly angry with Ozpin's words. Instead of continuing, he turned his gaze back to Crue. "What happened next?"
"Oh. Uh." Crue blanked, having been distracted by what was going on. "Uh, launch. Kabedon. Weiss and Ruby, Yang and Blake. Aura. Ren-Ren!" Crue murmured, before getting back on track and looking to the ninja.
Ren sat up a bit straighter, his hands on his knees as he waited to see what Crue would say. "You killed a King Taijitu close to barehanded. It was pretty cool."
Ren blinked, looking oddly relieved at what was said. "That was all that was shown?" He asked.
"Uh, yeah. You killed it and then Nora made the sloth call and joined up with you. Why?" Crue's head tilted slightly as he asked. Ren hesitated for the briefest moment, glancing away as he scratched his cheek with a finger.
"I, may have tripped moments before fighting the Taijitu." Crue wondered if his eye was playing tricks on him or if Ren actually had a faint blush.
"Really?" It was clear this was news to everyone else in the room, including Nora. "You never trip Renny."
"I was distracted, trying to make sure I found my partner."
"Aww." Nora wrapped her arms around Ren's, her aqua eyes sparkling. Ren's blush increased, and a few people smiled at the scene.
"I think that's some proof for everyone, I know there was a lot more, but you guys all came together after that. Well there was the thing with the torch and the Deathstalker and Jaune getting yeeted into the sky." Crue's mouth was beginning to run dry from explaining it.
"We were in a cave on our own for that." Pyrrha stated. Crue wanted to make a joke about a similar cave and secret tunnel helping two people in love, but he already made one joke about Avatar that fell flat so making another felt like it would be a waste.
His eye flicked to Neo, seeing her making a motion while pointing to her chest. "You didn't actually show up until the second Volume." He told her. "You… didn't get a lot of screentime."
Neo's face morphed, wondering if she should be annoyed by such a thing that she wasn't actually sure she believed. He was going to offer her some words of compassion, saying whenever she was on screen people usually liked her, were it not for Weiss suddenly throwing her hand into the air and shaking it so hard it might fall off.
"Uh, Weiss?" Crue called on her to speak.
"I have several questions about everything you have just told us." She said quickly. "But firstly, why is she here and why did she kiss you?!" She pointed a finger at Neo accusingly, who's pink and brown eyes swapped in confusion.
"Did Ruby not tell you?" Crue asked, looking to the silver eyed girl in confusion. She didn't appear to have heard him, staring at a picture on his Scroll.
Seeing she was unresponsive, Crue sighed. "Right. This isn't something I thought I'd be explaining today. Ok, first, does everyone know who this is?" He asked, gesturing to Neo with an open hand.
"Neo-" "Polly." "-tan."
RWBY and SSSN all stared at JNPR, who were staring back, wondering why everyone had said a different name. "WAIT!" Weiss suddenly exclaimed, eyes going wide as she looked at Neo. "YOU'RE POLLY?!"
Neo gave a small, not really apologetic, smile as she blinked, her eyes becoming a jade green. Weiss let out a shocked gasp, throwing her hands up. "I can't believe this! I can't believe I didn't realise it sooner!"
Her ranting soon became background noise as she left her place by the sofa, walking in circles as she tried to come to terms with this. "How did you guys know she was Polly?" Crue looked directly at Nora, remembering what she said during the battle.
The rest of her team turned to stare at her as well. To Crue's surprise, Nora's cheeks began to turn red. "Oh. Uh, was that meant to be a secret?" She asked, scratching the side of the cheek as she laughed awkwardly.
"Yes." Crue squinted at Nora in confusion before glancing at Neo. She seemed equally as confused. "Yes it was. How the Hell did you know? How long have you known?"
Nora's eyes were unable to meet anyone else's, staring at a fixed point above Crue's head as she gave a soft cough. "Uh, you remember that crazy time in Beacon when I nearly took your head off with my hammer?" She asked, placing both hands on her lap and trying to look as apologetic as possible.
Crue blinked in surprise, thinking about it.
"You're gonna have to be more specific." He requested. He and Nora had sparred quite a few times before, and sometimes stuff just happened.
Nora looked as though she was dreading that response. "Uh, the one where I thought I heard a Beowulf in Professor Port's class…" She trailed off, aqua eyes looking anywhere around the room aside from the Neo and Crue themselves.
It clicked, and the two suddenly turned the same shade of white. "Yeah, that one." Nora said with a sigh. "I looked inside cause I did think I heard a Beowulf. And I saw… you two."
"YOU DID IT IN PORT'S-" "But how'd that make you realise who she was?" Crue cut across Qrow and Ozpin's horrified exclamation, and tried desperately to ignore everyone else's look of shock and disgust.
Nearly all of it came from the fact it was Port's classroom. If it had been anyone else's there probably wouldn't have been as much astonishment. But Oobleck barely left his and like Hell he was risking doing it in Goodwitch's.
"Because I saw you and her." Nora answered, nodding towards Neo as she did. When Crue opened his mouth to question it, she continued. "Not you and Polly." His teeth clicked shut as he realised what she meant.
"We were not as careful as we thought we were." He whispered. Neo nodded in agreement, trying to ignore the piercing stare Blake was giving her. "Wait." Crue blinked, refocusing on Nora.
"You tried to smash my head in cause you thought I was cheating on Polly?"
"Yeah. Duh." Nora said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world as she looked at Neo. The shorter girl placed a hand against her heart in genuine appreciation. Crue placed a hand against his head in genuine fear. "After that you and Polly came out, instead of you and her."
"But, then what did you tell the others?" He asked.
"That Polly had a thing for cosplay." She shrugged. "We don't shame."
Crue let his head fall into his hands as he let out a muffled scream. "I almost wish I stayed dead." He mumbled, before righting himself. He spotted Sun holding up a hand and nodded to him.
"How come you told these guys?" He jabbed a thumb towards the rest of his team.
"Cause they found me first." Crue answered. "I was planning on telling everyone regardless, they just kind of ended up being a practice run."
"Yep. We found out who 'Jesus Christ' was as well. Totally worth it." Scarlet added.
"You said that Earth-" Blake began, pausing as she tried to come to terms with what she just said. "That Earth had no Grimm. No Dust, no Aura." She stared just above his head. "Did they have Faunus?"
Crue winced at the question. "No… Only humans." Blake and Sun's eyes were like dinner plates. "When I woke up here I had one new name, two new ears and a whole lot of new people suddenly being racist to me."
The two other Faunus looked deeply disturbed by this information. "Well, at least that means there was no racism." Neptune said, smiling as he tried to look on the bright side.
Crue let a sigh bluster his lips as he leaned back, wincing. "Well…" "Oh come on!" Sun exclaimed.
"How was there racism when there was only humans?!" Blake shared in his disbelief, and clearly everyone was wondering the same.
"People found different, stupider reasons to be racist. It was mostly skin colour." That had nearly everyone looking down at their hands in confusion, wondering what the difference was. "Though honestly sometimes just being from a different place was enough. There used to be a lot of racism against people from where I was from, but that was well before my time."
"And what Kingdom are you from?" Nora asked. "I know you said Earth, dumb name for a world by the way-" "Oi!" "-but what part of it? Me, Ren and Pyrrha are from Mistral, Weiss is from Atlas, a lot of others are from Vale."
"We didn't have Kingdoms, we had countries." That alone seemed to throw off a lot of people. "And I'm from a country called Ireland. I'm Irish." The term clicked with a lot of minds, several of them realising they had heard Crue use that term before.
"Agus seo í mo theanga." He told them. "That's my language."
"Are, uh, Irish?" Jaune began, waiting to see if Crue corrected him on the pronunciation. When the Faunus nodded, he continued. "Are Irish people good at anything? Like, how Atlas is really advanced with technology, or how Mistral has a lot of art?" He explained.
Crue ignored the immediate urge to say 'drinking' because it felt as though he'd be insulting his entire homeland at once.
"…pining." He eventually decided on. "A lot of music, our literature, a lot of it involves pining in some shape or form. Mostly pining for freedom." He made a mental note to play them some Hozier, and hopefully that would help them understand.
"Weird thing to be good at." Qrow muttered, taking a swig from his hip flask. Crue's throat immediately felt parched, but he resisted the impulse to mimic him.
"You said the Fall of Beacon could have been worse." Yang stated, as Crue's entire body suddenly tensed. He turned to look at her, as her robotic hand flexed its fingers. "How could it have been worse? What happened in- in the show that made it worse?"
"I-" Crue hesitated, completely clamming up. He didn't want to say what happened, worried that somehow saying what he prevented would somehow undo it. His eye tried to remain on Yang, but unwillingly, it flicked towards someone else.
"I-" "I died."
Crue closed his eye and crumpled as Pyrrha spoke. Her emerald eyes were wide as everyone turned to stare at her. Crue couldn't meet her gaze. "I was fighting Cinder on my own. And, and I was losing. She would have killed me if you hadn't shown up."
"But you weren't meant to be there." She didn't mean it harshly, but Crue still looked up with a wet eye.
"You did." He confirmed, and it was as though the breath had left Pyrrha's lungs as she slumped in her seat, Jaune immediately gripping her hand tight. "And so did Penny. And so did Ozpin. And so did so, many, others."
People he'd made friends with in Beacon. People he'd never seen in the show. He had no idea who survived. "And it was all my fault."
An immediate chorus of 'No it wasn't', 'Don't you dare blame yourself' and most commonly, 'It was Cinder's fault' sounded out.
"No." Crue shook his head. "You don't understand, I…" He sighed, trying to explain.
"I didn't just end up in Remnant. I was brought here."
His words brought the room to silence, everyone looking concerned. "Who could have brought you here?" Ren asked, before nearly every head in the room turned to look at Oscar. The boys eyes widened in surprise as he held his hands up defensively.
"It wasn't him." Crue spared the boy from anger directed at the one in his head. "And it wasn't Ozpin either. It was someone else entirely."
"Salem." Someone whispered, causing a sense of concern to wash over those present.
"She wishes." Crue let out a dry laugh, before his smile fell and he shook his head. "No, wasn't her either. It was a completely different asshole with a God complex."
"And actually thanks to this," He nodded towards the glowing lamp on the table in the middle of the room. "Things actually make a bit more sense, to me anyway."
"There was another Relic." He began, and immediately clocked Ozpin switching in as his face turned a shade paler. "One called the 'Relic of Reality'. And I'll give you three guesses what it did."
"Let you change reality?" "Let you change realities?" "Let you change- dang it." The answers came immediately, and Crue didn't have the heart to tell them it was a rhetorical question.
"Not at first." He told them, sighing as he remembered everything he had learned. "So there was this right bastard called 'The Author'."
"I don't know his actual name, and I never bothered to find out. But, he had the Relic. And he was around for… a while." He had no idea how long The Author had been alive, even ignoring the amount of time between when he got the Relic, and when he figured out how to use it, with the amount of resets he made he could have been eons old.
"How long is a while?" Ozpin asked, both hands on his cane and a concerned frown on his face.
"Since before Dust. Before Huntsmen. Before Faunus." He explained, and with each example he grew paler. "He was 'the Scribe Of The Gods'." He made some quotation marks, before remembering the images he conjured.
"Who were apparently real but fucked off." He shrugged. "The Relic of Reality was like a book. Except at the start it only recorded Reality. The Author found a way to make it so it changed reality instead."
"He made himself a God. Or close enough to one, anyway. He used the Relic to change reality however he wanted. He's been messing with this world long before I got here, long before any of us." With each word, eyes before him widened.
"He's even reset this world before. Changed things around, just to see what happens." Crue scowled as he spoke. The Author had never given any examples, but the worst case scenarios played out in his head.
"I don't know how many times he did it. But, eventually he got bored of messing with just this world, and started bringing in Heroes from other worlds." Briefly, Crue wondered which sounded more believable.
Him being from another world, or The Author existing and changing this one.
"And then, he got bored of that too. Got bored of seeing the good guys win every time." He wondered how many times the people before him had come so close to defeating Salem, only to have the world around them change just because The Author felt like it.
"And then, he found my world. He found me." Crue fell quiet after that, waiting for someone to say something.
"But, that would mean you were-" "Brought here to be a Villain." Crue finished Jaune's words, not quite able to look anyone in the eye.
"That's ridiculous." Weiss spoke up for the first time since her rant about Neo ended. Crue looked up at her in surprise. "Who would believe you were a Villain?"
"That's what we said!" Neptune agreed.
"I had anger issues, a willingness to throw hands at the drop of a hat and, thanks to The Author's fuckery, a connection to Salem." At that, everyone save SSSN, Blake and Neo leaned back from Crue.
"What do you mean a connection to Salem?" Ozpin asked immediately, hands gripping his cane tight.
"All of Salem's top people have magic. Gifts, given to them by her to give them an edge over us. And they take the form of Golden Eyes." He wasn't sure how many of them knew about that, but it wasn't as though the information could hurt.
"Kind of like a 'one up' on yours." He looked to Ruby as he said it, her silver eyes staring straight at him, but saying nothing.
"That does not answer the question, Mr. Cullen." Ozpin interrupted, causing Crue to glare at him.
"I'm getting there. Unsurprisingly, this is a lot for me too, dick." He breathed a sigh of annoyance, before looking to Qrow. "You remember Mentis?"
The older man was caught off guard by the sudden question, but recovered easily as everyone turned to look at him. "Yeah. Pretty standard stuff, except for the creepy psychiatrist lady."
"Yeah, well her Semblance let her get inside people's heads and muck about in them. Making them do what she said, changing their personality. Bad stuff. But, when she tried it with me, it was after I headbutt her and said 'come on in'.
"And, I can remember what it was like inside my head. Trippy as that sounds." He sighed, cracking the joints in his neck as the memory surfaced. "There was Grimm. In my head."
"And I'm not talking about some weird metaphor for depression or anything. It was an actual Grimm, and Salem was able to talk to me through it." Those who had heard about Salem, and those who had seen her illusion, began to shake.
"Obviously I didn't listen to a damn word she said." Crue didn't feel like he should need to say it, but did, just in case. "But, she told me she'd be seeing me soon. And she was right."
"Later that night, during the bonfire, I went into the woods alone for like, a minute. I passed out thanks to the mother of all migraines after I thought about fighting against Salem, and a Nevermore picked me up."
"I remember a small swarm of Nevermore showed up." Qrow said, eyes wide. "But because there were so many Huntsmen around it was over like that." He snapped his fingers. "I did wonder where you were, but didn't think too much about it."
"Gee, thanks." Crue smiled through the sarcasm. "Not that it would have mattered if you went looking. That Nevermore was taking me all the way to Salem." The smile fell. "I woke up above this fucked up looking castle in the- what's the name of the big dragon continent?"
Such a casual question being thrown out after all of that had the rather expected effect of causing massive complaints. "Ok! Christ! You know I suck at geography!"
"It's Nebris." Ozpin answered. "More commonly to referred to as the Grimmlands. Now, continue, Mr. Cullen." His angry expression didn't suit Oscar's face, but Crue did so.
"I woke up above a fucked up looking castle in the Grimmlands- Really? And you said Earth was a dumb name?" "CRUE!" "Alright!" He gave an annoyed sigh.
"The thing dropped me and I figured out a few seconds before I hit the ground that I didn't have to be touching something for my Semblance to activate." He would have given a demonstration, but everyone present was well aware of how his Semblance worked.
"Ended up in the worst designed dining room I've ever seen." He tried to joke, but it fell flat. "There were three of Salem's followers there. One was your man Hazel-" He gestured behind him with a thumb, referring to the battle that had just taken place.
"Actually." He brought the hand back to point at Ozpin, a warning expression on his face. "I want to talk to you about him." Ozpin scowled, but said nothing. "The other was this pompous dickhead called Arthur Watts, who I've recently been lead to believe died a while ago."
Weiss reacted worst to that, Watts having worked for Atlas and designed a lot of their software. "And the other was this mad bastard called Tyrian Callows."
"WHAT?!" Jaune, Ren, Nora and Qrow exclaimed, looking extremely alarmed. Ruby shared in their expression, looking between the group she travelled with and Crue.
"He attacked us on our way to Mistral!" Jaune explained for the benefit of those who were unaware.
"He what?!" Crue shouted, nearly jumping to his feet. "I should've ripped that bastards tail off when I had the chance!"
"Ruby beat you to it." Nora smirked. Sun suddenly found a reason to be on the other side of his team, putting as many people between him and Ruby as he could. Qrow caught him and sighed.
"He was a bad guy, it was a scorpion tail, and he poisoned me with it, sunshine." Qrow lifted up his shirt as he spoke, showing a thin scar on his lower abdomen.
Sun gave an awkward laugh, scratching the back of his head with his hand. "Right. Right, of course. Ruby wouldn't just do that to any old Faunus." Despite that, Sun had his tail wrapped tightly around his leg.
Ruby remained quiet through the whole interaction, and Crue noted she had been weirdly silent through his entire explanation.
"I nearly got into a scrap with him as soon as we met." Crue looked to Qrow apologetically, wondering if he could have prevented the injury. "But, I wasn't able to fight. Wasn't able to do anything." A lump in his throat suddenly made itself known, and Crue had difficulty swallowing.
"Salem appeared."
The two words were enough to sap the warmth from the room, leaving everyone with a ghastly chill. "And, I couldn't do a damn thing. Could barely breathe. There was just this, this pressure. I couldn't even mo-ve." Crue blinked in surprise, looking down and finding himself shaking.
"Oh. Cool. PTSD. Hah." He tried to laugh it off, but couldn't find it in him to actually manage it. "She said I was supposed to work with her. With all of them. I was supposed to be the 'King Piece' to finish off the set."
"I told her to shove it. Obviously." The ghost of a smirk crawled its way onto his face. "But, after that, she gave me my gift."
He tried to swallow, as his right hand reached towards his eyepatch. He couldn't get a grip on it, with his arm shaking so much. "Fuck." Crue whispered out, his breathing suddenly heavy as he had to grab his arm with his other hand to stop it shaking.
The sound of someone pushing off the sofa and approaching him reached his ears, and he didn't get to see who until a hand gently held his arm. Pink and brown eyes met his, and Crue felt his entire being calm.
Neo sat down next to him, the very presence of her body calming Crue's breathing almost instantly. She was staring at him with eyes that swam with concern and care, and Crue could find no words to describe how it made him feel, aside from safe. His shaking slowly left his body completely, and Crue managed to take a proper breath.
"Thank you." He whispered, before taking off his eyepatch.
There was an audible inhale from everyone, seeing the injury that Cinder had caused him. A terrible, jagged scar ran across his eyelid and socket, and cut his brow in half.
And then, he opened his eye.
Ozpin leapt to his feet, Blake and Weiss gasped, and everyone else was at a loss for words.
An eye with pitch black sclera and a golden iris stared out at them.
Having sat down on his right side, Neo had no idea what they were reacting to. She reached out, gently grabbing Crue's chin and turning him to face her.
Her own eyes widened, brown briefly becoming white at the sight of the scar, before she blinked once again. Soft pink and brown eyes stared at Crue as Neo pointed between the two of them and intertwined her fingers.
For the first time since finding out his eye was like this in Kuchinashi, Crue found a reason to be happy about it. "Yeah, we do match now." He smiled.
The sound of a scuffle caught his attention, and he turned, seeing Qrow forcing Ozpin to stay in his seat. He was about to ask what the Hell was going on, before Weiss' shrill voice sounded out.
"You're the Monster!"
His shoulders hunched immediately, his ears lying flat against his head. He turned to look at her, his golden eye on full display. It was full of shame as he nodded.
"We thought you killed you!" Blake's amber eyes, the shade so clearly different to his, were full of angry tears. Crue was confused by the words, but it seemed no one else was.
"That Monster barged into the cafeteria when we were there! And when we got out we found Penny! And Setanta!" Weiss held up his weapon for emphasis. "We thought you were dead! We thought that thing killed you!"
Remorse was written all over Crue's face, and he only felt worse on the inside. He recognised it wasn't just him feeling this way. "I didn't hurt you, did I?" He didn't know what he would do if he did.
"No." Blake answered, taking a breath and looking as though she wanted to say more. "No. It went after Adam. And now that I'm looking back on it, it was only after it saw we were hurt it went after him."
Relief flooded his system with the knowledge he hadn't hurt anyone he cared about. Physically, that is. He still caused them unimaginable emotional pain for making him think he was dead.
"How could you consider using Salem's magic this way?!" Ozpin demanded, hand still gripping his weapon as Qrow fought to keep him still.
"Says the guy who turned Thing 1 and Thing Two into birds." Crue scowled, his access to both eyes now making it even more effective. He spared a glance towards Qrow, somewhat sorry for putting him in the crossfire.
But, it appeared the older man was actually on his side as he instructed Ozpin to calm down, holding him in a headlock from behind the chair as he did. "And I don't consider using it." Crue told him. "I don't have a choice."
He sighed, looking away from Ozpin and to the rest of his, he hoped he could still call them friends. "I didn't have a choice when this magic was forced on me, and I don't have much of a choice when I use it."
"I transform into a monster whenever my Aura breaks. When my soul can't hold it back anymore."
It was hard to tell if this fact set them at ease, or worried them more. It was clear that Ozpin wasn't ease from the way he was struggling to get out of Qrow's grip with Oscar's body. Crue frowned at the sight, grabbing his eyepatch and beginning to put it back on, hoping it would calm him down some.
Neo stopped him, placing a hand on his arm and staring directly at his eye. Crue froze, his grip on the patch tightening, before he lowered his hand let his eye remain free.
"Look." He started, turning back to the group. "I know this is a lot to take in. And I don't blame you if you don't believe me and I, I'd get it if you don't want me around anymore but," Neo's gentle grip became like iron as she clamped down on Crue's arm, as those across from him suddenly froze in shock. "I still care about all of you, and I still want to help."
"Why would you think we don't want you around?!" Weiss exclaimed.
"We just got you back." Blake agreed.
"We spent all this time upset about you being dead!" Yang told him.
The words spilled forth with conviction that shocked Crue to his core, his eyes widening at their assurances.
"Even if you weren't entirely truthful, you've been helping us all this time." Ren stated, despite the calm tone he was as serious as everyone else.
"You nearly died helping us!" Jaune reminded him.
"We're not going to get rid of you after that!" Nora continued. "If we did it would be- it would be-" She seemed to struggle to find a word suitable for what they felt.
"Fucking stupid." Pyrrha enunciated, everyone's heads snapping to her in shock at the language, before turning back to Crue as they voiced their agreement.
"But I didn't tell the truth about who I was! Where I was from- what I knew!" Crue wasn't sure why he was defending their right to get rid of him, but he couldn't just let all this go without consequence.
"Yeah and neither did Ozpin but we still keep him around." Jaune managed a slight smirk, causing a few snorts from the group as he jabbed to the person in question.
Ozpin ceased his struggling, his face contorting into annoyance as he stared at a random point. He sighed, and his eyes flashed, Oscar coming back into control. "He's-gk. Uh, Mr. Branwren. Could you stop." Oscars hand rapidly tapped Qrow's arm.
Qrow let up immediately, offering a short apology to the kid. "Thank you." His voice sounded a little scratchy as he rubbed his throat. "But, I told him how much of a hypocrite he was being. He didn't really like that."
The way Oscar smiled shyly showed he didn't much care for what Ozpin didn't like. "But, I can make sacrifices to keep him in check." He took a long sip of coffee from his mug, his face contorted into disgust once he finished.
Crue let out a sigh of relief, happiness, and countless other emotions that swirled within him, knowing that his worst fears hadn't come to fruition. He turned back to look at his friends, blinking in surprise as he saw a pale hand raised.
"Ruby?" She was staring at his Scroll, and thanks to the way they were designed, Crue could see the picture was of a younger him and several others.
Silver eyes looked up from the photo to meet Crue's. "What was your name?"
Crue froze, the question suddenly sending him for a loop as Ruby continued. "You said when you woke up here, it was with nothing but Setanta and a new name." Everyone realised she was right, turning to Crue to see his response.
"What was your name? Who were you, Crue?" She finished.
"Huh." Crue's brows knit together in a soft frown, a complicated expression on his face. "You know, it's been so long since I even thought of it." He scratched the back as he thought about it.
"That's not a cop out." He held up his hand to excuse himself. "I remember it, of course."
"But, that's not who I am anymore. As far as I'm concerned, I am Crue Cullen. And I always will be." He smiled, a strange sense of pride welling up within his heart. Everyone else matched his expression, Ruby included.
"But, my old name was…"
"Darragh Faolán."
"PFFFFFT."
"Oh it's not that weird is it!?" Crue glared at Oscar as the boy had just spat out a mouthful of coffee. Several angry stares landed on the boy, who suddenly looked very afraid.
"No! That wasn't me!" He waved his hands wildly. "It was-" His eyes suddenly flashed, and his expression was no longer fearful.
"YOU'RE DARRAGH FAOLÁN!?" Ozpin yelled, dropping his cane as he jumped to his feet, his eyes wide as he stared at Crue.
"Yes?"
"I-You-Hnng!" Ozpin made several un-Ozpin like noises and motions, including one that looked like he wanted to strangle Crue, before he stumbled back into the chair, suddenly looking a lot younger.
"He's freaking out." Oscar relayed the obvious.
"From my name?!" Crue looked a mixture of confused and offended.
"Apparantly-eow!" Oscar suddenly gripped his head in pain. "What's a Hibernian!?"
"That's what we thought Crue was." Qrow answered, looking to the Faunus. "At least until now."
Crue's right eye began to twitch. "You have a place here called Hibernia?"
"Yeah. Why?" Qrow asked, looking at Crue strangely.
He looked as though he might explode. "Hibernia was an ancient name for Ireland when it was first discovered." He brought a hand up to pinch his nose, letting out an explosive sigh.
He was distracted by Oscar getting up and covering his ears, humming loudly as he tried to drown out Ozpin. It didn't look very effective.
"So, are you guys just all, fine with this?" Crue had to ask, seeing how well they were taking it.
"No." "Absolutely not." "Not a chance." "I'm going to do my freaking out later." Were the general responses. Crue nodded in fairness, before glancing down at Neo to see what she thought of it.
Her arms were wrapped around his, her head resting on his shoulder and also looking out at the group before them. Crue turned back to face them.
"So, any more questions?"
And now, it's your turn.
I meant to have something in last chapters Author Notes asking you guys to leave some questions. Either stuff about Crue you wanted to know or things you think the group should ask.
Speaking of, they are by no means fine with this. They will all have their existential crises at a late date. By which I mean probably next chapter lol.
This is mostly the same thing Crue explained to SSN, save a certain mentioning of 'Little Red Riding Hood'. The whole allusions thing will be explained later, but for now Crue is just explaining the basics and will go more in depth when asked.
I think that's the best way to prove it really, at least to the group.
But, more proof will come next chapter. I'm not sure if I can get it done in a week or not, but I'll try.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Let me know if you did, and as always...
Until Next Time
-Friday