Ruby Rose was having a nice day. It was the late afternoon, the last day of the school week, and she and Jaune Arc were blowing their final class period, reserved for free study, on a "Leader's Meeting." Typically, that involved the two of them swapping any interesting gossip on their respective teams (Team RWBY was way more interesting, Jaune!) for about 10 minutes and then reading comics or playing video games or eating junk food for an hour or two. It was a great way to look like you were working hard without actually doing anything. Ruby thought Jaune was a genius when he came up with it.
But something had been bothering Ruby today. She screwed her face up, squinting her silver eyes and running over the thought that had plagued her. Ruby paced the length of the room again, huffing to herself in increasingly faster frequencies and greater volumes.
Jaune was lying across the couch in the small room they had appropriated for "very leader-y things," reading the latest issue of his comic. Accustomed to sisterly shenanigans and inured to the art of the attention-cry, Jaune simply ignored his fellow leader.
"Jaune!" Ruby snapped, stopping in place and turning to him fully, unable to wait any longer for him to ask what was on her mind.
"Uh, yeah, Rubes?" Jaune asked, not even bothering to look up from his comic!
"Have you ever noticed that team RWBY and team JNPR are basically the same people?"
"…What?" Jaune was brought up short and lowered his comic to meet Ruby's eyes with his own. He tilted his head to one side, blonde locks falling across his eyes.
"We're the same people, Jaune! Like, each of us has a – a doppleganger – a twin – an imposter on the other team!"
"Ruby," sighed Jaune, "What are you talking about? We're all completely different."
"No, listen to me, I'm serious! Jaune, you and I are both adorable and awkward – "
"I am not adorable!"
"-and then Nora and Yang are really strong and crazy – "
"Hey, wait, I'm not awkward, either!"
"-and Weiss and Pyrrha are super graceful and smart and cool – "
"Hey!"
"-and Ren and Blake are literally both ninjas! Jaune, we're the same people!" exclaimed Ruby, her thoughts tumbling out of her mouth at a rate Jaune could barely register. He expected still further when Ruby spun on her heel to begin pacing once again. She brought her head down, staring at her boots past her combat skirt as she shuffled back and forth, deep in thought.
"Ruby, that has got to be, like, the most surface-level – no wait, superficial? Uh, basic? – thing you've said, and you told me you thought that Cinder girl was an evil villain because she's constantly talking in that really menacing way," protested Jaune, but Ruby whirled on him and closed the distance between them in a heartbeat, jabbing her finger in his face.
"Jaune! One: Cinder is definitely an evil villain and poor Emerald is trapped in her vile clutches! Two: this is not surface-ficial or whatever! I learned my lesson after thinking Neptune was a two-timing flirt and Sun swore he'd never do that! Just think about it for a minute, take me seriously!" urged Ruby, batting at Jaune as they bickered and knocking his comic into the forgotten void that was between-couch-cushions.
"Ack! Ruby! Stop! I'll take you seriously when you start making sense!"
As a veteran of sibling-abuse, Jaune knew full well how to match Ruby blow-for-blow, and for every light swipe against him he returned one of his own. Soon, they were both disheveled, Jaune's armor askew and hoodie bunched over him while Ruby's belt was pulled off-center, one cartridge upon it dropping to the floor. Abruptly, Ruby pulled away from their assault and Jaune made no move to follow.
Jaune straightened up on the couch, folding his arms as he faced her, looming over her even from his seated position. Ruby mirrored his pose while standing, fixing him with the intense gaze that made her the most feared of all team RWBY – you know, behind Weiss. And Yang. And Blake.
"Now you listen to me Jaune Arc, bestie the third of my besties!"
"Hey! Third!?"
"Weiss is my partner, so she's first, and Yang is my sister, so she gets automatic second place!" Ruby explained, scoffing imperiously (Weiss would be proud!) at his look of betrayal, "Don't give me that, I know Pyrrha and Ren are your first and second best friends, too!"
"Uh-" Jaune caught his denial in his throat, the situation de-escalating beneath Ruby's flawless logic and command of the situation, "Well, yeah, Pyr is definitely my best friend. Jury's out on Ren or Nora or you, though, being second," he calculated with the genius that made him JNPR's fearless leader.
"And that's exactly why we're the same!" declared Ruby, circling back to her original point.
"Oh for- Ruby, think about what you're saying! You're like a super prodigy or something and got here two years early and I'm – well, like bottom 25% of the class!"
"That's only combat classes, Jaune! Remember that stuff with Cardin? You were doing two people's work at once and somehow keeping up with it – you're just under Ren and Blake in the other stuff and that's because you're training with Pyrrha every night instead of studying."
"Okay, but that's exactly my point, how can we be the same if there's such an obvious difference there?" asked Jaune. A beat passed before he posed another question, "And how, exactly, am I adorable?"
"Are you kidding, Jaune? Once you get over your you-ness, you're like a big, stupid, cute puppy," exclaimed Ruby as she eviscerated Jaune's self-image. "And the answer is nature versus nurture!"
"Nature versus nurture?"
"Nature versus nurture!"
"Okay. I'll bite," conceded Jaune as he un-crossed his arms, "What on Remnant are you talking about?"
"Okay, so, first of all, we're Team Leaders!"
"Uh-huh."
"And neither one of us expected that nor were we prepared!"
"Right."
"And we were totally out of our depth for like our first whole month here!"
"Okay, is there going to be anything more substantial, or what?"
"I was getting to that, shut up!" demanded Ruby with a furious glare. Once Jaune obediently complied, she continued, "Okay, so, the point is, we're both natural leaders or whatever," Ruby began again, counting off the reasons on her fingers and pacing lightly as she voiced her thoughts, "We both have family legacies to live up to, we both are the ones all our friends listen to all the time – and it's not always just because we're the leaders but because they trust us for some reason – and neither one of us feels like we deserve it, we both have deep feelings of inadequacy, we're both terrified of letting other people down, though I'm way better at acting like I'm not than you are. And, we're both exceptionally cute. Also, we want to help other people a lot and we both think huntsmen are super cool. Those are just our natures! Our natural desires and values!"
"Alright, fine. So, the inadequacy and fear stuff – yeah, that's fair – also huntsmen are pretty cool and I do want to help people – but family legacies? Ruby, come on, what legacy?"
"Jaune, your dumb shield has your family's dumb symbol on it and I literally wear my mother's symbol – which is also my symbol! – and is way better than your symbol, by the way!"
"First of all: okay, good point. Second: wow, rude. But, I'm still not really seeing it. This is still superficial. It's not like your family didn't want you to come here like mine did."
"Actually, my Dad wasn't happy with me coming to Beacon early at all! He still let me go, though – just like yours did."
"Uh, okay, well, um, you knew people when you got here!"
"Pft, nobody other than Yang."
"Uh, you made a better first impression on your partner than really badly flirting with her and another girl?" offered Jaune, surely her first meeting with Weiss went better than that!
"I tripped over Weiss's bags and blew up! You were there for that!" exclaimed Ruby, slightly offended her first friend forgot – or maybe never knew? – how he became her first friend.
"Oh," Jaune said lamely, "Well, your landing strategy worked?"
"Okay that is definitely superficial, c'mon, what's next?"
"Well you and Weiss made it to the ruins without attracting a giant Grimm – wait, no, that Nevermore was you guys, right? – Nevermind. I mean, you knew what to do to beat the Nevermore!"
"Yeah, just like you knew how to beat the Deathstalker!"
"Oh come on," groaned Jaune, throwing up his hands, "I just made that up and flew by the seat of my pants, it was a total fluke!"
"If Weiss missed that shot I had no idea what I was going to do!"
Jaune struggled, stuttering as he tried to think and speak at once. He clearly couldn't go the easy way of just disproving her beat-by-beat. He had to think, long and hard, in order to come up with some way he could disabuse Ruby of the ridiculous notion that they were mirrors of one another. That's when he remembered something very important – his trump card! He had something that would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he and Ruby weren't similar at all!
Girding his loins, Jaune bore his soul to Ruby, "I bet you didn't have to lie, cheat, and steal to get into Beacon!"
"What?!" exclaimed Ruby, truly taken aback. Her whole body froze as she looked upon Jaune in an entirely new light. She knew he'd been kind of bad to begin with, but she wasn't expecting that!
"Okay, so I only did the lying and cheating part, but still, I bet you didn't have to do that – I didn't even have my aura unlocked when we got launched into the forest," Jaune added, twisting the knife he had placed in the heart of Ruby's argument.
"What?! How did you survive?! You have aura now, how did you get it!?" Ruby was utterly gobsmacked. Didn't Beacon test people for aura before letting them enter? How did this get past the faculty? There were so many questions!
"Pyrrha fixed it."
"Oh," Ruby replied, all her questions answered, "that makes sense – wait! You never went to combat school then, right?"
"No-pe! And you did!" preened Jaune as he reveled in his triumph over his fellow team leader. There was no way she was coming back from this!
"Buuuuut," interjected Ruby, a strange glint in her eyes as a wild grin manifested on her young face, "You've been getting trained by Pyrrha for like a semester and change now, right?"
"Yup!" said Jaune. He didn't know what she was planning, but it only added to his point! "Unlike the years of training and education everyone else received! See? We're nothing alike!"
"Jaune. After having aura for less than an hour you led a team of huntsmen-in-training to kill a Deathstalker, after having aura for less than a week you survived for longer than 30 seconds against people that have been training for years, and after a few months of training you're almost beating some of them! Do you know what that makes you?" Ruby asked, slowly spelling out her deductions to her friend as all the pieces came together.
"Um, a danger to everyone around me? A waste of a slot that could've gone to a better candidate? A selfish piece of garbage?" Jaune suggested. It wasn't unhealthy and reductive to think that way if it was true, right?
"A prodigy!" exclaimed Ruby, bringing herself up to her full height, hands falling to her hips as she stood tall and proud before Jaune.
"What?!" gaped Jaune, baffled, "Ruby I – how do you – that's – "
"Jaune, it doesn't matter when you start! I mean, you went overboard with that, but who cares? You're picking things up faster than people who have trained their whole lives! Brothers, it makes the way Pyrrha talk about you make so much more sense!"
"Pyrrha talks about me? I mean – hold on, then if I am such a prodigy," he spat the word like a curse, "Then how come nobody ever believed in me? How didn't I unlock my aura on my own or whatever or anything like that? Why don't I have my semblance?"
"Beats me!" dismissed Ruby cheerfully, "You said your family didn't really care about you wanting to be a Huntsman, right? I guess they just didn't tell you anything about it? And did you make a habit of going out into the woods and fighting Grimm by yourself as a kid? That's how most people who unlock their aura on their own get it!"
"Well, no, I didn't – "
"Then someone would've had to unlock it for you! And the only people that would've done that before you met Pyrrha would've been your family – who were exactly the people that didn't want to! Nature versus nurture, Jaune, it's all coming together!" cheered Ruby happily, rubbing her hands together as all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
Jaune grumbled to himself as he was cowed into submission by Ruby's reversal. What a joke! Him, a prodigy? It was laughable. Still, Jaune couldn't just say she was wrong, exactly, either, seeing as she would know way more than he did about these things. Really, what did he even know about the traditional huntsman training path? His ignorance was coming back to bite him when he was trying to prove his incompetence!
"Yup!" continued Ruby, "That's it! That's the difference between us that makes us separate people! I grew up with only my sister, uncle, and dad, but they were all super supportive of my dream of becoming a huntress. Even though we had problems and hard stuff, they all wanted me to succeed and see my dream come true!" Ruby pounced on the opening his silence left her, driving her point home. "You, on the other hand, grew up with a huge, loving family, but not even one of them cared enough for your dream to even tell you how to do it! I don't know why they did that, but that's the difference! I had productive support and you didn't! Heck, if I didn't, I probably would've tried to cheat or something, too! Nature versus nurture!"
"Al-right," Jaune sighed explosively, deflating in the couch as he fell to Ruby's unassailable position, "Fine. So maybe we have a few similarities. Maybe I've got emotional whiplash from getting thrown back and forth by the past 5 minutes of conversation. Maybe I'm a prodigy – wow, that feels weird to say – even if I don't believe it. What about the rest of our friends? Who did you say were the mirrors?"
"Weiss and Pyrrha, Nora and Yang, Ren and Blake!" chirped Ruby.
"Well, all you have right now is just words, Ruby. Like – like, uh, coincidences! Assumptions and suppositions! Who knows if any of them are really right if it's just us talking about them? Like, okay, maybe we can both agree that us and our teammates can be kind of similar and all, but how do we really know?" Jaune elaborated.
"My theory is way more airtight than that, Jaune!"
"Yeah, yeah, but it's all baseless! There's no evidence! So, let's go find our teammates and talk to them – and then we can answer those questions and decide properly, with them right there!"
"Er," Ruby fell short, for the first time beginning to look uncomfortable at the thought of all but accusing her teammates and friends of being mirror-images of one another. "Won't that be kinda rude?"
"We don't have to just barge in and ask them weird questions about how similar they are! We'll just go and have a conversation – maybe ask a few questions about their lives – and move on! It'll be perfect, and they'll never know what we were doing!" declared Jaune triumphantly. His plan was brilliant (maybe)!
"I mean… As long as it's just a conversation?" agreed Ruby cautiously. She still wasn't sure if she liked the idea of it, but she could always just blame it all on Jaune anyway, right? "As long as you're sure."
"Oh yeah, I'm totally sure! Let's just uh, figure out where they're at."
"Errr, I think Nora and Yang are at the gym together right now?" Ruby suggested as she pulled out her scroll, snapping off an inquiry to Weiss about her location.
"Oh, well that's convenient," mused Jaune, pulling out his own scroll and sending Ren a question as well. He was about to do the same to Pyrrha when Ruby received an immediate response.
"Weiss says she's with Pyrrha having tea out in some – we have gardens?"
"Yeah, they're out in the back," Jaune answered, silently noting the exceptional convenience that two out of three pairs of targets were already together. Just then, he received a response from Ren and looked down at his scroll with a stricken look.
"What? What is it, Jaune? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Ren was meditating in the library for some reason and Blake's at the table closest to him right now," Jaune's features screwed up as he spoke, blinking slowly.
"Oh boy, that's really convenient!" cried Ruby, though her happiness at the convenience slowly drained away as she noticed the look on Jaune's face.
"Almost… contrived…" Jaune pondered, staring off into the infinite distance. There was something there – just at the edge of his realization. A consideration, possibly, his mind guided to it as if by some external force capable of dictating his thoughts and actions. Everything was too convenient, too orderly, too -
Then Ruby hit him upside the head.
"Ow! Hey! What was that for?!"
"Come on, daylight's burning, vomit boy! And you were thinking about stupid things that don't matter, let's go!"
Grumbling and rubbing the back of his head, Jaune dutifully stood up and took up his position next to Ruby. Together, the two of them went to track down their teammates.