This here is a fix-it fic of sorts, updating sporadically and helping me cope with All That from V8. However, given how angst-thirsty I am, there may be some fixing things broken before I fix them better. Please enjoy!
Two minutes silence for the dead
Two minutes more for the dying
But no silence at all, for those still to fall
'Til the widowmaker hears the children crying
When Yang falls, its less falling and more…sinking. She jumped in front of her sister without thought and damn, Neopolitan hits hard, knocking all the way through her Aura and then…
And then it's the groggy tumbling and stumbling you always get from a one-hit KO that snaps your Aura clean through, except it takes her a few seconds to realize that she's rolled off the edge of the platform.
Ah.
Well, nothing that can be done now, unless she's lucky enough to land on a pathway. Yang can't really remember if there are any below her, and she's too drained to look –literally. Maybe she sees a swipe of black-on-black, maybe Blake tries to catch her with Gambol Shroud, but it looks like they can't –they won't– pull that move off this time.
Yang falls into the void, and it's like sinking softly to the bottom of a pool, weightless, even as her long golden hair flutters around her and she's plummeting through the black. Then something closes over her, like an envelope of lukewarm water, and she's gone.
When Ruby first falls, she's ready for it. She's assessed the risk and taken the leap of faith –haha– and if she goes down, she's the only one going down. But it works, the shuddering nearness of the void is avoided and then she's back on the solid gold pathway again, and she's reaching up for the Staff as it tumbles through the air when fire suddenly slams into her back. Her Aura flickers and dies for the final time as the impact slams her right off, and then she's grabbing onto Neopolitan by the ankles.
She's been here before. Ruby remembers this. Except the first time, what was beneath her was screaming and wheeling Grimm and the smoking remains of Beacon, and the villain sauntering towards her with the sedate clicking of high heels was the same girl whose heels she's currently clinging to.
Ruby thinks there's probably some kind of irony in that. Maybe Neo remembers it too: her multicolored eyes stare down at Ruby with something almost approaching fear before she turns back to the clang of the Staff being kicked up into someone's hand. She doesn't have her parasol this time –if she falls, she's falling.
Ruby looks up past Neo as Cinder looms on the verge, and Neo reaches up.
"You should have never threatened me." Cinder says to her former associate, her Grimm arm extending grotesquely to snatch the Lamp away from Neo's belt. A burst of panic spreads under Ruby's chest –if she was just stronger, faster, she might be able to reach up and grab it back-
Too late. Cinder's out of range, and then she kicks Neo's parasol over the edge.
"And you…"
Ruby feels the warmth burning in her eyes as she summons all her images of love, of Yang, of Weiss, of Blake, of Penny, of everyone-
"Should have never been born." Cinder growls, and she extends the Staff to knock them both off the edge.
"RUBY!"
Ruby's eyes snap to the side as she falls, seeing Penny and Blake zooming towards her as her name rises in a shriek from both of them. Oh no, no no no, Cinder's still there, she can still attack them!
Ruby flails desperately, looking for a path, any kind of path she can land on, trying to urge her Aura to recover faster so she can zip to safety but more importantly stay between them, and she hears Penny cry and Blake grunt and then an impact slams into her, and she recognizes the strength of Blake's arm around her waist, the smell of books that never seemed to go away no matter where they went, the sound of Blake breathing. For a second, it was like she was warm and safe in her mother's arms again, spooned against her teammate as Blake spun and whipped out Gambol Shroud, and Ruby saw the blade catch on the edge of the path.
Safe!
They start swinging up, but then there was a rush of flames and Ruby saw the Dust-infused ribbon burn through.
Blake cries out as they drop, sudden enough to take the air out of Ruby's lungs. Ruby's arms spread and panic overwhelms her as they fall, the feeling of being safe lost completely as she tries to squirm loose, to turn, to do anything to take the impact off of Blake still holding her, to whip them around so that she's on Blake's other side and can push her back up, even if the momentum of that kick sends Ruby hurtling into the abyss twenty times faster. She had to save her teammate, had to save-
And then Blake falls away from her as she loses her grip on Ruby, splitting off too far, much too far, and Ruby just barely has time to look to the side and grasp for her before darkness slides over them both.
When Weiss falls, she doesn't care. Cinder knocked away the last remaining piece of her family, Gambol Shroud tumbling head-over-heels into the abyss, just like Yang had, just like Blake and Ruby had. She's numb as Jaune helps her to her feet, starts pulling her towards that final, fateful portal to Vacuo. Who cares? Why should that matter?
They're gone.
He looks almost as bad as she does, pale and shaky like he's going to throw up. The words Vomit Boy drift across her mind, a childish nickname from a childish time and oh, how she misses it.
Of course he feels nauseous. He just killed Penny. He killed their friend, their beautiful, bright, upbeat friend, and he did it with his own hand, when it was possible that he might have saved her. Weiss knows that they had to –gods, that they had to was such a travesty!– but that hasn't stopped either of their hearts from breaking.
Weiss hears the rush of flames, and Jaune whirls around, tossing the Dust shield he carried. The impact threw them aside, but they remained on their feet, until the whistling of overheated material under her told Weiss what would happen. Ruby had told her about this, about the first time she had fought Cinder all those years ago.
The ground explodes under her, and Weiss is thrown into the void with a cry, losing her grip on Jaune. She has just enough time to see him roll to a halt on the platform, his Aura breaking in a puff of soft, crackling creamy-gold, before she drops. She hears Winter scream her name, a broken and ragged sob that sounds like it tore Winter's throat as much as her heart, and she sees Winter shooting towards her on Maiden flames, frantic, eyes wide, hand outstretched.
Soft blackness encloses her before Winter can reach.
Jaune sees Winter drift to the platform, sobbing. At first it's just confusing –the shock of seeing such a steely soldier cry, someone harsh and cold as the season she was named for breaking down and becoming human, and then he realizes what it means. He realizes that she didn't catch Weiss, that Weiss didn't come up to the platform with her.
He realizes that that's another one of them gone.
He doesn't think he's ever hated anyone in his life as much as he hates Cinder Fall.
A scream rocks the entire dimension that they're in, a woman's voice howling with untold fury as the portals flicker and their footing shakes, and at first he thinks its Winter, that she's manifesting the power of the Maiden into her scream of grief and fury and loss, but then he realizes its much, much worse. Winter's mouth is closed, that bitch is grinning smugly at them, and there's only one other person on Remnant that he can think of that has the magic to do something like this.
"We need to go." he swallows nervously. "Now."
Winter is staring at Cinder with all the hatred that's currently buried beneath his tears, but he's not wrong. They can't still be here when Salem comes.
"You are going to pay." Winter seethes. "For everything you've done!"
She flies off as Cinder smirks and retreats, and he runs after Winter, heading for the portal. Jaune doesn't realize anything's wrong until Winter glances back and her eyes widen, but then she's already through the portal and he hears it, the soft hiss of something dissolving. He thinks of the Staff in Cinder's hands, and how she has one way to ensure that they won't get out of here, one way she can be sure to kill her enemies before they can escape.
He runs faster, desperate. The hissing is almost at his feet, and he pushes, he jumps-
And the portal to Vacuo dissolves into golden sparks of light just before he touches it, making him cry out as he misses and starts to plunge through the void.
Maybe it's stupid of him, but he thinks of other people as he falls. I mean, there's really nothing he can do to save himself right now, is there? He's doomed, and there's a certain peace in accepting that.
It's the only peace he has right now.
He doesn't think of himself, flying into some weird interdimensional danger zone that there's apparently no coming back from –he thinks of Nora, and Ren, two teammates who are now alone. Is it even a team if there's just two people, or is it just Nora and Ren, partners since forever, since before Beacon and everything beyond it? Why didn't Nora come back through the portal with other Hunters? Did something happen on the other side?
Gods, Winter made it. Winter made it, and she's going to have to look them all in the eye as the Winter Maiden's power blooms and flickers around hers. They're going to know that Penny's gone without ever seeing her body, that she's gone again.
He's never going to forget the feeling of Crocea Mors sliding into her body. He's never going to forget, and he's almost glad his ancestral sword has broken, because at least then there won't be the blasphemy of knowing he has Penny's blood on that blade. He won't have defiled his family's honor, the remains of Pyrrha, with the blood of a friend. He won't have betrayed everything he loved like that.
Despair chokes him as he falls. Gods, they've all made so many mistakes, if they just did things a little different, if they just changed things around a little, then none of this- if he was stronger, if he hadn't make the mistakes he had, if he hadn't wasted his time-
They wouldn't have failed.
They had all failed.
Blackness closes over his sight.
When Ruby comes to herself, she feels different. It's not immediately obvious what feels different or why, until she shifts and realizes that she's smaller. She was used to being the shortest on the team, but that was a while ago and this is a different kind of small.
Her team!
Ruby's eyes snapped open, and the visceral shock of what she saw was almost worse than feeling solid ground under her feet and her heart hammering in her chest.
It was the skyline of Vale.
It was the skyline of Vale under bright, sunny blue skies, and it was perfect and pristine, without any signs of attack anywhere. She was on an enormous airship with people clamoring around her, other teenagers with rounded faces and bright eyes. She recognized some of them from the halls of Beacon –she recognized some of them from the list of the fallen.
Looking down at herself, Ruby's hands shook as she saw her black tulle skirt and long-sleeved shirt, the belt with all her old equipment and her red-laced cincher above it. Her cloak billowed around her, bright and red and undamaged from all the dirt and rips she got in Mistral, and it was pinned to her shoulders by two silver crosses. Crescent Rose was heavy on the back of her belt, and her hair was shorter, falling about her ears without the benefit of gel.
"Ruby!"
Ruby's head whipped up and around, and she saw Yang, pushing her way through the crowd. That wild mane of blonde hair, the lilac eyes, the tan jacket –it was undeniably her big sister, from the fear in her eyes to the urgency in her expression.
"Yang!"
She launched herself forward and her sister wrapped her up in a hug that was just as desperate as Ruby felt, tight and warm and shaky, clutching at each other like they would drown if they pulled away.
"Ruby…" Yang whispered brokenly, and Ruby clung to her tighter, pressing her face –that's why she felt so small, she'd lost the scant few inches of height she'd gained since Beacon– into Yang's shoulder. She was warm, she was solid, and she was here, and right now, when no one was trying to skewer either of them or end a kingdom, Ruby had time to appreciate and cling to that.
"Shut up." she choked in her stupid squeaky fifteen-year-old voice. "Shut up, Yang, don't do that again."
Yang's fingers slid through her hair, gentle, trembling.
"Couldn't resist coming after your big sis, huh?" Yang tried, and Ruby whimpered, clinging to her tighter. She hadn't meant to come after her, hadn't meant to fall from the paths and leave everyone else behind…
Wait…Blake!
"Blake!"
Ruby pulled away from her sister, looking around frantically. People were giving them weird looks, but Ruby didn't care. Was this even real? What was this? Ambrosius had said not to fall, and called it a dire warning, but what had he meant? This was obviously a very bad consequence of falling, but was this the afterlife, or what?
If it was the afterlife, people shouldn't be giving her weird looks. Ruby refused to countenance the idea of an afterlife where she still had to suffer from embarrassing herself.
"What?!" Yang stiffened and looked around as well, but she kept her voice low, like she thought the students around them might attack. "Blake fell too?"
"She fell trying to save me." Ruby said, tears starting to water in her eyes again, but then she inhaled deeply and shook her head, tearing herself free of her emotions and trying to center herself as a proper team leader should. "Okay, we need to -we need to be logical about this. I fell, you fell, and Blake fell –this is the airship back to Beacon, right?"
It was a measure of how many shocks had come over the past five minutes that Ruby only just now noticed her sister's conspicuously not robotic arm, and a measure of how dire things were that neither of them cared.
"I think." Yang said, looking at herself and shifting to stand on one hip. She wore the outfit she had worn years ago, that shoulder-padded jacket with the black mini shorts and yellow shirt peeking out of the unbuttoned cleavage.
"Okay…okay, this is the airship to Beacon." Ruby muttered to herself, gesturing sharply with both hands like she was framing in a box. "This is the airship to Beacon, and we're going to Beacon, so this is –the start of our first semester, right? This is when I got accepted into the school, and we're going to Beacon now, and I saw Blake and Weiss in the courtyard! That's where they'll be!"
"If things go the way they did." Yang said, shifting again like she wanted to extend Ember Celica, looking both skeptical and wary as her eyes scanned over the other students with her arms held ready at her sides. "What is this, anyways? It's not like Jinn's little pocket dimension thing –nobody else could see us, then."
"I don't know." Ruby gulped. "I-I don't know. We're not- we're alone, at least, I fell with Neopolitan and if she was here she'd be trying to stab me, right?"
Ruby smiled and tried a weak little laugh. Mechanisms whirred as Ember Celica extended into gauntlet form, and Yang sank into a combat crouch, searching for a student with eyes that were a bit too keen and who carried any kind of portable object that might, conceivably, be a parasol in disguise. Everyone around them muttered and shifted away, giving them more odd looks. A few people some distance away laughed.
"I…don't think she's here." Ruby said again, flinching at those looks and trying to look, well, not guilty. "I mean, she would have attacked us, right?"
Slowly, Yang withdrew her gauntlets and straightened up again, but she didn't look happy about it.
"Yeah, okay, this is totally weird." Yang said, shifting to get out of the direct eye of the crowd as Ruby ducked closer to her and followed. They wormed their way awkwardly to the back, near one of the walls away from all the display windows. People were too busy looking out and oohing over the sight and scanning for their first glimpse of Beacon, and thus a dark corner of the ship near where the restrooms were was a good place to have a quiet, subtle chat. Yang slouched on a bench, and Ruby nervously sat beside her.
"This is so totally weird." Yang began again, rubbing her hand over her face. "Beacon? Why in the gods' names are we back on the airship to Beacon? Was this what that Staff guy meant when he said we shouldn't fall, that we'd mess up the space-time continuum or whatever?"
"I think –I don't know, but I think– we showed up where we were, so there aren't any body-doubles." Ruby said hesitantly. "You know, like, if this isn't the afterlife and we aren't dead, then we're where we physically stood before. Th-that's why Neo isn't here, I guess? Because wherever she was today, it definitely wasn't on an airship to Beacon."
"True." Yang said, scowling. She then looked at her replaced flesh-and-blood arm and held it out, cupping her hand like she had a drink. "Alright, if this is the afterlife, then for all we got put through, I demand one Strawberry Sunrise in exchange."
Nothing happened. Yang and Ruby stared at her hand for a few seconds, before Yang lowered it with a sigh.
"Not the afterlife?"
"People snickered at us. Not the afterlife." Ruby groaned, putting her face in both hands. "Oh crap, what do we do? What about the others? Penny and Jaune and Weiss were still fighting when we fell! Are they okay?! Do you think Winter and Uncle Qrow managed to-"
"Hey, slow down." Yang said softly, putting a calming hand on her shoulder. "We can't figure out any of that from here, okay? So for right now, let's just find Blake and see what's what. Maybe she'll discover something we haven't."
"…Ruby? Yang?"
They both looked up in surprise, seeing Jaune standing at the end of the service hallway. He looked just like he had on this day when Ruby first met him: all noodly limbs, scraggly blond hair, and faded jeans, with Crocea Mors on his hip. He looked just as nauseous as that first time, too, but there was something different about him, something deeper underneath his eyes. Ruby recognized the heavy imprint of horror in his gaze, of something no trainee Hunter should ever see, and she saw how much better he balanced, how he absentmindedly cocked his head in a way that had his no-longer slicked-back bangs falling into his eyes.
"Jaune?" she croaked, and then her heart went numb as she realized what him being here, what him recognizing them, had to imply. "D-did you…?"
Fall. She couldn't say the fatal word, not now, not when his eyes were filling with tears.
It was all a tangled mess of limbs after that, him bolting across the length of the hallway to fall to his knees before them as they all pulled each other into a hug and cried, pressing together, clinging together, clutching onto the stability of having the warmth of their friend in their arms, their friend's familiar scent, their body, the way they moved and breathed and were, alive and well.
"I'm sorry," Jaune sobbed into her hair, like he was begging for mercy. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"
"Shhh." Yang pulled him in closer. "It's okay, Jaune, we're here…"
"Penny-" Jaune choked, and Ruby's heart turned to ice. "She's gone, Ruby, she's gone, and it's all my fault, I did it, she asked me to and she- I-"
The Maidens. Those cursed, damned magic powers that Cinder had killed so often for –Ruby's eyes filled with even more tears as she realized what had happened. Penny was brave, selfless…if Cinder was coming for her, she'd take temptation away the only way she could. She'd sacrifice herself for everyone else, to make sure the power went to someone deserving, just like she'd been willing to do when the virus was inside her.
Ruby pulled Jaune closer, sobbing. It wasn't his fault, she told him over and over again through her tears, it was Cinder, it was all Cinder's fault. That was someone who should never have been born, not Ruby. Cinder brought only misery to other people, like an open sore, like a cancer, like the Grimm arm that had snatched the Lamp away from Neo.
They ended up rocking each other, all huddled together in a clump as their sobs turned to silent tears that etched their way, burning, down all of their faces. They just held each other, letting the inconsolable grief run out, letting it subside into a dull throb along their hearts.
"Weiss fell too." Jaune croaked. "Just before I did. It- it was all so fast, after Penny was gone, Crocea Mors broke, and then Weiss's sister came with the Maiden powers, and when we were all fighting Cinder, Weiss lost Gambol Shroud and then Cinder threw fire at us and I lost her-"
Ruby and Yang hugged him tighter. Jaune took a shuddering breath.
"I lost her, Winter couldn't catch her…she fell. Salem must've woken up –we heard her scream, and then we pulled back, but Cinder had the Staff and she must've used it, because the portals started to vanish. Winter made it."
I didn't. Ruby could hear that unspoken continuation, and she hugged him tighter still.
"Okay." she said, her voice still hoarse. "Okay, so Team RWBY's here, and you're here, and Neopolitan's probably here too. We can deal with this. We can do this."
"But what exactly are we supposed to do?" Yang asked, shifting. "Talk to Ozpin? If this is our first day of Beacon, he should still be around."
Jaune went stiff.
"Pyrrha!" he cried, and if it wasn't for Ruby and Yang's arms around him, he would've bolted.
"Woah, hey, she won't know you right now, right?!" Yang grunted, holding him still as Jaune struggled. "You won't have met each other yet! None of us would!"
Jaune stopped fighting with a broken almost-sob, his head falling.
"Okay." Ruby said, pulling back from the hug with a deep breath, letting Yang hold him. "Okay, so here's what we'll do. For now, let's assume we've gone back to our first day of Beacon. First priority is finding Weiss and Blake. Then we can all decide what to do from there. Let's try to act normal and not raise any alarms until we do."
"Right." Jaune nodded, pulling away from Yang's hug now and sitting on his heels between them. He wiped his tears away with the back of his wrist. "I-I can do that. Uh, I don't have to throw up like I did before, do I?"
"I think you'll be fine." Yang teased. "We'll still call you Vomit Boy if it makes you feel any better."
A watery smile flickered on and off his face. Then Jaune looked down at his waist, where Crocea Mors sat in its oldest, plainest form. Ruby missed the slits for Dust discharge and the extra gold edge he'd gotten from…
"I- do you think I have time to upgrade this?" Jaune asked, his fingers trembling as he touched his sheathed blade. "I mean, with the Dust and all…not…not…"
"Weiss should have plenty of Dust." Yang said, dodging the topic of the first upgrade along with him, and looked down at Ember Celica. "We should probably work to upgrade our weapons back to…uh, normal, I guess. Jaune first, though, since otherwise he's not gonna have a landing strategy."
Jaune gave a self-depreciating little laugh and raked his bangs back from his head.
"Gods, I was such an idiot…" he muttered. "Uh, anyways. Since the rest…the rest of JNPR won't remember anything, we should probably get things hammered out in the courtyard. You ran into Weiss just before I met you, right, and that's why you blew up? Hopefully she'll still be hanging around there, hoping to run into you, and we can all link up. If Neopolitan went back with us, then we need to act…normal, I guess."
"Normal. Yeah. We can do normal, right, Ruby?" Yang asked with a smile that was maybe a little bit too bright.
Ruby's answering smile was brittle.
"N-normal knees all the way." she said, giving a thumbs-up.
Beacon.
Once, Ruby had been ecstatic to be here, fluttering back and forth in the courtyard and held back (literally) only by Yang hooking a finger into her hood. Now, staring up at the graceful spires, the green glass globes in the tower, the circular courtyard lintels, all she wanted to do was cry. It looked so unnaturally pristine and perfect, like the attack had never happened, like the CCT had never been compromised, like the grounds hadn't been irretrievably shattered. There were so many happy memories here, so many innocent childhood days, and seeing this place restored was almost worse than watching it crumble. Like the Girl Who Fell Through The World, they were no longer the same people they had been when they first stepped onto Beacon's grounds. Ruby and the others were Hunters now, licensed (well, in the future) officially and hardened by more battles than most fourth-years whet their teeth on.
Judging from the glassy sheen in Jaune's eyes and the way Yang was absently rubbing her left arm, they felt the same.
"Okay." Ruby said with a deep breath. "Let's go find Blake and Weiss."
They wove though the crowd of disembarking students, heading for that spot. Ruby would have liked to say something about their meeting being so magical that she remembered where she had been down to the exact stone, but she couldn't. It was a big courtyard, and so much had happened since, it would be impossible to point out the exact location. What she could do, though, was fondly look in that general direction every time she had crossed the courtyard or went to the airships, giving it a sort of metal pat of yes, you're the spot I first met them. You're where I first found my friends.
Her heart leapt as she saw the familiar luggage cart full of white suitcases, its curved peak poking up above the crowd like a monument, and she heard Jaune and Yang's breath quicken. She nudged Yang.
"Right, okay." Yang said, flashing an exaggeratedly large grin and lacing her hands together, stretching her arms up above her head to crack them. "Be cool, Ruby, new kid."
Jaune laughed dutifully, looking as dorkily awkward as he ever had as he rubbed the back of his neck. They were sticking to their agreed cover of "just met on the ship," and even if none of them were particularly good actors –why would anyone think they were lying? Why would anyone suspect people of hiding the fact that they knew each other, especially when they were staying clustered together as a group?
Ruby, Yang, and Jaune just needed that veneer of deniability, that shroud of normalcy, so that if Neo started poking around, she wouldn't have grounds to suspect that they came back too.
As they pushed through the last screening of students, Ruby knew immediately that Weiss and Blake had come back too. Not just because Blake had pulled off her ribbon and her cat ears were on show for all the world to see, but because Weiss was sitting on the lip of her luggage cart, alone, her attendants dismissed, looking like the bottom had gone out of her world. Her chin trembled and her eyes watered, but she was clinging desperately to the iron control taught to her as a member of the Schnee family, even as she stared vacantly at the ground. Blake was holding her, reassuring her with tears in her golden eyes, which occasionally darted spitefully around, scanning for any threats.
Jaune cleared his throat and aimed fingerguns at the both of them.
"Ladies." he said, trying for normality even though his voice was just a trifle too high and tight –the other students around them might have attributed it to the nerves of a dork like him trying to chat up two such obviously-fraught women, but Ruby knew that it was because of the strain of trying to seem normal after everything that had just happened to all of them.
Weiss looked up with an expression so venomous Ruby almost thought that they'd been wrong for a second, before she recognized Jaune, and Ruby and Yang standing behind him. Her mouth dropped open, and Yang laughed –a bit too loudly and forcefully, trying to distract from the suspicious sheen of tears in her own eyes as she elbowed Jaune a few times.
"Wow, swept someone off her feet already, Vomit-Boy." she teased, winking very obviously.
"Yeah! Wouldn't it be amazing if the two of you were on a team with us?" Ruby agreed in a similarly slightly-too-forced tone, winking herself –probably a bit more than was necessary. "Especially if we went on adventures to Mistral and Atlas and almost to Vacuo?"
Blake was first to crack the stunned silence with a slow, reluctant smile.
"And learned things from a certain Lamp?" she asked, and Weiss let out a broken, slightly hysterical laugh.
"And got something from a certain gentleman named Ambrosius, whom I am going to strangle the next time we meet?" she added, a smile flicking on and off her face as she tried to decide whether to cry from joy or despair. "You fell too, Jaune?"
"Y-yeah." Jaune rubbed the back of his neck. "I was the last, though –like, the very last. Winter made it through to Vacuo, and Cinder looped out through one of the Atlas portals before closing down the whole system by using the Staff again –I don't know on what. As far as I know, no one else would've come through…whatever we came through, except maybe those civilians Cinder knocked off the platform."
Ruby glanced around, making sure that none of the other milling students were paying attention to them, before she scooted closer, under the shadow of Weiss's enormous tower of luggage. Moving with her, Yang and Jaune tightened the circle, until they were all clumped together within arm's reach of each other, with a nice wide space around them to prevent any eavesdropping.
"Weiss already filled me in on what she saw before she fell." Blake sniffed, wiping her tears away with two quick swipes of her wrist, before she opened eyes sharp with purpose. "Did Ruby fill you in, Yang?"
"Yup." Yang popped the consonant, a surface smile tacked onto her face, but her eyes held the shadow of all that had happened. "We figured that we'd get you guys in on the loop before we planned any forward moves."
"Right now, we should focus on remembering what kind of enemies we have to deal with." Ruby said, hunching her shoulders in her hooded cloak. "Cinder's still in Vale somewhere –she must be, because she bailed Torchwick out during the attack that got me into Beacon. She's planning for the Fall of Beacon again, and that was her using the White Fang and the Dust robberies, right?"
"She used the Dust on the train during the Breach." Weiss said, frowning. "But we foiled that, didn't we? At least, we ruined whatever schedule she'd put it on. Can you imagine if the Breach and the Fall of Beacon happened at the same time…"
They could imagine it. They all –Team RWBY plus Jaune– winced so hard it became a shudder.
"She wants to tear down the school, and she's looking for the Fall Maiden." Jaune continued, glancing towards the school and what lay beneath it, and remembering those horrible last few minutes –if he had but known it at the time– where he saw Pyrrha alive. "That's going to be her goal right now, and Torchwick's working with her because she's got him under her thumb, right?"
"He said…something about a game he couldn't afford to lose." Ruby said, rubbing her forehead. "No, it was bet –he said, on the airship when we were fighting, that there were some bets that you just don't take, and the people that hired him were going to change the world and neither of us could stop them. And since he couldn't beat them, he was gonna join them."
"Well, that fits with most of the people that work for Salem." Yang mumbled as she folded her arms, a bitter twist to her mouth.
"Emerald's still loyal to them as well." Weiss pointed out. "Well, loyal to Cinder, at least. Her and Mercury Black both."
"Cinder, Mercury, Emerald, Torchwick, the White Fang…" Jaune said, ticking it off on his fingers. "And then that Adam Taurus guy, he's gonna show up in Vale eventually, too."
Blake's shoulders tightened as Yang made an imperceptible shift in her weight.
"What our real problem is right now, is Neo." Ruby said, looking with worry at her teammates before giving them all a decisive nod. "If falling off the paths takes you back to this point in time, then she'll remember pretty much everything we do, and so will those people from Atlas."
"Atlas civilians." Blake stressed, a caustic smile drifting across her face. "They'll probably think it was a dream, and if they don't –who'd believe them? Still, Ruby, you're right: we should keep an eye out for any rumors floating out of Atlas."
"My sister will probably be a good conduit for that." Weiss said, glancing towards her Scroll. "But Ruby is right. What about Neopolitan? Yang, you've fought her before all this happened, and you too, Ruby. Input?"
"I lost to her before." Yang mumbled, pinching her nose. "She's freaky good at predicting your moves, and freaky flexible at adjusting to them. She moved into every punch I threw and used my momentum to toss me around like a first-year Signal student. It was embarrassing, honestly."
"She and Torchwick were a really, really good team." Ruby said, rubbing her elbow and looking sheepish. "A-ah, if I'm gonna be honest…they were probably better at teamwork than we were for, like, a really long time. As good as we were in Atlas, or better."
"She was with him at the White Fang rally." Blake said. "You all remember that, right? She helped him escape when we broke his Paladin."
"She was wearing Torchwick's hat when she attacked us in Atlas." Jaune added. "And Oscar said he didn't see her while he was in the whale at all, except when they were all gathered to hear Salem's orders. That means that she's like Torchwick, right? She's not loyal to Salem or her goals, she's scared of Salem and she thinks it's better to be the witch-queen's right hand than one of her many targets."
"That's not all." Ruby said in a small voice. "Do you guys remember that last fight…? She kept coming after me, not anybody else, unless they got in her way. And she was always hanging around Torchwick, and she wore his hat after he died, and they worked so well together…"
A ghastly silence fell over them all.
"She wants revenge." Weiss finally said, speaking what was on everyone's mind. "After the Fall, no one would have even noticed if she ran off to live in Vacuo someplace. That was her ticket out of this whole business: after that rapscallion died and you threw her off the airship, no one would know or care if she was alive or dead. If she was following Salem purely out of fear, that would have been her best and only chance to cut and run…or so she would think at the time."
"Nobody can run from this fight." Yang agreed, clenching her once-prosthetic fist. "If you live on Remnant, you're a part of it, and there's nowhere you can run to escape."
"Yes, but judging from how carelessly Cinder used both Torchwick and Neopolitan, I doubt they were fully in Salem's inner circle." Weiss continued. "At the time, Neopolitan likely wouldn't have known she had no chance at running from Salem, so, as I said, that would've been her out. But what happens? She disappears for some length of time, and then when we next see her, she's at Cinder's side, wearing mementos of her old boss, and hell-bent on punishing Ruby. That suggests a motive beyond fear –so what would her motive now be, especially after Cinder betrayed her?"
They all looked at each other. Puzzling out the motives of a wicked person was not Ruby's strong point, but she did understand bonds and loyalty.
"She wants Torchwick to stay alive." Ruby announced after a long moment. "Whatever they were to each other, she cares about him, and I…I think she wasn't just a minion to him. When I sent her flying off the airship, Torchwick lost it. He screamed her name and everything, and then he just…he really stopped holding back. I think he would've killed me if his negativity hadn't attracted a Griffon."
"It's not unheard of for a very small team or pair of criminals to form tight bonds, though in-fighting tends to happen with larger groups." Blake said, flicking a lock of her much-longer hair back over her shoulder. "Corrupt morals or not, you get used to relying on another person, especially if you've gone bad rather than been raised bad. Like, for the sake of argument, if those two were former Hunters or something, that means that they're more used to cooperation than your run-of-the mill-thug. By that logic, they've essentially split the world into two sections: them, and everyone else. Everyone else can go and die, as long as the two of them are okay. They extend mercy and empathy towards each other that they'd never dream of showing to anyone else."
"Okay, so she wants Torchwick to stay alive." Jaune said with a click of his tongue, folding his arms thoughtfully. "How's she gonna do that, though? It'd be great if she decided to stab Cinder through the throat and solve all our problems, but I don't think we'll be that lucky."
"She knows now that Salem exists." Weiss agreed. "She might've been willing to chance it if she really were the Neopolitan of this time, but she undoubtedly knows now that if she kills Cinder, Salem will come looking for her. Criminals are also used to viewing us with hostility: a better option, from her perspective, would probably be to kill us and thus remove any and all threats towards their future plans. And she certainly will have a far better idea of where and when we are, from here on out, than we do her."
"The initiation." Yang said in a tone of realization, glancing fearfully towards the Emerald Forest. "She corners us there, we're straight fucked. We can't show off the skills we've learned since Beacon, because that'll tune Ozpin and maybe Salem into the fact that something happened, and we don't even have our new mods to begin with. She can pick us off one by one, too, while we're scattered."
"Okay." Ruby said, trying not to hyperventilate. "Okay, short-term plans. One, we sleep in shifts tonight, with at least one person awake at all times. Two, we try really hard to get our proper teams tomorrow during initiation. Three, if we all get through initiation okay, we seriously need to figure out what, exactly, happened to us with the portals and the falling and the suddenly-being-here. I vote Jinn."
"I second Jinn." Weiss said with a toss of her hair. "Since apparently that's how Cinder figured our plan to begin with. If we use a question now, there'll only be one left, and we'll probably have to use it on the way from Mistral to Atlas. The others will need to know what's going on, and if the Relic is useless, then Cinder can't ruin our plans again."
"I don't know." Blake said, frowning. "To get the Lamp, we'll have to get to Haven, firstly, sneak into Haven because Lionheart is a traitor, open the Vault, and then somehow sneak back out again –and that's assuming that we have the Spring Maiden's cooperation in the first place."
Everyone looked at Yang, who grimaced.
"I dunno." she said. "Raven's got the whole Branwen tribe as backup, and we don't want to kick up a ruckus that Salem might hear of. And she's not just gonna help us, even if I am her daughter."
There was a general disgruntled mutter as everyone remembered Yang's birth mother and her astounding lack of both generosity and morals.
"I hate to suggest this, but you don't think killing her-" Blake began, only for both Ruby and Jaune to frantically shake their heads.
"She's got that Vernal woman, for one thing." Weiss added. "I suspect she'd think of her decoy just to spite us. And besides, the Maiden transfer process isn't guaranteed. Even if we have everyone except Jaune and Ren standing in front of her, there's no guarantee that we'd be the ones to receive the power."
"A trap." Jaune suggested. "We lure her to the Vault somehow, and then we surround her –JNPR and RWBY both. Make it a question of does she want to fight Pyrrha Nikos and all the rest of us at once, with six out of our eight being other Maiden candidates, or does she just want to open one little door for us when we're not even affiliated with Ozpin and we'll put the Relic right back?"
"No go." Yang shook her head. "I mean yeah, that might work with anyone else, but Raven's Semblance is teleportation. She can cut open portals to people she's bonded with, remember? If we actually get her to the point where she feels threatened, she can either call in reinforcements or book it on her own."
"That's something for the future." Ruby said. "Okay? Let's just focus on surviving for right now. We can't leave the city –much less go to Mistral– during the semester, so anything we have to do, we'll have to do over break. Until then, let's all just act- act conspicuously normal, but keep an eye out for Neo. Jaune, Weiss, you're our best bet for that –she doesn't know that you fell, and heck, she's probably not sure if me and Blake did either. She only knows that Yang fell."
"She won't touch Team JNPR." Jaune said, blinking in realization. "Because if she's planning for the worst-case scenario, she'll be focused on you guys -even if Yang was the only one to fall, she'd probably talk to you three to try and figure out what happened. If Neo wants to be safe, she'd kill all of you, because Hunter teams are that close-knit."
"Jaune's our secret weapon." Yang said with a grin, slapping him on the back.
"Yeah." Ruby smiled slightly, before it dropped. "And listen –maybe Neo will leave us alone. Maybe she'll look at things and think the safest option is to take Cinder out herself, or that we're not worth bothering over. A-anyways, what I mean is…if we're going normal-normal, then Blake will be at the docks when Torchwick comes in to steal that Dust."
"And Neopolitan will probably be with him." Weiss said, her eyes widening as she sat up straighter. "Because even if she leaves us alone, she wouldn't be willing to take any chances of us encountering him."
"Right, and, uh…okay I know this is gonna sound weird…but maybe…we should try and talk to her?" Ruby said hesitantly, rubbing the back of her hair. "Look, if her only motivation for attacking us is she wants Torchwick to stay alive, maybe we can cut a deal! It was his fault the robots got infected with a virus, so if we, if we double-agent them both-"
"Setting aside how implausible that is…" Blake said, frowning deeper than Ruby had ever seen. "You're not wrong. If Atlas's robot soldiers fail to turn on us, the Fall of Beacon would be much less catastrophic. And if that…man becomes a turncoat for our side, we'll have access to enough information to perhaps stop it entirely."
"Too much of that hinges on Neo being willing to play ball." Yang said with another, less severe frown. "And from what I've seen, Blake's right. She doesn't give a damn about anyone except herself and her shitty boss, so she has no reason to listen to us."
"So let's give her a reason." Jaune said. Team RWBY looked at him with some surprise –he sounded like someone had lit the spark of inspiration in him. Jaune flushed a little under their collective attention, but moved to elaborate. "Look, we know things that no one else knows right now, right? So let's say we take that to Ozpin. Let's say we tell him exactly what we know: Torchwick and the White Fang are stealing Dust to stockpile in Mountain Glenn, where they'll run a train to cause the Breach. Let's say we spill all of Cinder's plans. I mean, we know she'll make new ones, but in the meantime, she'll be frustrated. She'll be angry. Who will she have to blame for leaking her plans? Emerald was loyal to her for years, and Mercury doesn't give a damn. That leaves…"
"Torchwick and Neo." Ruby gasped, her silver eyes going wide. "She'll think they told us everything!"
"Maybe not that exactly, but she'll certainly suspect them, which puts Neo and her boss in hot water. And then what if the Breach happens like it did and Torchwick gets arrested, and we go to tell Ironwood everything we know?"
"He'd execute him." Yang said immediately. "On the spot."
"Y-yeah." Jaune looked uncomfortable, but he didn't deny that that was what he'd been thinking. "My point is, Neo's in a hard place too. Maybe we don't want to tell Ozpin about what happened, but if we do, we know he's on our side. Nothing bad will happen to us. Neopolitan, on the other hand, is bound to enact Cinder's plans right now, because if she doesn't, she knows Cinder's going to cook her and Torchwick like an Atlas housewife's casserole. She's basically in a hostage situation, because she knew even back then that she and Torchwick couldn't run from Cinder, so they had to make the most of it. She's basically stuck defending her old boss, and that means that if we make it a choice of sticking with us or having it all blow up in her face…"
"She'll stick with us." Weiss said, looking satisfied. There was a moment of silence.
"It's risky." Blake said at length. "Blackmailing a criminal isn't necessarily a good idea, because they're used to that process. We'd need a lot of backups."
"Backups?" Yang looked perplexed.
"Insurance. Ways to make sure that even if she kills us, our information will still reach the intended people." Blake explained, one of her ears swiveling idly. "Because otherwise she'll just kill us. Dead men tell no tales and all."
"Ooh. Yeah." Jaune winced. He missed Nora –if she was here, the chipper ginger would've gone on a five-minute rant about pirates after that ominous statement. It would've diffused the tension and given them all a good laugh.
"Right now let's just stick to the plan." Ruby said firmly. "We need to meet up with each other during initiation, and we need to form our proper pairs. Jaune and Weiss, that means you've got to be all awkward and weird so Pyrrha notices you."
There was a long moment of hesitation.
"Do you think you can…?"
"I can fake not knowing her." Jaune said, his fingers trembling as he raked his hair back. "I can- I can look dumb and stupid and not know her. I can do this. I can do this for her."
Sympathetic looks were exchanged all round, and four gentle hands came to pat the suffering Jaune.
"Think of how much it'll mean to her." Weiss said softly.
"You can do this, Jaune." Blake said. "Be strong."
He inhaled deeply.
"A-after that, we'll do initiation." he said. "The eight of us arrived at the ruins more or less together, so we can all just make sure to snatch the matching chess pieces."
"The important thing is to look out for Neo." Yang said, shifting from side to side. "Nobody lets their Aura down for a second until we're back on the ships. Treat this whole damn thing as an active combat scenario."
"She'll try to ambush us, if she's attacking." Ruby said. "She favors misdirects and like Yang said, using your moves and momentum against you. She'll wait until we're distracted with the Grimm and then close in for the kill."
"We've got to be careful not to seem too competent." Blake added, frowning a little as her ears bent backwards. "They'll have cameras in the forest watching us."
"Don't seem too competent, m-make sure Pyrrha catches me, don't let our guards down, fetch chess pieces to ensure the formation of JNPR and RWBY." Jaune said, bobbing his head slightly as he looked upwards and recited the list. "For tonight, bunk together, keep watch, and hope she doesn't have a way of getting into Beacon. Yeah, we can do this."
"We can do this." Ruby agreed, looking at her team with a brave smile. Weiss straightened her shoulders, smiling back in a way far more vibrant than Ruby had ever remembered from when Weiss was wearing this outfit. Blake nodded once, her golden eyes smoldering with quiet, fierce determination. And her sister…
Yang looked at her with a grin, confident and upbeat. It was a smile that said there no way they could lose, not as long as they worked together and knew what was coming.
Ruby could only pray that was the case.
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