A/N: Greetings, and welcome to my 'RWBY' Volume 9 fanfic! :)

First, an explanation of why I'm making this fanfic.

I at first got into watching a couple episodes of 'RWBY' on their own and some YouTube clips a couple years ago, then a while after, I read some 'RWBY' fics online which I really enjoyed, and after that I grew increasingly familiar with the lore and everything that had happened over the first eight volumes. I watched V9 as it came out, and it was my first experience of watching any post-Beacon 'RWBY' volume in full. Watching V9 without having really seen what came before it in 'RWBY' canon, I had high expectations for most of it… and then the last two episodes came. I've seen a lot of shows and films where when you first watch them, you feel awed coming out of the viewing at the end credits, then as you process and you mull over it later you think it wasn't all that good really. The ending of 'RWBY' V9 was NOT that. The ending of V9 was something that literally had me wanting to SCREAM and PULL MY HAIR OUT IN FRUSTRATION in the middle of the first and only full viewing of the final episode! :( There was so, SO MUCH done wrong that the hardest thing to believe for me is that writers AREN'T deliberately sabotaging their own show!

One of the things which really pisses me off in V9 is the Curious Cat's end. Leaving aside all their wasted potential as a character, I fell in love with that Cat, especially after we found out how and why they're the way that they are at the end. But the Cat gets treated like an irredeemable monster who deserves to die screaming in terror and agony, without having been given a single chance at redemption? Whereas the vicious hitwoman who had far more agency over her evil, killed or ruined THOUSANDS more lives, had chances to turn away from evil, and Stomped Little, all for the sake of vengeance; gets Easily Forgiven and doesn't have to make amends for anything she did, because she hypocritically temporarily forgets her "vengeance only leaves me emptier" realisation long enough for her to murder the Cat out of personal spite? (I don't hate Neo generally, but the sheer Varian-Cassandra syndrome between her and the Cat makes me SEETHE.) To say nothing of how Team RWBY behaved overall, and how V9 turned out to just be one long Ignored Epiphany for RWBY/J where they didn't learn anything from the trail of bodies, destroyed nations and wrecked alternate dimensions they've been leaving behind them except that their egos matter more than the thousands of lives they still claim to be "protecting."

You know that a group of writers REALLY don't know what they're doing when the cast consists of a set of heroes, a "sympathetic villain" (Neo) and a "despicable villain" (the Curious Cat), and the latter ends up being the MOST sympathetic of all three parties. :P

Suffice to say, my first 'RWBY' viewing experience of a post-Beacon volume cemented me as a 'RWBY' Fanworks-Only Fan.

Anyway, after several months of having the idea for this fic and the feelings behind it bouncing around in my head post-V9, I decided to go through with writing it out in a vent fic, to air my feelings towards the characters at the end of V9.

BE ADVISED, this is kind of a Rooting for the Empire (Curious Cat) fic and a Spite Fic (RWBY/J). This isn't so much a redemption fic where the Curious Cat makes a heel-face turn as it is a villain-protagonist fic for them – I might write a redemption fic for the Cat further down the line, if someone else doesn't do a good job of writing one first. This fic secondarily is also kind of a revenge fic against the main "heroes," who for me have become VERY unsympathetic and downright despicable in their canon incarnation in the later volumes. :( This fic isn't going to wipe away their post-Vale character derailment, or make them learn and grow from their mistakes For Real – this fic is going to take RWBY/J's character derailment in the show and RUN WITH IT. Here, the Curious Cat is the villain-protagonist, and RWBY/J are their antagonists. So, yeah… if you don't want to see your show's main heroes getting that, or if you're just one of the canon-fandom's rabid Kool-Aid drinkers… Now you know before delving into this. Although this is basically a half-spite fic, I'm still writing and researching for this fic to the same standard as I would another fic, and I'll be incorporating headcanons of mine about the Cat and the Ever After, if any of you on the fence about looking at this fic are interested in that bit.

If you want to invest in an AU where the Curious Cat gets done right and where the heroes get redeemed too instead of reading this, then I recommend checking out 'AZRE' author Dragynkeep's a.k.a. BehindTheCorner's lovely Penny Everafter AU on her Tumblr and giving it your support. ;)

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fanfiction using the characters and world-aspects of Rooster Teeth's 'RWBY;' and I do not claim any ownership of said world and characters. This story is my own invention, and it is not purported or believed to be part of 'RWBY' canon. I am not financially profiting from the creation and publication of this story; it is for entertainment and catharsis only, and is not part of the official storyline. I am (somewhat) grateful to Rooster Teeth and associated cast, voice cast and crew who worked on the aforementioned franchise – without them, this story, and many other 'RWBY' fanfics which I've read and enjoyed, would not exist.

Okay, with that unusually-long opening author's note out of the way, I now give you…

The Tale of a Cat Most Curious

Chapter 1

Hope was a blessing they hadn't known theirself for a long time. They knew routine, they knew distraction from the past, and they knew heartbreak. But they hadn't known hope since a time that they'd like to forget, when it had been crushed in front of them like a flower in front of its tutor. (Crushed with so much more…)

But hearing that word in the Red Prince's palace brought something resembling hope back, a fresh excitement that reached into their very being rushing through them.

…humans.

She said the word.

That was the last confirmation on top of everything the Cat had already observed. These unusual folk were what the Cat had dared to hope they might be! When the Cat had first dropped by the Red Prince's party out of boredom, just to see if there was anything new gathered in one place, part of them had worried that these strange new people-shaped ones might have just been Afterans who'd chosen to be remade as something based on the first human visitors' images – the Cat had seen one or two such Afterans before. But now their last shreds of hope were verified! And from the humans' appearances, and the sole Faunus with ears like the Cat's, all of which matched what a certain knight had once told them, the Cat was certain they knew which humans and Faunus these four were.

The Red Prince's reaction to the word was no less sensitive than the Cat's own. He may not have remembered being the King, but his heart hadn't forgotten, temper splitting his face down the middle. The Cat waited before they dared intervene, wanting to see what the three humans and the Faunus would do. They were stronger than Alyx and Lewis had been, closer to Jaune, and those abilities of theirs which were surely their Semblances… Such variety! It was just as a certain knight had told the Cat once, many years ago. How did these Semblances work?! And their gadgets…

The Cat revealed theirself and changed the Prince's heart long enough for the four Remnant-folk to flee with them. They engaged in a little chase through the castle from the Prince's guards, a slip out of a secret exit that the Cat directed the Remnant-folk to, and on the Cat's end, some tediously extensive playing the fool chasing butterflies to appear innocuous. The latter kept the Remnant-folk invested in garnering the Cat's attention as they'd expected it to, and the Cat started getting answers to some of the many, many questions they had out of the Remnant-folk. Remnant-folk whose mouthing made clear their desire to use the Cat for their own ends. The Cat's hope that other humans might be different from the last ones they'd known was dashed like paint within minutes of meeting these four, but the new information, and above all the new opportunities, made up for it. New knowledge, at last! And what a feast these four new Remnant-folk provided like the Cat hadn't tasted in so long.

The Cat's original question was about the origins of Remnant. Decades ago, the Cat had heard very enlightening second-hand talk from a certain knight of ancient history that his friends had witnessed through the Relic of Knowledge, regarding the Two Brothers who'd made Remnant and their pseudo-abandonment of it (much like how they'd abandoned the Ever After), and the old wizard's resurrection cycle by the Brothers' magic. This time, however, the Cat was getting the original, first-hand account of that vision from the source. It shed some new details that Jaune's account had lacked about the Brothers', the Makers', interactions and the lead-up to their cursing of Salem, but it also gave the Cat as many new questions as it answered. Why had the Makers avoided conflict with each-other over Salem and Ozma on Remnant, where on the Ever After, the acre where they'd once lived was still desolate from their fight to the current day? Why had they treated their creations on Remnant so differently than they had their Ever After creations? An age-old question gnawed at the Cat as it had done for years and years and years: had the Cat or the other Afterans done something wrong to provoke the Makers into leaving them? And why, why had the Makers made and continued to attend to broken, deranged, destructive humans on Remnant whereas they'd left the Cat and all Afterans behind without further contact? The Cat still needed to know. Suffice to say, the Cat's quest to learn that particular tidbit wasn't ended.

The flow of answers from Team RWBY drifted away from the Makers onto other Remnant subject matters, but as delightful as the new knowledge was, the Cat didn't let the shift truly distract them from the information that they needed to prioritise getting out of these Remnant-folk. For every one answer that these humans spoke, they were actually providing two answers for the Cat.

Team RWBY didn't tell the Cat as much about Remnant's topography as they did its history – no doubt reserving that so they wouldn't run out of information to give which they thought was keeping the Cat under their thumbs. Team RWBY told the Cat of their beginnings at Beacon, their conflict against Salem and her minions over the Relics and their Maiden powers. They told the Cat of theirs and Team JNR's journey from Beacon Academy through Anima, to the Kingdom of Atlas and Mantle in the frozen continent, and also how Yang had kept the Spring Maiden's true identity secret from everyone but her teammates. Most of this, the Cat had already heard from the first yellow-haired human they'd met.

The more the in-walk dialogue went on, the more the Cat's initial suspicions about Ruby Huntress's (or just Ruby's) heart were verified. As they'd thought, she was already 'in a bad place' as some would say, suitable for a new heart to fill her. And her three friends were at best none the wiser or at worst thought it would blow away if they just ignored it.

Hmm. That the Cat could use to their advantage…

Heroes, these Remnant-folk saw themselves as, but the picture that theirs and Jaune's accounts painted didn't make them out to be very genuine heroes in the Cat's eyes. Not much progress made by their actions for their side in the war against Salem, but there were plenty of ruined Remnant-lives, destroyed kingdoms and betrayed allies left in the wake of their decisions. Atlas and Mantle certainly took the cake on that front – the Cat could barely imagine such destruction as Team RWBY's account implied, for such hadn't occurred in the Ever After since the Makers had left. Team RWBY also liked to take credit for the accomplishments of others, such as saying they'd won at Haven and it wasn't just blind luck that Jaune unlocked his Weiss Huntress-saving Semblance and that Blake's surprise arrival stopped the White Fang from blowing them sky-high. Or like saying it was them and not that stuffy Atlas-woman who'd done the work of defeating the 'Leviathan' Grimm at Argus. And there was how they'd treated the old wizard and the boy he was inside. Ozpin deserved to be hurt and screamed at for keeping secrets and manipulating them, but it was okay for Team RWBY to do the same immediately afterwards to that Atlas general with much more disastrous results? And when it cost them his mind and the most powerful kingdom on Remnant, it was all the general's fault somehow? The Cat wondered, had the fall of Beacon, trauma and a lack of discipline turned the young Remnant-folk into the deranged, craven hypocrites they were now? Or had they always been like this and their journey had just brought it out? The story about how Team RWBY in their academy days had taken their fight against a giant, running automaton onto a bridge filled with civilians did make the Cat lean towards the latter interpretation.

The Cat innocently inquired to Team RWBY about their moral discrepancy.

"We got everyone out of Atlas, we saved everyone we could," Blake Huntress replied. Like Weiss Huntress and Yang Huntress, she was currently the size of a mouse thanks to the Red Prince's magic, nestled in Ruby's hood along with an actual mouse. From Blake's tone and her eyes, everything was okay so long as she and her human team had tried on their own terms. (But the Cat didn't miss how Ruby alone deflated slightly at Blake Huntress's words, her silver eyes shifting to the side.) And Team RWBY and their friends hadn't saved everyone in Atlas, had they? They hadn't saved their friend Penny, to say nothing of the kingdom they'd sent all those thousands of refugees into…

"Wasn't that exactly what the half-metal man was trying to do?" the Cat asked innocently, swimming through the air to hover in front of the huntresses, chequered back facing towards the ground as they smiled a bright, upside-down cyan smile at the Remnant-folk, dextrous forelegs' turquoise paws linked together above their belly. "How was he any different?" Ruby's walk notably slowed, and her breathing picked up. Even Weiss Huntress, the rude, white-haired one who was quickly becoming the Cat's most un-favourite of these new Remnant-folk, looked sideways a little guiltily.

"Because Ironwood was insane, and he didn't put protecting everyone else first," the yellow-haired elder sister of Ruby, who wore the plainest and grungiest attire out of the four, said. Mismatched flesh and metal fists were on her hips, and she met the Cat's gaze with a glower that said she felt aggravated. "I hate to say it, but Remnant is better off without him in it. He did more harm than good, while we did what had to be done."

"Because things would've been so much worse if you hadn't acted?" the Cat asked, making sure to sound innocent as their body righted in the air. They leaned away and pointed their nose towards the direction they were headed in as they asked, "Does that mean you will do the same as you've done before if you go back to Remnant?" Ruby said nothing.

"Duh," Yang replied with a subtle shrug of her mouse-sized shoulders.

"Someone needs to do something, and we couldn't trust it to be Ironwood or his Ace-Ops or any of the other authorities," Blake Huntress said, the white-coated feline Faunus coming to the yellow-haired one's side. Clingy, those two were.

"So it's only you – even if you have to make more sacrifices?" the Cat pressed on, smiling.

"We aren't sacrificing anyone," Yang Huntress growled, taking a step forward in Ruby's hood and placing her shoulder a little in front of Blake's. "Sacrificing people is what Ironwood did. Not us." The Cat didn't say, except for when you sacrificed Atlas and Mantle because your original goal of saving every last one was impossible? Or when you sent the refugees to the desert just because it would have brought yourselves closer to the next Relic instead of serving the non-soldier refugees' welfare.

"Bah. Ah, well, moving on." The Cat continued their innocent questioning, and the little terse episode was quickly forgotten by the shrunken three. The Cat had to play carefully if they wanted to finally reach Remnant, and it wouldn't do to show their paw too much by appearing too critical of Team RWBY. The Cat hadn't even decided what route they would take to reaching their goal. After Alyx had died, the Cat had thought and thought about how to get to Remnant if – when – other Remnant-folk arrived in the Ever After. They needed someone with an attachment to Remnant who could cross through the door, a door which wouldn't permit the Cat or any other Afteran exit from this world. The Cat wouldn't make the mistake of bargaining with another human to carry them through the door, not after where that mistake had gotten them with Alyx. In their time thinking after Alyx's death, the Cat had had the idea to use a human another way. A way which involved wearing down their heart and will. At first, the Cat had immediately sought out a certain human knight they'd known for that purpose, but it… hadn't worked. He'd rambled and raved at the Cat in his stubborn delusions before the Cat had gotten two steps to breaking him, and it had become clear that the Cat wouldn't have made any progress trying with him. But now there were several new humans, the very ones that knight had expected to comer one day, whom were much less wary of the Cat right now than Jaune's cowardly, wilful, insensate, self-destructive denial had made him.

Yang and Blake Huntresses, and to a lesser extent Weiss Huntress, were all set in their ways and sure of their actions – but in a very similar way to Alyx or Jaune. Blake and Yang were focused on themselves getting back to Remnant and most of all were drawn to each-other like moths to a flame – and they were not just blocking out or had yet to process their anguish over the fate of Atlas-Mantle. Weiss Huntress, the Cat could safely tell was suppressing her grief. Blake and Yang's hearts truly weren't hurt by the destruction of Atlas or the refugee crisis, which had been caused by their hands no less – and all of which had happened for them mere hours ago. So, those two were sociopathic in addition to being narcissistic.

And Ruby… there were openings to her heart which the other three were too stubborn and self-assured to exhibit. Though she didn't voice her true feelings and the Cat wouldn't force them out in front of her teammates, the Cat could tell by reading between her words that she felt sorry about her inability to feel useful. She was doubting herself, her purpose. Her heart was already weak and struggling in the face of her failures and what they told her about herself. She was a delightful choice for a host. The only question that left was how would the Cat go about breaking her little heart so they could fill it with theirself?

They could let Ruby be worn down by her guilt, taking steps to make sure the self-centred girl got to the point of questioning herself but didn't re-find any purpose. Her teammates clearly weren't paying attention to her mental state, and the Cat knew enough now to know that when they did notice, their egotistical ideas of medicine for their poor little leader would end up driving her further to the breaking point. The mouse who had attached theirself to Ruby (much like how the Cat had made the mistake of getting their feelings attached to a human long ago) could be a problem. Still, the Cat could tell that mouse was very young, which meant they were naïve, unlike the more seasoned and wary members of their brethren in the Jungle Acre. Those mice many, many ascensions ago had been good friends of a sort, somewhat frenemies to the Cat when they'd been young, but that time was long past now…

However, a second option the Cat had to prepare Ruby was to drive a wedge between her and her friends. Turn her hurt against them, and turn them against her while she was hurting. The ingredients were already right there. If the Cat could break Ruby by making her see that she was wrong, while letting the other huntresses' delusions of righteousness and neglect of Ruby's hurting heart work against their ties…

A heart broken by self-pity and depression alone could be malleable and soft like Ever-clay, but a heart broken by betrayal and antipathy… That could be so much harder to fix (as the Cat well knew. And besides, inflicting such on these Remnant wretches it could be therapeutic.) The Cat probably wouldn't even have to use lies so much as truths from a new perspective on Ruby to accomplish this.

…

A heart broken by betrayal it was, then.

And then, after all this time trapped without answers to their questions, without knowing why THEY left them alone to make Remnant and all the humans, the Cat could finally go somewhere new, and they could finally have answers! The Ever After would lose its way of mending higgledy-piggledy Afterans' hearts, yes; the Cat had known that and been at peace with it from the first time they'd come within inches of escape. But ascension as a process made the Ever After adaptable – it could take time, but the Tree would make something to fill the role that the Cat's departure would be leaving vacant. And had the Cat theirself not stuck by their role, never changing, never ascending, never getting anything for all that they'd done for every Afteran in this realm at one time or another, for long enough? Afterans they'd once called friend, Afterans they hadn't, Afterans they'd once laughed and played with, Afterans they'd gone on adventures through thick and thin with into parts and places of the Ever After that had been brave, new and exciting for the Cat once? All Afterans whom had never seen or never cared what was happening to the Cat's heart as the millennia had gone by. Had the Cat not earned the right to be selfish in leaving their old role behind, by will if they couldn't accomplish it by ascension?

"Each acre is made specifically for its inhabitants and their roles," the Cat replied to one of the humans' questions as the many-coloured leaves of the Ever Tree blew on the winds around them. They were approaching the bridge from the King's Acre to the Garden's Acre. "Is it not like that on Remnant?" They already knew the answer, for Alyx, Lewis and Jaune had themselves voiced bewilderment at the Ever After, but it wouldn't hurt for the Cat to feign obliviousness, or to verify how cunning these girls really were by seeing if they could work out that discrepancy. (If they did, the Cat had an excuse to wave it off.)

"N… No," Yang answered awkwardly.

"How strange," the Cat murmured, turning their eyes back ahead. "It never even occurred to me to ask that before!"

"I have a question I'd like to ask," Weiss the ever-rude one said with a glare of her ice-coloured eyes, gloved hands on her hips. "How much longer until we're back to regular size?"

"Not long at all," the Cat answered with a helpful smile, very-briefly considering throwing a verbal barb back at her. "The Garden is just down this path, and is sure to have all the ingredients we'll need to make you a lovely Growgurt Parfait! Just don't go talking to anybody without me. If you're not careful…"

"We might get our heads cut off," Blake deadpanned.

"That is how we met, isn't it," the Cat replied. The bridge's velvet and white stone, and the green sky of the King's Acre, gave way to the next acre's starry nighttime sky, mossy wood and glowing toadstools. "Oh, you Remnant-folk are such troublemakers!"

"Well, I'm sure we'll be less trouble when we're back to regular size," Blake said.

"Pah!" the Cat scoffed as the tall trees surrounded them. "I don't see what all the fuss is about. Some of my best friends are six inches tall." Friends they didn't talk much with now, but there had been a time when some of them had gone through thick and thin with the Cat, evading angry monarchs, armies, terrors and the Jabberwalker itself.

Now came time for the Cat to make their first real move on their would-be host. The first step was egging Ruby on to doubt hers and her team's past actions, something which the clingy half of her four-person team were incapable of doing, which would start to drive Ruby away from them. So the Cat picked their next words strategically for that purpose. "If I were you, I'd be more worried about all the people who are in the desert kingdom right now. Vacuum, was it? Vacuo?" The Cat kept their eyes ahead and on the dirt path, but they knew the crimson-clothed girl's attention was now hanging on their words. "Why send people from a cold tundra into a hot, lawless desert where everyone hates them, again?" The Cat shook their head, pretending not to notice the effect their ramblings were having. "Couldn't you have just used the staff Relic to send them anywhere else and then used it to send yourselves to Vacuo?" They glanced back to meet Ruby's gaze out of their cyan eye's corner as they continued trotting ahead. "Isn't Vacuo right back in that scary sorceress's warpath?"

Ruby's pace slowed to a complete stop almost right away. The Cat, pretending not to notice, continued into the forestry and willed theirself to become unseen.

So it began. The first seed of doubt had been planted, and a certain old friend of the Cat's would unwittingly help with the next stage. The Cat would have their host, they would cross through the door at long last, and they could get answers.

And in all honestly, the Cat expected they would be doing Remnant a favour in making that delusional, hypocritical snake of a girl see herself and her friends for what they'd really done to everything they'd touched and then becoming her. The Cat served theirself alone, and they understood that – if others had to be hurt so they move on to where they NEEDED to go, then so be it.

The Cat had met and treated enough narcissists and narcissistic folk since the Ever After's beginning to know Team RWBY's type. Those wretches wouldn't change, wouldn't learn from their mistakes, because to do so would mean admitting to themselves that they weren't as good as they thought they were and internalising it – to a narcissist, facing the Jabberwalker's jaws was easier. The Cat could postulate easily what would happen to Remnant if Team RWBY ever returned: the millennia-old weary wizard, the grief-addled drunk and the Winter Maiden would continue putting those girls on a pedestal and singing their praises while ignoring the trail of death behind them, and they would betray or drive away more invaluable and irreplaceable allies like General Ironwood once they refused to let Team RWBY get their own ways however petty. Another kingdom 'not sacrificed,' thousands more of the people Team RWBY were 'protecting' broken and crying messes – or (urghh) dead, thousands thrown in the scary witch's warpath. And Team RWBY would refuse to learn again and again, piling up more inane excuses to justify breaking everything they touched ad infinitum. All so that four petulant, self-centred, hypocritical human girls whom had aided their enemy's progress to ending their world far more than they'd aided the resistance could continue feeding their egos and their deranged needs to be the heroes in their own far-flung imaginations.

Heh. Whoever said that fairy-tale villains had to be wearing their evil colours on their sleeves?

If the Cat had any say, Team RWBY's run of luck was about to run out.

A/N: So, that's the first chapter to set it up. New chapters will be posted every Saturday-Monday from here.

I'd normally say in the bottom A/N of my stories that comments and feedback are much appreciated whether they be constructive praise or constructive criticism so long as there are no flames. Since I've seen on social media sites just how Like That the RWBY fandom can be (and I don't know if the fandom presence on AO3 is any different from that), and this IS a "rooting for the empire" fic which'll be giving the canon heroes some spitefic Ron the Death Eater treatment – let's just say that if any rabid "Team RWBY can't do any wrong" Kool Aid-drinkers that read this anyway despite the top A/N and decide to post flames, then they shouldn't expect me to take notice of those.