We've made it to 100 chapters!

At a bittersweet moment, as RoosterTeeth is shutting down and the future of RWBY is probably the least certain it's ever been. To be entirely honest, I haven't watched actual RoosterTeeth content since like, 2016. But whatever happens I'll forever be grateful to the ones who accidentally helped me discover my passion for writing and creating fiction.


Caspian glanced at the ship's directory on the way in, and followed its instructions to the reboot station: down the hall, right into the main cabin, then into the tiny hallway tucked unceremoniously behind the kitchen. It felt like a garage, with its concrete floors, harsh white light and door that opened to the ceiling in a slow, painful rattle. Six glass tubes lined the far wall, seven feet tall and only a couple wide, Holoscreen floating above the steel dock to the side of each. He set Snow down, caught his breath for a second, then followed the instructions to set Snow in place, plug a cord into the base of her skull, and seal her inside.

It felt odd, he thought, to see her in glass. Like a product in a box, like an exhibit in its display case, instead of one of his closest friends. The progress bar on the Holoscreen jumped to 9%, then held steady. He turned away, ventured into the short, blank hall before the cafeteria-like cabin to see if a single living soul sailed with them.

"Hello?" he called out. He faced the kitchen, a couple dozen feet to his left. "Anyone in here? It's alright! I'm a huntsman, from Sentinel. If you're here, you're safe."

But in the silence he heard only the ship's engines rumble to life far beneath him, and the rattling shut of the reboot station's gate.

He turned to the sound. Muttered a curse, and ran to it. The pad he pressed a hand to before glowed red, and was oblivious to his touch. He tried pulling the door up manually, but even with Moka's semblance couldn't muster enough strength to budge it. Another whispered curse. He stood for a few seconds, peering in through the door's fiberglass panels to ensure Snow was safe inside. But as he finally turned from the gate, he felt the ship lurch forward.

"No. Gods, no!" he protested, and ran out of the hall to the main cabin to confirm. Past windows lining it from front to back, he saw the docks already several hundred feet behind, and Atlas Academy crawling toward the horizon.

He practically lunged at Ichigo's name when it popped up from his wrist. His voice was garbled, but audible.

"Caspian? You there? Can you hear me?"

"Yes, I can! Where are you?" Caspian pleaded.

"On a ship, headed for PC. Everyone's here except Snow and Lazula. Are they with you?"

"Snow's with me. She overheated, so I had to figure something out quick. Ended up on one of Frontline's ships," Caspian reported. He glanced back to the hallway door. "I hoped we'd make it out in time, but we left port. Snow's still rebooting."

"Shoot. We're not on any of Frontline's ships, that's for sure."

Moka's voice chimed in from the background. "I think I see them!"

"You're right– Caspian, look out to your left. Starboard? Port? I don't remember. Your left. You should be able to see our ship."

Caspian turned to the port side, and breathed half a sigh of relief when he saw the lights of another Speedliner cutting the surf about a half mile out. "Looks like we're headed the same direction, at least. That's good."

"Caspian?" a voice called from behind him. A man's voice, strangely familiar though he struggled to place it at first. He turned to see Midas Baine– of all people– stepping cautiously into the cabin.

One of Caspian's hands clenched, the other relaxed. He was trapped on board with Snow, shut off and shut away, and the son of The Apoptosis Project's mastermind. But it was at least reassuring to see a familiar face, one looking just as confused and anxious as his own.

"Midas?" Caspian asked. "Why are you here? And what's going on?"

"I don't know. There's a lot my father's been hiding– even from me," he claimed. "It's at least nice to see a familiar…" he trailed off, his brow stitched and he looked past Caspian. "Oh, shit!"

Caspian whipped around, and from the port side window saw two golden streaks burn the sky before crashing into the ship in the distance. A flash of light and flame, then a cloud darker than the night above it.

"Hey, what's the m–" screams vibrated Caspian's Holoband, and the signal cut out again.

He felt the blood drain from his face, into the heart that couldn't decide on pounding or stopping altogether. He held a hand out to stabilize himself against the window. Another to stifle his scream. He raised his Holoband again.

"Ichigo!" he shouted. "Is everyone–"

But the spare inches between his face and his Holoband screamed with heat, and crackled with lightning. He pulled back out of instinct, winced at the pain of a hot blade across his arm. His Holoband lay in two halves on the ground. The glass beside him fractured out from a single impact, and past it the ship carried on, ignorant to his nightmare. He turned slowly to Midas.

He lowered his bow from a full draw. His lips curled into a smirk of amusement.

"And so, the mask. Comes. Off. Tell me– do you know how exhausting it is, pretending to be Prince Fucking Charming every second of every day?" He cocked his head back and chuckled, running a hand through his hair. Then a contented sigh. "It feels so good to show myself for once, you know? Though I guess your sister knew already. She had you beat there, too."

Dark eyes snapped to Caspian. Midas was a predator, closing in on certain prey. Resplendence twisted to transform in his hand, and lightning crackled around the white-and-gold halberd.

"Let's begin."

Caspian felt the cracked window on his back, but only shook his head. "How did I never notice?" he remarked. "That lightning doesn't come from you. It comes from your armor. And your weapon."

Midas cracked a grin, and like a bolt of lightning flashed toward Caspian. He threw himself below Midas's halberd, heard it powder the glass where his neck would have been. Hard-light sprung from his armguard and two swipes glanced off its face before he rolled sideways and back to his feet. Undertow pulled back toward the handle, split down the middle and locked into its handgun form, and Caspian opened fire.

A dust beam glanced off Midas's shoulder, leaving smoke in his wake. "You know what's funny?" he boasted, and another shot buried in his stomach. "Even when I won the Vytal Tournament, I was holding back." He spread his arms, welcoming another beam. "Want to fight the real me?"

Darkness flashed across the ground in thick veins, and a black halo encircled his head in the split-second before he vanished. He re-appeared not a foot from Caspian, burying Resplendence in his shoulder. Lighting coursed past his elbow, past his wrist, through each fingertip. And into his chest, until molten steel surged through his heart. He smelled the hair in his nose burning, felt Resplendence's tip bury beneath his chestplate and heave him through a plywood table. He blinked a splinter from his eye, sprung backward over his armguard half-blind to stand upright. He– by some miracle– dodged a slash, blocked the second though he felt lightning through his forearm, felt his fingers lock in place. He slapped the halberd aside, and his overhead strike in retaliation met its haft. Both arms seized, and the kick to Caspian's chestplate could have dented it. A storm of five slashes seared his skin and rendered his muscles useless– one across each side of his neck, one down his back, one at his ribs and one at left knee. Each came so fast he couldn't see the next, only a flash and the crackling of air torn apart by lightning.

Flat on his back, Caspian shot a grappling hook into the far wall, rode the smooth floor away until he could plant a hand and flip back to shaking legs. "You're The Ambassador, aren't you?" he accused. "Why target me, of all people? I'm hardly a threat!"

Midas stepped forward, echoing The Ambassador's purposeful, driving gait. "My father told me to test you. Your sister's an exception to The Apoptosis Project, after all. And you've grown. We wondered if her twin would be worth our time, after all." He appeared next to Caspian in a clap of black thunder, pulled a scream from Caspian's stomach with the tip of his halberd, and his next words accompanied seven more slashes. "Isn't this what you wanted? It's a very exclusive club!"

Moka's semblance manifested as blue sparks down his legs as he dodged a slash, and parried three more that came in the span of a second. "Why would I want to live in a world with nobody in it?"

"Come on!" Midas goaded. "Moka can come along too! Or even better– an android copy you can shut off when you're tired of it running its mouth!"

Midas flicked his halberd to lock Undertow in its tip, and lightning coursed into it. Caspian's fingers clenched around the hilt of his weapon, as if a white-hot hand clutched his own to hold him in place. The hand trailed up his arm, grasping his wrist, his elbow and his shoulder before embracing his core. Midas whipped Resplendence– and Undertow– aside. Scored an X down Caspian's center with two strikes, and with a straight thrust beneath his chest plate flung him into the window. The back of his head threatened to shatter it, and the air evacuated his chest. Midas followed him. Resplendence's haft in his throat ensured his breath didn't return. Midas cracked another grin. Forced the haft further beneath Caspian's chin, and his feet left the ground.

His victim sputtering and gasping for half a breath, Midas leaned in. His eyes were an abyss, and within them silver wisps stirred like quicksilver in the night. The scene around Midas began to melt away– the marbled floor, fractured wood scattered across it, the moonlight in ripples upon the ocean– all started shifting, undulating to some demon's heartbeat. Caspian felt himself slipping out of his body– somewhere behind it, below it, or beyond it entirely.

He fell away, into the abyss. Into a nightmare.


Falling may have not been the right term. Up and down had lost all meaning in the abyss. He was moving, that much he could tell, from somewhere to nowhere. The edges of his body– the border between himself and reality– reality and a nightmare– blurred. Vanished. He was a cloud of silver, a fog in the darkness. If he stretched out what used to be his fingers, he could barely make out the gap between.

And in one moment the darkness burst with light and noise, the scream of a million moments lost to time. The moments played out before him like a film fast-forwarding. Around him, within him. The phantasmagorie played out over three seconds– but to him, like another nineteen years. He felt his mind would break beneath the weight of it all– rupture at the seams with its strain. But he held out against the overload as Midas's Dread assessed him– downloaded his psyche, to learn exactly how to break it.

The deluge ended, and Caspian laid on the grass. Pines around him stretched into blue sky, and the song of the birds within them floated on a warm breeze. He smelled grass. Pine. The sea. The area was familiar, though years had changed it. A meadow in this vision, now the site of Lazula's personal training compound. A little girl sprinted through him, oblivious to the wispy form she stirred. She slowed and turned to the blue-eyed boy who struggled to follow, whose hair was cut short so it didn't fade to silver. It stayed blue, just like his sister's.

"Come on, why can't you keep up?" the girl scolded. "They'll catch us!"

The boy's hands clutched shaky knees, and his back heaved with breath. "I c– I can't run anymore," he panted. He tried to hide how he gagged with exertion, and spit.

"Ew. Stay here and get caught then, I don't care!" And she turned to run.

Why should I care about this? This was fifteen years ago.

But Lazula's voice in his head didn't relent.

"You can't outrun a girl?"

"Dad's teaching me how to be a huntsman. Must mean I'm his favorite!"

"I'm the older twin. Know what that means? They wanted me. And you were a mistake!"

The final word echoed as he fell again into the abyss. It separated around him, pushed past the windows of the penthouse filled with faceless suits and dresses. Only three faces he could make out– his own and Lazula's, nine or ten years old. And his mother, holding Lazula's shoulder in one arm and a champagne flute in the other as she spoke and laughed with a maroon dress.

She turned to Caspian. "Cas, would you mind fetching my Holoband? I left it in my bag at coat check."

Caspian nodded, ignored himself ten years in the future– a hostage to his memories. A suit turned away from coat check when he arrived, and knelt next to the boy. "Oh, Castor! How's your sister doing?"

And the question resonated, magnified by two hundred other times he'd heard it.

"How's your sister doing?"

"How's your sister doing?"

"How's your sister doing?"

"What's your name again? How's Lazula doing?"

The echoes subsided just in time for the boy in the memory to fetch his mother's Holoband. And as he approached, above a low murmur and the clinking of champagne flutes, "I can tell your daughter has a bright future ahead of her!"

His mother turned to him. The memories blurred, as now they sat in the Skye Manor. Lazula, now older, stormed off at the tail end of an argument. Mrs. Skye looked down to the boy next to her with a sigh. "Gods, you're so much easier to take care of."

And Caspian smiled.

The glass of the Skye Manor's windows began to crack. The abyss leaked through then surged forth as a flood. But before the darkness overtook him it took form– a near-human silhouette with two beams of blue where eyes would be. His own voice spoke, within his head but everywhere outside of it.

"Since you will never measure up to her, you'll just stay out of the way. Keep quiet. Keep your head down. Give others everything they want." The blue beacons narrowed, and struck Caspian with the sense his shadow was smiling. It pulled forward, to just a few inches away. "So maybe– just maybe they won't hate you half as much as you hate yourself!"

The liquid abyss, like the dredge of a Blackened Pool, was up to his neck. "No– that's not true!" he protested. The darkness threatened to take him, he felt it flood his mouth and nose, but he fought for a final breath. "Not anymore!"

A final surge and the abyss overtook him. But he felt it draining, swirling, down into another scene. He thought Noxis would walk through him again. But he was in his own point of view, and the faunus towered over him. "So there's no use in trying, huh? For someone who whines incessantly about living in his sister's shadow, you sure do enjoy the shade."

Caspian shook his head feebly, tried scrambling back. But the faunus stayed close, continued his advance. "If anyone was Headmaster besides your own father, you wouldn't be here to argue this with me." And Noxis pressed forward. He grabbed Caspian's collar. Thrust him through the wall to another memory in the same dorm hallway. "How you're acting right now is exactly why I can't stand you. You outright refuse to face reality. If something upsets you, you run from it. Like how you're backing away from me right now. Like how your sister's leagues ahead of you, and instead of training, you sit back and whine about it!"

A thousand memories flooded his mind in a second– moments he knew Noxis was right.

"You bend over backwards for everyone, but hate every second of it. You hate yourself, too. You hate yourself so much you think you don't deserve to be liked. So you manipulate people into liking you. Or pitying you, at least!"

He was falling again, through darkness. Into black jaws. Into Cyrreine Bay, as the Red Claw detonated that cargo ship. Despite the voice that begged him not to jump. To stay on board. Die a hero. Because maybe then, his life would've been worth something. He sank to the bottom of the ocean.

"You try to act like some saint, but you're actually just spineless! You let people walk all over you, and apologize when they trip! And you know what I hate most? After all that, you still have everything. And you have the audacity to act like some kind of gods-damned martyr!"

"I've changed– we've both changed!" he contested. And he began to fight toward the surface. "You were right back then. But not anymore."

His shadow encircled him. Its eyes glowed just a few inches from his face, though in darkness distance was impossible to discern. It shivered with laughter he felt inside of himself, and pulled tighter. And where it constricted him, he felt the prickle of static electricity.

"Look at you," the voice spoke inside of him. "Working so hard to improve yourself. So maybe, just maybe you can become someone you can stand being. You think you've made it!"

The shadow pulled tighter.

"You're lying to yourself."

"You know, deep down, you're still that same person you hated."

"You're getting better at lying to everyone else, sure."

"But you can't lie to yourself."

It pulled again around his neck. He pulled at it with his hands at first, but they passed through. It wasn't true. It wasn't true. He knew it wasn't true. But even then, his shadow-noose wouldn't slack. He broke the surface, gasped for air, and was absent from the next memory. An observer in Cattleya's dorm. Next to a fresh bouquet, she covered a splotch on her neck with the concealer Caspian bought her.

"I saw you got a new boyfriend!" another woman's voice spoke through the Holoband splayed across her desk. "Tell me about him!"

"Oh," and Cattleya scoffed. "It's nothing, really. But he's the headmaster's son. Related to the Schnees! He can get me whatever I want, whenever I want it. It's that easy!"

"That's my girl!"

"And mom– you know what the best part is? I think he knows. He knows, but won't admit it to himself because it at least feels like someone actually cares about him."

"What? Cat hated her parents… they never called! They wouldn't give her the time of day! She was terrible for me. I know that now. But even after everything, I couldn't bring myself to hate her. Not after knowing that."

Cattleya stood, and her eyes snapped to his vantage.

"You wanted to save me?"

"Not save you. Help you."

"A savior and a martyr. Pathetic."

He felt the scene shifting again. Undulating, the walls melting away like wet paint in rain. He saw another human form born of the darkness, thought it was himself in times past. But Cattleya's face swirled and her form shifted until she became Caspian. He felt his consciousness– the silver wisp– shunted into the body.

The other form, opposite him at the candlelit table, was Snow.

"I love you. You know I love you." And he thought, for a second, he was granted respite. But she shook her head, and anguish set deep in the lines on her face. "I'm not angry you chose Moka. But why keep leading me on like this? Giving me just enough hope to stay close to you? Telling me I'm more than an object, but treating me like an accessory? Do you know how much it hurts? Do you care?"

The scream of another million moments. And the walls of the SFC manifested around him. Moka led him through, and Caspian remembered the first time he followed her. When she whipped around to him with a smile. But this time would be different. In an instant she was inches from his face, and there was something dark behind her essence. Her smile was twisted, her eyes empty of light.

"Do you think you're slick with the way you look at me behind my back? I know you do, you freak."

Even in a false memory, his words failed him. Her grin stretched unnaturally.

"I know the things Cat said about me. And I know you only hung out with me because each time, you hoped I decided I pitied you enough to get lucky."

"Th-That was never true," Caspian insisted. He forced the truth into his mind. The night before. The Northern Lights. Her smile on his lips. "And I know this isn't you. This isn't her."

She only got closer.

"Do you really think you had a chance? You've seen who I can get. Who I do get, all the time, while you can only fantasize!" The shadow imitated her laugh as a harsh cackle. "Keep working on that confidence. Maybe then, you can go on and find someone else to annoy."

A thousand more moments in time strobed before him, and they left him in Sentinel Stadium. His vision flashed across twenty thousand painted smiles, and to the reflection of spotlights glinting off the edges of Lazula's armor. Off of Impetus as she whipped the blade from its sheath. He held Undertow, and hard-light sprung from his armguard. But his movements felt sluggish, and she laid into him easily.

Each hit, he re-lived another. From his fight with Noxis, with Python, with Sable. "Gods, you're pathetic!" she shouted. Her blade came down over his shoulder, and in his mind's eye Midas did the same. "And this is after you actually trying for the last six months? Compared to me, you're nothing. You'll always be nothing!"

Impetus licked at his neck. He felt it tearing through flesh, and all fell dark.

He opened his eyes on the floor of Headmaster Skye's office. His father faced him, and his friends stood around him, frozen in time. All but Lazula, held by Condor far over the ocean.

"Remember this?"

"I'd rather not."

"It might've been the worst thing to happen to you. It shook your faith in your father. It shook your new-found faith in yourself."

"I understand more now. But it was still wrong."

"This is nothing. If you went through what your friends have, you would be broken."

A great surge of light and noise became all he knew, and he felt as if a Line train had smashed into his back. He felt the shattered remnants of his psyche plucked away, forced into a hundred different lifetimes aside from his own. All at once he felt the Man in Red impale him through the gut, and learned he harbored the souls that man killed. He watched powerless as his mother withered. He staggered away from his father, held him off with a broken chair as he spewed whiskey-scented insults at him. And felt boiled water searing his skin. A syringe of black liquid plunged into his infant chest. And in the same world of white, a scientist plugged words into his Holoband as a second blistered his skin with a fire dust crystal. But he couldn't flinch. Couldn't cry out. They couldn't know he felt pain.

"None of these things happened to me," he reflected. "And I'm glad, because maybe you're right. Maybe everyone I know is stronger than I am. And maybe this would have broken me. But we're built by everything that does happen to us. By the people we know, and how they treat us. I won't apologize for that."

The visions vanished, the fragments of his soul pulled thousands of miles, through decades, all in half a second. He pulled back into himself– his full self, no longer a wisp in the darkness. And he found himself alone in the void, apart from the little boy from the first vision who now knelt before him on blank white ground weeping.

"Hey… it'll be alright," Caspian offered. He chuckled. "We get involved in some pretty crazy stuff down the line. But there's a lot to love. About life, and about you."

Through tears and soaked fingers, the boy asked; "Are you happy?"

"Yes. I am."

"Are you really happy?"

Caspian knelt to the boy's level, and met his own eyes. "Nobody's ever entirely happy. But… I'm happy with myself. And I'll keep improving. Discovering the person I am, and discovering the fact I like that person."

He placed a hand on the boy's shoulder, and he became mist. It dispersed into the swirling abyss surrounding them– something half-physical half-ethereal, and it all began to lighten. Somewhere, past it all, he saw the Speedliner's cabin. Saw Midas still holding him to the glass by his throat.

"So self-assured," a voice insisted– Midas's voice transposed over his own, but with something deep laid beneath it all. "You know you're the reason your uncle died, right?"

"That's not true. And I know he didn't do it himself, either."

"You're right– he didn't. After your argument he stole a copy of an Organd's code, all in an attempt to circumvent the failsafe put in place. The Ambassador had to pay him a visit. The best part? It's not just your uncle. You've damned the entire world!"

"...What? What failsafe?"
But he heard only laughter as the nightmare dissolved.

Caspian gagged and gasped for breath as Resplendence slackened slightly. His back still pressed to the window, neck still crushed between it and the halberd's hilt. "Probably thought I was an easy target for your cheap little mindgames," he choked. "Not anymore."

The light was still absent from Midas's eyes, but he grinned as he leaned in. "No need to be hostile anymore– you've passed!"
Caspian readjusted his grip, and clutched the hand that pinned him. Midas tried to pull away, but cobalt coursed up to his elbow, and a dual-hued shimmer of gold and black flowed into Caspian's chest. Caspian noticed the look stirring in the abyss of Midas's eyes– terror.

"Your turn."