(REPLIES)
Guest 1 & EffTeamRWBY: Glad you're both enjoying and finding this fic cathartic with how it treats Curious and RWBY/J respectively, especially since those are the main reasons why I wrote it. :)
Chapter 3
"Ruby? Ruby!"
Ruby woke and shot up with a high-pitched cry, not immediately registering her surroundings nor registering either of the talking animals she'd startled.
She'd been dreaming back on the bridge made by the Atlas Relic. There had been flames, Cinder, Penny's voice, Neo grappling her…
Taking stock of her surroundings helped her detach herself from the nightmare memories. Trees, towering toadstools, scattered sunbeams filtering through the branches. So different from the contents of her nightmare, even if her brain needed a few seconds longer to catch up and remember where she was. The Garden's Acre, in the literal fairy-tale out of a children's book that she and her friends had fallen into less than twenty-four hours ago.
"Shhh, shh-shh, it's alright, Ruby," the multicoloured talking cat on the girl's flank soothed her, turquoise cat's paw dextrously rubbing circles on her chest, cyan eyes meeting her gaze from a purple-and-cyan face with diamond-shaped patterns and lightning bolt-shaped whiskers. "Only a bad dream." Part of Ruby's mind idly noted that the Cat's voice and mannerisms sounded very therapeutic at times – that part of Ruby's mind felt oddly detached. Ruby felt her hood rustling before a tiny mouse's paw pressed the back of her jawline in comfort. That detached voice in Ruby's head noted that Little was more willing to show theirself around the Cat instead of hiding than they'd been yesterday, the first day in the Ever After. "You wait right here. I'll…" The Cat paused to stretch their chequered body, much like a cat from Ruby's world, flashing their sharp teeth and their mouth's cyan inside. "…fetch what we need for a scrumptious breakfast!" The Cat turned and began sauntering off, not taking four steps before they glanced back with that approachable, helpful feline smile. "Remember, we still need to go to the highest point in this acre to look for your friends before the day is out. So don't go wandering off." The Cat turned and pounced into the forestry, torso stretching and lengthening in an arc of surreal pixels. "Back soon!"
"Right…" Ruby mumbled. (No point in her wasting energy only to fail again.) Seconds after the Cat was gone, Ruby heard a tiny stomach growling by her ear-lobe.
"Hmm, breakfast wouldn't hurt!" Little's voice chirped as they rubbed their tummy. Ruby almost envied Little for being able to feel so enthusiastic. She still felt hung-up over what had happened in Atlas, and what had since happened in the Garden.
The Cat returned shortly with a collection of fruits and vegetables held in a makeshift basket made of a giant leaf, which they carried with their jaws. Sitting on their hindquarters to use their forelegs like a person's arms again, the Cat put the ingredients together over a fire that Ruby fumblingly started, and like the Growgurt Parfait, the forest ingredients erupted in a flash. Leaving behind a small feast of what looked like purple turkey and salad with crockery and all, a few tiny plates of cheese which had Little going starry-eyed, and a decanter of clear, pale-blue juice. The turkey and salad tasted good when it hit Ruby's tongue, good enough that she briefly felt warm inside. Little happily dug into the cheese, even offering Ruby a crumb (crumb by Ruby's standards, the size of two paws by Little's standards), and the Cat dug into their portion with their feline fangs. Little and the Cat left nothing but crumbs of their portions by the time Ruby had eaten two-thirds of hers, at which point she decided to stop eating so they could get going. The Cat had told her last night that there was a special vantage point from which they could see the rest of the acre and even the neighbouring acres, as high as that clifftop Blake had led them to on the jungle-beach acre. As they trekked into the toadstool-filled forestry with the Cat leading the way – Ruby wading through a salty pond which the Cat avoided touching, and traversing a hill where Ruby had been unable to hear anything but ringing until they'd crested it – the Cat reassured Ruby that the somewhat weaving and solitary path was the safest and most well-hidden route. It was less likely to get them into more trouble with Neo's Jabberwalkers. Ruby's silver eyes widened slightly in surprise at the Cat's thoughtfulness – she'd never even considered that. She'd only thought of getting back to her teammates and that was it, no thought of how she would get there. (Just like she hadn't thought about HOW she would do better than Ironwood when he'd snapped and decided to abandon Mantle.) She was wondering how Yang, Blake and Weiss were doing when the Cat's voice cut through her thoughts.
"It'll be some time and distance before we arrive," they said in front of her. "Why don't you pass the time by sharing some more delightful knowledge from Remnant with me?" They gave Ruby an eager look which vaguely reminded Ruby of a younger child that she and Yang had once babysat, pleading for dessert with a doe-eyed look. Ruby had almost completely forgotten about her bargain with the Cat to share information about her world with them. Ruby briefly wracked her mind. She and her team had already shared Remnant's origins, their backgrounds, they'd shared a semi-detailed account of Team RWBY's story from Beacon through to falling into the Ever After, and they'd shared some basics on the kingdoms.
Ruby settled for telling the Cat what she remembered learning during her Signal and Beacon years about the Faunus Revolution, both in classes and at home from her uncle Qrow and her dad (the latter when he'd recovered from her mum going).
"So after Faunus won the war for better rights, humans still segregated them, and so the Faunus took over the White Fang to win their rights with violence? And humans still refuse to recognise them as equals?" The Cat was swimming through the air in front of Ruby again, glancing back at Ruby in inquiry. Ruby shrugged her shoulders lightly, and the Cat chuckled in amusement. "How silly." They folded one foreleg, with the other foreleg's elbow atop its paw. "Afterans have more variation among ourselves than you Remnant-folk, yet none in the Ever After have ever gone that far."
"Yeah, racism's stupid," Ruby half-said, half-mumbled at the Cat, gripping her arm with one hand, while Little was half-listening quietly. "My history professor at Beacon once said something about it. What was it…?" Her eyebrows furrowed as she tried to remember what it was Professor Oobleck had said. Something about people who stood aside and did nothing? Ruby hadn't thought about it in years…
"Your friend Blake used to be part of the White Fang precisely to fight this spite," the Cat said as they twisted around to meet Ruby's eye again, body floating lazily onward. "From what you've told me, Atlas is one of the kingdoms where prejudices against the Faunus were the worst. Did Blake do anything to try and persuade Ironwood to make things easier for the Atlas Faunus when you were all working under him?" Ruby felt like she'd been hit by a car, that feeling where someone suddenly got hit with a truth so clear that they were surprised they hadn't spotted it earlier.
"Ah- We had other things to worry about," Ruby said to brush it off. Yes, that was the truth, it had been far from the highest priority with Salem's Grimm encroaching. "With Salem attacking, and then Ironwood going mad… The fate of the world on our shoulders…" Ruby trailed off as she suddenly felt a crushing weight that she couldn't describe on both her shoulders, and an odd sense of… hurt came over her, the kind of hurt like when a friend had hurt her feelings, mixed with a tinge of the awful feeling in her gut when she'd disappointed a teacher badly. The Cat hummed in thought.
"I suppose you did once you had two cities and an insane general on your plate," the Cat said. "But what about all the weeks before that, when you were going on missions for Ironwood and his marbles were still up there? Did Blake or your sister broach talking to Ironwood about it in that time?" Ruby suddenly felt like there was a noose tightening around her neck, and she couldn't quite breathe. No, Blake wouldn't do that, Blake was a hero and her friend. Blake cared… She couldn't be bad!
"We didn't trust Ironwood even then," Ruby said. He was always paranoid, and look at what he'd turned into later.
"It wasn't worth at least trying?" the Cat asked, intrigued. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ironwood was prone to a lot of things except inaction, was he not? What was the worst that could come of Blake or your other friends telling him to help make things in his kingdom better for Faunus?" The noose-like feeling tightened, and Ruby felt very cold and vaguely sick. If she'd been the same person that she was just a few days ago, back in Atlas, then she would've been annoyed at the Cat for questioning her friend Blake's good qualities like that. As it stood, Ruby wasn't in the state of mind that she'd been in a meagre few days ago that felt like months ago.
"Oh, well," the Cat sighed dismissively, but Ruby couldn't help continuing to dwell on it. "I suppose Blake and your sister Yang were just… prioritising each-other first and foremost."
"What do you mean?" Ruby asked, arching an eyebrow, although she had a slight feeling in her gut that she already knew, and even Little seemed to be listening fully.
"Oh, if you don't know today, I think you'll know tomorrow," the Cat mused teasingly. "It just… seems like those two care for each-other very much. Much like how your poor father and uncle cared so much for your mother. They could barely function anymore when they lost her, even for yours and your sister's sake, no? Wasn't that when your sister took you into the Grimm woods looking for that Raven woman?" Ruby almost stopped walking. She felt that sick feeling inside her again, but more than that she felt tears threatening to prick at her eyes, making part of her just want to collapse to her knees and weep. Tears, and a vague swell of defensiveness stirred inside of Ruby.
"Dad did the best that he could, and Uncle Qrow was trying," Ruby mumbled, while Little was looking at her in concern.
"Of course, of course," the Cat sighed and nodded, before turning their bright grin back ahead – apparently not noticing she was still feeling haunted. (No-one ever did notice what she felt anymore. Not that she blamed them with the world in danger and with everyone scared since Beacon fell.) "Oh, it's terrible when a heart breaks from losing another. In the Ever After, it might be someone that an Afteran was put here to tend or protect, who breaks or…" They shuddered. "…worse as you saw last night." Images of the purple monsters swarming the Garden flashed in Ruby's vision. "And then the Afteran left behind becomes too broken to carry on their role. Perhaps the old wizard on Remnant was so supportive because he saw those daughters of his in you and your three teammates. The ones who Salem…" They paused awkwardly and made a face like they were sucking on something bitter. "…killed." Ruby found her mind almost automatically gnawing and chewing, barely hearing the Cat pass a comment about how Ozpin with his immortality "couldn't be all up there anymore." Truth be told, Ruby felt like she'd always suspected that might be the case – that Ozpin, especially after he'd reawakened in Atlas, backed her and her friends so much partly because he saw his daughters in them, the daughters that his firefight with Salem had killed. But hearing it suggested aloud, Ruby didn't know how to feel. Sympathetic to him, she supposed. A little sad that the faith he'd placed in her when Atlas and Mantle had been in danger wasn't unbiased trust in her and her friends' capabilities. (It would certainly explain why he put his faith in a hero like HER who'd done what she had.)
A sound from the Cat tugged Ruby midway out of her thoughts, drawing her gaze to a heightened ridge off the beaten path, where something had drawn the airborne Cat's curiosity. Ruby climbed the small, barren ridge, feeling the air getting colder.
"I don't know about this…" Little mumbled in her hood anxiously, though Ruby persisted, and she thought she heard the Cat mutter something about Faunus.
What Ruby saw over the ridge forced her to stifle her gasp.
There were three Afterans, in a well-tended grove past the ridge. Two, resembling upright birds with clothes, almost like avian versions of the Jinxy Peddler or more like the bird vendor at the Garden, were stood nearer the ridge. They were watching a service that the third Afteran seemed to be performing in the centre of the grove. The grove was decorated with jars or urns of varying shapes, arranged in weaving and overlapping rows with a kind of chaotic order. The third Afteran was about ten feet tall. Its… their quadruple-horned head and exposed arms, with brown- and white-patterned skin, looked reminiscent of a cow, but they were wearing a giant turtle shell around their torso, and their legs looked more scaly than mammal. That wasn't what drew Ruby's gasp, though. The cow-turtle Afteran was praying over the body of a man. A man wearing grungy grey-and-brown clothes indicative of Mantle, burned black where he'd been hit by an explosion, was laid out on the grass. Past the cow-Afteran were more people's bodies, humans and Faunus wearing distinctly Atlas and Mistral clothes, most visibly burnt to varying degrees by the explosion that had knocked them off the bridge, all of them laid out with funerary care on patches of grass unoccupied by the jars.
"This is the Mourn Turtle's funerary service," the Cat whispered adjacently to Ruby by way of explanation. "More Remnant-folk? Wherever did they come from?"
"They fell on the bridge when Cinder bombed them." Ruby's lips mumbled out her realisation almost on automatic, the Cat's wide eyes glancing over to her momentarily.
"His purpose is to mourn for those who are lost and do not ascend," the Cat said by way of explanation as they and Ruby watched the grove. "Before you humans came, that was only ever Afterans who were eaten by the Jabberwalker." The Cat's tone was turning sombre. "But now…"
"They died on the bridge," Ruby whispered, her eyes fixed on the scene though images of Cinder and Neo flickered over her vision. She felt like she needed to throw up and had no vomit to expunge. Diagonally below Ruby and the Cat, one of the other two Afterans sighed and shook their head in annoyance.
"Oh, we'll never get this done before that Punderstorm hits," that Afteran said – they were an anthropomorphic eagle with white feathers and a hooked beak. "And I was so hoping we could see the Swan Lake."
"Old Mourn needs us until all the funerals for the day are completed," said their companion, who looked almost like a pigeon with their grey-and-brown feathers, except for their lengthened beak. They added more softly, "And remember, we should show respect for the lost."
"You're right," the eagle-like Afteran said softly. "But, forgiving my insensitivity, Dode – these ones are still here yet not. The-" The Afteran cleared their throat meaningfully. "-Jabberwalker, pardon me, did not eat them. How can we be sure that they simply haven't yet been returned to the Tree?" The pigeon-like Afteran, Dode, sighed dramatically and meaningfully.
"Mourn spoke to the Tree and confirmed himself that they have not ascended, and never will ascend," Dode said. Ruby felt like she was being slowly stabbed one inch at a time.
"Oh, poor things," the eagle-Afteran said sombrely. Rather than increase each-other's spirits, the two Afterans seemed determined to be mournful. That detached part of Ruby faintly recalled what the Curious Cat had said in the Garden about the Red Prince, that he wasn't nice because being nice wasn't part of his purpose.
"Dode, Eagrit," the Mourn Turtle called in a low, wheezy voice which sounded to Ruby like the epitome of misery. The bird-Afterans approached. They all formed an asymmetrical triangle around the dead man, the Turtle clasping his hands in front of his waist like a mourner, while the eagle-Afteran Eagrit crouched and spread their clawed hands out over the fallen man as if grasping for prey. Dode spread their wings and tilted their head towards the sky.
"One day when I was passed, the Hump was eaten instead," the Mourn Turtle recited miserably. "Now you are eaten too, there's no more purpose for you." The three Afterans crouched lower, and suddenly, torches appeared in each of their hands in a flash. Ruby stared as they lowered those torches to the human corpse, and flames suddenly sprung over the body as if he was coated in petroleum. After two seconds of burning, light flashed, making Ruby gasp quietly. When the light dissipated, the Afterans' torches and the man's body were gone – in the corpse's place was a new urn. The Afterans stood and dourly sighed together. The Mourn Turtle murmured, "So many lost…"
The urn was just like the many others arranged around the grove. A vocal shudder from beside Ruby's head made her turn, having nearly forgotten the Curious Cat was levitating in a sitting position next to her.
"Eaten by Jabberwalker; death among you Remnant-folk," the Cat said grimly. An expression that was hard to gauge for Ruby (what was the point) came over their face as they stared back over the scene. "Mourn and the others aren't usually this gloomy. Most times, they brighten up at the end if the service." Ruby closed her eyes. "…Ah. More funerals than they've had in one day for years, I suppose. If there was more than several of your people on that bridge who fell…" Ruby barely caught the Cat's words as they continued speaking, seemingly not noticing the emotions swelling in her. The Mourn Turtle held his avian friends.
"Ruby?" Little spoke as the huntress turned away, feeling her limbs working on automatic to climb her back down from the ridge. Ruby's eyes stung as she crouched on the earthen path, staring solely at the cracked ground below her as if that could protect her from the reality. She felt Little's paw touch the side of her face in concern – that made Ruby feel slightly lighter, to know that no matter how bad she felt, someone would make her feel better about herself again. But it wasn't enough. She was supposed to be the hero who saved everyone (just like in the stories she'd grown up on). It was like that thing that had talked to her in the Herbalist's smoke using her past face had said – the real world wasn't quite like the stories. How many times had she failed to save people who couldn't save themselves…?
The Cat had told their temporary human companion that they'd been leading her on this path because it was the safest, but that wasn't the complete truth. It was the most covered and secret route to the vantage point that could help Ruby find her way back to her fellow Remnant-folk, yes, but their passing by the Mourn Turtle and his fellow moods hadn't been accidental at all. Last night, the Cat had slunk out before Ruby had gone to sleep, telling her and that mouse that they were going to keep watch, but they'd actually been setting out ahead to check up on those gloomy old friends of theirs unseen. The Cat had been looking to see if wind of the Hawker's Jabber-consumption at the Garden – and any other terrible Jabberwalker-dinners that that awful Neo woman's Jabberwalker creations might have caused that night – had reached Mourn, Eaglet and Dode, so that Ruby and the Cat could eavesdrop on it the next morning while passing by that part of the path. News of the Garden attack hadn't reached Mourn and his friends after all, but instead, they'd discovered something even better to help the Cat wear Ruby down: the dead Remnant-folk refugees who'd fallen into the Ever After when that twisted Maiden Cinder had attacked on the bridge. The Cat had learned of them from one of the first humans they'd met decades ago when he had finally remembered them. Team RWBY had passingly mentioned Cinder's attack when telling the Cat their story, but otherwise hadn't joined the dots and realised that they should look for those refugees in the Ever After at all. And they called that Ironwood human callous…
The Cat hadn't wanted Ruby to sleep in so late without breakfast that she'd miss Mourn's services for those (unworthy) humans and Faunus. And it was working! Ruby's trust and faith in her friends still needed some wearing down, which the Cat had already begun work on by casting questions about her mentors and her family on her, but her faith in herself was currently quite fractured. The Cat was tempted to try filling her with theirself there and then, checked only by the self-reminder that it was much too soon for her heart to take in all of them. Trying now would only ruin their work on her.
"Oh, Ruby," the Cat sighed as they swam up on Ruby's side. With their purpose and instincts, which went back to their creation and hadn't fully left them (despite everything since then), the show of sympathy and empathy came easily to the Cat – no matter how unworthy of it this all-breaking, wretched human was. "It's alright, little huntress." On Ruby's opposite shoulder, Little was gazing into her face with more concern than the human deserved. Not for the first time, the Cat considered trying to make that mouse understand what humans were really like when Ruby wasn't looking, try to make them flee her for their own good, but the Cat doubted it would work. The mouse was much too attached to Ruby, oblivious to where getting close to any human got an Afteran in the end. "Did you and your friends not think to look for others who fell?" The Cat played their paw a little recklessly for once, and Ruby cried a little harder.
"We…" Ruby didn't look at the Cat or mouse on either side of her as her silver eyes brimmed with tears. "I said that we were going to save everyone in Atlas and Mantle." Her eyes scrunched shut and the tears leaked. "It was why we turned on Ironwood in the first place!"
"But meaning well and doing well aren't always one and the same," the Cat sighed in understanding. "And feeling bad doesn't make the scars that others bear go away." Ruby clutched at her arm silently. "I should know," the Cat sighed, lowering their own gaze, and their sadness was true enough that the cyan squares and lines along their body faded. "Alyx broke many things in the Ever After when I was with her, and not all such things were easily fixed. A defeat for the Red King, a ruined workshop for the Lively Carpenter, a loss of will in the Froggy Doorman…" The Cat lifted their cyan gaze back up to Ruby. "Not even I could fix everything she'd broken. Nor could the Tree."
"The Tree?" Ruby muttered after a sniffle, rubbing at her nose with her gloved knuckles. A pause hung in the air before Ruby realised. "The Tree causes ascension?"
"Indeed it does," the Cat said, lowering theirself to the ground by Ruby's legs and smiling at her silver gaze. "Now, I know what you're thinking. But it's not what you think. I'm not taking you and your friends to the Tree to ascend. I'm taking you there because it's where the way out of the Ever After is."
"You give Afterans to the Tree?" Ruby asked.
"That is my purpose when Afterans break or wear down," the Cat said, tail curling behind them. "It's how I'm able to take you there without the Tree going to you – much as I once did for Alyx. I thought it was obvious after you saw me helping Herb to return." A pause, where the surprise in Ruby's pained face lingered while the mouse listened quietly. "No?" Goodness, had this girl truly thought SHE was a hero clever enough to save Remnant, or had she not thought at all? From the way Ruby curled in on herself ever-so-fractionally, a similar thought about herself might be going through her own head.
After a pregnant pause, Ruby fragilely asked, "Did Alyx really do so much harm?" The Cat wasn't smiling. They sighed a sigh that they felt in theirself, steeling theirself to pick at old scabs.
"I sense that that book of hers was light on certain details," the Cat said. They stalked ahead slowly, Ruby following.
The Cat told Ruby about how they'd found Alyx when she'd been lost in the Ever After just after falling, and how together, they'd found their way to the Rusted Knight, and her brother Lewis.
"The Rusted Knight is Jaune?!" Ruby interrupted, stopping in her tracks. The Cat said nothing. "…How is that even possible?!" Her silver eyes hardened on the Curious Cat, in accusation. "Why didn't you say anything earlier?"
You never asked were the words near the tip of their tongue.
"I… am sorry for that," the Cat said, hanging their head a little. "I don't like to dwell too much on my first human companions. Not after how that story ended." Ruby's eyes softened somewhat, but she didn't back down. "To answer how, Jaune told us. After he fell…"
…The Cat told Ruby of Jaune's unfortunate encounter with a Stopwatch Fruit. They told Ruby about Alyx's antics, breaking so many Afterans, places and hearts without a care, and the Cat had reluctantly put up with it in the belief that it would've been worth it when Alyx took them to Remnant. They told Ruby about how Alyx had changed after breathing in the Herbalist's Ever-incense, and Jaune had grown more frantic the more that she'd rebelled against his attempts to steer her a certain way. They told Ruby that one night when both they and Lewis had scouted ahead to set up a new camp, Alyx had caught up behind them but Jaune hadn't. Alyx had said Jaune had had a fit and had run off screaming, and the Cat said they and Lewis had bought the claim – for despite them both knowing Alyx to be a very far cry from an honest girl, Jaune's preceding frantic behaviour over being unable to control Alyx's actions had been quite enough to make Alyx's lie sellable. The Cat told Ruby how they'd guided Alyx and Lewis all the way to the Tree. The Cat told Ruby that just after Lewis had stepped through the door, they'd been on Alyx's very heels, when she'd suddenly grabbed them and thrown them against the Tree's bark while they were caught off-guard, hard enough to hurt and stun them. They told Ruby that Alyx had made it clear in that moment that she'd never intended to help the Cat, and she'd gone through the door without them, leaving them behind.
"I thought she was my friend. But she was only using me to help herself – until I had nothing left to give." The Cat said morosely, having slowed to a crawl and then stopped a few moments ago. They meant their words, the cyan almost-completely drained from their patterns. They glanced up to Ruby's gaze as they said, "Which is why I wanted to be careful of trusting another person from Remnant." Ruby winced and shifted her eyes a little awkwardly. Did she not see the Cat as a fellow sentient being worthy of her empathy? Well, it wouldn't surprise the Cat if not, considering how Alyx's treatment of the Ever After and Jaune's self-destructive efforts to force her 'story' back on-track lined up with Team RWBY's past hypocritical and destructive blundering against their own allies and protectorates.
"I'm sorry," Ruby said a little awkwardly, reserved. Even the brown mouse in her hood, despite their fear of cats, had a sympathetic look for the Cat in their large, twinkling eyes. The Cat hated it when young Afteran incarnations got so empathetic, so full of heart just because it was all so new for them and they hadn't yet been worn down by the ages. (It reminded the Cat too much of theirself when they'd been young and new and full of heart, and oh so eager to help without expecting anything back. Before they'd started feeling the loss of so, so many pieces of their heart and the way that changed them. Even when the Cat had driven Alyx towards reaching the door and away from Jaune with that trip to the Herbalist, it had still made them feel MISERABLE to do it then. Unlike now, where the Cat's current machinations with the current group of humans didn't make them feel remorseful at all.)
The Cat didn't reply to Ruby's apology before they resumed trotting ahead and resumed their retelling. They needed to tell Ruby, in their own words, everything that the Rusted Knight might have already told her three friends in his own words after they'd left the Garden. They expected that when Ruby's friends next saw them, they would be distrustful, indignant and accusatory that the Cat had kept such information to theirself, since secret-keeping was only acceptable to Team RWBY when they were the ones keeping the secret. But if Ruby already knew certain things from the Cat's own confession before their reunion, on top of the not-untrue reason the Cat had given her for not wanting to bring up their past… Well, would Ruby be so likely then to side with friends who barely cared about her feelings against the troubled cat who had led her to safety, had shown her consideration and notice at the Mourn Turtle's funeral, and had now bled their heart out to her? The Cat told Ruby that after Alyx and Lewis' departures, they'd eventually gone looking for Jaune in the realisation Alyx might have lied about him. They'd found him, in a poor state of mind from Alyx's actions, but when they'd tried to help him, he'd rapidly started lashing out – raving and accusing the Cat of trying to erase the three humans' minds by guiding them to the Tree. He'd driven the Cat away and never sought contact with them again.
Ruby was walking in silence with the Cat as they finished the tale and sullenly said nothing, waiting to see what Ruby would do. She seemed to be deliberating as her eyes shifted. A sliver of positive energy crept into the Cat as she seemed to make up her mind and met the Cat's gaze.
"What if… I take you through the door to Remnant?" she asked. The Cat perked up a little, bushy ears rising and eyes widening. They hadn't been placing much expectation that Ruby would make such an offer, that she would even think of it. A few decades ago, the Cat would've believed and accepted her offer straight away. But after their last encounter with humans including a horrible girl who'd made them such a promise, the Cat knew far better than to ever trust a human's words like that again. Neither human girl who'd said they'd do such for the Cat had even considered the impact on the Ever After of taking the Afteran who played an important role in helping other Afterans with hearts too weak to listen out of the realm. But, it was very good if this broken human was starting to feel a friendship with the Cat, which would make it easier to drive her away from her pretentious fellow Remnant-folk.
Take me through the door you shall, Ruby Rose. One way or another.
"Will you?" the Cat murmured, sounding pleasantly surprised. They made a show of floating off the ground and eagerly getting into Ruby's face, noses almost touching as the Cat grinned and squashed her cheeks between their forepaws energetically. "Will you really, Ruby Rose Huntress?! I've longed to see Remnant with my own eyes for so, SO long!"
"Uh… sure," Ruby said awkwardly, hesitantly. The Cat thought that must have been the same level of commitment she'd displayed on Remnant to saving every last citizen in Atlas and Mantle, or to being better than Ozpin after she and her friends had raged over him keeping secrets from them - little.
"Ah! How delightful! How wonderful!" The Cat exclaimed jubilantly, practically cartwheeling gleefully through the air a little away from Ruby's nose. "Oh, I can finally see Remnant and everything you've told me about, and everything you haven't; with my own eyes!" Not ten seconds later, the wide-eyed Cat glided forward at the sight that was coming up ahead. They returned to ground at the path's end, by the wide base of the acre's largest toadstool stalk – so large that its wide, wide cap loomed far above the overhead branches and treetops that its stalk rose through, exposed to the open, sunlit sky. "Here already?! Time certainly flies!" The Cat floated back off the ground to accentuate that point. The entrance at the toadstool's base opened, and the Cat led Ruby into the cylindrical interior with the winding staircase.
The height to the toadstool's top was shorter on the inside than it was on the outside as the Cat and Ruby ascended the stairs. White light flashed as they arrived at the toadstool's cap, on one of the external lookouts that gazed across the Ever After's open sky, a doorway to the cap's inside standing behind them. The entire Garden's Acre and most of the acres around it were clearly visible. The Ever Tree, as always, stood over the Ever After. To the right, the Volcanic Acre's peaks and ridges climbed skyward. Adjacent to the Volcanic Acre, they could see the Origami Acre's pale paper surface and multicoloured forestry. Just past that, the purple landscape of the Abandoned Acre was visible, the storms which ever hung over it looking like translucent smoke at this distance. Ruby stepped closer to the lookout's balustrade, taking in the grand view, and the Cat theirself appreciated the high view and the wind brushing over them, appealing to their cattish instincts. Once upon a time, the Cat had loved to come up to this high place. Though the Ever After had equally high vantage points dotted around other acres (some visible to the naked eye, some not), the Garden's Acre's high lookout had been one of the Cat's favourites for the forestry below it – they could sit up here with the breathtaking view and the treetops below, and feel like they almost like a little kingdom all to theirself.
"Oh!" the Cat exclaimed after several seconds of scouring the view. They grinned pleasantly at Ruby as they pointed with their foreleg. "There's your missing band of misfits!" The Cat was pointing towards a patch of the Garden's Acre where the trees gave way to an open field, which made the sole five upright-walking figures and the quadrupedal steed easy to spot. Translucent thunderheads were rolling toward their position but not yet upon them. Ruby followed the Cat's gaze and saw them, but she wasn't smiling. The Cat snickered to theirself. The two (and the mouse in Ruby's hood) began descending the toadstool to meet up with Ruby's fellow Remnant-folk.
A/N: Little headcanon lore dump. Although the Flower Field where the Punderstorm happens is listed on RWBY Wiki as an acre all on its own, my take is that it's just another area inside the Garden's Acre. Because Jaune's Ever After map is accurate to what we see in the show of the actual acres' positions relative to each-other and to the coast, but there's no acre inbetween the Garden and Origami Acres, on the map OR in the "I think we're in a fairy-tale" establishing shot. The closest thing that could be a Flower Field acre is the "farming fields" acre on Jaune's map, which is in the opposite direction from where Jaune was leading RWBY/J.
I'll say now that as much as I think the show's Team ALJC (Alyx, Lewis, Jaune, Curious) backstory was left incomplete with too many gaping holes, this fic still won't be filling in ALL those holes (like the questions of how Alyx and Lewis fell into the Ever After in the first place, what Alyx saw in the Herbalist's Ever-smoke, or what the Tree told Alyx that made her change at the last). Partly because this fic's "vent fic" nature and the speed it was made at meant I didn't prioritise brainstorming a satisfactory "complete version" of those aspects of Team ALJC's story. That's not to say the fic won't be filling ANY holes – it'll be filling some of the holes on the Curious Cat's end and providing their own POV on Team ALJC, like in this very chapter, since this story is about the Cat. :)