Sam
"So, what if there's nothing we can do?" I asked after Ruby had went to bed. And by went to
bed, I mean passed out on the couch. The rest of us quietly (okay, not so quietly) moved to
the computer room and shut the door behind us.
I should probably take a moment to describe Ben's insane server room. It was once a decent
bedroom, but now it looks like something you'd see in a decent-sized tech business. There's
two big racks on one wall, both filled with lots of servers and other crap with lots of
blinking lights. Two computer stations, both with multiple monitors. A workbench covered
in bits of computer. Extra towers, monitors, and laptops crammed in empty spaces and in
bins and shelves. And cables, cables everywhere, although they're mostly tied up against the
ceiling or behind equipment.
Once, I had asked Cliff how Ben powered all this crap, and he told me that this is why Ben
didn't have a functional dryer. I'm still not sure if he was joking or not.
Ben and Jen took their usual chairs, Isaac sat on the floor, Cliff took the extra chair, and I sat
on the workbench. That got me a disapproving look from Ben.
Ben began, "Then... that's a good question, isn't it?"
Isaac insisted, "We can't just stop."
"What are we gonna do, Isaac?" Cliff replied exasperatedly. "There's five of us, we've got
fuck all resources between us, and we don't know what we're doing. We're not exactly the
most resourceful bunch, either. There's not a lot we can do."
He paused dramatically, or what he thought was dramatically, anyway. "I hate to be that guy,
but we're also taking a lot of risks to help someone who is a complete stranger who we only
have a vague idea of the intentions and capabilities of. Every step we take increases that
risk. That's financial risk, risk of getting in trouble with the law, and, eventually possibly the
risk of getting killed."
"That's dark," Jen muttered.
"Well, you should keep going if you're in hell," Isaac quoted.
Cliff shot him a look. "The quote is 'If you're going through hell, keep going.' Winston
Churchill, IIRC."
"Did you just-"
"Yeah, I did."
"This is serious, though," Jen interrupted. "We need to figure out what we can do and what
we're going to do."
"Like a contingency plan," Cliff said. "Figure out what our possible courses of action are,
then which course we're going to take."
"Yeah."
"Okay, what are our possible courses of action?" I asked.
"Option one, we dump Ruby on the street and pretend nothing ever happened," Cliff
suggested, before quickly adding. "Okay, I'll admit, that's pretty heartless, even for me."
"I'm not even sure if that would work," Isaac added. "She might just come back, like a cat."
"I thought Blake was the cat," Ben pointed out, missing the point completely.
"I think we can all agree we're not going to go down that road," I concluded. "What else can
we do?"
"Dump her on the proper authorities," Cliff suggested next. "Again, not a course of action I
would necessarily recommend, but I feel it's necessary to put it out there."
Isaac said, "Yeah, there's a lot of problems with that."
"Well, maybe," Jen added. "We could teach her about our world first, build up a cover
identity. Instead of taking Ruby Rose the fictional character to social services, we take
Ruby... Jones the homeless orphan to social services. I mean, I don't like it, for a lot of
reasons, but it's a possibility."
"I don't want to do that without talking to Ruby first," I assured her. "I think that's the first
thing we can say is actually an option, though it's not really a good one."
"Should we be writing this down?" Isaac asked.
"This isn't a class," I pointed out. "Okay, what else could we do?"
"Keep going the way we were going," Cliff suggested again. "Keep Ruby here, keep
searching. Don't stop, just continue."
"How long can we keep that up?" Ben asked.
Cliff replied, "Honestly, not very long. We're all busy with our own lives, and we've
exhausted the easiest avenues that are most likely to produce results. We could try other
things, but it's gonna take time and effort we don't have."
Isaac glared at him. "Effort? This is RWBY we're talking about, man!"
"A poor choice of words on my part. I meant resources."
"Okay, so we can't keep searching?" I half-asked, half-concluded.
"Not if we want to continue our own lives, no," Cliff answered, shaking his head. "And I'm
not prepared to drop everything, not even for the Ruby Rose."
"So, what do we do with Ruby?" I asked.
"She could keep staying here," Cliff suggested. Seriously, he's like a suggestion machine at
this point.
"We're-" Ben began, but Jen cut him off.
"Perfectly happy to have her here indefinitely," she said, shooting Ben a look.
"Where else could she go?" I asked.
"Maybe relatives or friends, but I think it's better that we don't tell a lot of people," Isaac
offered.
"Agreed," I agreed.
"So, do we put her in school?" Isaac asked.
"What school?"
"I mean when it comes back," Isaac corrected himself.
"It might be a good idea, yeah," Cliff agreed. "Gives her exposure to our world, and, more
cynically, keeps her off our backs."
"Isn't that a bit unsafe, throwing her into that environment?" Jen asked.
"Two to three times stronger than an Earth human, at the low end. Probably more, actually.
She's not going to have any problems."
"Well, that's the problem. I mean, fitting in and such. Not looking like, well, Ruby Rose."
"Lots of weird people in high school," Cliff pointed out. "Also, refuge in audacity. As long
as she doesn't whip out Crescent Rose in the middle of class or something stupid like that,
everyone's going to dismiss any similarities as coincidental."
"So, we should try to get her into school," I finished. "Okay, how are we gonna do that?"
Cliff shrugged. "Can't be that hard. Explaining some misunderstanding, forged paperwork,
hell, we could probably just show up and get her lost in the system."
"So, in the event we don't get a response, or we get one that's useless to us, we're going to
keep educating Ruby on the weird and wonderful world of Earth, keep her here, and
eventually put her in a normal school."
"And hopefully think of something," Cliff added. Although we hadn't actually discussed it
openly, it was possible that Ruby would be stuck here forever.
"Yeah, that. We agreed?"
There was a chorus of nods. Wait, I don't think that's possible.
"Good. That's it for tonight. See you all tomorrow."
Ruby Rose
I sat in the circle of people as Isaac opened the message and read it aloud to everyone.
I'm going to assume you're telling the truth and this is real, because it is kind of awesome
and if that video was fake it was really good. I kind of want to believe it, to be honest.
Unfortunately, we created RWBY from our own ideas influenced by others, and we didn't
get it from a magical portal or anything like that. This is just as much a shock to us as it is to
you, and there's nothing we can do. We don't know anything about actually getting stuff
from here to Remnant unless you're talking about Poser, and we definitely don't have a
handy portal in the basement. I know this isn't what you wanted to hear, but we don't know
any more about this situation than you do.
-Monty
PS: You're welcome to take Ruby down here to meet us anytime, but it might be hard to get
her past the border.
"You have your answer," Sam quietly said to me.
"You owe me fifty bucks," I heard Cliff whisper to Isaac. It seemed wrong, but right. With
all this happening, they were still doing that... but so did we.
I looked down, sad about the message. "Does this mean I'm not going home?"
Sam shook his head. "Probably not, no."
"Are you sure there's nothing else we can do to find my team?" I pleaded. I was hoping they
would be here, at least, then I wouldn't be so along.
Sam sighed, a deep, stressed-out sigh. "Not a hell of a lot, even if they're here at all."
I guess they might not have come here. I think that's better, maybe, because then there's
someone fighting the bad guys on Remnant even though I'm gone. "Oh."
"For what it's worth, Ruby, I'm sorry."
And for some reason, I was too.