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A/N: I'll say now for anyone who'll be wondering; my assumption for how Neo and her tea party illusions knew the things they did about Ruby, about the dead tea-party guests' real selves, and other things Neo had little to no chance of knowing about, is that Neo's Semblance when supercharged by the Abandoned Acre gave her a degree of heightened awareness, or at least it enabled her illusions to know things that only their real selves could have known much like how they were able to mimic the real things' weapons and the Jabberwalker's Afteran-permakilling ability.
You could also say that's probably a big part of why the collective "reason you suck" speech torture session for Ruby is as different as it's going to be in this fic, since in this version, Ruby is still worn down but not in quite the same ways as she was in canon.
Chapter 5
Ruby's feelings didn't get better after the Punderstorm had passed. She, Jaune and Weiss filled Blake and Yang in on the revelations that had come to light between the three of them and the Curious Cat. When they described Ruby and the Cat's encounter with the Mourn Turtle, Blake said they'd saved as many in Atlas as they could – she meant the words as comfort, but Ruby felt something inside of her writhing uncomfortably, while Yang just held her partner's, now girlfriend's, arm. Remembering the night before, Ruby asked what had happened to the Afterans at the Garden after Neo had destroyed it. Had _WBY/J stopped to help them, offer them aid, or at least make sure they got away safely?
"What about them?" was Blake's confused reply, her puzzled expression mirrored in Yang and Weiss's faces. That made something in the pit of Ruby's stomach feel icy-cold and slippery wet.
"Did we do anything to help them?" Ruby stressed. "Did we at least make sure they were okay?"
"Rubes, we're huntresses, not babysitters," Yang said, like that answered the question. Ruby couldn't help but recall a couple lectures from their childhood at Signal, where they'd been told that being a huntsman or huntress was about more than just fighting Grimm or criminals – it was about protecting people who couldn't help themselves. Hadn't Blake herself described them that way to the Herbalist a day ago?
"We didn't have time," Jaune said without looking back at Ruby, and he didn't seem intent on breaking their stride. "You'll understand why when you see my village." Ruby, uncomfortably remembering Jaune and the Cat's argument in the storm, wondered what made Jaune want to get her teammates to this village first without sparing time to find Ruby after the Garden attack. (Did he even plan to go back out looking for her after he got _WBY there? Did _WBY even think to try finding her? Or did they all expect her to just be okay on her own and somehow find her way because she was the leader they all depended on?)
As Ruby and the others crossed a bridge from the green Garden's Acre into a night-skied acre that looked like a pop-up storybook forest, the crimson-themed huntress couldn't push thoughts of the dead people from Atlas and Mantle to the back of her mind, unlike everybody else around her. Her eyes were drawn to Blake and Yang several more times, and the pair didn't seem to have eyes or ears for anyone but each-other. Ruby knew she should have felt happy for them, and a small part of her was, but something about them felt discomfortingly foreboding, like when walking into a Grimm-infested forest fired off a huntress or huntsman's instincts. Ruby was surprised when Jaune showed her that he'd found Crescent Rose. She felt a lot of things at seeing her (old) weapon again, but none of them were good. She didn't sleep easily through the acre's nighttime.
Ruby didn't feel better when the paper-themed acre's daytime started with a literal explosion, and her team briefly chided her for forgetting to pick up Crescent Rose. Nor did she feel better when Jaune showed them the Paper Pleasers and explained his 'plan' for Team RWBY to join him, to which her teammates saw fit to complain – to Ruby, her teammates' complaining looked childish (like they were just finding excuses to turn on their allies again). Ruby didn't feel better when one of the Paper Pleasers, having overheard Weiss mentioning how Jaune had thought before the storm that the Tree was death, talked about the Pleasers' viewpoint on Jaune's 'protection' – and the Cat's words about the village in the Punderstorm suddenly made sense. Nor did Ruby feel better when her teammates resolved to take the Paper Pleaser's words at face value and put 'freeing' them first. (So all the Afterans that Neo terrorised at the Garden weren't their problem, Ruby feeling the weight of failure after failure wasn't their problem, the people from Atlas and Mantle that Cinder had blasted after they'd VOWED to save everyone wasn't their problem, but THIS WAS their problem?) And Ruby certainly didn't feel better when Neo's Jabberwalker horde appeared at the hill overlooking the village.
Then Jaune's village fell, or rather they killed themselves. Or ascended, whichever it was. And then, everyone else was all too eager to forget about what Ruby was doing so they could focus on comforting Jaune over his not-even-really-dead, make-believe friends – the only reason they so much as glanced at Ruby's frowning face at that point was because they were again expecting her to be the unflappable, perfect, all-resilient pillar that she was always expected to be.
So Ruby stopped being that pillar for a moment. She told them what she'd been thinking and feeling through their couple days in the Ever After since Atlas had fallen. Screw being the one everyone looked to, the one who told them to look the other way whenever they screwed anything up – she let it out. Yang just snapped back at her. Jaune exploded, saying everything from Neo attacking to how things in Atlas had ended was her fault. That stung her enough to make her tear up, coming from the boy-turned-man who she'd considered one of her closest friends – yet she knew Jaune was right. (And then when Jaune started breaking down again, Ruby's teammates, her so-called friends, turned their backs to her pain to focus all on Jaune's pain, AGAIN.) Blake started speaking about 'staying positive' again as if she hadn't listened to a damned thing that had just happened, so Ruby cut her off.
"Shut. UP."
That was how Ruby left her team and Jaune. Rid as many people as possible of her uselessness and the harm that she did. (And rid herself of her 'friends' who clearly didn't care about her as much as she'd thought they did.) She ran, ran and ran. Maybe that was the real reason why she had a speed-based Semblance – because all she was really meant to do was run away from the ones she'd get hurt. (Maybe Blake had had the right idea when she'd run away after Beacon.) Ruby had forgotten Little was still inside her hood until the talking mouse came out and asked her so innocently why she'd shouted at everyone. Little's words about sticking together reminded Ruby of who she'd started her shining career as a huntress as, and it made her stomach roil. She sent Little away as well with a shout, for their sake. She kept walking deeper into the Origami Acre without a destination in mind, only knowing that she needed to get away.
Ruby had no track of how long she walked. Her boot-clad legs were tiring. Her uncle Qrow used to say any huntress worth their salt could walk or jog for miles before getting tired, but it felt like her legs were working slower than normal. She was still among the Origami Acre's forestry, with paper-white ground and with Euclidean patterns cut into the multicoloured trees. Her gaze was on the ground she was meandering along, when a slight rustle and a flash of movement made her eyes trail up. She craned her head, and drew in breath.
A figure was up ahead on the winding path through the trees. Orange hair, green-and-white clothing and pale skin. The familiar girl turned and all but ran. Ruby didn't think – she ran after her, not even considering activating Petal Burst. Ruby was soon panting for breath and she thought she'd lose the girl, but the girl stopped far ahead and stared back, then started moving ahead just when Ruby was catching up to her. Several times, the girl disappeared behind a natural barrier like a tree-walled bend or a paper-walled waterfall, and Ruby thought she'd lost her before the girl reappeared further ahead, standing atop a hill or by another bend.
Ruby wasn't sure how long they ran. Their course took them over a new bridge out of the Origami Acre, into what could only be described as a blasted wasteland. The dark sky was coated in broiling stormclouds, and light rain didn't fall so much as float lazily towards the purple ground. Dead skeletons of trees and ruined, artificial structures passed Ruby and the girl by.
Until Ruby was led to a small yet decorative and brightly-lit mansion that was fully-intact, festooned with Winter Holiday-like strings of lights. The orange-haired girl was slipping inside through the grand front doors.
Yang, Blake, Jaune, Weiss, and Jaune's giant rabbit must have spent over half an hour walking through paper forestry shouting Ruby's name, before Yang stopped and growled her frustration, asking aloud how Ruby could just run off on them like that. Why didn't Ruby just talk to them?! Blake placed a comforting hand on Yang's shoulder, and Yang felt so much better for it. She had such an awesome partner and now also an awesome girlfriend. Once they found their missing teammate and got her back to her normal self, Yang would be expecting Rubes to apologise for scaring and threatening Blake like she had outside the village.
Weiss contemplated that maybe Ruby didn't feel that she could talk to any of them because they were always looking to her to be their leader and inspiration. But Yang wasn't convinced that was an excuse. They weren't asking much of Ruby, were they? They weren't asking her to be perfect. A silence hung over Yang and her friends when she mumbled that thought aloud. Besides, there was no excuse for hurting anyone as far as Yang was concerned.
Yang had lost most of her childhood to take care of Ruby. When Yang and Blake had talked to each-other on that bridge in the storm, Yang had thought she was finally free to live her life how she wanted. But then Ruby had snapped. Why did Ruby have to make it all about her? Whatever. They would find Ruby, they'd patch things up however they had to, and things would be back to normal. They'd all go back to kicking butt and taking names, and they'd get back home and resume saving the world.
The geometric paper trees appeared to thicken, and the daylight seemed to change sharply just before they came out on an open hill. A familiar hill, overlooking a lagoon where a village had been only a few hours ago, the Tree's silhouette visible far beyond it. Had they gone in a circle…?! Urgh, this place was sending them back to where they started again? But they hadn't even been trying to walk towards the Tree this time!
"I don't…" Yang was vaguely aware of Jaune whispering to himself, transfixed by the sight below. Pieces of multicoloured paper were floating on the water. Blake didn't move to approach Jaune, so Yang didn't either. Instead it was Weiss who approached their hurting friend and gave him words of comfort.
"Hello." A voice that sounded distorted like it was underwater drew all five gazes downward, to where something they hadn't seen before was cresting the hill towards them. It looked like a living crystal rock-creature, but its star shape made it look very familiar, carrying a freaking picnic-basket on one of its arm-stubs. "You appear to be upset. Do you wish to tell me why so that I may help? Are you hungry?"
After the gambit with the Paper Pleasers paid off (better than they'd hoped), the Cat followed close by the fleeing huntress, invisible and intangible. Ruby was lost in the woods, and after shooing away the mouse that was her last non-feline friend, she saw her dead friend from Remnant – a dead friend who the Cat was willing to bet was Neopolitan's conjuration under the circumstances. The Cat's poor, inept human girl followed her friend into the Abandoned Acre, and into the strange new mansion there like a wedging bird following the Chef's lullabies.
"Hello, Red!"
The Cat might have jumped if they were physically present, which they weren't in their invisible and inaudible state. Ruby jumped back from the portrait, reaching towards her 'mecha-shift' weapon on her back, though she didn't draw. The human in the portrait, who the Cat suspected to be Neopolitan's late partner from Jaune and Team RWBY's anecdotes, jumped off his pedestal, walking forwards in the picture with a swagger.
"It's been a while," he said, idly kicking one of the unmoving pairs of feet at the portrait's edges. Dead Remnant-folk. Shudder. "How's the hero job going? I've gotta say… you're not looking good."
"Wha- Where is Neo?!" Ruby shouted after a moment's pause. The talking painting scoffed.
"Yeesh, didn't your parents ever teach you any manners?" he said, before his gloved fingertips flew to his lips in mock-shock. "Oops. Parent, I meant to say, with the mum being dead and all." Ruby's teeth clenched and she glared at the painting. "Too bad. Considering everyone came out to see you!" He bellowed and raised his hands. An overhead chandelier flashed to life – the Cat was awed by how it produced light without any visible fire, every point flaring to life at once with a metallic hiss of sound. Was this some of the electronic lighting technology they'd once been told existed on Remnant? The chandelier had illuminated a hall that would have been considered moderate-sized by most monarchs. Still, the Cat checked their immediate curiosity. Neopolitan wanted to kill Ruby, and Ruby was in the tiger's den – one moment of inattentiveness before the Cat knew Neo's game could cost the Cat everything. But the Cat was still curious, and could prosper by getting a reading of Neo now, learning more about her and how powerful her Semblance was. (They'd had a theory for some time on how her Semblance had changed, given that the Abandoned Acre had affected a rare couple Afterans over a few millennia, changing them.)
A second chandelier flashed to life at the far end of the hall, which had been completely obscured in shadow – exposing nine new Remnant-folk, sitting in groups of four and five at two sides of a triangular table so they angularly faced towards Ruby. Some of them resembled second-hand descriptions that the Cat had heard from Jaune and Team RWBY.
"Salutations, Ruby!" Penny, the once-metal girl turned flesh, greeted.
"Helloooo!" said a red-haired human next to Penny whose appearance matched the lost sweetheart of poor, useless, wilful, self-damning JAUNE. Past Pyrrha Nikos sat a blue-eyed girl with short hair and a sleeveless, roughly-hewn grey jacket. Then a thin, suited human man with well-groomed grey and brown hair and glasses, and then a brown-haired man in a sleeveless blue and white jacket. They smirked coldly, eyed Ruby shrewdly, or sat up straight respectively.
"Ah, Miss Rose," greeted a pale, bespectacled man with silver hair on the table's other side, voice sounding almost too old even for his appearance.
"Why don't you have a seat?" offered a dark-haired, broad-shouldered man with metal pieces on his body, who sat far across that side of the table from the bespectacled man, smiling through his beard. Ironwood? Inbetween Ironwood and the bespectacled man sat what might have been the biggest and burliest human the Cat had ever seen – he had brown hair tied tightly back, bags under his eyes and scars on his arms. (Could that be the Hazel man who'd worked for Salem?) He grunted an aloof, wordless greeting at Ruby. The final occupant was a grey-haired, bearded man with a lion's tail and a nervous countenance. Was that someone else Ruby knew…?
"How… How is she doing this?!" Ruby muttered, eyes wide in horror. Her words caused every person at the table to erupt in laughter, tossing heads back, thumping the table with fists or leaning on each-other's shoulders. The Cat understood their amusement. Even if things on Remnant were very different to the Ever After, poor Ruby had already seen Neo's Semblance summon and multiply the dreadful Jabberwalker, she'd seen one of the Jabberwalkers turn into Neo at the Paper Pleasers' village – the Cat wondered what had happened to the real Jabberwalker, but they doubted they'd have time to find out that particular fact without risking losing their chance to enter Remnant, so they would have to leave finding out until after they'd entered Remnant – and they were standing in a mansion which didn't match with the rest of the Abandoned Acre. Yet Ruby still found this unbelievable?
"This isn't real," Ruby muttered, shaking her head.
The Cat wanted to yowl in shock as Roman shot his sneering face near Ruby's, suddenly outside of the painting, to coo at her, "Really, Red?" Ruby jumped and fell on her keister. "'Isn't real?' You've been following your best friend turned fairy-tale hero around a fairy-tale land." The Cat was intrigued to learn Neo, or her illusions, knew that much about Jaune. Roman all but danced over to the cackling table, jumping atop it and twirling his cane. Quite a ringleader that human. "Reality's on its way out the door, kid." A pause passed before Roman began sauntering on the tabletop. "Speaking of which… Neo always loved the idea of running away from it all. Being able to just do whatever you want. No rules, no consequences. Indulge yourself." Just like ALYX, the Cat thought. Roman deliberately hopped over a teacup at the table's far end, to sit cross-legged on the other side of it, picking it up and nursing it as he hung his head. "That's what I offered when we first met." His smile faded to a dark scowl – if they'd been in the right acre, the Cat suspected the temperature would have literally dropped around him. "But we know how that ended."
"That is what all this has been about?!" Ruby shouted with incredulous anger after a second's pause. "You blame me for what happened to Torchwick?!" The Cat didn't know if she noticed Roman hissing a breath softly, or how his black-gloved fingers shifted on the teacup. The Cat raised their guard, ready to protect their host if she was caught too off-guard for her aura to protect her. "If you're looking for an apology, you've wasted your time!" An awful silence followed. A smile formed on Roman's half-shadowed face.
"Typical Red," he said. "I suppose that's just who you and your friends are these days. Always blaming everyone but yourselves for every single thing that keeps going wrong around you where you go." Ruby's eyes widened, looking like she'd been struck. The Cat wondered, did Neo know Ruby's and her friends' minds that intimately, or… was it possible that her augmented Semblance enabled her, or her illusory creations, to somehow know things that she had no other way of knowing? Oh, if only the Cat could find out here and now.
"They say every villain is the hero of their own story." Roman stood, placing the teacup down. "I knew what I was." He breathed deeply and closed his eyes for a moment. "All hard feelings aside, Red… I don't think you're all that different from me and Neo." Ruby's lip curled. "Think about it. You've done everything I did better than I ever could have."
"You lied," Ironwood supplied, smiling as if he was saying a helpful pointer.
"You stole."
"You cheated." Ruby's face fell further at every line.
"And you survived," Pyrrha supplied, smiling.
"Indeed," Penny said cheerfully.
"Ring any bells?" Roman taunted, crushing the teacup underfoot as he stepped forward. "And if you go home, what's to say that it won't start all over again?" Chuckling softly, Roman slipped something out from inside of his coat.
"A leaf from the Tree?" Ruby asked in confusion, blinking away the tears that had started to form. The Cat was paying close attention to hear what would be said next.
"Oh, you know what these are?" Roman exclaimed, jumping off the table. The Cat now noticed the rainbow colour of the crushed teacup's spilled contents. "It took a while before Neo knew all about the Tree and ascension." The Cat wondered how she'd learned that. The thought that she might have forced the information out of Afterans through unkind means was an unpleasant one. "Do you know what these leaves do if you drink their tea?"
The Cat knew.
"Is that what you want?" Ruby spat. "If you want me dead, stop hiding behind your tricks and come get me!" Roman laughed, and Ruby blinked in surprise. The Cat wasn't so surprised.
"Neo doesn't just want you to die, Red," Roman murmured, turning the Ever-leaf over in his hand. His voice dipped into a stage-whisper as he released it, letting the leaf drift down to a teacup on the near end of the table. A teacup which the Cat saw on closer inspection held the same multicoloured Ever-tea as the first cup had. "No. You deserve to be broken down. To have everything ripped away from you. Until you want to be wiped… from existence. And only then will you be granted oblivion."
Interesting…
The Cat knew Neo was coming – they were prepared to whisper a warning in Ruby's ear, just tangible enough for her to get her aura up, but they didn't need to. Ruby spun, unsheathing her weapon and firing Dust blasts which forced the charging Neo to mecha-shift her own bladed weapon into a parasol (how intriguing), canopy taking the blasts like a shield as she arced above Ruby. While Ruby was focused on Neo, Roman behind her back fired a blast from his cane's tip which threw her off her feet. The pink, white and dark-themed human twirled in the air and was caught gracefully in Roman's arms, the nine guests behind them applauding. Roman snickered and shared a look with Neo, before they both turned their darkening gazes on Ruby. Roman lowered Neo to her feet and held her shoulders, while the guests around them stood in perfect unison.
"I'm going to enjoy WATCHING YOU BREAK." The guests' and Roman's voices spoke in perfect unison around the voiceless girl, who smiled brightly.
Despite the shiver the Cat felt, they knew this was going to be delightful.
Ruby didn't lift Crescent Rose, nor did she think much. She ran left and right to evade the hail of Dust bullets and bright-green blades which cut and slashed after her.
"You thought you, not even a fully-trained huntress, knew what was best for a foreign kingdom that you'd barely so much as seen before!" the deep voice of Ironwood spat, firing his right-handed pistol.
"You sent the people you swore to protect into one of the most dangerous places on Remnant for them!" Clover Ebi growled, voice low and venomous as he waved Kingfisher and sent its fishing line shooting out. The hook caught Ruby's leg and sent her crashing chin-first to the floor with pitiful ease, before two Dust bullets hitting her aura made her cry out.
"They have the Winter Maiden to protect them…" Ruby felt like she was forcing the words (which she didn't feel much faith in) out through her sore throat. Kingfisher sharply dragged her by her ankle, Clover throwing her to crash violently against a wall. She hit the floor on her hands and knees.
"And you thought the Winter Maiden's power was going to ensure every one of them gets fed, sheltered and protected from every angry or lawless Vacuan in a scarce, lawless desert where Atlas and Mantle's people are hated?!"
"Or that the Winter Maiden was going to be everywhere at once so that everyone is saved like you said?" chimed in the deep voice of Raven's lackey.
"Or that anything that's come of your treason is going to be any better than what James was planning in the first place!" Clover shouted.
"Before you broke him!" Roman, standing near Neo at the table, chimed in as Kingfisher's hook line withdrew back into the pole.
"I was honest and faithful with you, and HOW DID YOU RESPOND?!" Ironwood roared, eyes like chips of arctic ice. Ruby didn't reply, activating Petal Burst as she shot in crimson petals from one side of the hall to the other, chased by Dust bullets and projectiles. "You can tell yourself that I was starting to crack before I closed Atlas, but the only reason I lost all my mind just in time to worsen the situation was because YOU AND YOUR PEERS DID EVERY SINGLE THING to make me think my worst thoughts were right!" It was almost as if he knew her deepest thoughts…
A Dust round caught Ruby, sending her crashing with a pained cry to the floor and rolling as her aura flared. She didn't stop to process, she frantically reactivated Petal Burst and took to the air to escape the barrage, even as the voices continued to roar at her.
"I was the best and brightest in Beacon!" Pyrrha's voice spat with venom that Ruby didn't remember ever hearing from her when she was alive, the armoured redhead switching from a firing stance to a javelin stance as she mecha-shifted Miló into its spear form. "But I lost my life on that tower because you were too slow!" Pyrrha threw, and the spear cut through the golden chain holding one of the chandeliers suspended. It crashed into Ruby's petal form faster than she could weave out of the way, eliciting a cry from her a second before she crashed against the floor, the ruined chandelier pinning her. The voices didn't stop.
"You thought you could do better than every leader in the history of warfare by saving everyone without casualties."
"But you couldn't," Penny's gentle-sounding voice chimed in, and Ruby felt like she was being smothered.
"And Salem now has two Relics instead of just one or none, and an entire kingdom, a quarter of the WHOLE OF CIVILISATION, is GONE!"
"Specifically one that had the best and the most important military-industrial complex on Remnant. Though I shouldn't expect you to know anything better than finding excuses to beat up whatever's in front of you!"
Ruby was struggling to pull herself free of the chandelier when the flat sole of a shoe struck her face.
The shoe's pale, gaunt, bespectacled and well-dressed owner, one Atlesian Councilman Sleet, shouted as he kicked at Ruby's exposed head again and again; "Telling our own civilians in Mantle and Atlas about the Grimm's leader when we were in turmoil was one thing."
"But what you did?" an approaching Ironwood hissed as Roman, Neo and several others watched behind him, the projectile assaults having ceased while Ruby was pinned. "Telling everyone else around the worldabout her? Including the two kingdoms that have already been defensively crippled, and including every un-walled frontier village that was close enough to get a CCT signal?! Letting negativity surge and draw the Grimm straight to them?! I risked and sacrificed lives every day because I am a soldier who makes the tough calls to save those he can!"
"What's your excuse?!" Vernal spat, suddenly in front of Ruby's head as her boot kicked hard enough to make something burst with screaming pain in Ruby's neck.
"Did you learn nothing from when Beacon was attacked?!" Pyrrha was suddenly there as well, twirling Miló. "Nothing but vile, thoughtle- Argh!"
"Argh!" Every undead person around Ruby and the hall cried out and craned their heads as one. Then they all turned their heads towards the table at the end of the hall. Neo, face scrunched in pain, had a gloved hand by her ear, atop the small, fuzzy grey thing that was on her shoulder.
"Leave my friendalone!" Little's muffled voice shouted through Neo's earlobe which they'd clamped their teeth into. As they pulled their teeth free, a beat of blood trailed where they'd broken Neo's skin with her aura down. "You're n- AAURGH!" The small mouse's words were cut off as Neo threw them like a softball. Little's tiny body slammed diagonally against the floor with a cracking sound and bounced from the impact. Ruby felt her pallid strength double against the chandelier, but she never got the chance to force it off before someone else swiped it away. Ruby hadn't seen the giant bear of a man approaching, and she didn't have the chance to scramble away before Hazel Rainart grabbed her hood, dragging her high enough that her feet were off the floor to meet his eye-level.
"How much less chance does the rest of the world have because of what you've done?" Hazel growled. His voice's volume was calm, but his tone and the look in his eyes were burning cold like Solitas' tundra. He shoved Ruby, and the (so-called) huntress staggered backwards as her boots re-met the floor. She had to go and help Little-
"How many more people have died?"
"And WHY?!" Ozpin's cane slapped Ruby's face faster than Ruby could comprehend that her former-headmaster, in the same old headmaster body, was attacking her. Knocked onto her backside, Ruby scrambled backwards along the floor as he continued yelling, hazel-brown eyes furious. "Because YOU couldn't practice what you preached about trust, faith and honesty among allies?!" He lifted the Long Memory like a club, and Ruby shrieked as the blow struck her so hard that aura sparked and the wind was knocked out of her. A pair of brown shoes attached to grey pants were standing a foot past where Ruby's scalp had hit the floor.
"Are you sure it's Salem's enemies and not Salem that you're helping?" Leonardo Lionheart muttered, the sombre, bearded Faunus man leaning down a little until his head filled Ruby's vision.
They were everywhere. The voices, the people, the guilt; there was no escaping!
Ruby didn't know when she started screaming, or when she started scrambling to escape the bodies surrounding her. Someone kicked her hard enough to send her flying. Someone else struck her, pain exploding, and before she knew it, her body slapped into a wall at the hall's edge.
"I'm trying to save everyone!" she protested weakly, her voice sounding pathetic even to her ears as her throat felt like sandpaper. Every part of her body hurt or felt like jelly as she navigated along the wall by the palms of her hands. The wall was solid, the wall was an anchor, the wall was the one place where she didn't have to look back and see THEM. "Urgh!" Nausea and pain bloomed outward from where Ironwood's uppercut – his cybernetic uppercut – had slammed into her, literally lifting her off the floor.
"You think meaning well just makes everything okay?" Ironwood spat angrily, the bearded Atlesian pinning Ruby's arms at her sides and slamming her back hard against the wall – leaving her with nowhere to look but at him. "That saying you meant to help and flashing a pair of puppy eyes absolves you of everyone you've ever hurt and everything you've ever ruined?! That the road to hell is never paved with good intentions?!"
…meaning well and doing well aren't always one and the same…
Not two seconds after the words came back to Ruby, Ironwood threw her over his shoulder like she weighed no more than a doll – and she might as well have with his cybernetic arms – so that she hurtled past Pyrrha and Lionheart. Straight into Hazel, who immediately delivered his own uppercut. Stars exploded in Ruby's vision and white noise ripped her ears.
"You think it excuses you of doing more harm than the very monster you've been fighting could have done in your absence?!" Ruby still heard Hazel's words through the blinding pain. She rolled across the floor to a stop, her aura flickering from his and Ironwood's blows. There was a clear line of sight between her and Torchwick, who was now sitting with one leg folded neatly over the other, a book in hand.
"Antisocial personality disorder, also known as sociopathy," he read loudly enough for Ruby to hear. "Signs include lack of empathy, grossly inflated self-importance and inability to admit any wrongdoing. Like me!"
"Did you think, at your age, that a child breaking a cookie jar was no different from a grown woman gambling with lives in a war?!"
Silver eyes shot wide open at that new woman's voice.
All other sound faded out of Ruby's ears. She had the vaguest snippets of that woman's voice in her memories. Hearing it now was almost like the feeling of seeing one's earliest childhood school or a previous childhood house again for the first time in many years, some of it feeling familiar but in the way that one had to be seeing it again to remember it at all.
No. Please, not her. Don't let HER be here.
"Gah!" Ruby choked as a crook suddenly dragged her backwards by the neck, forcing her to stand with a cold body pressed behind hers.
"Are you ready for a cup of tea?" Roman murmured tauntingly in her ear. Ruby elbowed him on reflex, pulling herself away on blind instinct. She staggered, trying to get away, get away, GET AWAY; only to be struck by Clover and Vernal.
"Agh!"
Ironwood was suddenly upon her again, raining punch after pistol-whip, which forced Ruby back and made the pain wracking her body throb that much worse as he shouted.
"You got on the high horse with me, but while my people were in the field, you and your team spent half the fight moping in your expensive mansion instead of doing anything to help anyone outside of your group!" Roaring, he grabbed Ruby's exposed arm and swung her clean off her feet and around him, releasing and throwing her with all his cybernetic strength. Ruby crashed painfully against the fallen chandelier, aura flickering before it died.
She heard Roman's cackle echoing in the hall. "Heck, Red. You and your friends didn't even think to look for any of those people you saw fall!"
"I should never have trusted you so much, in Beacon or after," Ozpin spat somewhere on Ruby's flank.
Roman's laughter was still in Ruby's ears as she half-staggered, half-ran past the accusing faces and voices. A row of green, crystalline-looking blades vertically embedded themselves in the floor in front of her, cutting off her escape as she staggered back and floundered.
Please, no…
Ruby glanced back.
The same girl she'd chased here was now standing alone, facing her. She looked exactly as she had the last time Ruby had seen her alive. Long, curling orange hair, with a bow at the back of her head. Mostly olive-green dress over a white blouse and bare human legs, with black highlights on her torso and collar. Her hands were clasped in front of her, and that freckled face was looking at Ruby with a sad, almost judging expression of misery.
"You took the Relic out of its vault, and you endangered everyone in Atlas and Mantle so you could save me," Penny said sadly. "And it was all for nothing." Her every word cut into Ruby like a blade of ice, and she glanced away to the floor as if lost in an unhappy memory. "I died because you put me in a human body. Didn't I?" Penny spread her pale, human arms. "I begged you to let me do what was right for others. But you took the decision away from me – just like everyone else." Now there was nothing but Ruby sprawled on the floor, and Penny stepping towards her. "Can you imagine… what it's like… to know that the only person who ever granted you your own say over your life or your death…" Penny crouched in front of Ruby, letting her see every detail of hurt and dismay etched into her freckled face, a face that Ruby had thought she'd never see again. "…was the one who KILLED you?"
Ruby hadn't even registered the rasp of a sword drawing before Jaune was suddenly driving Crocea Mors into Penny's chest, having appeared on her flank as if from nowhere. Penny's eyes widened and she grunted as the stab forced the air from her lungs. Red rapidly pooled and stained her blouse. Ruby knew that Ruby herself was screaming at the top of her lungs, but her mind felt somehow detached as it threw an arm in front of her face as if to try and shield her from what had happened.
Someone struck Ruby's side hard enough to send her flying and sprawling, tearing her back out of one nightmare and into another. She felt her bones grind, her aura depleted.
"It's… not my fault…" she mumbled desperately, voice sounding as broken as she felt.
"Not. Your. FAULT!?" Ironwood roughly grabbed Ruby and threw her, screaming, across the hall. Pyrrha used Miló's blunt end to violently slap her out of her trajectory and flat to the floor. "Who was it that took the staff out of its vault?!" Ironwood roared. Ruby coughed and gagged, vomit caught in her throat, bruises forming all over her.
Councilman Sleet was suddenly upon Ruby, the aura-less politician swinging a chair into her with enough force to splinter it and throw her back to the air for a moment as he yelled; "Who was it that turned the potential destruction of one city into the certain destruction of TWO?!"
"Who was it that stirred a Leviathan into attacking Argus, before the very person you were fighting cleaned up your mess?" Hazel growled, the giant of a man lifting Ruby by her hood before throwing her almost lazily from one end of the room to the other, crashing against a wall.
Ruby hadn't even tried to push herself back up before Vernal was upon her, the short-haired bandit's weapons absent as she threw swings, kicks and haymakers, one in every three blows delivering enough force to throw Ruby five feet back before the bandit closed the distance and was upon Ruby all over again.
"Who was it that would have led her partner, her uncle and all her friends to certain death at Haven, if they hadn't been lucky enough that the White Fang destroyed themselves without your influence?" the bandit spat, grinning as she delivered a leap-kick which sent Ruby flying. Flying into Pyrrha, who pinned Ruby's back against her chestplate, Miló pushing into Ruby's throat in a chokehold.
"Who failed to stop Beacon from falling?!" Pyrrha angrily snarled by Ruby's ear, her breath brushing the shorter girl's hair. Ruby tried to break free the same way she'd broken free from Torchwick, but Pyrrha harshly threw her forth and kicked at her back, sending her falling face-first to the floor.
"You made people follow you with hope, and then you led them to their deaths!" Lionheart spat. "And you left the world even worse off than it was before!"
"You're just like Salem," she heard Ironwood's voice spitting somewhere. "Ruining lives, ruining the world, all because you'd sooner drag everyone down than admit you were wrong!" Ruby scrambled away frantically on numb limbs.
"You are an overgrown child demanding that everything goes your way or the highway!" Clover shouted.
"How many more people-"
Crack "Urgh!"
Ozpin was atop her and battering her with the Long Memory.
"-have to suffer and die-"
Crack
"-just because YOU are too arrogant-"
Crack
"-too stupid-"
Crack
"-too selfish-"
Crack
"-and too desperate-" Crack "-to feel good about yourself-"
Crack
"-for you to acknowledge-"
Crack
"-that things would be better-" Crack "-IF YOU'D NEVER FORCED YOUR WAY-" Crack "-INTO THINGS-" Crack "-YOU DIDN'T UNDERSTAND?!"
"ARGH!"
It took Ruby a moment to realise she'd deployed Crescent Rose and swung it in a slash – the first time she'd used its scythe form in the few days since the fall. She didn't register hearing the Long Memory clatter to the floor until a second after the fact. Her eyes widened as she saw it wasn't quite Headmaster Ozpin in front of her.
Oscar Pine's wide, hazel eyes were staring into her own, hurt and confusion forming an unspoken question: Why? He glanced down to his chest, as red rapidly seeped into his white shirt and the jacket atop it much like it had with Penny moments ago.
"Ruby…" That was the freckled boy's last word before he fell backwards to the floor, wide eyes staring lifelessly up as blood continued to seep out of him. Ruby's legs gave out under her, and she didn't even hear or sense the weight of Crescent Rose crashing to the floor. Several of the others were gathering around Oscar's body, most of them looking down at him in horror, one or two glaring at Ruby instead.
"Do you know what the definition of madness is?" Roman's voice cut through everything and nothing around Ruby, almost sounding like it was all around her. The voice was uncharacteristically soft. "They say it's doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results." The onlookers around Oscar's body were replaced in flashes of fractals one by one. Pyrrha, Lionheart and Penny each became Cinder, in all the different looks Ruby had seen her in – Cinder's original un-maimed appearance at Beacon, her long-dressed appearance at Haven, and her darker-clothed appearance in Atlas. Ironwood, standing closer to Ruby than the others, became the ashen-white, black-and-red-eyed Grimm woman who's haunted Ruby's sleeping and waking nightmares; with the lamp Relic in one hand and the staff Relic in the other. But there was something wrong with Salem's and all the Cinders' faces – they all had Ruby's face. Away from them, Ruby almost didn't see Vernal, Clover and Hazel being replaced – by Emerald with Weiss's likeness, Mercury with Yang's likeness, and Adam Taurus with Blake's likeness. The wall behind Salem and the Cinders was replaced by an image Ruby hadn't seen in person but had glimpsed inside the Punderstorm – Atlas crashing into Mantle. The other walls changed on every side of Ruby. On one side of her were dishevelled people from Atlas and Mantle, lying sick, miserable, begging and dying in a desert city's dilapidated streets, some of them being assaulted and attacked. On Ruby's other side, Grimm were rampaging in a burning village, and she heard someone screaming desperately on a scroll, asking why there weren't any huntsmen available. If she looked at the far wall behind her where Neo was still dwelling, she would have seen Vale in ruins.
"Are you willing to let more people and more of the world fall around you?" Roman asked.
"Please… just stop…" she found herself whimpering.
"Or are you ready to admit the truth?" he all but whispered right beside her ear, chin close enough that she felt his breath by her earlobe. "That the world will be better off if you just stop?"
A voiceless noise whistled its way past Ruby's throat.
It was too much… She couldn't take it…
A pale light shone faintly on Ruby's half-bruised face, making her look up as a tear trailed from her eyes. Her eyes widened. The light's source was a figure standing with their back to Ruby, clad in a sweeping, pure-white cloak that was rustling with nonexistent wind in the mansion, hood over their head.
"For the first time, I think it's a blessing she isn't here," Ozpin's voice echoed, but he didn't reappear. Ruby had killed him and Oscar, hadn't she. "She would be horrified if she saw what you've become."
No.
No, no, no…
She…
She couldn't… couldn't be like this anymore.
Make it stop.
Maker her stop.
PLEASE.
"Ruby!" Her eyes blinked at the familiar high-pitched voice. The pale light was gone as Ruby turned and saw the familiar mouse, her Little, hobble-crawling across the floor to her. Little's face was stained from multiple tears, and Ruby's stomach boiled as she noticed one of Little's hind-legs was dragging behind them at a crooked angle. Large black eyes met Ruby's, pleading. "You have to get up!" they begged. "We have to go-"
BLAM.
A small flash of light and a crack of noise, and Little's body was thrown a foot away. They didn't move or speak anymore.
At the table, Neo blew smoke off of Hush's gun barrel, smirking in satisfaction.
Ruby Rose's dead silver eyes stared listlessly at the spot where Little had died.
She vaguely heard Neo's heels clacking on the floor towards her, but she didn't react. Reacting felt like too much pointless effort. She was so bruised and hurting. She felt so tired…
Didn't want to think anymore.
Neo kneeled in front of Ruby, placing the teacup and saucer on the floor and sliding it towards her.
Ruby registered seeing Neo smiling smugly down at her one second – the next second, a bolt of blue lightning and flying squares blasted Neo out of sight.
Ruby wasn't sure if she blacked out for a second or for hours, wasn't even sure if the crash she'd heard just after Neo was struck had been the cause of her blackout. Her gaze drifted back to the teacup on the floor in front of her. A thin, purple-and-turquoise tail waved and lazily knocked the teacup over, spilling its liquid and the leaf on the floor. Ruby blinked, gaze drifting. She saw a paw touching the floor and then rapidly expanding in size, black and white flashing colours and patterns filling it.
She felt some new, living mass shifting underneath her.
She saw black and white chequered patterns underneath her body, and she felt outside wind and moisture buffeting her.
Everything went blank for some time after that.
Juniper trotted to the threshold of the bridge connecting the Origami Acre to its darkest neighbour, Jaune and his three new friends atop her back. She didn't like the stormy sky on the far side. Few Afterans liked to enter the Abandoned Acre, and those few were almost all unpleasant folk.
The humans craned their heads as a sound like a faraway thunderclap reached their ears. There were no tall trees or mountains in the far acre, so they saw the distant blue lightning-bolt which climbed into the stormy clouds clearly.
"Are we sure Ruby's in there?" Jaune's white-haired friend Weiss asked.
Jaune replied, "This was the direction she went in, and that doesn't happen every day. Let's go, Juniper." Despite her reservations, Juniper obeyed her friend loyally, taking the humans over the bridge to the Abandoned Acre.
~trapped~
~bound~
~languishing~
~languishing~
…
CRASHHK!
~decay~
~collapse~
~bonds~ ~breaking~
~resisting~ ~breaking~ ~FREE~
~go~
~leaving~ ~running~
~go~
~scouring~ ~HATING~ ~searching~ ~find~ ~HER~ ~KILL~ ~AVENGE~
A/N: Hmm, who do we know that speaks like the POV in the last scene? ;)
Yeah, I removed the whole Neo-apporting-Ruby-to-her-mansion thing from the episode. WTH was even up with that? If getting Ruby to the mansion with her supercharged Semblance was as simple as apporting her anytime that Neo wanted, why didn't Neo apport her to the mansion sooner, why go to all the Jabberwalker clone trouble?!
I also added more guests to the tea party, 'cos really, 1/3 of the canon six-person canon ensemble seemed pretty random, especially Lionheart of all people being there if these are the people whose deaths Ruby regrets, instead of someone like Sleet, Vernal or Hazel.
(REPLIES)
RDDash: Yeah, that's Curious' goal as per canon, although they're going about getting there in a slightly different way here – instead of focusing solely on lowering Ruby's self-esteem in her being a hero, they're also focusing on driving a wedge between her and _WBY/J by turning their faults and shortcomings against them. My headcanon regarding how the Cat's possession ability works and the chances of them getting through the door with it is that Curious CAN get through the door if they possess a host who is JUUUST the right balance of being empty enough for them to control, but not too empty that they don't have any attachments on Remnant to take them to.
Oscuro Oscuro: (SPANISH) El Para Siempre definitivamente fue poco explorado en el programa. Parece que solo vimos una fracción antes de que el programa lo abandonara nuevamente. Cuando vi el último episodio de V9, el cambio de edad de Jaune me hizo querer gritar y arrancarme el pelo. Los eventos del episodio Paper Pleasers no han cambiado mucho después de lo que sucedió en el último capítulo de Punderstorm: las palabras de Jaune explicando su 'plan' durante el desayuno y su discusión con el Equipo RWBY han cambiado un poco para reflejar el cambio de postura sobre Cat y el Árbol, pero por lo demás los eventos se desarrollaron igual, y el único ajuste al 'plan' de Jaune fue que ya no excluye formas de llegar a la puerta del Árbol de su búsqueda de posibles salidas del Para Siempre. Por mucho que Ruby merezca y necesite una jodida revisión de la realidad sobre toda la mierda que ella y sus amigos han hecho y siguen haciendo y sus consecuencias, ella realmente no es la única culpable: el resto de _WBY/JNR/Q merece Tanto si no más, como dijiste. Buen indicador sobre el fracaso de JNR cuando Neo les robó la lámpara; pensar en ello de esa manera no se me había ocurrido antes, pero hay una escena futura en este fic donde creo que a Curious le resultará útil usar ese dato. ;)
Las ficciones de Coeur tienen sus defectos, aunque todavía las encuentro comparativamente mucho más legibles que el programa canónico, y tienen un lugar en mi corazón del que carece el canon. Honestamente, aunque creo que algunas de las travesuras del equipo RWBY en los primeros tres volúmenes del programa ya eran bastante cuestionables en formas que el programa no logró abordar, *tos* el peligro público en la persecución en la carretera, *tos*, personalmente me inclino a Sea más fácil con los 'héroes' de la era Beacon que con sus yoes de Atlas y más allá, ya que el Equipo RWBY de la era Beacon aún no ha cruzado el Horizonte de Eventos Morales. El final tan malo que es una locura que no fue deliberado del volumen 9 y el hecho de que el gato se ensucie tanto me empujó a mi punto de ruptura de ira. Sólo hay que decir que 'The Tale of a Cat Most Curious' no se detendrá cuando esta versión de RWBY/J enfrente su merecido.
No dejaría de lado ninguna de esas cosas que mencionaste sobre la participación de Ozpin. :) Y oh, el Gato ABSOLUTAMENTE tendrá un destino muy diferente en esta historia al destino canónico. Si no era obvio ya, DESPRECIO el final del canon V9 y lo que le hizo al Gato en el último episodio, que es una parte fundamental de por qué hice este fic en primer lugar. Tendrás que estar atento para ver qué pasa. ;)
(ENGLISH) The Ever After was definitely underexplored in the show. It feels like we only saw a fraction of it before the show left it again. When watching the V9 last episode, Jaune getting his age turned back made me want to scream and pull my hair out. The events of the Paper Pleasers episode hasn't changed much after what happened in the Punderstorm last chapter – the wording of Jaune explaining his 'plan' over breakfast and his argument with Team RWBY have changed somewhat to reflect the changed stance on the Cat and the Tree, but events otherwise played out the same, and the only adjustment to Jaune's 'plan' was that he's no longer excluding ways to reach the Tree's door from his search for possible exits out of the Ever After. As much as Ruby deserves and needs a Fucking Reality Check concerning all the shit she and her friends have done and are still doing and their consequences, she really isn't the only one at fault – the rest of _WBY/JNR/Q deserve just as much if not more, like you said. Nice pointer about JNR's failure when Neo stole the lamp out from under them – thinking about it that way hadn't occurred to me before, but there's a future scene in this fic where I think Curious will find using that tidbit to be useful. ;)
Coeur's fics have their faults, though I still find them comparatively a lot more readable than the canon show, and they have a place in my heart which the canon lacks. Honestly, although I think quite a few of Team RWBY's antics in the show's first three volumes were already pretty questionable in ways that the show failed to address, *cough* public endangerment in the highway chase, *cough* I'm personally inclined to go easier on the Beacon-era 'heroes' than on their Atlas-and-beyond selves, since Beacon-era Team RWBY haven't crossed the Moral Event Horizon yet. Volume 9's so-bad-it's-insane-that-it-wasn't-deliberate ending and the Cat getting done so dirty just pushed me to my Rage Breaking Point. Let it just be said that 'The Tale of a Cat Most Curious' isn't going to hold back when this version of RWBY/J face their comeuppances.
I wouldn't put any of that stuff you mentioned about Ozpin's involvement past him. :) And oh, the Cat will ABSOLUTELY have a very different fate in this story than their canon fate. If it wasn't obvious already, I DESPISE canon V9's ending and what it did to the Cat in the last episode, which is a core part of why I made this fic in the first place. You'll have to stay tuned to see what happens. ;)