Author's Notes

ONGOING STORY ALERT!

Just a quick thing – you all do know that Living The Dream has an ongoing sequel, right? I'm not trying to spam you with ads or something, but it explains the missing aspects of the story like Cardin, Watts, Salem, Raven, and Lionheart, and it's barely been noticed compared to the first (Living The Dream had about 10x the readership).

If it sucks, I can accept that, but I know that FFN email notifications are down and just don't want members of the Rat's Nest to be missing out on something they don't know exists.

Happy rats, and don't do crime!

Chapter 24 – Ruby's Sneak Level

"Look, Hazel, we're not gonna find them if we keep going around in circles. I may not be much of a tracker, but I can recognize my own footprints."

"Hazel, is it now?" The big guy's arms folded. "Whatever happened to Mr. Rainart?"

"Does it matter what I call you more than the fact that we've been going around for days without even as much as a glimpse of any other people, let alone bandits?"

Hazel shook his head and continued ahead, climbing over a fallen tree that Ruby recalled seeing just an hour ago. She could even see the notch in it where Crescent's tip had clipped it.

"Maybe we should find some people. Merchants, a traveling caravan, I dunno, anyone! If we follow them, or even find a village, we're more likely encounter Raven's tribe when she raids them than just hoping to bump into them by sheer luck."

Hazel stopped and fixed her with a disapproving glare. "If you think you can do better than me, you're welcome to go out on your own."

"Okay," Ruby said. She turned around and started to march in the direction of a faint dirt road, or at least the direction she thought it was in.

A hand grabbed her before she could make it more than ten feet. "That wasn't an offer. You must stick by my side. This, her grace has decreed."

Ruby seriously considered wrestling free of his grip and breaking out on her own, but in the end, she decided to stick with him. Hazel might be acting like an idiot, but there had to be some expertise hidden beneath that thick beard of his or he wouldn't have been kept around by Salem this long. She just hoped it was going to show itself before her feet blistered up.

The entire day was a waste. Ruby had begun to mentally map the pattern in which they moved, just to alleviate her boredom, and she'd figured out that his gradual curving had been moving then in a giant pair of figure eights, making a four-leafed clover.

The broke camp when the sun set. Hazel had spoken about them breaking up shifts for a night watch, but Ruby had just sent her Scarab out onto a tree branch and told it to wake her if it saw anything. As a Grimm, it had no need for sleep and no sense of boredom. Plus, Ruby was fairly certain it had some sort of mental connection to her, and she hoped it might be enough that she would wake up automatically when the beetle caught a whiff of danger.

Hazel, of course, had been extremely resistant to anything that made sense. "If it dies, what will you do then?"

"Get a new one from Salem," she'd said back, proud that he had no retort to that. It wasn't like they were planning to go out and fight any maidens. Even if they did find Raven, Ruby knew engaging her would be a fool's errand. She wasn't planning on making the same mistakes as last time.

Only new ones, like listening to a wilderness guide who seems to think our goal is to draw pictures viewable by satellite with our footprints' paths.

Just in case Grubbie wasn't loud enough to wake her, Ruby decided to sleep under the stars. If Atlas was the world's ice-chest, Mistral had to be its thermos, as it was warmer than warm even as autumn rolled in.

As Ruby lay in her sleeping bag, doing her best to pretend Hazel wasn't doing his best to pretend she didn't exist, Ruby couldn't help but wonder how her life had taken such a turn for the worse. Aiding the people she hated, helping the White Fang hurt good men and women serving their kingdom, humoring a big fat loser's search for a short thin loser maiden…self-sacrifice had seemed so good when it was an idea, but looking back, she genuinely had to ask herself is she truly would have said something different to Goodwitch with the benefit of hindsight.

It doesn't change anything, but it matters to me.

I would still say yes.

I would.

The world's in danger. If Salem gets the Spring maiden, she already has Lionheart and access to Haven. Getting the relic there would mean she gets all three other maidens and all their relics too. My comfort is a small sacrifice for so much at stake.

I would say yes. That's my final answer.

The fact that Ruby was still here, doing what she could to see her mission through, was proof. With that question answered, Ruby fluffed up her pillow and closed her eyes.

Her eyes opened, and she saw her own body.

She saw her campfire, she saw her sleeping bag, she saw Hazel as he glared at Ruby and shook his head…she saw everything.

Ruby looked down and saw a tree branch.

Grubbie! I'm…I'm seeing through his eyes! I'm controlling him!

Woah, this is so cool! I knew we had some kind of mental connection!

She could feel Grubbie's beetle legs, her beetle legs, scratching against the bark of the tree on which she'd perched him before going to bed. Everything about this was awesome – she instinctively knew how to control six limbs and two antennae at once to move about and feel her surroundings. She couldn't explain it, the new way she instantly commanded her warped body to obey with the same ease that her bipedal human form had possessed, but it worked, and she wasn't going to question it.

Hazel was still awake, so Ruby had time to test out the limits of her Scarab's…whatever this was. Astral projection? No, that would be her ghost, and she was still inside a physical body. Warging? No, I don't want to tag this as crossover with Game of Thrones. Animal familiars? That didn't seem to fit.

She decided to settle on calling it sleepbeetling, because she wasn't creative and it was too late at night to think of something better.

The scientific method dictated that she form a hypothesis, isolate all variables but one, and repeatedly gather evidence on that variable's effect as a method of validating that hypothesis, so Ruby ran out into the forest to see if she could find the Branwens.

Hazel has no clue I'm doing this! This is so awesome!

Traveling as Grubbie was a whole lot slower, given his tiny legs, but he was free to go in whichever direction he pleased, and that made it worth it all. She recalled seeing some vague signs of human activity in the eastern corner of the forest – all of the berries plucked from a bush, but with no damage to the plant – and so that would be the first thing she investigated.

As long as I set aside enough time for Grubbie to crawl back home before my real body wakes up, there's nothing that could go wrong. He's too small to be seen by any hunters, Grimm won't react to him, and I can catch up on my sleep while sleepbeetling at night. Plus, I'm armored with Grimm bone, so even if a bird or something tries to snatch me up, I could just kill it and drop back down. It's a win-win for everyone, 'cept the bird.

Hazel might not have taught her much, but that didn't mean Ruby hadn't learned anything in Mistral.

As a Grimm, Grubbie didn't get tired, which made scuttling around on the leaves and grass a continuous process. There were some times when she encountered obstacles in her path too high to jump over or too steep to climb, like a deer carcass and a tree stump, but she found that the forest floor always had a different path if she paid enough time and looked close enough to find it.

The stars and moon gave her light, and Ruby found the bush within half an hour.

Okay. Tracking time. I guess…I look for tracks?

She wasn't an expert or anything, but the logic seemed clear enough. Animal tracks would be proof that the berry bush wasn't worth investigating, but human tracks might give her a bearing for her next quest.

The only problem was that the ground wasn't mud or sand, meaning that there were no visible tracks.

Hmmm…this is a tough one. I guess I'll look around the nearby area for other clues. If I can't find anything in a ten-meter radius that piques my interest, I'll give up and look somewhere else.

As Ruby set about to scaling a tree by piercing its bark with her sharp beetle toes, she wondered just how far she could take sleepbeetling…wait, beetlewalking! That was so much better. Anyways, she wondered what the limits of beetlewalking were. Like, if she died in the beetle, did she die in real life? Would it only work for Grubbie, or was it any Scarab that Salem bonded to her? Could Cinder do it? C-Could she sneak into Raven's camp and steal the maiden powers in her sleep?

At the top of the tree, Ruby looked out. It was so bizarre, for the sights were all the same that she'd seen during the day, but everything was different – much bigger, and also quite a bit more colorful. Ruby had read that sharks could pick up on different colors than humans, and it appeared that Scarabs could do the same as well. Or was that dogs that could see the extra colors? Ruby couldn't remember.

She needed to focus. Tonight would only last so long, and she probably oughta take it easy on her first time beetlewalking.

I could leave the beetle somewhere and then just pick it up when I'm awake and my stride isn't 1.2 centimeters, but who knows if Hazel's going to march us in the opposite direction just to screw with me. I think it's best that I recall Grubbie every night before it gets bright.

Ruby couldn't see anything that struck her as out of the ordinary. No broken branches, no path of shrubbery pushed aside, no litter left behind by a careless bandit mook. Rats!

It wasn't a problem. This was just her first foray into scouting, and it would've been a miracle if she'd found a trail that led her to Raven. Hell, it would've been a miracle if she'd found a trail leading her to a wild head of cabbage, given how inexperienced she was at this whole thing. But the night was young, and after a boring day, Ruby's appetite for adventure was starved.

"You seem awfully chipper," Hazel had said, noticing Ruby brightly eat her breakfast ration pack.

Ruby nodded. "I had a wet dream last night."

Hazel immediately paled at that, clammed up, and looked away, no longer eager to pursue that conversation. Ruby knew how adults worked, and this wasn't the first time she'd weaponized polluting her innocence as a shield to avoid tougher conversation.

That's basically why I've been hired by Salem – to weaponize my innocence.

"So, where're we going today?" Ruby asked. "Gonna cover the same ground again?"

"No," Hazel declared. "We're going to head further inland. It's unlikely that Raven will keep her tribe close to the capital city, so we shall head westward. Argus would also be a likely deterrent, excluding the north. If anything, I'd venture a guess that she's further south, closer to Menagerie."

"Menagerie? Does Raven like Faunus or something?"

Hazel shook his head. "A bandit's bread and butter is a land of rich commerce, and that is one of the few aspects of civilization humans wish to share with the island. Her people would benefit greatly for raiding merchants who ship goods between the mainland and the Faunus kingdom."

"Faunus kingdom?" Ruby asked.

Hazel look at her funny. "Is Menagerie a part of Mistral?"

"No," Ruby answered.

Hazel raised an eyebrow. "Atlas? Vale? Vacuo?"

Ruby shook her head.

"Then it must be its own kingdom."

She couldn't argue with that logic.

Everything was easier once the next step became clear. Ruby would just scout out locations of interest during the day and use Grubbie to investigate further at night. Instead of pestering Hazel with questions, she would just keep her eyes open and leave him to his own devices…mostly.

A few pestering questions will be necessary, just to avoid him noticing any big behaviors in changes. It wouldn't do for him to learn about my beetlewalking.

Ruby had figured out the trick for how to deceive people – just keep acting like you always did, and react the way you normally would. Don't force it, but don't go out of your way to appear inconspicuous. The least sus Ruby Rose was the normal Ruby Rose.

"How far south are we going?" she asked.

"Far enough."

"Oh, is there gonna be a beach?"

Hazel sighed defeatedly. "Not that far."

Over the course of the day, Ruby found three particular things that piqued her interest and would be receiving midnight visited from her sleepytime Scarab. One of them was a shell casing of a bullet that she'd kicked, thinking it was a rock. It looked old and rusted, but it was a sign of people having been there, so it warranted another look.

The next item of note was an empty backpack that Hazel had found. The two of them had checked the surrounding area for any other clues rather thoroughly, but Ruby might have been able to find something from her different perspective if she looked closer.

Lastly, Ruby had noticed white smoke from a campfire rising up from behind a hill just before it had gotten dark. She had only barely been able to make it out through the clouds, and she'd pointed it out to Hazel. He'd said they would proceed in that direction tomorrow, but Ruby wanted to get ahead of things with some early scouting.

Tonight was a lot clearer, or perhaps the sky had better visibility in the south. It would be the perfect climate for some sneaking. As she cozied up into her sleeping bag, Ruby could barely contain her excitement. An entire night of beetlewalking awaited!

Now, just to go to sleep.

Ok. Ruby closed her eyes and exhaled deeply.

Time for sleeping.

Sleep didn't come.

It was something of a catch-22, Ruby realized, after two hours spent awake. Her excitement over the prospect of going to sleep was making her heart buzz and her blood flow, and there was no way she could catch some Z's in this state.

I didn't even eat any sugar and get a rush or something! I'm just naturally hyper! Boy, this sucks big ones.

It was probably around midnight by now, but Ruby dared not check the time for fear that the brightness of her scroll would jolt her awake even more. How was she supposed to go to sleep?

Hitting her head with a rock was a surefire way, but Ruby couldn't see any rocks nearby, and Hazel himself was too busy keeping watch to help. Sleeping pills would also work in theory, but again they were unavailable to her, so she supposed not.

Plus, I have no idea if unconscious or drugged counts as sleep and would even work. I think I have to nod off the natural way.

Counting sheep, then? The highest number Ruby knew was nine-hundred and ninety-nine quadrillion plus change, but that didn't sound like something Ruby could do to wind down. She would get distracted by the sheep in her dreamscape, and what if one of them got away and she had to chase them down with her semblance and –

"That's it!" she said aloud, nearly causing Hazel to tip over from the tree trunk on which he was perched.

"What?!"

"My semblance! If I wanna fall asleep, I just gotta tire myself out even more." She caterpillar-crawled out of her sleeping bag and unruffled her clothes. "I'm gonna go for a little jogging."

Hazel held up a hand. "W–"

He was too late to stop her as she sped off into the jungle. Actually, this could be a good thing, now that she thought about it. She could save some time by running to the bullet casing or the backpack and deploy Grubbie from ground zero. Maybe she'd hold off on the smoke, just in case the sight of a huntress scared off the people that might've been making it.

It hadn't been difficult for her to memorize where the spots were. With nothing else to do all day, Ruby had run over the mnemonic trick to memorize them again and again in her head until she could recite the coordinates in her sleep.

And I will, ya know, cuz I'll be sleepwalking as a Grimm.

She arrived at the destinations a much more tired woman, and after a long day of hiking, she had a feeling that would be just what she needed.

"Guess I forgot to bring my bag," Ruby said to herself as she laid down in the grass. "But that's fine. I'll only be here for a little bit, and it's hardly cold."

It was impossible to know exactly when one fell asleep, and recalling the precise moment she awoke as Grubbie was equally impossible. Ruby was already crawling back and forth on her own shoulder when she came to, presumably from Grubbie's own mindless movements before she took over.

The bullet was first on the docket. Ruby had curled up in an empty patch of ground just to make sure she didn't soil any clues in the nearby area. Picking it up in her mandibles, she turned the small brass cylinder over and over, checking it for any indicative markings that might give away its firer's identity.

It was a plain round, the kind that was moved by Dust but contained no Dust itself. This was the type of ordnance that non-hunters used when they were on the road, as the recoil from anything more explosive could pull their shoulder out of its socket. Ruby sniffed it, only to realize that arthropods couldn't smell.

Well, that wasn't much. It removed trained huntsmen and huntresses from the pool of people who might've used it, but that still left most of the world.

If the bullet itself didn't have any clues, perhaps the nearby area did. Ruby peeled over it with a fine-toothed comb, looking for anything that might've been noteworthy.

…and this time, she actually found something! It wasn't much, but her extra sense of color from the non-visible spectrum to humans picked up some powders that were scattered on the ground. Ruby remembered looking at that same spot with her human eyes, and she hadn't seen anything, but as a Grimm, it was there.

It must be such a similar color to the ground that I just couldn't see it. Hmmm…what's a brown powder that might blend in with Mistrilian dirt?

Dust? No, humans can see that, and it tends to twinkle.

Drugs? Probably not, since they're usually white.

Cinnamon? Maybe, but what would that be doing out here in the sticks?

Hot chocolate?

Ruby turned in time to hear her real body's stomach gurgle.

I really should've eaten a bigger dinner.

"RUBY?!" Hazel's voice cried out in the direction she'd come from. "WHERE ARE YOU?"

Great. Now he's gonna come and…and…

You know, all Hazel'll probably do is either set up camp around my body or carry me back to camp. I can't think of any reason why he would wake me up. There's no need for me to recall Grubbie.

Ruby scurried off in the direction of the dropped backpack.

When she got to the location of the backpack, it was gone. Ruby didn't know exactly what that meant.

It could've been something simple – a bear saw it, liked the weave, and decided to carry it off for stuffing to make its nest. These parts were full of animals, and the jungles of Mistral were everchanging landscapes.

Alternatively, whoever originally owned it might've retraced their steps and doubled back to reclaim it. That would mean tracks, except, same as last night, track didn't tend to show up on this kind of dirt floor.

Maybe Hazel had disposed of it. That didn't paint a good picture of her standing with him.

He's not bound to me like Cinder. If he decides to sabotage my efforts to lower me in Salem's eyes and thereby raise himself up, there wouldn't be any consequences. Shoot, he might even be doing it just to find a roundabout way to punish Cinder. She said they came to blows once.

It was too early to jump to conclusions. Hazel hadn't smothered her in her sleep last night, so it was unlikely he would change his mind and try again tonight. Everything else wasn't a priority and could be worked out at a later date.

But he has been slacking off for most of our time in the jungle. Is it possible that he's really trying to undermine my progress locating Raven?

…wait, what if he knows?

Ruby didn't have lungs in her beetle form, so she couldn't hyperventilate, but the sensation of panic struck her just the same. If Hazel did know about her mission with Ozpin, a man he apparently hated beyond reason, the best way to ruin her would be to drag her around in circles and ensure she never located her target.

I'm being crazy here. The best way would be to kill me.

Hazel doesn't know who I am. He can't.

Ruby focused up. She only had a limited nighttime, and thoughts like this were something she could have during the day. Right now was meant to be for scouting.

Well, if the backpack wasn't there, she might as well move on to the smoke. Ruby sped off as fast as her tiny legs could carry her in the direction of the hills.

It was actually quite fun to zoom around like this. It might be slower than her semblance, but it was like she was perpetually running an obstacle course where the obstacles were protruding sticks, leaves as big as couches, and pinecones that made Ruby feel like a, well, a bug.

The coolest part about it was that, because of her chitin armor, she was pretty much unaffected by any of those things that might poke or crush her. As she crawled along the ground, sharp pokey pine needles that would have been scaled up into small swords bounced off her abdomen like they were nothing. Ruby even intentionally knocked over a pile of rocks just to kick off the miniscule landslide.

I can do whatever I want, and nothing can impede me. It's like running around as a person with full aura that never diminishes. If I ran into a tree as a human, I'd go splat and fall over, but as a beetle, the stick breaks before I do.

She still wouldn't be able to run straight into a tree, but a stick was about the same thing if you considered its relative size to Ruby.

"…Kuo…"

The sound of a voice made Ruby halt in her tracks. It wasn't Hazel, and it certainly wasn't shouting at her. No, this voice belonged to a young man, if Ruby had to guess, one who was casually conversing.

This might be the best lead I get, but I need to be careful. If they see me and recognize me as a Grimm, they'll smush me.

Ruby had no doubt that for all her durability, even a normie's boot would be the end of her beetlewalking days. She refused to let Grubbie's light fade out like that.

Quietly t̶i̶p̶t̶o̶e̶i̶n̶g̶ t̶i̶p̶c̶l̶a̶w̶i̶n̶g̶ tipbeetlefooting her way over, Ruby moved within the briars of a thorny shrub to get herself cover as she approached.

There was a pair of people, one human and one Faunus, sitting around a dying campfire in a makeshift pit. As it was now, nothing was coming out, but she could easily imagine it having been a great source of smoke just a few hours prior.

The Faunus was now the one speaking, and Ruby listened in.

"…don't even put it on anything. I swear, it baffles me."

The human puffed up his chest. "Well, a Mistrilian like me –"

"I'm not talking about Mistrilians," the Faunus responded. "I'm talking about humans."

"That's racist," his human companion dispassionately stated.

"You can't be racist against humans."

"Speciest, then?"

"No, you can't be discriminatory against humans. They're the dominant power on Remnant, and four out of four kingdoms have entirely human councils."

"You can't be systematically speciest against humans, then, but you can be racist individually."

"You callin' me a racist?"

"Yeah."

Both snorted.

"I assume you mean the gruesome twosome."

"Now who's bein' a racist, ya tailless ape?"

The human shrugged the insult off, and it finally sank in to Ruby that the two were just playing with one another.

"Atlas and Vale," the Faunus said, speaking again to his companion but gazing into the dying fire. "Vale and Atlas. The hearts of civilization, and not a pickled speck of civilized culture to speak of between the two of 'em. Plain, boring lumps o' land."

"Our biggest buyers," lamented the human. "And they don't even have cuisine to speak of."

"I'd take the bandits of Mistral or the sands of Vacuo any day," said the Faunus. "If only they had the money to purchase our wares in bulk."

"They actually know how to use spices," lamented the human.

Spices…that meant…

I was spot on before! It really was cinnamon that I found near the bullet!

"Damned Valeans – the only spice they know is the only one we don't sell: cinnamon."

…I'm still gonna count this as a win.

Ruby slid a little forward in her briar bush, hoping to get a better look at the two of them. The human was a younger man, probably no more than thirty, with bright red hair that was well combed and reminiscent of Adam. The Faunus, on the other hand, possessed penguin flippers for hands, which Ruby though must've made things difficult. He was a far older man, likely requiring at least two hands…er, two feet worth of toes to count the number of decades he'd lived. In spite of his odd situation regarding his digits, he was still somehow whittling a piece of wood using a knife, carving a little castle out of it.

"Bah. Give me the sand dunes over the banditry of Mistral. I say we pack our bags and move."

The Faunus regarded his young companion curiously. "Oh? And when was the last time we ran into bandits?"

That got an embarrassed shirk.

"You know they only run in the north. The Grawl tribe can operate in the shadow of Argus because that fieldmouse they call a commander can't be bothered to police her own land, the Nisiens rule the coastline, and the –"

"Aye, you don't need to remind me who owns the land."

But, like, you should. So that I can hear it.

"Kent, you're like a son to me, so I'm trying to remind you just why we do this. Our partnership is a well-oiled machine, with me taking on the Faunus of Menagerie for imports and ye dealing with Mistral. If we try and break things off, go on our fancy to Vacuo, we risk everything we've built, and in a hostile desert. We may as well wander south of the floatin' mountains for all that it'd be the death of us."

The levitating mountains to the north…I've heard of those. I know where they are!

It wasn't like it was a guarantee that Raven and her tribe were going to be there, but Ruby had heard the Faunus guy talking about bandits, only to be cut off. He had ended on 'and,' meaning he was about to say the name of the last one, probably the 'big one' if Ruby were a guessing girl.

I've made assumptions before and landed in hot water, but this will just give me a starting point. Now that I've got a clue, I can split off from Hazel to look in the north on my own. It's not like he wants me here. I know for a fact that Tyrian's not busy, so I can just ask Salem to send him my way as an escort, just to keep me safe. This won't be like before, where I approached her head on. I can learn from my mistakes.

The men had launched into some conversation about sand, how much they didn't like its coarseness and roughness. Talk of the desert was far off topic, but Ruby played it safe and listened in for another hour or so just to make sure that the old Faunus didn't circle back around to the topic of banditry. When he announced that he was turning in early and leaving his younger associate to keep first watch, Ruby turned around and headed off. Both men were none the wiser for her presence eavesdropping on them that night.

Scuttling through the forest like a bug on a mission, it didn't take longer for her to find the location of the bullet, where she'd left her human body.

It also didn't take long for her to realize that her human body wasn't where she'd left it.

Huh.

Oh, Hazel had been there. He'd been calling her name and looking for her, and judging from Ruby's own absence, he'd likely found her and moved her back to his original base camp. No matter.

For a little while Ruby's beetle legs carried her back in the direction she'd just come from until she stumbled upon the clearing in the trees. Hazel had chosen the sight for its clear visibility in all directions, lest an ambush be sprung on them. There was her backpack, and Hazel's big overcoat, still stuffed with supplies in the hidden pockets.

No body. No Hazel, either.

Well crap.

Coming Soon – Ruby's Grand Day Out

And now, a tip from Ruby:

Ruby's Tip #912 – Worried about a busy morning? Brew a pot of coffee the night prior. Before you go to bed, drink the coffee so you aren't thirsty when you wake up, thus saving you time.

Author's Notes

That's a good stopping point, is it not?

Ruby has a special connection with Grubbie, and it's only going to get specialer. More special. Whatever.

Happy rats, and don't do crime!