Author's Notes

The rat reemerges and resumes! That's right, we're back to posting Origin Story and You, Me, and the Tuna once more. RWBY but Worse is temporarily finished but will probably eventually continue at some point.

A quick recap on where we were for those who forgot:

Ruby was sent by Salem to be trained by Hazel in tracking, but her training ended up being lacking. Thus, when she discovered she had the power to use her Scarab Grimm at night by remote controlling it from her sleeping body, she began to search for the Branwen tribe independently. However, when she tried to find her body at dawn to become Ruby again, it was missing.

And that's where we're at!

Happy rats, and don't do crime!

Chapter 25 – Ruby's Grand Day Out

The sun had risen, and Ruby was still a beetle. That painted a dark picture for how reverse beetlewalking worked. Every other time that her consciousness had left her human body (actually, that was just the once), she'd returned Grubbie to her arm before waking up. It had seemed like something one just did at the time, much like putting a cup away in the cupboard to avoid losing it or having it fall out, but now she realized that it had probably been an essential part of the process of returning to normal.

I'm almost certain I would've woken up by now, and I bet Hazel's probably trying to rouse me. If I'm still beetlewalking, that means I HAVE to find my human body to stop it.

That meant finding Hazel, which meant somehow tracking despite the fact that she still had no clue how to track.

Ruby looked around for some sort of clue as to where the giant might have gone. This could work; all she needed was a single direction. From there, she could just travel in a straight line until she caught up with Hazel.

Until she caught up with a full sized human who was moving at human speeds, using her tiny little beetle legs that probably didn't move her at more than a meter every five seconds.

Oh, and there were no clues where Hazel had taken her or why.

This was going to be a problem.

For the first minute or two, Ruby had paced around nervously, until she realized that she couldn't think while she was moving. Next, she tried sitting still, but that didn't help ease the turbulent waters of her mind.

In the end, she had to shut her eyes and bury her face into the dirt just to get her disturbances out of her head. She wasn't used to being a Grimm, and it was starting to get difficult to control all of her limbs, eyes, and abnormal body parts in addition to planning ahead.

What did she do? Where did she go? North? South? Which way even was north? With her head buried, she couldn't see the sun.

Back it up a bit – think broader.

What did she want?

To get back to my body.

How did she do that?

I find it.

Why couldn't she do that?

Because…Because I don't know where it is. And I don't know where it is because Hazel moved it.

Where would Hazel move it? Why would he move it?

Imagine you're Hazel. Your adorable and well-armed sidekick Ruby Rose runs off to burn off some calories, with no mentions of beetlewalking or independent detective work. You chase after her…

Hazel had been coming up on her body when she'd run off from it. She heard his voice calling out for her before she'd gone for the backpack.

Go through the motions one at a time, Ruby.

You chase down Ruby because she wandered away from camp at night which is dangerous, and you find her. She's asleep, and you carry her body away instead of letting her rest.

Why? If she could figure out what Hazel was moving her around for, she might be able to guess where he was moving her to.

Be Hazel.

It was tough. She was already a fake spy-Ruby on top of her real personality as an undercover superhero, and now she was Grubbie – being Hazel might be one mask too many.

You find Ruby's sleeping body. Maybe…you're angry? You did seem kind of pissed that she ran off. So, you cuss her out for making you trudge through the jungle when you want to catch some rest.

…except she doesn't respond, because her consciousness is elsewhere. You shake her and shake her, but without a Scarab in her arm, she doesn't rouse, except you know nothing about Scarabs or beetlewalking.

The sequence of events became a lot clearer in Ruby's mind.

You panic. Ruby's not waking up, no matter how much noise you make or how much you shake her or how bright it gets when the sun comes up. After a certain point, you realize that something is wrong with her; this is more than just a deep slumber.

What do you do next, Mr. Hazel? Where do you take her to fix this problem with your little friend?

She seems to be in a coma, so you take her to a doctor. Settlements tend not to have them, and Mistral is too far away. The nearest kingdom, even if the other humans don't recognize it, is…

Menagerie. He was taking her to Menagerie.

The coast was to the south, and that was where Ruby headed. With her head unburied and the sun rising on her left, Ruby made a beeline for the narrow ocean strait that separated the island nation from the mainland continent.

As Ruby ran, her mind started to get more and more fuzzy. It wasn't anything bad, like not being able to remember who she was – quite the opposite. She was thinking too much, with far too many stray thoughts appearing out of thin air. She wondered if Hazel was upset with her or worried for her safety, and then a random memory of Mom spoon feeding her soup when she caught strep throat came out of nowhere, and the exact recipe from a cookbook for an extra spicy Chicken Divan meal she cooked with Dad to surprise Yang for her fifteen's birthday popped up, followed by the entire catalog of Signal's school-sponsored textbook with all their prices, ISBN numbers, and summaries.

It was stuff Ruby knew, all digging its way out of the corners of her brain, but it wasn't relevant, at least not directly. The memories felt like internet pop-ups, or even second screens of her brain, as though she had multiple streams of consciousness running in the background that she'd forgotten to minimize.

I have a human brain. I must not be supposed to keep it in a tiny beetle for more than this amount of time.

It felt like pure chaos. There was so many things just tumbling around. The thought of Grimm brought back a perfect vision of her first kill of an Ursa Major, back when she'd only been thirteen, which triggered a memory of study Grimm habitats before she'd even gotten into primary combat school, which unprompted brought to mind a poster about recycling that she'd only once glanced in passing while at the supermarket.

Still, there were some upsides. The memories seemed to be perfect, recalled in crystal clarity photographic memory with 100% accuracy. Ruby could read the recipe with such fine detail that she could probably make and serve the Chicken Divan if she had the ingredients. And, you know, wasn't a bug.

I might as well use this to my advantage. If my stray thoughts are starting to fray, I should at least maximize the benefits. It's not like I have anything else to do while I run in a straight line in the direction of the sun.

So, what could Ruby recollect? Sentimental memories of her family – particularly the fallen members – might be nice, but a phrase she'd uttered once struck her.

'Every moment in which I'm not closing in on the powers of the maidens is a moment wasted.'

There were so many things for Ruby to think about, to plan about, to get ahead on. Fluff would be a waste of time.

Raven was the first and foremost priority. Ruby knew things about her: repressed childhood memories from Yang's obsession, casually uttered phrases that Ruby had overheard from Team STQ as a child but forgotten, tiny details of her fight with –

It happened before Ruby even finished that train of thought. Thinking of the name Stark brought up a photograph of the team that Ruby had once glanced in Uncle Qrow's wallet when he'd been handing her a twenty for her birthday. That random thought diverged into three separate chains – one about the stock markets, one about the eight king of Vale who died on the same day Ruby was born many centuries prior, and one about Dad talking to Mom about Raven.

Ruby wanted to say that she chose to follow the last chain, but all three of them continued out in all directions, branching into three more paths each. Ruby was watching them all go along at once, just doing her absolute best to take in the memories of the important stuff as she went.

Raven had run off because of Yang. Well, maybe not because of Yang, but almost exactly at the time Yang had been born. The timing was too convenient for it to not have been directly related to Yang. Chewing gum could stay in the body for seven days. Dad had said that Raven herself claimed to not be cut out for motherhood, but both he and Mom really thought she was just scared. They said that was what she always was – a coward, despite her bully persona to cover that up. Mercury had a poster for a V-Pop band up in his space back at Roman's apartment. The five idols on the poster were all kneeling down in a way that made Ruby's stomach turn a little bit, less because of the poster itself and more because of what it said about Mercury as a person if that was the kind of borderline pornographic filth with which he chose to adorn his walls. Raven fled from combat when she could avoid it. She had mastered her portals, not to give herself an edge during combat and use them to move about an active battlefield, but to rapidly flee them. The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. Raven's portals was known to open up to at least seven living people in the world – Dad, Mom, Uncle Qrow, Ozpin, Yang, and two others they hadn't confirmed. Three of those living people weren't actually living anymore. The mitochondria, though, it might've originally been a free-floating organelle until it entered into eukaryotic organisms some time back in the –

Silver eyes.

Ruby had silver eyes.

She wasn't sure what that memory stood out above all others, but it most certainly did, and she felt like she could be sure that it held a prize at the end, if she could ignore the stream of random intrusive echoes in her head that threatened to distract her.

She'd used her silver eyes to stun Salem when she'd gotten crazy with anger, and she remembered in full just how she'd done it. Dad handed her a receipt from the eyedoctor's with a lot of numbers on it and had mumbled something about highway robbery. Ruby had drawn a picture of a lion onto a cardboard box before Yang had taken away her markers. The entire Remnapedia entry for ceramic toilet bowls displayed in front of her, followed by an advertisement for a petstore that sold fish and fish pellets, Dad's social security number, the chemical composition of TNT, the mitochon–

The shock of cold air crashed into Ruby's face, and she was taken out of her descent into insanity. Ruby had to shake herself just to avoid going back into that rabbit hole.

She had glimpsed beyond the curtain of how Grimm thoughts were processed, and it wasn't meant to be mixed with human comprehension. Grimm were supposed to have single-track minds, with their entire life's worth of knowledge (a small amount) being rapidly called upon using chains of relevant memories. When they ran into a human with a sword, they would remember past fights with other swordsmen, and that would jog even more memories of other similar fights. In theory, it allowed them to extremely quickly sift through their small pools of experience and retrieve what might be crucial information based on relevance to the task at hand. Typically Grimm only gathered a handful of such experiences before dying.

For Ruby, though, who had fifteen years too many thoughts and memories to manage with a Grimm mind, she had come close to destroying herself. Still, it was a decent memory haul – she'd learn some about Raven's portals and personality, and about her silver eyes too. The memory of how she'd blasted Salem was hers once more, though it was more an emotional state that triggered them than any set of instructions, and she might not be able to reproduce it if she tried.

I'm not sure I want to go back to that state of mind, though, Ruby thought. She and the Sea Feilong she was riding exited the high altitudes that held the headwinds it had needed for flight and came crashing down into the forest.

Oh, there was that, too. The chain of Mercury's sexy poster had somehow pulled up some memories of seeing a wanted poster for Hazel on the wall of a police station, and she'd remembered that he was the only known member of Salem's inner circle. That had led one of Ruby's divergent brain chains to the conclusion that Hazel wouldn't be going for aid to Menagerie where he risked recognition and capture, but to Watts or Salem instead.

Her Grimm brain might've been on the brink of overloading, but it was certainly operating at 100% efficiency in the way it arrived at every conclusion simultaneously. Around the time she'd been thinking about silver eyes, she'd also figured that she might be able to communicate with Grimm and had autonomously hopped aboard the back of a Sea Feilong at the southern coast. As it turned out, she could, at least when she'd been far too close to the Grimm way of thinking. The Sea Feilong had carried her where she'd told it – to her downed airship, the one she'd c̶r̶a̶s̶h̶e̶d̶ landed when traveling from the Grimmlands to meet up with Hazel for the mission. It had impaled itself on the trees (Ruby supposed she'd 'landed' her Grimm mount as well), but she was now close enough to see her airship.

She'd also had the fortune of having glanced the bullhead piloting instructions Watts had sent her and seeing them again in her eidetic memories. The buttons were just the right size to push, when she used her entire body to do so one at a time.

Now, the only trouble was figuring out a way to tilt the stick…

"Please! I don't know what – gaaaaah!"

The steely grip of the small army of Shadow Hands did not seem like it could have grown any stronger, but at the sound of Hazel's plea, it somehow did. The behemoth of a man had his cheeks being pulled so tightly into the floor that some of the castle's stone was probably rubbing off onto his face. There may have been a time when he carried himself with something of a stoic pride, but that time was long gone. Now, he was reduced to desperate pleas for mercy that fell on deaf ears.

Cinder and Watts were watching through the Seers at their locations, having been summoned by an enraged Salem. Naturally, Cinder had shaken off her drowsiness at being roused so late at night upon realizing who was doing the rousing and raced to her goddess' beckons, and it proved to be the right instinct. From halfway across the world, Salem had started off their conversation with a solid twenty seconds of torment her via the Scarab, not for any particular disobedience but merely to reinforce the notion that this was a serious topic.

From there, Cinder had been interrogated in a quickfire deluge of questions from Salem alongside Watts, most of them concerning her whereabouts and actions the night and evening prior. Cinder had answered honestly – she was in class, then with Emerald, Mercury, and Neo keeping their cover up, and then had gone to sleep. There was no time to search for Amber, and Cinder had heard nothing regarding the staff vendors, so it was just business as usual.

For her honesty, Cinder received another forty seconds of torture followed by the same questions asked once more, this time from a screaming Salem. Through the vision of the Seer, Cinder could see what was once her home at Evernight collapsing in the background as the Grimm goddess' control lapsed.

Watts was also interrogated with the same questions, and his Seer was forced to choke him out as Salem had placed no Grimm inside his arm. Furthermore, Cinder could see Tyrian skulking in the background, hunched over like an infirm old man, but his snark was noticeably absent. The look on the scorpion's face was one of pure fear.

This isn't Salem wreaking havoc. He always loves it when she does that. This is her on the verge of losing control and destroying everything around her. What did Hazel do?

Hazel's own interrogation must've taken place before Cinder's, as she was not asking him the questions. No, Hazel was not asked any specific questions but merely ordered to confess. Cinder knew not of what sins he had been accused, but she dared not ask. She hadn't been dismissed yet, though, so she remained on the Grimm mode of communication, silent as a shadow.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? WHAT IS THIS?"

"AUUGHHH! I don't – KNNNNAAAAOOOOW!"

The Shadow Hands drove past his aura and ripped apart thin lines of blood as they did. The typical rivalry between herself and the other minions might've made this a pleasant scene, but neither she nor Watts were stupid enough to smile. They both knew the difference between scoring a point against their rivals and what was happening here.

I'm next on the chopping block, obviously, and Watts must be smart enough to realize that he isn't exempt from Salem's rampage.

Diverting her eyes from the screen briefly, she took out her scroll and sent a quick message to Watts.

Cinder: what is this

The screen didn't change for a second or two, then the dots indicating that the person on the other end was typing appeared. For a drawn out moment, those dots were Cinder's entire world, save for the agonized screams and incensed ranting.

The message appeared, hastily typed out and riddled with errors that were atypical of the normally erudite and anal-retentive.

Watts: hazwl took ruby to mitral

Watts: look for sping maidem

Watts: all i kkow

Of course. Ruby. It always looped back around to Ruby. Cinder regretted ever having snatched up the red tyke, even though it had seemed like a prime opportunity for a new well-trained minion at the time. Now, she knew that the child only brought with her peril and ruin.

It wasn't Ruby's fault, truly. She wasn't meant for this dark world, and that was the exact reason Salem had taken such delight in snatching her up. Ozpin's silver-eyed warriors were among his most valued possessions, and to have one in her grasp was Salem's grand goal. That was why she continued wasting time on that accursed hound, in spite of its inability to complete the most basic of tasks.

Salem wanted Ruby to bend, but she was the type that would break first. When that happened (if Hazel had not already facilitated it), Cinder's life would end. Thus, the task of keeping Ruby from losing her mind fell to Cinder, as an extension of the lethal huntress' own desperate desire for self-preservation. And given how poorly she seemed to be faring in the fight against the kingdoms that had loved and nurtured her, it would be no easy task.

On the more immediate note, Cinder needed to figure out what was wrong with Ruby here and now. If Hazel had gotten her injured…

No. It's not that. Cinder suppressed a shudder by focusing on logic. Were she wounded, Salem would not be asking after my actions or trying to rip an admission of guilt from Rainart. She's searching for something.

Had he lost her? If she'd wandered off in the jungle doing something Rubyishly inane, Salem would want her back and within her clutches as quickly as possible.

But why would Hazel fly back to Evernight and turn himself in to Salem? If that were the case, I'd expect him to just keep searching for her and 'forget' to report it. I spoke to her just two nights ago – assuming he lost her the second she landed on Anima (which is possible), he would probably feel comfortable searching for longer than that before calling Salem for help.

Cinder coughed. It went unheard over the screams.

Her eyes saw motion, and she saw the three dots on her scroll. Watts, no doubt, warning her not to lift her head up and draw back Salem's attention to her Seer (and his own). However, he wasn't the one who'd been explicitly told to protect Ruby at all costs.

"Your grace," she said in a loud volume. She wanted to whisper it meekly, but her goal was to attract Salem's attention, and she succeeded on that front.

The half-deity on the other end snapped its neck upwards. Her skin was almost entirely black, and the veins that normally stayed near her neck were now pumping and coursing across her entire body. The same black blood was dripping from her mouth; whether that was from her teeth clenching into her lips or a side effect of her rage, Cinder knew not.

"GRAH!"

Cinder dropped her head in deference. "Your grace, remember that I am your loyal servant!"

"YyyyyyyyyoOouUUu–"

"Remember that you have thoroughly incentivized me to protect Lady Rose with my life!"

Salem bit her bottom lip with such temper that the flesh was ripped apart by her own teeth and torn off.

"I only wish to help. I am nothing without you, your grace. Is Lady Rose missing?"

The rage didn't fade, but Salem shook her head from side to side. Sensible speech was probably just out of her reach in this state. Instead, she merely snapped her fingers with a rabid growl, and a wave of Shadow Hands dragged in an motionless body.

Oh, shit. Oh, shit!

If Rose was dead, Cinder was too.

…but she wasn't.

Salem had seen Cinder, spoke to her, tortured her even, but she hadn't killed her. The goddess was many things, but forgetful was not one of them.

If I'm still alive, that means so is she.

"Her heart beats?"

Salem snarled.

Hazel answered. "She's alive! She just…fell asleep!"

Salem turned back on him, and the man began to resume his pleas for mercy. Cinder, meanwhile, took the time to ponder Ruby's condition.

Falling asleep, unable to wake up…it could be a medical condition, but Ruby hasn't shown any signs of narcolepsy, and I've never heard of it lasting for more than short times.

Mistral is full of infectious diseases and vermin to spread them, but her aura would show signs of strain as her bodies tries to fight it off, whether or not its successful.

A hostile semblance? It could be.

They had gone hunting Branwens. Perhaps if one of Raven's hunters had attacked Ruby with a power to push her from the waking world…

"Your grace," Cinder said, cutting off the sounds of torture.

"WHAT?" she screamed, throwing her fists down in anger like a child throwing a tantrum. Behind her, in the Seer's sight, a window exploded outwards, raining glass outwards.

"Was Lady Rose in Hazel's line of sight when she entered this state?"

Salem turned back to Hazel, who frantically shook his head.

"If you were in Mistral with the express purpose of ascertaining the location of the Spring maiden, it is possible, perhaps even likely, that Ruby encountered one of their scouts or warriors and in now the subject of a semblance induced coma."

"Impossible!" roared Hazel, desperate. "That's not possible!"

"FIX IT!" Salem raged. "I NEED HER! I WANT HER TO HURT OZMA! IT HAS TO BE HER!"

"If we found the Branwen that did this –"

"It wasn't bandits!" said Hazel. "It couldn't be them!"

Salem fixed her glare upon him and bent over, gripping his forehead in her palms. "YOU DID THIS!"

"No, I swear, I did not, your grace. I don't know what's wrong with her, but we were nowhere near anyone for miles!"

"You were out searching for the Branwen tribe," Cinder offered. "It's likely there were some nearby, even if you didn't see them. We should devote our resources to finding the bandit huntsmen or huntress that froze Lady Rose."

"nnnnn…"

Cinder's head shot up at the faint sound, as did Hazel's in spite of the Grimm limbs holding him to the floor. Even Salem snapped around at the whimper.

"…nnnnnnnno need." Ruby sat up and rubbed at her head. "That's better. Anyways, as I was saying, there's no need to find the Branwens. I have a heading: the Levitating Mountains of North Mistral. While I was out, I had the bright idea to order some Beowolves to check for me and save time. They found the tribe there and then charged in recklessly to die so that Raven would think they were mindless, not controlled. It was the most efficient way."

The rooms fell silent, no one truly sure how to react. Salem's dark black veins began to recede from her body, and the Shadow Arms holding Hazel slackened.

"Ohhhh, my head. Man, who says Grimm are mindless? They use their minds to 100%, even if they're a lot smaller. Remind me not to do that again – I'm feeling phantom mandibles right now." She looked up at the Grimm Queen staring at her. "Oh, thanks for opening the window for me. I was waiting outside. By the way, the bullhead I used needs refueling. Oh, and also, I figured out a way to find the Fall maiden a lot faster."

Coming Soon – Ruby's One Question

And now, a tip from Ruby:

Ruby's Tip #848 – In the mood for some quality reading material that you can really get into? Then what the hell are you doing here?

Author's Notes

Some explanation of what I had in mind for the Scarab (put in the notes so the text didn't get to wordy):

Basically, I envisioned it being like a branching tree diagram, where each thought triggers all possible next thoughts related to that, and all of those each trigger more branches, and so on. Basically, all trains of thought simultaneously run at the same time, so it's 100% efficient and Ruby can think of everything and come to every possible conclusion she logically could all at once. That's how she was able to figure out stuff about Raven and her eyes while simultaneously deducing where Hazel was going and changing her trajectory while using other Grimm. She also gets photographic memory and can remember anything from her entire life, but not on command (it has to be something in her natural thought process). The Scarab is like a Seer, in that it can command other Grimm and communicate with Salem.

Her Beetlewalking form is running human software on Grimm hardware, so it's overpowered, but it comes at a cost. It's one of those things where, if she stays in for longer than a normal night of sleep, she starts thinking like a Grimm and losing her humanity. It nearly destroyed her mind this time, so she's going to use it sparingly if at all.

Happy rats, and don't do crime!