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A/N: Hope everyone's had a Happy Easter! :)
Chapter 7
Yang's, her girlfriend's and Weiss's eyes widened, while Jaune recoiled.
Jaune's giant rabbit (Yang couldn't remember her name) had carried the four of them over a bridge from the paper acre and into a stormy acre, which looked to Yang like the typical lands of darkness out of a cheesy videogame with light rain falling and everything looking desiccated. The mount had carried them across purple ground to a giant shell of a house which looked like an archaic ruin, save that it was still crumbling piece-by-piece, the pieces disappearing in flashes of bright-pink fractals. Apparently, Neo could conjure up giant houses now. Inside the disappearing house, _WBY/J had found Crescent Rose lying on the ground. Yang, Blake and Weiss had spent a few moments calling Ruby's name again without answer, before they'd noticed Jaune was pouring a couple ingredients he'd been keeping on his person onto Ruby's mechanical scythe. He'd explained it was a potion that he'd learned while he was with Alyx and the Cat, which could open a window to Ruby. Silver light had flashed on Ruby's weapon, and a moment later, a mirror-like portal had spat Ruby out in a flurry of petals and pixels. Except something was wrong with her. Ruby's eyes, and the voice which came out of her mouth weren't her own – they were the Curious Cat's, though the masculine-sounding voice now sounded slightly distorted, and Ruby's white teeth had been reshaped into horrible fangs. What was going on?! Ruby, or the Cat, snickered.
"A spyglass spell…?" the Ruby-Cat-thing said. She, it, snorted, then turned the slit-pupiled eyes on Jaune. "All these years, holding onto that spell the Lively Carpenter gave you, hm?"
"Ruby?" Yang asked in confusion. What was this? Had the Cat… possessed Rubes? Jaune got over his shock first, eyes narrowing and drawing his broken sword.
"What have you done to her?" he growled as lightning flashed overhead.
"Ruby's poor little, fragile heart was so broken, she couldn't keep being Ruby Rose Huntress anymore," the Ruby-Cat thing replied in a taunting, sing-song tone, and Yang was aware of the shiver running up Blake's spine. "So I gave her my heart." Instincts to hold onto and shield Blake flared as Yang glared at the thing. The Cat sharply straightened Ruby's back and began strutting back and forth, horizontally to _WBY/J. Jaune stepped over Ruby's silver-glowing weapon, mecha-shifting it to its storage mode as he slid it securely onto his belt.
"Give Ruby back to us!" Weiss demanded, stepping forward and pointing Myrtenaster while everyone was glaring the Cat-Ruby thing down. The Cat was their enemy now? Had the Cat been lying to them from the start?! Like Ozpin before, and like Ironwood?! Yang's blood simmered.
"You've always been the worst of the bunch," the Cat-Ruby drawled at Weiss derisively, inhuman eyes lidded. Only then did Yang notice why the Cat's voice sounded slightly off – there was the slightest hint of Ruby's higher-pitched voice inside it, speaking along. Yang noticed because the feminine hint of voice disappeared almost entirely from the Cat's voice during that snark at Weiss. A light snicker escaped the lying, body-snatching bastard. "Why would I let Ruby go? I need her to take me to Remnant. But even if I didn't, what would I be giving her back to? Being put back on her pedestal by all of you again?"
"Is that really so bad?" Blake voiced Yang's thoughts, glowering at their new foe. Wasn't getting Ruby out of the weird funk she'd been in all the time they'd been in the Ever After the whole point? So that Ruby could be the leader they followed, and they could save the world? The Ruby-Cat thing giggled, and Yang felt the urge to wipe that ugly, jagged grin off of their face swelling in her.
"So you're right back to your old ways?" the Cat asked with a gesture of one human arm. "All the people on your world that you broke and destroyed, and the only ways you can resolve your failings are any which way except for admitting that you were the biggest problem all along? Staying the same manchildren you were when you fell into the Ever After." Yang might have rolled her eyes if the situation wasn't so dire. She'd had more than enough of her and her friends being called the bad guys by people who should've trusted them, after all that they'd done to save people in Atlas, Mantle and Argus. Yang admitted that evacuating Atlas and Mantle hadn't gone well, and some unfortunate sacrifices had been made, but if it hadn't been for them, things would've been so much worse.
"Mistakes were made, and Atlas wasn't a victory for us," Weiss said, closing her eyes solemnly for a moment, before she hardened her gaze. "Bringing Ruby back from you will not be a mistake, and I will personally count it as a victory." The Cat snickered.
"But don't you see?" the Cat-Ruby asked, grinning to show too many sharpened teeth in Ruby's mouth. "It's not just acknowledging your mistakes, it's learning from your mistakes. Unless of course you think like poor Jaune!
"Do you even know why I'm doing this?" the Ruby-Cat asked, one of Ruby's gloved hands clutching the strap of a sack that was slung over their back. "I just want to go Remnant because I'm cursed with a need to know more. I need to know what I can't ever learn from inside the Ever After's confines, including why I was abandoned. It's what I'm made for. But I only need Ruby to take me through the door. Then I can release Ruby and be on my way. Why not just let me go? You've forgiven much meaner people than me, haven't you?"
"No." Yang stepped forward, shifting into a combative stance, glaring into the eyes of the monster. "You lied to us. You took Ruby. We don't care what you want. You're going to pay for what you did." Yang's girlfriend and everyone else around them drew weapons and entered their own fighting stances. "You're going to see why we're the best – because we're going to kick your ass and win." She smirked, lifting her armed fists. She meant her words. She'd had enough of everyone lying to her for a lifetime, and she'd also had more than enough of her and her team being bullshitted for everyone else's failings around them.
Lightning flashed and thunder growled. The Cat waved Ruby's arms out, and over the course of three seconds, Ruby's appearance changed. Glowing, pale-blue stuff like the Cat's original form appeared over Ruby's arms from above the elbows, forming enlarged limbs and hands with stubby fingers, tipped with long, sickle-like claws. Claws of blue light cut through the tips of Ruby's boots. A long, blue tail like a big cat's emerged from the back of her skirt. The Cat used the giant, clawed hands to pull Ruby's hood over her head, a pair of blue-glowing cat-ears rising up from Ruby's hair as they did and phasing through the hood. The hood shadowed Ruby's upper-face except for the bright-glowing feline eyes, while her fang-filled mouth was still clearly visible even in the acre's gloom.
"Then I'll put all of you in the ground."
The CatRuby would have just fled with Ruby's Semblance straight to the Tree, leaving the wretched Remnant-folk behind in the Abandoned Acre, if they could. But Crescent Rose still had on it the spyglass spell which Jaune had summoned the CatRuby with. So long as poor, stubborn, pathetic Jaune and his friends had it, they could summon the CatRuby back to them from anywhere in the Ever After faster than the CatRuby could Petal Burst to the door. Jaune knew it, having secured the mecha-shift weapon to his person. Before the CatRuby could leave, they needed to get Crescent Rose off of _WBY/J.
Fine. They'd killed Alyx, and they'd killed again with the Hawker – the CatRuby would kill these destructive fools as well (however much killing broke them). They would laugh through it and find joy in granting Ruby's repulsive 'friends' what they had coming to them. There were serious disadvantages the CatRuby had to worry about, particularly Semblance- and acre-related disadvantages, but they had some advantages in the sack on their back that were foes didn't yet know about. Narrowed eyes flit inside the hood over each of the CatRuby's enemies while thunder grumbled in the rainy sky.
'WBYJ' struck first.
Yang and Blake leapt like a singular lifeform; Blake with animal-like agility that Ruby's instincts, feeding into the CatRuby's, remembered, while Yang fired her arm-mounted guns behind herself for extra propulsion. Grinning, the CatRuby leapt backwards, and purple earth cracked as Blake and Yang struck the spot a second later. Activating Petal Burst, the CatRuby curved in the air faster than Blake could deploy Gambol Shroud, barrelling into the couple full-force and sending them hurtling backwards mid-reconstitution. The Cat had had some experience fighting over the millennia since their creation, though mainly only when defending others per their purpose from others' intent to cause harm, but they'd never fought in a human's body before. However, merged with Ruby's heart, her honed warrior's muscle memory and instincts were feeding the CatRuby's actions so they knew exactly how to use this body to fight.
A rotating, white-glowing glyph formed under the CatRuby's clawed boots, and they leapt clear with Ruby's reflexes before it could take effect. Their gaze snapped towards where Weiss, Jaune and the Afteran rabbit were hanging back for the moment. Ruby's instinctive memories suggested that the awful white-haired human would likely be content performing long-ranged attacks. The CatRuby snapped their gaze back to the other, more active combatants – in time to see Yang propel Blake like a cannonball with twin gunshots to the Faunus' heels, before Blake lashed out Gambol Shroud. The CatRuby slid around the ribbon's bladed end, which embedded in the ground. Blake gripped the ribbon and swung around the anchored end and the CatRuby, aiming to kick them from an angle – but the CatRuby used Petal Burst to arc out of Blake's range and come up behind her, reconstituting mid-air and swiping a clawed hand into Blake's back. Her aura annoyingly protected her from bodily harm, but the blow still threw and unbalanced her.
"Hahaha!" the CatRuby cackled. Just before twin blasts of fire and pain hit their side from Yang's weapons, throwing them back. The yellow-haired wretch was sprinting towards them. Ruby's memories told the CatRuby that Yang was a brawler in fighting style; strong and hard to move, but she had limited reach. The CatRuby didn't know how long they had before the Remnant-folk's Semblances might become augmented – Weiss's glyphs and Ruby's own Semblance had both demonstrably operated normally so far, but that was no guarantee that all the combatants' Semblances wouldn't augment at any moment here in the Abandoned Acre, just as Neo's Semblance had.
The CatRuby arced with Petal Burst above Yang's head as though aiming to kick down at her, but their petal-comet form bounced back at the last second – which proved to be wise, as the girl fired a skyward blast from her metal arm at where they'd just been. How did the Remnant-folk's weapons never run out of ammunition, when they had no Dust from Remnant to restock them in the Ever After?! The CatRuby circled around Yang and Blake, and they shot straight for that self-pitying, failed knight. Reconstituting in a flurry of petals, the CatRuby kicked their clawed boots into Jaune's timeworn shield, making him slide backwards along the damp ground, before they kicked back off as Jaune was lifting his sword. The broken oaf had been expecting the CatRuby to press the attack and had made a mistake. Twirling and back-flipping, the CatRuby threw two projectiles from the sack slung tightly over their back. Those projectiles splattered on the nearby Weiss and Juniper in a mess of blue goo, purple leaves and vegetables, the bowls which had held that food bouncing off their bodies.
A bewildered and messy Weiss exclaimed, "Wha…?!"
She and Juniper suddenly began shrinking like deflated balloons. The CatRuby was too busy suddenly engaging Yang to catch the look on the haughty, shrinking girl's or the human-sized, self-damning shade of a knight's faces, but the thought was amusing. They delivered an airborne kick to Yang's crossed arms which drove her back, then bent their upper-body backwards, grinning upside-down at the newly mouse-sized heiress and the cat-sized rabbit.
"Shringress Salad courtesy of the Picky Carpenter!" the CatRuby shouted gleefully. Jaune's stunned face turned to a scowl. They'd both met the Picky Carpenter back when they'd been the LivelyCarpenter, before that awful incident Alyx had caused with the oysters. "You'll need to get used to fighting small again!" Weiss and Juniper were now the size of housepets with the strength to go with either, and if the CatRuby had observed correctly at the Crimson Keep, the average size of Weiss's glyphs would shrink to match her new size. The CatRuby cackled-
"Ack!" Ribbon noosed painfully around their neck and wiped their grin away. The similarly feline-eared Faunus handler yanked the CatRuby off their feet and into the wet air, where a leaping Yang threw a downward punch into their skyward-facing belly, knocking the wind clean out of them, before rainy and purple earth cracked under the CatRuby's hard landing. Hissing, the CatRuby evaded Yang's next punch, letting her fist bury itself in the earth where they'd just been. They kicked at Yang's exposed flank, her knee and her face several times in quick succession to force her back, giving the CatRuby some space and breathing time. A second before Blake was upon them, and the CatRuby was throwing a very close flurry of kicks and swipes at her face and body, which forced the Faunus to backpedal.
Another Blake formed with each and every backpedalling step of the original, each and every one groaning from the assault.
The fight in the gloomy acre came to a standstill as all attention was on the rope of identical cat-eared, dark-haired, white-and-purple clothed girls.
"Blake?!" Yang exclaimed, her purple eyes wide.
The CatRuby wasn't so shocked – they'd suspected what might happen to the present Remnant-folk's Semblances, and from how Neo's Semblance had previously changed, they'd had an idea of how the other Semblances including Blake's Shadow Semblance could change. The CatRuby didn't let anything distract them. One of their enemies had just displayed an augmented Semblance, which meant they had to act now. Twisting their lower body and leaping to their feet with a flare of Petal Burst (which showed no changes of its own that were immediately obvious), the CatRuby threw objects from their sack in everyone's directions around the battlefield. A glass orb shattered in Yang's face and spilled liquid. A pouch burst in Jaune's face, rainbow-coloured smoke expanding. Some of the Blakes got hit – more pouch-shaped smoke-bombs exploded on two Blakes and engulfed six in the Ever-smoke, while another glass orb exploded on another Blake.
Around the CatRuby, two non-Blake enemies were coughing and gagging as the Ever-leaves' smoke engulfed them, and those among the Blake clones that weren't enshrouded appeared stationary. The CatRuby couldn't see the shrunken Weiss but they could hear her coughing, while Jaune's rabbit was glaring from on the conflict's edge but didn't join in. As Ever-smoke rolled near the CatRuby, they backpedalled mindfully. The Ever-leaves, like many things in the Ever After, had no effect on the Cat, but from how Jaune's spyglass spell (one other such thing) had summoned the CatRuby, the CatRuby had guessed that their human host could still be affected and the Cat with her. Yang stopped coughing, glancing at the rainbow-coloured tea that had splashed on her from the orb. Her glaring eyes found the CatRuby for one second, before those eyes glazed over and her muscles visibly relaxed as the colours of a rainbow glowed on her. The purple ground snapped open below Yang and swallowed her. One of the CatRuby's enemies had just been sent to the Ever Tree, and the others except the shrunken Juniper on the sideline were effectively paralysed by Ever-smoke. The CatRuby didn't waste any time – they needed to get rid of as many of their foes as possible as quickly as possible. They couldn't possibly afford to fight all of an augmented Semblance-armed _WBY/J at once.
The CatRuby charged, tearing with blurring, spinning motions and weaves of their claws through the Blakes that weren't enveloped in Ever-smoke. None of the Blakes showed the presence of mind to resist as the CatRuby cut through, each of them turning to smoke instead of spilling blood where they were wounded. The CatRuby had observed that Blake's new clones were visibly paler than the original Blake, the one who'd been at the end of the rope of them. Cutting down the nearest Shadow-Blake to the rainbow-coloured cloud that had expanded where the first Blake had been, the CatRuby didn't miss a beat – gulping in air and holding their body's breath, they dived in.
The Ever-leaves in their incense form weren't potent to the touch like their tea was – the incense needed to get inside someone to affect them. The rainbow-coloured gas was pressing all around the CatRuby, wisps looking for entry into them. They saw a Blake-shaped outline looming through the smoke, and they attacked. Their clawed hands raked down full-force, then they slashed and hacked madly and blindly, looking to cause as much damage as possible. They felt their claws were cutting through something other than aura, something soft and moist which didn't evaporate like the Shadow-Blakes had.
The Ever-smoke recoiled and billowed away from the CatRuby and their target, no doubt due to the attack interrupting the target's smoke-induced vision. The CatRuby didn't let up right away – yelling, hacking, slashing and tearing with their giant claws for several seconds longer. Then, sharply, they leapt away. Not a second later, the shrunken Juniper charging in put her cat-sized body between the CatRuby and the crumpled Blake on the ground. A sweet gesture, and the CatRuby recalled this particular bunny had been like that in their last incarnation or the one before, even if it was wasted on the Remnant-folk. The CatRuby looked past Juniper at the damage they'd done.
Blake's guard had apparently been down while she'd been seeing what the Ever-smoke had shown her, so her aura hadn't protected her from the CatRuby's first strikes at all. She'd gotten her aura up the instant she'd registered that she was under attack, and that had deflected further injury during the tail-end of the frenzy, but it had been too little too late for her. Blake was lying in a half-crumpled heap on the rain-dappled purple ground, her white coat and dark clothing stained with sprays and splatters of her crimson blood. Awful marks from the CatRuby's claws, as deep as a finger-and-a-half, had carved open her shoulder, back, thigh, and her neck and the side of her face. Thicker blood-stains were seeping into Blake's clothes where the CatRuby had speared their claws into her inbetween frenzied scratches. The Faunus writhed weakly on the ground at a snail's pace (or a dying Remnant-native's pace). She coughed and hacked weakly, and her lidded golden eye roved onto the CatRuby standing over her. She glared, despite the deep, bleeding claw-marks reaching from her neck to her jawline.
"You have… no right…" Blake forced the weak words out. "No right… to make Ruby's… or anyone else's… decisions for them!" Looking down their human nose at the Faunus, the CatRuby's face didn't betray any of the profound scorn or amusement they felt. In Ruby's heart, a dark pit opened and knotted around itself. "You monster… Just like Ironwood… Salem… and Adam…"
And you? The CatRuby didn't say.
Blake paused, eyes widening but no longer seeing the CatRuby, seeming panicked.
"You can't win!" she growled at something only she could see, tone becoming desperate. "We're not like the White Fang! We're Team RWBY! We're better than this!"
"No," the CatRuby said calmly. They felt an out-of-place breeze coming from a certain direction, but they ignored it, not glancing at the multicoloured leaves blowing in from a certain direction. "You're not. No-one on this ground is." The CatRuby's lips quivered up into a grin, the laughter (which always eased them through it) bubbling inside them. Without another word, the CatRuby swiped Juniper out of the way with an arm as they pounced on the downed girl like she were a butterfly they were chasing (or like she was Alyx at the Tree), and then they started inflicted more violence than they ever had on any butterfly. Blake's aura, weakened from her wounds, broke under the first slashes. Crimson splashed into the rainy ground. The CatRuby kept on clawing and tearing, not noticing the yellow-haired figure who was appearing among the gust of leaves from the Tree's direction. The frenzy was over as quickly as it had started. Cyan eyes were bulging wide under the CatRuby's cat-eared hood, a fanged grin plastered on their face as weak (broken) giggles petered out of them.
"BLAAAAKE!"
The CatRuby leapt away with Petal Burst (barely feeling the lone tear that had escaped their cyan eye); a second before Yang Xiao-Long of all people was upon the eviscerated girl. There was something very wrong about the light Yang was glowing with.
"NOOO!" Yang's hair hadn't just lit on fire, her entire body seemed wreathed in yellow and orange flames, burning brightly in the dark acre as slow-falling raindrops evaporated around her. Apparently, the Ever Tree had sent Yang back within minutes. The CatRuby wasn't surprised – coming to the decision to stay the same within minutes was common when textbook narcissists went to the Tree, and generally, those whom were uninjured, less damaged and less weary-hearted when they ascended tended to take less time to return from the Tree fixed up. But the CatRuby had been hoping Yang would've taken somewhat longer if she was going to come back at all. And of course the Tree had transported her from itself straight back to her all-mattering, all-important Faunus partner and their fellow narcissists in the Abandoned Acre, instead of leaving her to make her way on foot!
Yang, tears streaking down her cheeks, turned the broken Faunus girl over to see her face. The CatRuby weighed whether to strike her right now or go straight for the next most dangerous Remnant-folk after Blake. They'd targeted Blake first because in addition to her augmented Shadow Semblance's potential; from what Ruby's instincts and memory had told the CatRuby, Blake had been the toughest, most agile and most durable of the bunch with the fewest weaknesses to exploit. A cloud of Ever-smoke on the CatRuby's other side dissipated, and their keen eye picked out the mouse-sized Weiss stumbling forward while the human-sized Jaune coughed the incense away. Jaune saw Yang and Blake, blue eyes widening. Yang sniffled and blubbered sadly, cradling the fallen Blake's head in her arms for a few seconds longer, the heat radiating from her evaporating her tears. The CatRuby easily iced down their urge to reach out and help a hurting heart. Yang's sobs and weeping slowly melted into ragged breaths, which started to sound like growling. Her head snapped up, wide red eyes glaring straight at the CatRuby beneath her flaming hair.
"I'LL KILL YOU!"
Not just a fire, but an inferno erupted off of Yang, illuminating the Abandoned Acre as a blistering blast tore outward, throwing everyone but Yang backwards and turning the rainy air oven-dry. The CatRuby hit the purple dirt with a pained cry, yards away from where they'd been, as did Jaune and the shrunken Weiss and Juniper elsewhere. Thunder clapped overhead as if in feeble protest to the heat and fire in the Abandoned Acre. The CatRuby heard the terrible sound of flame roaring nearer, feline eyes bulging a second before they Petal Bursted clear – just in time to avoid a flaming fist which smashed the ground where they'd been, kicking up fire and purple dust as the ground broke like a dropped plate for over a dozen human-yards. The CatRuby reconstituted at a distance from the humans, scowling – Ruby's instincts screeched that that blow would have powered through their aura in a single strike. The CatRuby almost missed the white glow in the bottom corner of their eyes. Their gaze snapped down, seeing two of Weiss's shrunken-sized glyphs glowing at either of their clawed boots. They grunted, forcing their legs to move – more glyphs, black-coloured, sprung up to try and hold them back as the first glyphs broke apart under the resistance. The CatRuby grit their fanged teeth, pushing their legs with all their host's strength – they shrunk their blue-glowing arms a little and pushed blue energy into their lower-legs above the boots, strengthening the muscles. The black glyphs broke apart, and the CatRuby instantly Petal Bursted to the air. Just under two seconds before pain exploded as a fiery comet ripped into and through the CatRuby with a roar, making them reconstitute as they crashed back to purple ground with a pounding head.
Weiss, small for the second time, stared in shock at where Yang had just knocked the Cat-possessed Ruby out of the air, her Semblance burning brighter and stronger than Weiss had ever seen it before. Was this just Yang's rage driving her? Had her Semblance evolved? Was it related to what had happened to Blake? (Just before she'd died.)
Fresh, hot tears stung Weiss's eyes and face. Just a few days ago, she'd thought her entire team had died in front of her on the bridge. Now she'd lost Blake for real. It was cruel. She resented when a cool raindrop floated down onto her shrunken form and washed her tears away. But Weiss knew she couldn't beat herself down right now – she had to take consolation in the fact everyone including Blake had tried their best and been very brave. She and her friends had to focus on finishing this fight – defeating the Cat, that thing that was possessing Ruby, and getting Ruby back. But Weiss worried that Yang in her own grief was going to do something foolish…
The wet, shrunken huntress cursorily glanced over at Jaune, who was towering even more over Weiss than before in her current state. He was gazing at Yang and the possessed Ruby, bearded face looking astonished but thoughtful. He glanced at his hand and clenched it. His aura rippled, then it rippled again, but suddenly brighter and more vibrant than Weiss had ever seen anyone's aura shine before. Jaune gasped, almost as though feeling the difference.
"It's our Semblances…" he muttered loud enough for Weiss's ears to hear, brightened aura fading. "That's how Neo's Semblance evolved so fast…" Jaune turned to look straight at Weiss, eyes urgently wide. "Weiss, your glyphs!"
The CatRuby smashed into a barren tree, hard enough to splinter it and send all of it above their shoulder-level creaking backwards to the ground. Panting, and shrugging off the pain with Ruby's resilience, the CatRuby scowled and their glowing eyes narrowed in their hood. They'd heard Jaune's words clear as day. And he apparently had the same idea as they did about who the next most-dangerous member of _WBY/J after poor, dead Blake was. That the sorry, pathetic knight was half-smart when he wanted to be only made his monumental decades-long failures all the more contemptible! But the CatRuby had to act now. If Weiss could sprout up a hundred or a thousand of her glyphs with her Semblance augmented, then even when she was shrunken (and it was very fortunate that she was shrunken with her Semblance's potential), Weiss could cripple the CatRuby's capacity to move in any way. And with a raging Yang on the CatRuby's tail at the same time…
"AAAAAAAARGH!"
Yang, her eyes reflecting the red she was seeing, crashed to the purple ground where the CatRuby had been just a second before, a boom cracking the air as the splintered tree-trunk was completely shattered, flames catching on several neighbouring trees and overgrowth. The CatRuby was truthfully surprised by that attack. Was the idiot girl oblivious to how her Semblance had changed, or did she really mean to…?
Regardless, the CatRuby didn't waste the opportunity they had. They leapt upon Yang's back, having swung around her flank into her blind zone. It was almost laughable the way that the vengeance-crazed human, whose augmented Semblance made her a natural disaster, went down like any person struck to the back of their head by a decently-executed kick. Ruby's knowledge and instincts told the CatRuby that Yang's Semblance, no matter its power, didn't do anything to strengthen her aura when she absorbed a Semblance-fuelling strike; quite the opposite in fact. The CatRuby frenziedly slashed and clawed at the downed girl's back for no more than a second, before recoiling. Knowing how her Burn Semblance was fuelled, they had to be careful with her. Yang's hair was no longer an inferno, but it was still on fire. She didn't immediately move at the CatRuby behind her. The CatRuby turned their gaze and activated Petal Burst, shooting towards the remaining two humans.
They knew the shrunken Weiss had acted when glyphs started forming on all sides around their petal-trail. Dozens upon dozens, then hundreds of small, black and white glyphs, were materialising around the CatRuby's crimson petal form like coordinated horseflies and fireflies. Ruby's mind recalled that Weiss often needed to use Dust for her glyphs, and couldn't recall her ever summoning so many glyphs of more than one type before. Fortunately, the glyphs were forming just too slowly to keep up with Petal Burst and catch the CatRuby in their effects. At least, that was until a black, vertical arch formed faster than the CatRuby could swerve away. Their Petal Burst form's trajectory halted inside the arch, suspended by its effect, but Petal Burst didn't dissipate back into the CatRuby's tangible state. Petal Burst was still whirring, trying to escape, but the 'gravity'-themed black glyphs matched its resistance with their own. The CatRuby could see the shrunken Weiss was crouched on the purple ground, visible by her bright whites.
No.
Weiss gestured with Myrtenaster. A new white glyph formed in the dark, rainy sky directly overhead, as large and wide as a house. Any lingering doubt that Weiss's Semblance was now augmented was completely dispelled. The CatRuby was caught, trying to Petal Burst through the spot where they were trapped against the black glyphs. A couple glyphs in the arch broke apart every second, but it was only a minor dent as many more were still in operation, holding the Semblance-using CatRuby trapped. Weiss on the ground gestured with her free hand, and new glyphs sprung up in the air to replace the ones that were breaking. No!
A terrible noise, unlike any the Cat had heard but instinctively familiar to Ruby, cut through the stormy air from above. Overhead, a pair of gigantic, feathered white wings were emerging from Weiss's house-sized sky-glyph. Between the wings, a terrible bird's head with a hooked beak emerged. A Grimm summon. Weiss on the ground smirked darkly.
No!
This, Weiss's Semblance potential, was why Ruby's tactical aid had told the CatRuby that Weiss was the next most hazardous enemy after Blake. If they didn't stop Weiss now, they were as good as done for. They would never escape the Ever After, would never have their answers. They would rot here for another several thousand years, always needing but never knowing. Forever!
No, no, NO!
Petal Burst whirred faster, stirring up winds which buffeted the nearby humans. Jaune's blonde-grey hair whipped about as he lifted his shield, and Weiss scowled as she crouched to form a black glyph under herself, anchoring her to the damp ground.
SKAAAAW!
The Grimm summon's entire upper-body had emerged from the overhead glyph. A few more moments, and the beast would descend fully-formed on the CatRuby.
New glyphs had stopped appearing to replace the ones that Petal Burst was still breaking through. The white-haired girl, kneeling, looked too busy maintaining her anchor glyph to avoid her being blown away.
SKAAAAW!
The Grimm summon, the Nevermore, was descending, lower-body emerging.
Only a dozen black glyphs were still intact around the former arch.
Less than a dozen…
SKAAAAW!
YES!
The CatRuby shot straight for their target. Reconstituting, petals were trailing and their clawed boots hadn't even touched the ground when they threw their drawn projectile. The pest of a girl slid backwards on a new white glyph, not quickly enough – the tea-filled glass bauble shattered close enough for the force to unbalance and throw Weiss from the glyph as Ever-tea splashed.
"Yargh!" Jaune roared. The CatRuby Petal Bursted in the opposite direction from him, putting over a dozen human-yards between them and his swing in a second.
Even from that distance, the CatRuby saw Weiss, soaked in a mix of multicoloured liquid and rainwater, coughing. Something – Ruby – urged the CatRuby to pay attention to her. The shrunken girl's ice-blue gaze met the CatRuby's. Their blue, feline ears atop their head picked up Weiss's voice.
"Ruby…"
A pit tore open in the purple ground, and Weiss was swallowed. One of the Remnant-folk was dead, and another had ascended to the Tree. In truth, the CatRuby had grasped for the first instrument their clawed hand had felt in their back-sack when they'd attacked Weiss – if they could have afforded, they would have much preferred to render her dead rather than risk her coming back in minutes as the same Weiss like Ruby's sister had. Although based on the CatRuby's analysis of the obnoxious heiress's character and her last attempt at communication with Ruby, the CatRuby was somewhat hopeful that she wouldn't be coming back so soon, as overgrowth sealed off the pit to the Ever Tree's roots.
The CatRuby re-observed their remaining few opponents. Jaune was sparing a solemn glance for the pile of green vines where Weiss had met the Tree, before glaring angrily at the CatRuby. Thick, golden aura flashed too brightly on him for the CatRuby's liking. The growing glow of firelight drew the CatRuby's gaze over to where the fiery-haired girl was picking herself up, barren trees around her burning like torches in the acre's gloom, her boots loud on the purple ground. Yang's face was still a red-eyed picture of wrath and rage. (Idly, the CatRuby wondered if the Cat's face had borne a similar expression when they'd killed Alyx.) For now, the CatRuby only had two awful humans to contend with, while that little rabbit continued glaring on the fringes. Those enemies included a knight, who held the spyglass spell-laden object that was keeping the CatRuby from just leaving now, and who had an aura-amplifying Semblance that had now been augmented – which, based on his normal Semblance's nature and how the others' Semblances had changed, likely meant that his aura was now all but invincible. The CatRuby doubted Jaune would fall for the same Ever-smoke trick twice now that the element of surprise around that was gone. The CatRuby's other enemy was a strong girl, currently moving on pure fury, who with her augmented Semblance was a living quake, and a living explosion of Flamepowder that could set a forest on fire; and there was the question of how little she would truly hold back when measuring her lust for vengeance against the need to avoid severely damaging Ruby. It was inadvisable to get too close to Yang, especially with the fuel her Semblance had received in the CatRuby's last strike at her, but as knocking her out had proven, her aura hadn't been made stronger like her Semblance had. Though if Jaune used his Aura Amp Semblance on Yang, that would change.
Yang threw her arms out, and the air roared and the ground vibrated as an inferno burst from her hair in all directions, flames climbing higher than the burning treetops to the point where it seemed like her fire was licking at the lowest thunderheads. She blasted her arm-mounted shotguns to propel her forward, screaming. The CatRuby knew better than to take a blow like that. They just didn't know how right they were until Yang made impact on the spot where they'd been – the purple ground broke for several-dozen yards as a cloud of purple dust and flame exploded.
Yang blasted out of the dust-cloud with propulsion-blasts from her arms. The CatRuby dodged with Petal Burst. (Again, were the Remnant-folk's Dust supplies unending? A pity the CatRuby didn't have Crescent Rose to find out.) And it frustratingly seemed at this point that Ruby's Semblance wasn't going to become more powerful as her false friends' Semblances had – perhaps because it was the Cat's heart piloting her, or because her own heart had been weakened so much more than the other Remnant-folk's. But an un-augmented Petal Burst Semblance was still doing the trick for the CatRuby, for now. Yang leapt, practically wreathed in fire, and the CatRuby activated Petal Burst a split-second before she made impact. The shockwave shattered earth again and sent an outward bubble of scalding heat from the impact – the CatRuby reconstituted at the explosion's edge, the once-rainy air unnaturally dry. Yang's red eyes fixed on them.
Turning their hooded head fractionally, the CatRuby saw Jaune coming with his sword and shield raised – the CatRuby briefly flared Petal Burst again to come upon him. Thunder cracked and lightning forked as the CatRuby crouched atop the shield's tip in a flurry of petals, and began slashing their clawed arms in light-blue blurs, forcing Jaune to parry with his sword arm. If Jaune's Aura Amp Semblance was augmented in the way the CatRuby suspected, then they had very little hope of breaking through his aura while his guard was up, but they could still make him feel pain, disorient him and maybe throw him off his feet. Jaune threw out his shield arm to throw the CatRuby off, only for them to vertically arc back around with Petal Burst, aiming to kick out at him – but Jaune side-stepped and drove his shield's edge hard into the CatRuby's abdomen as they were sailing past, knocking them straight to the ground. The CatRuby had barely half-spun back onto their feet when Jaune drove down at them again, making them cry out. A second later, he was hoisting them to their feet – an idiot move – and grappling them from behind, shield arm across their shoulders and trying to pin them by the collarbone. Drawing on Ruby's non-Semblance speed and reflex, the CatRuby threw their head forward – hood falling from their head-hair and cat-ears – and then threw their head backward into Jaune's face.
Crack.
The CatRuby's head threatened to swim – they heard Jaune barely cry out, and no doubt his nose was as undamaged as the back of the CatRuby's skull was because of the Remnant-folk's aura, but his grip loosened enough for the CatRuby to break free. They spun, kicking and slashing at Jaune and his shield, using Petal Burst to arc out of range of a purple Gravity Dust blast. (That old thing still had functioning Dust after all its decades of presumed use in the Ever After?!) Then the CatRuby jumped back in to cut and swipe at Jaune some more, before dodging backwards from a swing of his broken sword. The CatRuby heard Yang coming, felt the heat through their uncovered head-hair. After a second, they leapt at Jaune again, making slashes at his impervious aura and deflecting his sword-arm, before they kicked off his shield and over his head.
Fleeing with Petal Burst just as an inferno-wreathed Yang Xiao-Long made impact fist-first with Jaune Arc's Crocea Mors shield. A crack split the air, and everything seemed to happen in slow-motion. Aura flared and kept flaring as flames rolled outward and Jaune's vambrace on his shield arm distorted – the shield in question splintered at the point where Yang's Semblance-empowered fist had impacted it, while Jaune was sailing backwards off his feet. As the shield was breaking, a final wave of Gravity Dust blasted Yang and forced her backwards.
Jaune flew for yards, aura still flaring as he crashed to ground. He didn't get up. Crocea Mors' shield component was splintered in two atop his arm.
Reconstituting, the CatRuby stared wide-eyed. Part of them felt surprised, but it wasn't a part of them, per se. Ruby's instincts told them that a blow like that must have been meant to kill, and if it hadn't been for Jaune's Semblance, his aura would've almost certainly broken along with his arm at least.
Yang, recovering, didn't seem to notice Jaune lying on his back from her blow, the passive Juniper running to him for the first time since the fight's start. Instead, her red eyes sought out the CatRuby again. The fire-haired girl charged, howling her grief and hate out. Her hair was still flaming, but she ironically didn't explode with a blast of heat as she pursued the CatRuby, who used Petal Burst to evade – they kept evading Yang and letting her chase them for several seconds before they felt confident she wasn't going to unleash another explosion. Her Burn Semblance must have been running low, and even augmented, it needed another blow to feed its power.
Yang's blow on Jaune had been meant to kill, and it probably would have killed any human body that lacked a Semblance like his. The CatRuby distantly felt something in Ruby's heart hurting with flavours of hurt, shock and betrayal. A tiny voice, so fragile that it was barely audible, whispered inside them from the heart. Yang…?
Jaune's head was pounding. Many years ago, a part of him would've wanted him to curl up and lie here (like the useless failure he was), but now, he forced himself up on his elbows. His aura was intact – though certainly not undented– and he fed Aura Amp into himself to recharge it. It felt unreal how rich his aura was right now. He imagined it would take a lot to deplete it – although Yang's friendly fire had come close.
Juniper, still shrunken to the size of an average housepet, was stood protectively by Jaune. Ignoring the headache cutting into his optic nerves and the way his shield arm felt like it would scream if he budged it the wrong way, Jaune glanced towards where Yang – hair still glowing with more fire than was normal for her Semblance, but no longer a walking inferno – was chasing and grappling with Ruby's possessed body. She tried to get the possessed Ruby into a hand-lock, which Ruby's body recoiled from at the last without landing any hits that could further charge Yang's Semblance. Assuming her Semblance would even work that way anymore.
Jaune's blue gaze turned away as he remembered his plan.
The human girl came hurtling at the CatRuby with another backwards-blast of her twin shotguns. The CatRuby dodged out of range in a flurry of petals, then just as Yang swung out an arm, the CatRuby dodged around it and snapped out their clawed arm to catch the girl's flesh limb, before their opposite arm grasped Yang's metal arm just as it had been moving to close in on them. Ruby alone would never have been able to match Yang's physical strength like this, but the CatRuby's enlarged, pale-blue arms packed far more strength. Yang and the CatRuby's arms trembled furiously against each-other as their muscles fought – apparently matched so long as Yang's augmented Semblance was so low on fuel – and barely a foot of distance separated their noses, Yang's snarling face glaring into the CatRuby's cyan eyes and razor-toothed mouth.
"Right now, Ruby is remembering a time when her sister fed her, cared for her and put her safety above a high salmon-school fling!" The words tumbled out of the CatRuby almost involuntarily, and at a rushed speed. They knew it was Ruby's influence pulsating inside of them to be heard in some form by the girl in front of them, after Yang's attempt on Ruby's life. The words came out faster and faster, almost desperate and pleading. "Whatever happened to that Yang, hm?!"
"SHUT UP!" Yang yelled the first coherent words since flying into her rage, a second before the CatRuby withdrew with Petal Burst, putting several human paces' worth of distance between them inside of a second. The CatRuby laughed.
"So this is the real Yang Xiao-Long Huntress?" they asked, gesturing with a clawed arm. Two wet tears that weren't the Cat's leaked from the CatRuby's eyes down their pale cheeks, contrasting their razor-toothed grin.
"You murdered my SOULMATE!" Yang screamed, baring her own flat teeth like a beast while a lone tear rolled from her eye. The CatRuby Petal Bursted backwards as Yang shotgun-propelled herself into the spot where they'd just been standing.
"PAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" The CatRuby almost wasn't sure how much the laughter was from them and how much it was from Ruby, faintly feeling something inside them cracking and collapsing into a black void. "Your soulmate?" the CatRuby parroted the childish drivel. The next words were definitely compelled to pour out of them by the same something that had made their eyes leak and made them rant questions at Yang: "Did poor, dead Blake matter more to you than everyone else around you including your sister?! Does Rubymatter so little to you that you're willing to KILL her now?!"
Yang's eyes widened. The human staggered a couple small steps backward as if she'd been stabbed. Her rampaging mien breaking. The CatRuby almost took the opening to strike while her guard was weak, but something made them wait.
"I…" Yang mumbled. "No, I…" She glanced down at her hands. "I didn't mean… I was angry… I didn't…" The CatRuby was a split-second away from taking the opening to strike when Yang shook her head. "No!" Rays of burning yellow shot off her hair. She pointed a finger and yelled, "This isn't myfault! YOU made me lose it! You did all of this! You killed my Blake! It was YOU!" The CatRuby cackled aloud, eyes bulging, though they didn't dare break eye contact with Yang.
"One of the telltale signs of a narcissist is an inability to accept criticism!" the CatRuby said, grinning. Yang charged at them, and she threw more punches, haymakers and an attempt to grasp, all of which the CatRuby dodged and Petal Bursted away from before they delivered a tremor-inducing punch to the ground, which forced Yang slightly backwards. The CatRuby kept speaking through it: "You think any critique is an assault to your person. In your mind, you're the last person in the world who can be wrong, because you're the only person who's really real! Urgh!" Yang had managed to deliver an uppercut after jumping back into the CatRuby's space, throwing them several paces backwards.
"If Ruby had talked, we would have helped!" Yang shouted.
"She did talk, but you ignored her," the Cat-Ruby shot back with a feline hiss, wiping stray spittle from their mouth on the back of their enlarged hand; "you selfish BITCH!" The CatRuby was surprised to hear the vulgar last word push out through their mouth, and their ears even heard the Cat's voice momentarily become less prominent to Ruby's voice.
"I GAVE UP EVERYTHING FOR RUBY!" Yang screeched before the CatRuby could charge. "Ever since I was a little girl, for HER!" The CatRuby's eyes widened fractionally – hearing those words from the hurting, wretched girl, the faintest stirrings of sympathy pulsed in their heart, but it was iced down so quickly that even the CatRuby were surprised. The hurting, wretched girl who'd broken her sister, which Ruby's heart was still simmering in pain from. "We all looked up to her because she was the best of us! She led us when we saved Haven, Argus and everyone we could in Atlas!" Those words were enough to kill the last remnants of sympathy – the CatRuby remembered giving so, so many pieces of their heart away to Afterans for so long, and getting none back (even as giving so many bits of their heart away had changed them for the worse). The part of the CatRuby that was still Ruby was cold. "But Ruby kept being difficult ever since we landed in this place, just like Ironwood, Ozpin and Cordovin. But she was NEVER wrong or weak!" Yang suddenly charged again. "IT WAS YOU WHO MADE HER THINK THAT!"
The CatRuby Petal Bursted away from Yang's sudden strike, a cackle bursting out of them as they reconstituted far on Yang's flank.
"Did you kill the Yang who Ruby remembers you being, just like Ruby and I killed our broken, old selves?!" the CatRuby asked, their laughter turning to a snarl from the sentence's start to end.
Yang didn't scream so much as grunt, charging again. The CatRuby, spreading their arms and twirling, activated Petal Burst as they shot high into the air and kept climbing, before making a sharp U-turn and hurtling back towards the girl on the ground. They shot narrowly past Yang, and the tailwinds of their passage buffeted her like a surge from a burst dam, throwing her off her feet after a second of resistance. The CatRuby reconstituted, glaring back at Yang as they reached back-
-and found no sack for their clawed hand to touch. Cyan eyes widened and their grin vanished. They patted their upper-back with two giant hands, feeling nothing but Ruby's cloak and back armour. Where was their sack?!
A recent memory flashed through the CatRuby's mind, the moment where Jaune had grappled them from behind with an arm across their shoulders.
Ah…!
They snapped their head around, frantically looking for any sign of the sack. No, no, no! Any one of the weapons in that sack could be disastrous if turned against them! The Ever-smoke could affect Ruby, the Shringress Salads could shrink them, the Ever-tea could ascend Ruby and potentially rip the Cat away from her; it could render all their work for nought-!
"Urgh!"
Something slapped the CatRuby's face, feeling soft the instant before it exploded on contact, filling their face and visions with multi-coloured smoke. Their cyan eyes itched and their nose burned.
No! No, no, no, nonoNO!
The CatRuby's wide eyes caught sight of Jaune's rust-coloured shape, a split-second before he threw something else – more Ever-smoke exploded and blotted the CatRuby's line of sight. Jaune was using their Ever-smoke bombs against them! The CatRuby frantically wheezed and hacked to clear their airways, tried to run to escape being enshrouded.
"ARGH!" They felt something inside them split, like their head was being cut down the middle, making their face twist. A second later, their essence was being pushed to their body's surface. They coughed and hacked painfully, knees collapsing under them, and the inside of their chest above the left breast – the heart – was burning as things surged up. Straight to the forefront of their mind. Horrid, horrid things.
"No!" the CatRuby screamed, pawing at the sides of their head as if they could rub and scratch all of it out. "All these regrets… these FEELINGS!" Images through the Ever-smoke were flooding the CatRuby's vision, but they could feel all that came with those images' origins. The Cat had been designed to empathise with those in distress, but never like this, where there were no physical boundaries whatsoever between them and the heart that was hurting! And their purpose… they still couldn't take FEELING these things and being UNABLE TO FIX THEM! The sister who'd effectively told Ruby that she didn't love her, the people Ruby had thought were her friends and who'd been a far cry, the ponytail-haired armoured girl Ruby had watched die, the metal girl she'd failed to save-!
And those were just Ruby's feelings!
The CatRuby could feel more coming up, and they realised after what felt like two seconds that these feelings were also coming from the Cat's own heart. Being inside a smoke-affected Ruby was enough for the smoke to affect the Cat for the first time in ever.
"I can't…!"
No!
The Hawker… Afterans who'd been eaten by the Jabberwalker… Afterans they'd been unable to fix… So many faces they'd failed since the Ever After's beginning… Jaune, Lewis, ALYX…
"I CAN'T!"
It was Blake's death that had given Jaune the idea to grab the Cat's sack full of Ever After weapons. The Cat had shown the rest of Team ALJC decades ago that the Tree's leaves had no effect on the Cat. But that didn't have to be the case for Ruby, did it? After all, the spyglass spell on Crescent Rose had been for Ruby, not the Cat, but it had summoned them with her all the same.
The rainbow-coloured clouds across the ground had completely enshrouded the Cat-Ruby from sight, but Jaune heard their screaming, before a bluish-white beam of light shot out of the smoke for a moment. Tossing the stolen sack of Ever After weapons aside, Jaune flexed his mutated Semblance (for lack of a better descriptor), shimmering with bright golden aura. He glanced sidelong over at where Yang was standing on the dark, cracked plain, looking more than ready to fight whatever came out of the Ever-smoke. Truth be told, Jaune was a little worried about her. Juniper was on the edge of the battlefield in moderate safety. A rumble like a low thunderhead drew Jaune's gaze straight back to the smoke that hid their enemy, before a light rush of air rolled over him like breath from a gigantic maw. The rainbow-coloured fumes were slowly billowing upward and outwards, thinning at a steady pace – at the centre of the smoke, a patch of white light was breaking through in flickers. Thunder crashed and lightning flashed.
Jaune heard the familiar voice cackling, no longer containing unnatural hints of Ruby's voice. He heard it at about the same time he saw a jagged outline against the thinning smoke. The mirthless, insane cackle made a shiver run up Jaune's spine, to think that that creature had hidden this side of theirself the entire time that they'd been together with Alyx and Lewis. Or had the Cat not yet been like this back then?
The jagged-shaped thing in the smoke was lifting itself higher and higher. Jaune's eyes widened and he took a half-step backwards as he realised it had risen over a head taller than him or Yang. The laughter was getting higher in intonation, to the point where it started reminding Jaune more of wailing, while the voice producing it was conversely distorting to a deeper pitch. He saw the outline of a familiar head through the fading smoke, feline eyes shining as the cackle reached a crescendo. An outward-movement of the huge figure's forelimbs dispelled most of the rainbow-coloured gas. Every muscle in Jaune's body instantly screamed alert, danger.
The Cat was no longer inside Ruby, but they were much, much larger, and they were standing upright. Their purple, blue and turquoise colours were gone, completely replaced by stark shades of paper-white and charcoal-black, the latter colour blending seamlessly with the dark and stormy landscape. The Cat's new form was striped and patterned in a way that vaguely reminded Jaune of a tiger. Outside the smoke, their eyes were pitch-black with narrowed white pupils. The triangular ears atop their head were huge, taller and more pointed. The fangs in their mouth – twisted into a demented grin – looked almost too long and large to fit in their jaws. The Cat's torso was the leanest and thinnest part of them now, and the upper-torso was crowned by a charcoal-black mane of wild hair like jagged spines. Their double-jointed legs and their bipedal forearms were surreally large. Each forepaw alone was equal in size to the Cat's enlarged head, with sickle-like claws that were each as long as Jaune's forearm. A long, thick, tiger-like tail tapered behind them.
The laughter wracked the enlarged, warped Cat. They'd taken this particular form several previous times since they'd first learned to warp their size and shape. The first time had been in a moment of anger when they'd been trying to help some trapped folk in physical distress. Another time had been in a moment of protective fury when the Jabberwalker had almost been upon their charges, and they'd used this form to hold the creature off just long enough for their charges to escape behind them. Oh, how the concept of fighting back had still been so new and strange to the Cat back then, as it was still strange to many of the renewed, memory-less Afterans who knew the reprieve of ascension. A long-ago friend had called this form the Furious Cat. Though it took much feeling for the Cat to access this form, they'd learned from experience that it was powerful – it was more than enough to hold the Jabberwalker back with ease. That having been said, the Cat was up against two creatures that were currently more powerful than almost any Afterans. Despite the fang-filled grin on the Cat's striped, monochrome face, they would have to be careful about their movements. They had their most powerful natural form, but they'd lost Ruby's speed Semblance along with all her fighting prowess that they'd been drawing on. They had to regain their host. Being powerful didn't make the Furious Cat immune to harm. They'd once not that many hundreds of years ago held back a large band of angry and ill-tempered Afterans who'd been slow to listen to reason and been chasing a distressed charge of the Cat's – though none of the attackers on their own had been able to get past the Furious Cat at the time, their combined might and lack of reservations about fighting to get through had eventually broken the Furious Cat's strength and left the Cat back in their normal form, weakened. More than a few blows from Yang with her augmented Burn Semblance, and the Cat suspected that their enlarged state would fail and then they'd be too weak to put up much more resistance. Jaune was a problem too. The Cat knew from their time merged to Ruby's heart that her wretched sister's aura was weakened by her Burn Semblance, but Jaune's Aura Amp Semblance could replenish that back to full while making Burn even more powerful. Though the Cat had some ideas about circumventing that…
Springing their hind-legs, the Furious Cat leapt at Jaune. They didn't put their warped limbs under theirself mid-landing so much as throw them down, cracking the ground at Jaune's feet and throwing the joke of a knight – now wielding only half a shield and a sword – back off his feet. The Cat didn't give him a chance to hit the ground, lashing out a clawed paw with feline speed to catch Jaune's torso, causing his aura to flare again with the force of the whiplash as they pulled him back and angularly threw him behind them – causing a spiderweb of cracks to instantly splinter out from the point of impact as Jaune's body bounced off the ground and tumbled away. He hadn't even finished tumbling when the Cat leapt in a pinpoint-accurate arc upon him and they started slashing their claws – his aura was flaring, but it didn't break with his cursed augmented Semblance.
The Cat's enlarged ear picked up the twin-shotgun noises of Yang rocketing herself towards them. Jaune under the Cat swiped and struck his loose arm's sword at their forelimb, but it was little more than a flurry of stings to them. The Cat threw Jaune's entire body by one paw straight at the incoming Yang, aiming for his aura to take her blow again. But that wretched, useful-only-when-it-didn't-help waste of a knight embedded his broken sword in the ground, momentum forcing him to swing around it as he gripped the pommel tight – aura flaring to prevent his arms tearing – and he fell to one knee, Yang shooting past him.
The Furious Cat scowled, before they fluidly leapt a couple-dozen human's-paces backwards from Yang's attack, the girl landing where the Cat had once stood with a small spiderweb of cracks splintering the ground further. Her red eyes were already back on the Cat, filled with the promise of destruction. The Cat's black-and-white eyes flit, observing hers, Jaune's and even that passive rabbit's positions, trying to work out how best to deal with them. The Cat turned their gaze to something distantly on their flank: a discarded, dull-brown sack on the purple ground. Yang had been sent back within minutes of going to the Tree the last time, on account of her narcissism and having no serious damage done to her body – but that had been just before Yang had become distraught with vengeance from losing the Faunus she'd been joined at the hip to. If Yang was sent to the Tree again in her current emotional state, she would probably be there for much longer, leaving only Jaune, Ruby and that unthreatening rabbit to fight.
The Furious Cat was grinning as Yang and Jaune charged. The Cat lifted their giant foreclaws above their head, and smashed them into the purple ground – the ground-cracking tremor might not have been enough to trip the humans up (which aided them with how Yang's Semblance was fuelled), but it threw up a smokescreen of dust between the Cat and them. Which prevented the humans from immediately seeing the Furious Cat's change in direction until they were shooting past the dust-cloud's edge, in a horizontal direction to the humans. The Cat seized their sack less than a second after reaching it, pouring several contents into their enlarged paw at once and then throwing with a wide swing of their forelimb. Smoke-bombs exploded on the ground into multicoloured clouds around the humans, who lifted their arms to shield their mouths from the incense – nothing made direct impact on them, though.
"Clear it!" Jaune yelled at Yang. The fire-haired girl hesitated a second, before throwing her gauntleted arms out.
BWOOM!
Fire blazed off of her, burning the Ever-smoke away in seconds along with every trace of moisture in the air. The Cat scowled. Jaune was looking at his hands as his aura flared, before he glanced at Yang. If he was thinking what the Cat suspected he was, then they needed to separate him and the yellow-haired girl now. Even empowering Yang's augmented Semblance again was worth stopping Jaune from undoing all the Cat's work on weakening her aura completely! The Furious Cat hissed in breath, then let loose from their muzzle a stream of purple lightning wreathed in indigo 'pixel' squares.
Ruby was still in the spot where she'd been when the Curious Cat had been forced out of her. Her bare hands and arms, lacking her destroyed gloves and sleeves, were pressed into the rain-soaked, purple ground, as was the rest of her. The battle she'd been able to hear raging around her had avoided this spot so far, and the light rain was floating down all around her. She weakly craned her neck to look up – and even that felt like a Hercalean task. It was the first time she'd moved without the Cat guiding her. She'd felt every part of her body moving and touching, but it had been the Cat commanding her brain to move them, not her. She remembered she'd had her thoughts and feelings, but they'd been sort of buried or masked underneath the Cat's thoughts and feelings, like ice-cream layered atop a shortbread base – almost as if her body and mind had been registering the Cat's feelings and thoughts as hers instead of what had been underneath them. Even as Ruby moved, she barely noticed how the rainwater had partially soaked her through.
A distance ahead, the Cat in their gigantic, vaguely Beowolf-like form was upon Yang and Jaune, claws hacking and slashing to throw Yang back and trying to throw Jaune. Ruby watched but didn't really feel anything warm. Instead, Ruby felt cold, colder than the light rain. The cold was inside her, swirling amid a black pit which the colours, feelings and sensations of the Cat had been layered over until now. But the pit below the cold wasn't entirely black.
There was anger there. Anger at someone who was going to endanger everyone on Remnant out of selfishness, who Ruby had thought she could trust, who'd betrayed and tortured Ruby in a way that she'd never have thought possible. That someone was currently right in her field of vision. And she could see the means to put a stop to that one. That anger, that fury, dim in its constancy, gave Ruby the strength to reach out her arm towards the battle, towards the means to get herself back on her feet and get her justice…
The Cat feinted around Yang's blow, quickly grabbing her hair and swinging her around with her own momentum, pivoting to throw her back in the direction she'd come from. The sound of Jaune's approaching yell behind the Cat forced them to spin as he was lunging and swing their claw full-force into his stomach. They saw the miserable human's eyes bugging out as his trajectory reversed, and he tumbled over a dozen human-paces away – his aura flared from the blow, but his Semblance kept it from breaking. This was problematic. The Cat needed Jaune neutralised now, then they needed to sprint for their sack, which they'd thrown a distance away to prevent their two enemies from seizing it again. Hissing in breath, the Furious Cat bellowed lightning and 'pixel'-squares at Jaune.
At the very last second, a yellow-haired human leapt into the lightning's path in front of Jaune, a feral grin on her face.
No-!
The Furious Cat's lightning-breath blasted squarely into Yang, who flew off her feet under the assault. She hurtled far past Jaune and crashed on her back, not far from where bloody, dead Blake lay. Two seconds later, a sound like thunder growled as Yang stood back up – she almost stumbled, but her head-hair was literally levitating upwards with the fire raging through it, while smaller flames licked all over her body and clothes. Her augmented Burn Semblance had been fuelled again by a direct hit of the Cat's lightning, though her aura must have also been dramatically weakened for it. Yet Jaune could still charge her Semblance and her aura with Aura Amp if he got to her! The Cat had to end at least one of the humans, quickly!
Snarling, the Furious Cat pounced past Jaune, towards Yang. Yang was sprinting towards them, and the Cat readied theirself to shield, defend or dodge. It wasn't enough.
Before Yang had crossed the distance to the Cat, she smashed her fists together, and a blast of bright light and scorching heat reversed the Furious Cat's trajectory, their entire coat hissing as their hind-paws slid backwards along the half-dried and shattered purple ground. They arched their mane-crowned back and hissed. This was exceedingly bad.
Yang glared hatefully at the Cat with red eyes, hair still levitating, when Jaune's voice calling her name drew her gaze. He was holding out his hand towards her.
NO!
The Cat roared out their lightning without even thinking. The targeted humans saw it coming, and Yang blasted the ground to propel herself and Jaune out of range – grasping his hand. Still exhaling lightning, the Cat tracked their head to try and catch the humans' escape. Yang and Jaune arced back to purple ground intact, a second before the pixel-wreathed lightning-bolt caught them and threw them back. They didn't tear apart from each-other as they slid along the ground. They held on tightly, both their auras flaring brightly as Jaune's Aura Amp strengthened them both.
No.
The Cat had to stop them. It couldn't end here! They had to go for their sack of potions, it was their only chance of…
Their black-and-white eyes, tracking towards their next destination, passed over and landed on the one human that they hadn't been paying any notice to for the last couple minutes, and the Cat's thoughts petered out.
Ruby's trembling arm was outstretched. She was curled up on the purple ground, half-soaked by the light rain, like a creature who'd lost all purpose. But there was something in her countenance, the way she kept that arm held up and her silver eyes focused, that communicated an urgency, a need.
"Please…" the Cat's large ears caught her hoarse voice whispering, her arm stretching towards the thing her silver eyes were focused on. The Furious Cat.
They gawked, fang-filled jaws slack, black-and-white eyes wide on their striped and patterned face. Lightning silently flashing somewhere above, and the Cat felt their mind click as they fully processed the unexpected development, though their body took a second or two to catch up. Ruby's heart was so shattered and weak, so desperate for something to fix it (a torment which the Cat knew FAR too well). But her friends had let her down at every turn, her sister had tried to kill her and the Cat. Ruby wasn't choosing her friends. She was choosing the Cat!
The lips on the Cat's muzzle curled upward as soft, distorted barks of laughter popped out of them. The barks exploded into a full-blown guffaw. Yes! YES! They couldn't have expected this, but it was what was happening. So perfect! Yes, YES! And not a minute too soon with Jaune and an aura-flooded, flaming-haired Yang picking themselves up.
"How PERFECT!"
The Cat leapt with nearly all the force in their double-jointed legs.
A/N: The final chapter of this story comes out in one week. ;)
(REPLIES)
RDDash: True. Talk about "Same Character, But Different."
Oscuro Oscuro: (SPANISH) Me alegra que hayas disfrutado esas cosas y que mi visión sobre la ascensión y la verdadera moralidad del Herrero tenga sentido para ti.
Seré honesto, no he leído tantas representaciones fandom del sadismo de Neo. La mayoría de las representaciones de fanfiction de ella que he leído dejan las partes asesinas de sus actividades criminales fuera de la pantalla, ya sea porque la interpretan de manera alegre o porque se la presenta como un antihéroe o un cambio de cara. 'Not This Time, Fate' de Coeur Al'Aran fue una notable excepción a eso (¡caramba, ese fic Neo logró rebajarse incluso más bajo que el canon! Neo). Jeje, ese headcanon que tuviste sobre cómo Neo simplemente estaba fingiendo una alianza con Cinder me recuerda a la reescritura del Volumen 8 de Unicorn of War en Youtube. Lo recomiendo si aún no lo has visto, es realmente jugoso y satisfactorio.
Por un lado, Jaune al final del Volumen 9 admitió que lo que les hizo a los Paper Pleasers fue egoísta y incorrecto, y que las muertes de Alyx y Penny permanecerán con él por el resto de su vida (salvo la mala escritura de Rooster Teeth). Por otro lado, ciertamente no contradijo la tontería de Weiss de "estamos siendo demasiado duros con nosotros mismos y deberíamos felicitarnos por tener buenas intenciones" en la misma escena, y parecía completamente de acuerdo con la "lección" que Ruby y sus compañeros de equipo se llevaron al final del Volumen 9 cuando Ruby salió del Árbol, a pesar de que Jaune fue anteriormente quien le recordó apasionadamente a Ruby que su plan para dejar caer a Atlas no salvó a Penny ni a ninguna de las Reliquias. Estoy de acuerdo en que las muertes de Penny y Alyx todavía estaban en la mente de Jaune incluso después de la escena de Genial Gems (su reacción cuando CatNeo se convirtió en Penny antes de que pudiera apuñalarlos, además de sus referencias a Alyx en los dos últimos episodios), y estoy de acuerdo en que todavía está Aún no está completamente "fijado" o "resuelto" en este punto del fic.
Creo que el proceso de ascensión es MÁS O MENOS el mismo tanto para Afterans como para Remnantians. Excepto que creo que los remanentes solo ascenderán si entran en contacto con el Ever-tea o si, cuando están bajo la influencia del incienso Ever-smoke, eligen activamente la opción que les presenta para cambiar/restablecer en lugar de permanecer igual. Los Afterans que mueren por cualquier causa excepto ser devorados por el Jabberwalker tarde o temprano ascenderán, mientras que un Remnantian que muere en Ever After simplemente morirá de verdad como Alyx. Sabemos por la exposición de la ascensión del Gato en el Jardín que los Afterans ascendidos tienen la opción de regresar como lo mismo que eran antes si no eligen regresar como algo nuevo, pero supongo que es posible que (a) ¡Los Afterans que eligen permanecer sin cambios aún no pueden conservar sus recuerdos como en el canon! Ruby lo hizo, o (b) es muy raro que los Afterans ascendidos elijan la opción "permanecer igual"; de ahí que Jaune parezca no darse cuenta de tales Afterans con su mala interpretación de "el árbol es la muerte".
(ENGLISH) Glad you enjoyed those things, and that my take on ascension and the Blacksmith's true morality makes sense to you.
I'll be honest, I haven't read that many fandom portrayals of Neo's sadism. Most of what fanfiction portrayals of her I've read leave the murder-y parts of her criminal activities offscreen, either due to playing her lightheartedly or due to her being presented as an antihero or a heel-face turn. Coeur Al'Aran's 'Not This Time, Fate' was a notable exception to that (blimey, that fic's Neo managed to stoop even lower than canon!Neo). Hehe, that headcanon you had about how Neo was just feigning an alliance with Cinder reminds me of Unicorn of War's Volume 8 rewrite on Youtube – I recommend it if you haven't watched it already, it's really juicy and satisfying.
On one hand, Jaune at the end of Volume 9 admitted that what he did to the Paper Pleasers was selfish and wrong, and Alyx and Penny's deaths will still stay with him for the rest of his life (barring Rooster Teeth's crummy writing). On the other hand, he certainly didn't contradict Weiss's "we're being too hard on ourselves and should pat ourselves on the back for meaning well" rubbish right in the same scene, and he seemed fully onboard with the "lesson" that Ruby and her teammates took away at the end of Volume 9 when Ruby hatched out of the Tree, despite that Jaune was previously the one who passionately reminded Ruby that their plan to drop Atlas didn't save Penny or either of the Relics. I agree that Penny and Alyx's deaths were still on Jaune's mind even after the Genial Gems scene (his reaction when CatNeo turned into Penny before he could stab them, plus his references to Alyx in the last two episodes), and I agree that he's still not fully "fixed" or "resolute" yet at this point in the fic.
I think that the ascension process is MORE OR LESS the same for both Afterans and Remnantians. Except I think Remnantians will only ascend if they either come into contact with the Ever-tea, or if they when under the influence of the Ever-smoke incense actively choose the option it presents them to change/reset instead of staying the same. Afterans who die of any cause except being eaten by the Jabberwalker will sooner or later ascend, whereas a Remnantian who dies in the Ever After will just die for real like Alyx. We know from the Cat's ascension-exposition at the Garden that ascended Afterans have the choice to come back as the same thing they were before if they don't choose to come back as something new, but I guess it's possible that either (a) Afterans who choose to stay unchanged still don't get to keep their memories like canon!Ruby did, or (b) it's very rare for ascended Afterans to pick the "stay the same" option; hence why Jaune seems unaware of any such Afterans with his "the Tree is death" misinterpretation.