Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals!

Bet you didn't expect to see this, eh?
Let's define some terms: Go back a couple chapters, you'll see I described the second 'half' of the epilogue as a 'Take It Or Leave It' deal - if you liked it, great! If not, consider it a 'What If'.
However, I specifically did so in terms of the Watchmen comic. The chapters actually titled 'Epilogue' were the 'canon' ending - the 'Rorschach drops his journal in the mail and everything is left up to the imagination' ending.
I described what came after that as the 'Take it or leave it'... 'Doomsday Clock/HBO' ending.
I did this because, like Watchmen, the two sequels it got are dubiously canon. They conflict with each other, and yet due to the nature of comics, they both can exist simultaneously. Whichever one you liked could be canon, and if you didn't like either, well - that's perfectly fine too.

What I wrote and finished at the end of 2020/beginning of 2021 could be considered the 'Doomsday Clock' ending to TPATS - and much like the comic, it is the ending where, after his words were published, the world took Nebo Aldric's journal seriously, and things went accordingly.

However, there's another possibility. Much like in the HBO Show… It's equally possible for the world to just disregard The Record as the ramblings of a madman at worst, and outright fiction at best.

That has been the biggest question haunting my mind for the last three years. The biggest thing that has kept TPATS from leaving my mind despite it ostensibly being finished.

But… That's not the only reason.
See, I've been wanting to make something of my own for a very long time. I'm 27 now (Jesus Christ!), and I've been tinkering on an original setting since I was in the fifth grade. Every single fanfiction I've written across multiple profiles on this website has been in that aim - to hone my skills, to test out ideas, keep what works, change what doesn't, and to generally work towards making something of my own. I've said in TPATS specifically it was a vehicle to play with magic systems, and the like.

Seven friggin' years ago (Once again: Jesus Christ!), someone left a review on one of my stories that said something to the effect of 'this isn't a good fanfiction, but it is good fiction', and they continued on to say that perhaps posting that story to FFdotNet wasn't the best idea.
That's lived rent-free in my head ever since I've read it, and I've often tried to imagine if it's possible to disentangle the plots I've written for the stories I'm marginally proud of from the settings they were originally written for.

The stuff on an old profile is a big, hearty, laughable 'NO,' but they also had a lot of baggage of their own and were intended to serve much different purposes. I was also fourteen when I wrote them, they've been featured on Library of the Damned, and that's why I'm vague whenever people ask for details, lol

For something like my Naruto story, that would be feasible, but difficult. It's a fun thought experiment, trying to parse a similar plot together, and it's even more fun to try and impose limits on myself to ensure that similar characters and arcs occur, but is overall just a bit too much to make work, especially as a first original venture. Maybe as a second, though.

But then recently(ish) I was thinking about TPATS again. Because like I said: This beast has never quite seen fit to leave me since I marked it 'complete' a couple Januarys ago.

And I realized I think I could make that work.

There's a spot in my original lore that the story of Aldric would fit perfectly into, and I can think of many ways to diegetically have him make the same references and inferences to other media, without stepping on a lot of copyrighted toes. (IE: Turn 'lightsaber' into 'laser sword' and eventually explain why an uber-nerd can't remember the word 'lightsaber')

A lot would change, of course, a lot would be unrecognizable but for its base DNA, but the basic structure, characters, and progression of the story would remain the same. Just the details, lore, and events would be different, to say nothing of the fact that it would be plugging into a much, much wider world than RWBY's.

I spent a good chunk of time thinking about this. How it would let me play with so many toys that I had initially consigned to just existing but were likely never to be actually seen or mentioned beyond exposition.

Before I got excited, however, a couple more thoughts came to mind.
1: I returned to that review someone posted so long ago, with this new idea as well as the fact that I had an unused ending basically ready to go, and considered whether or not the 'HBO' ending would be feasible in this new interpretation of the story.
Simply put… It wouldn't. Even ignoring the fact that I haven't fully planned this out, the details changed already make a lot of the necessities for this ending impossible. No spoilers, but… Well, I've never been a fan of the 'aliens can breed with Humans' trope, just as one example. That alone can likely snowball for the astute among you to the many things I would have to change by necessity.
2: The above meant that I essentially had unfinished business in the world of RWBY. One last hurrah, one last arc, one last 'take it or leave it'. I wanted to tie off that loose end before I started everything over from scratch. I wanted to tell that last idea I'd had for years but had never done anything with.
And finally, 3: Would this even be a good idea?
I know there are examples of things that started off as fanfics or webnovels that eventually got published, The Martian and Beware of Chicken come to mind, but there's still a modicum of hesitation there, to wonder if I should try and pull it off. If it's a good idea in the first place.

In the end, after talking to someone I trusted and being sold more on the idea, and then promptly torturing them for the last year by way of making them my soundboard, I put some more thought into it, and decided I'd put the ball in your court before I finalized any major decision. As much as I write for myself, to see and make things I've never seen before, I obviously do it to entertain others chief above all, so who better to ask than the people that have already donated to me their time?
But I didn't want to just drop in, send a 'Story Update!' email, get everyone excited and rush in, only to see me basically go 'HEY. I WANT YOUR MONEY EVENTUALLY NOW. GIMMIE. HOWZZAT SOUND?!' three years after I had last done anything of substance. I didn't just want to E-beg without anything to show for it.

So, regardless of what you all say, if remixing and rewriting TPATS into an original style in an original world would be a worthwhile endeavor, this here is still happening, and my future plans for future stories (See the little synopses I've been putting on my profile) are still in the works.

Here though?. This is it. This last arc, telling an alternate take on what happened after Rosemary Ashmore stole and published Aldric's journal. The last words I'll write for this Nebo Aldric before I put any major thought and effort into anything else.

Of course, I say that, and who the hell knows? Sean Connery once said he'd closed the book on James Bond and would 'never again' play the role.
He promptly made another Bond movie, cheekily titled 'Never Say Never Again'.
Always food for thought, that anecdote.

Now let's set the stage:

Heron Blue

Garbed in a thick cloak almost as pure white as the endless blizzard around them, a figure paused in their inexorable advance. Despite the many layers that shielded them from some of the coldest temperatures in the world, the horrendous wind chill still made its way through to their bones, eliciting a series of shivers as they beheld their destination. Above them was a mountain - the largest one on the planet, perhaps even in their entire star system. Despite stretching so high that it left the very atmosphere, and the practically nonexistent unnatural dangers in its vicinity, this mountain was largely unexplored, unstudied, and untouched by the people who lived on its world. They had simply found it, given it a name, noted its significance, and then moved on. Sure, there might be resources worth plundering, but the sheer effort needed to do so would make it counter-productive in the end, to say nothing of the general adage that people inevitably attracted the very monsters they built walls to keep out. So, Mount Cerise was left alone, no one, not even the greatest thrill-seeking explorers came to see it.

And yet, this mountain - this unimaginably enormous pillar of rock and snow, looming over the cloaked and hooded figure before it, was their destination. They had been given no explanation as to why, they had been given no context, no reason, just a simple request on a piece of paper, handed to them scant seconds before they watched their friend die. This paper was held in a pocket pressed close to the cloaked wanderer's chest, and the coordinates written upon it had taken them right here, alongside a simple set of instructions:

Make it right.

Despite the cold making its way to their bones, the wind whipping at their cloak and the creeping unease of uncertainty making its way up their spine, the figure regarded the mountain, conjuring up images in their mind of the man with whom it was ostensibly associated. Underneath the question of what they would find, and the reminder that they were not yet technically at the coordinates provided, they found themselves comparing the mountain and the man, noting the poetic similarities between the two, and wondering which of them was actually bigger: The mountain, whose creation was believed to be the reason their world had the axial tilt and rotational speed it had today, or the man, whose mere name had held an entire planet in the grips of such sheer terror that the monsters that dwelled upon it still fed upon it to this day.

The figure lowered their gaze and raised an arm. Strapped to their wrist was a scroll, its holographic interface allowing them to interact with it even through the thick, all-weather shell that encased it. The coordinates displayed told them they were in the final stretch, but the finish line was a groan-inducing distance right up the behemoth in front of them. Their bones ached from equal parts fatigue and cold, but they soldiered on, thick boots crunching through tightly packed snow. They felt terrible for how long they'd waited before beginning this journey, for how long it had taken them to remember they'd been given the paper at all, so focused had they been on their own grief, and the mounting responsibilities they would be faced with imminently.

Those thoughts brought a smile to the figure's face, though it was completely hidden by the layers of warm, furred cloth pressed against it, and the strengthening blizzard around them. Though the thought of this particular responsibility was a little harrowing, it also excited them beyond belief - and, they had to admit, the open hero worship from the little girl had been a little nice to indulge in, though only briefly. Thoughts of training the child, how they would go about doing so, what the challenges might be, were what helped occupy the figure's mind as they trudged through the snow and up the mountain.

The time passed could have been a few minutes, a few hours, or a few days, for how long it felt and how suddenly their scroll cast the snow around them in a deep red glow. Continuing to march through the snow, the figure raised their arm. Just as they confirmed they were exactly where they were supposed to be, their feet fell out from under them, hitting a patch of much more loosely packed snow than that which they'd marched through until now. They whirled their arms about and tried to shield themselves from the fall, but what happened next wasn't quite what they expected - they hit the snow, but instead of the hard impact of their face on the ground, they kept going. The snow was loose enough, and theywere heavy enough with all of their cold-weather gear and their primary weapon, that they were able to careen straight through the snow and begin falling straight through. It happened so fast and the hole so quickly resealed by the whirling blizzard that, had someone been watching her, all they would have seen would be her falling forward and promptly being swallowed by solid ground.

Although the figure had some experience with cold weather, and had indeed been in a situation or two somewhat similar, they nevertheless couldn't help themselves as they cried out in fear while they just kept falling. It was beginning to feel less like falling through snow and more like they were riding down a waterfall, and then, just as suddenly as it began, it ended, and they were spat out into a deep, dark cave.

After they got to their feet and brushed off the wet snow, they looked at the large pile they'd just fallen out of. They found it blocked effectively all light from entering the cave, and with the storm outside, that meant it wasn't just pitch black, but an oppressive dark that weighed on the soul. The solution to this came from a weapon they unhooked from their back and fished out from the innards of their cloak. Though collapsed, the deep red weapon was still the size of their torso, and with a flick of a switch, a light appeared that turned night into day. Casually cradling the weapon like a rifle, the figure twisted around, throwing the beam of light all around, but finding little of note except the pile of snow behind them, and the descent into the cave before them.

The initial instinct was to turn around and climb back to the surface to resume their search. The second instinct was to not do that because while it was still freezing cold, it was substantially warmer in here than it was out there. The final instinct was an errant thought - that they were exactly where the coordinates had brought them.

The cave might very well be the destination.

This thought bringing warmth back to their bones, the figure descended deeper into the cave. After a brief journey, they came across the first break in the monotony of stoney, rocky walls: A welcome mat. A literal, twine mat with the word 'WELCOME!' printed on it. Right before the mat was a small pedestal, reaching just up to the figure's chest, upon which was a bright red button with the word 'EASY' printed upon it.

Tilting their head, but aware of the understated playful nature of the person that had brought them here, the figure reached out and pressed the button. It took some effort - years in a deep, frozen cave left a small layer of ice that she had to press hard to crack apart. One soft 'chunk!' later, and the button was pressed.

"That was easy!" Echoed throughout the cave.

Silence.

"That was easy!"

Yep, they had indeed heard that right.

They knew well enough that this wasn't just a gag - or, at least, sending them here hadn't been. The button probably was, but knowing the person who had put it here, the gag was quite possibly also the answer. In those brief and few moments where their true self had been allowed to shine, they'd always been the kind to play games whose solutions were obvious, but obfuscated by that obviousness. The best place to hide something was right under someone's nose, as they liked to say.

After a brief poke to test a theory, the figure determined that the button was, indeed, not affixed to the pedestal, and took it before descending further into the cave. Soon they reached its end, the rock wall ahead of them saying simply that there was nowhere further to go. The figure, however, caught onto the trick instantly - the illusion was good, very good, but it was undone by her knowing the trickster. The button had been the first attempt to get people to turn around, while the answer was to keep moving forward. This was the second attempt, and when she pressed her hand to the wall, it revealed itself to be a hologram by fading away. Revealed behind this hologram was an enormous, flat, metal, and man made blast door.

And in its center?

A depression, exactly as big as the button.

A smile graced the figure's face, and a silent, tired laugh shook their shoulders as they got the joke. They lifted the button and slotted it into place, before pressing it one last time. Instantly, the blast door split apart with a ground-shaking bang, and the button fell to the floor with a light plastic knock.

"That was easy!"

The figure shook their head as relief and satisfaction washed over them. In front of them was a cavernous bunker, its lights coming to life and illuminating it with bright, sterile white light. It felt like walking into an indoor stadium, and the temperature difference between the cave and the threshold of the bunker was so tangible that it felt like walking through a wall of warmth. Though none were as large or as thick as the one they passed through, there were more blast doors at regular intervals, and as they continued walking inside, they found the bunker sloping downward as it continued even deeper underground.

Soon, they reached the apex, and saw at the far end of the bunker a wall of computers and screens. They came to life after each of the ceiling lights finished activating, and bold letters appeared across each screen: I'M WHAT YOU SHOULD SEE FIRST.

With another smile splitting their face, the figure approached the wall of computers. As they felt the biting chill of cold finally fade out of their bones, they began removing some of their gear, starting with the thick gloves. They stopped dead when they noticed, just before it sprang to life, a small metal disc on the ground. Above it appeared a hologram, whose appearance caused the figure to gasp.

He was younger - much younger than the last time they'd seen him. Worse than that, as she had grown on in years she now realized just how young he really had been. He still looked like a kid! He hadn't half of the scars that characterized the completion of his labors, and there was still a fire in his eyes - the drive of a man who knew he had something to do, and would move heaven and earth to get it done. Seeing this, and comparing it to the burned, scarred man he would be barely a year after this had been recorded, it stilled the figure's heart, bringing an ache to it that they had thought would go away when they set the man's grave.

"Now before you freak out! I'mma say this here and now, and you may hear it a lot, so get used to it." The holographic recording cleared his throat, and the figure could tell he'd done so to fight back a grin. "I'm sorry. My responses are limited. You must ask the right questions." He gulped, trying to keep his grin from stretching too far, one corner of his mouth twitching from the effort.

"Now that that's out of the way..." The hologram held his hands up. "This is the bunker... And considering that you've no doubt followed the clues I left in my journal, you probably at least concluded that, if nothing else. For clarity's sake, though, I'm calling it the Batcave. Because fuck you -" He pointed at the figure, who was only now getting feeling back after the shock that was seeing him. "- It's my doomsday bunker armory vault lonely mountain teasure horde, I'll call it what I want... But, for those of you who may have gotten here through more duplicitous means -" He coughed, masking the words 'Ozpin!' and 'mind reader!', which brought on a morose frown to the figure's face, as they stowed their thick winter gloves in a pocket inside the cloak. "- Who have no fucking idea what's in here and-or have no instructions on how to be walked through some of its... Finer things... I'm here to help get you started, and to provide any answers I couldn't leave in the journal or with my Mother..." A beat, "or that I specifically wiped from my mind because you're a dirty rotten asshole and I knew I shouldn't have trusted you." He gave the figure the finger, "you know who you are." Before he stowed it away. "So... Ask and you shall receive." He grew completely, unnaturally still, waiting for a question to respond to.

The figure removed the fur-lined mask covering their face, and then the hood covering their head, revealing flawless skin and a head of hair so deeply crimson that, but for the ends, it almost looked black. The goggles came next, revealing a pair of sterling silver eyes, wrinkled with equal parts melancholy and joy at seeing her old friend, hearing his voice, and seeing the fruits of his endless plans.

After stowing her weapon back on its rightful place, the woman standing before the hologram decided to just go for it:

"Cinder told me to come here." She told the ghost of her friend. "She told me to make it right." She retrieved the slip of paper and displayed it to the hologram, though she was unsure if it made any difference. "What did she mean?"

The hologram twitched, the man blinked, and seemed to deflate a bit.

"I know that voice… Ruby Rose." He said, face seeming to age right before her eyes, as all the stress and horrors he'd seen and done slammed into him at once. "Ruby… I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry. I genuinely looked up to you, you know? People like Superman, or Captain America, they were ideas, but you were standing right in front of me, being that person. There was no question of right or wrong, correct or incorrect, it was just do the right thing, and things will work out. I always felt the worst when I hurt you, and I know that won't change. I don't know what all I'll do after today, but if you're here…" The hologram shook its head, and ran a metal hand through dark hair. "Fuck, I'm sorry. I don't know what you think of me, and whatever it is I know I deserve worse. I know it's not worth much from someone like me, but I would beg above all else - stay who you are. Be the good person. I can't imagine how badly things went to bring you here, but I just hope what you find here will make it -" The hologram flickered with a static pop. " - it - it - it -" It continued flickering, like someone was taking a projector and flinging it around.

Ruby initially thought age might have claimed it, until, just as suddenly as it started, the malfunctions stopped, and a new image replaced the old. It was the same man, but now later in life - still young, barely a year older than he had just been, but now covered in scars and burns. The armor he'd worn moments ago was gone, replaced with a thin shirt and simple cargo pants. His face was bisected down one side by a scar made by a katana, while fully half of it was covered in hideous burns that snaked all the way down his neck and beneath his shirt. The fire in his eyes was gone, replaced with a hollowness that one could almost mistake as completely dead, were the person not obviously animate and speaking.

It was him, not long after he'd won.

"I guess…" He murmured, his voice taking on a new quality, seeming less vigorous than before, and now more rumbly, as though the scars tracing down his neck had made it much deeper than surface level. "I lost the toss." He let out a long, heavy sigh. "I figure you're here because a certain lady sent you, or you found your way here after we all died. In either event, the answer is the same: Let me go, Ruby. There were only two ways this coin could land, and I got tails." The hologram leaned back, closing its eyes and taking in a deep breath. Its face actually relaxed, and a subtle smile smoothed its features, this lone act seeming to wipe away years of age and stress. "It's freeing, in a way. I don't even have any regrets… Because I know you'll be there for the only loose end I left behind." The smile faded, the age and stress returned, and its metal eyes locked onto Ruby's silver orbs. "But I know you… You're stubborn, like me. So you won't accept being told 'no'... So I had this prepared for you. This will show you what you didn't know you were looking for. Once you find it, do yourself a favor: Turn around and leave." A pause, the hologram hesitated for a moment, appearing to want to say something else, but deciding against it with a shake of the head. "Goodbye, Ruby." Without another word, it vanished.

For a moment, Ruby was left stunned and confused, her brain unable to chart the path from 'A' to 'Z', unable to determine why she had been sent here if Aldric's forethought had been simply to acknowledge her presence and then vanish. This moment passed when the computers before her lit up, displaying a desktop which, upon examination, although it was cluttered with files, folders, and things the likes of which she could spend weeks attempting to divine the purpose of, there was one thing in particular which called out to her: An executable file, dead center on the main screen, which had space cleared around it to ensure it was attention-grabbing.

Its name was, aptly, very Aldric:

WhatIfDotExe

Ruby felt the slightest tug of a smile at the corner of her lips as she beheld the file. Her eyes slowly crawled over the other screens and the other things that populated them as her mind tried to catch up to reality, but none of them jumped out as readily as the center display. Coldly, she approached the computers and did the only thing she could think to: She clicked on the file.

The executable activated and wiped all of the screens clean. A new desktop appeared, this one an image stretched across each of the screens. It took her a moment to realize that it was a starry expanse yes, but the stars all coalesced into the shape of an enormous man, who gave her the eerie feeling as though he were watching her. She shuddered and tore her eyes away from the star man, and found that there were now like before dozens of folders cluttering the screens, but their names were significantly less mundane than before. Gone were 'surveilance', 'tactical analysis', and 'I unleashed an AI on Remnant and all I got was this stupid folder', and here were files like 'Douchebag Aldric', 'The Path Not Taken', and 'Doomsday Clock'.

Of all the files, Ruby noticed that, much like before, two folders in particular seemed to have been purpose-placed to grab attention. The aforementioned 'Doomsday Clock' was center screen, immediately to the left of a folder labeled 'HBO'. Immediately below them was a third file, entitled 'I'll Do It Myself'. Ruby felt the urge to click on one of them, but stopped, something else calling to her to try and explore a bit. The hologram had made it seem like this was all here to teach her something, and she suspected jumping to the end wouldn't be conducive to that.

So, after looking around the desktop for a few more moments, she picked 'Douchebag Aldric', opened it, and revealed several different subfolders. Some had labels she didn't need much effort to recognize, like 'The Record', but others had labels she couldn't quite understand, like 'stolen images' and 'stolen video'. At the bottom of the main index was a new executable, simply titled 'The Short Version'. Ruby frowned at the computer for a few moments, before clicking on The Short Version. The computer locked up just long enough for it to be noticeable, before proceeding to display brief snippets of footage that began flashing by, alongside sections of a Record that described events that had never happened.

First was an entry describing his shame and loathing of himself, and how he'd fallen and, at the last moment, succumbed deeply to his genuine belief that Salem had been right, in the end. This was accompanied by footage of a younger, not quite as scarred Aldric falling to his knees before Salem. She watched Aldric take the golden gauntlet and use it to kill the Brothers as she knew he had, but when the light faded away and people began fading to dust, Aldric and Salem stood at the height of her tower. Aldric sobbed, Salem placed her hand on his back, and promised him he'd made the right choice. More excerpts from the Record accompanied more footage, describing Aldric warring in Salem's were flashes of battles between a different Ruby and this fallen Aldric, epic clashes between Aldric and Ozma, world-shaking duels between he and Cinder, every single one escalating from the one previous as they began to learn from each other. More excerpts from the Record described how Aldric knew he'd put in place plans against himself, specifically intended for situations and scenarios like this, and these excerpts accompanied more footage of his former allies in the Justice League and the Watchmen taking advantage of these plans. In the Record, Aldric himself even questioned whether he had planned so thoroughly that he was unable to stop them from being executed, or if he was allowing them to be used in the first place.

At length, Ruby watched years turn to decades, as the story of Aldric's fall continued to play out. There were more battles than she could count, and not just against Huntsmen - she saw him and Salem war against Mankind as a whole. Mountains of corpses lay at the feet of Aldric, Salem, and their endless hordes of Grimm. Entire sections of both planets were scarred Earth and Remnant both lost ground, but they held the line where they absolutely had to, and inexorably began to unite against this threat. The unparalleled might of the Terrans of Earth melded with the unmatched power of the Humans of Remnant, creating a war machine that was able to hold the line and win battles in those key areas deemed unacceptable to lose, but as great as these feats were, the heads of the Grimm army were too mighty, and just as often turned victories back into defeats. As great as the collective strength of both planets were, the true war was the killing of the Queen of the Grimm and her General. Ruby and her friends headed that spear, and she watched as they utilized Aldric's endless plans against him, slowly escalating their gambits until the screen froze right on an image of an older Ruby, her eyes alight with silver flame, an older Cinder, a lightning-covered staff held in one hand, and Jaune, silver sword gleaming, all attacking Aldric as one.

Ruby stopped the playback, hands shaking. She didn't like the look of hatred in her eyes, directed at her friend - at a good man. She didn't like the arcane and alien tools she and her allies were equipped with, and the power they were bringing to bear upon the man who had called them to existence. She closed out this folder. Returning to the desktop, with a sinking feeling she was beginning to understand what all she was looking at, she looked for something else - anything else, to prove her wrong.

The next folder to catch her eye was labeled 'Aldric Quest', Ruby saw a new series of images and excerpts from new versions of the Record play out. In this sequence, Aldric did everything as before, but for one choice: He spared the Brother Gods. The Brothers, having been spared his wrath, arrived on Remnant and summarily wiped everyone out. The sole exception was a young man surrounded by a field of anti-magic who, upon being personally visited by these defied deities, used that anti-magic to deprive them of their power and slay them both with a beaten up double barrel shotgun. Ruby then witnessed this differentiate itself from the previous file, as it literally split apart. On one screen, Aldric fell to his knees in the pile of dead deities, clutching at his head and screaming, while another stoically took in the sight, before resolutely retreating to his bunker. The first Aldric tried desperately to prove the gods wrong, but nowhere on Remnant or Earth could other people be found, the second Aldric initiated a contingency which immediately began artificially birthing people back into the worlds.

The Desperate lost himself to his grief, and while he too returned to his bunker, he didn't go for the life-giving machines the Stalwart used - he went for a vault labeled 'Doc Brown'. The Stalwart raised the new people as they were born, flashes of the Record explaining his intent to take a third option in Salem and Ozma's argument - to start over from absolute zero, and create unity by teaching new generations the follies of the old. The Desperate catapulted himself backwards through time, launching a quest in which nothing was sacred, and he killed and did everything he had to to reconstruct the gauntlet he'd improperly used the first time. The phrase 'white whale' appeared often in the Desperate's Record, alongside his recognition of the metaphor and his disregard of it, founded on the rationalization that 'not chasing this whale is infinitely worse than chasing it'. Meanwhile, the Stalwart re-opened the links between Earth and Remnant, and slowly reintroduced his new generations back into both worlds, using the resources of the Bunker to keep them steady as he created something new. The Desperate finished his crusade in the center of a battlefield, causing Ruby's heart to skip as she recognized her uncle's body amongst the many that littered it. The Stalwart grew to an old age, shepherding his third option through their initial generations, easing conflicts but allowing his 'children' to learn, err, and grow into their own. The Desperate swung his gauntleted fist and blanketed the universe in a wave of light, killing the gods, annihilating Salem, slaughtering the Grimm, and falling to his knees. The Stalwart too, died, but he of old age, and with a smile on his face, as he saw none of the faults that had plagued two species of Humanity, and instead held hope in their hearts, as he held faith in his.

The screen froze on the two dead Aldrics, the last lines of their Records providing their epitaphs. For the Desperate, kneeling in the dirt, body unrecognizably scorched and smoldering, it was a simple, "I'm tired." For the Stalwart, his eyes closed in his casket, surrounded by Humans of both the Sapiens and Faunus variety, it was: "Even now, I do not know if I allowed this to happen, or if it was true, random, chance."

No… No, no, no. Ruby refused to believe it. With every second that passed, Aldric's message from beyond the grave grew ever clearer, but she couldn't accept it. Was this really what he was trying to tell her?

With tears in her eyes, she returned to the desktop and selected a folder entitled 'Ode To Be Better'. It depicted a new sequence in which Aldric, after being found by Pyrrha, accepted her help. Ruby actually felt hope as she watched Pyrrha bring Aldric back to civilization, but this dwindled as time advanced. Their friends, the wounds he'd caused still raw, largely turned their backs to him - Yang even tried on several occasions to murder him outright. Ozma tried to reconcile with Aldric and convince him of his genuineness, but Aldric could not bring himself to trust the man. Pyrrha and Ruby soon convinced him to contact Ecru and Srebro, but they rejected him upon learning he was the reason why Myrtle left, and why she'd died. Ironwood attempted here as he attempted in reality to arrest Aldric, but lacked the same actionable evidence and public support to pull it off, resulting in his dedicating huge amounts of resources to tracking and observing him. Cinder, unable to find him as she had in reality, was forced to give birth to their daughter alone. She did her best to raise the young girl, but her constant exposure to magic resulted in her awakening powers the ten year old in Patch didn't seem to have. The presence of a new source of magic on Remnant attracted Ozma's attention, and alongside Aldric, went to investigate. The two failed to learn that Ashley was the result of Godric's intervention, and instead concluded she was an attempt by Cinder to upset the balance of power between the three of them.

Ruby stopped the playback when the battle began, fearing she knew where things would go from there when she saw the look of fear, and the familiar fire of determination, spark in the alternate Ashley's eyes as her mother defended her against Ozma and Aldric's assault. There was more to this file, but Ruby couldn't bring herself to see where this ended. She wanted to ask what all of this even was, but that was her denial talking. She knew Aldric well enough to put together that this was his predictive and analytical tendencies writ large, and given a full decade to stretch - in anticipating his death and Ruby's attempt to 'make it right', he'd sat down and charted out all the ways things could have gone. He looked at the most major points of his quest and asked himself how things would have changed had he made a different choice, then somehow used his powers to give voice and video to those thought experiments.

He was telling her that using any of his endless tools to change things very well would make them worse.

But… No. She shook her head. No, no! This was all flawed from the beginning. Aldric had been in an awful, terrible state of mind after he defeated Salem, and had quite likely been in an even worse place after he'd ended the second Faunus Rebellion. Whenever he'd put all of this together, he'd only seen all of these negative outcomes because that's all he would look for. More than that, the only things he'd ever planned for had all relied on him making different decisions - those two combined meant that all he could conceive of were ways things could have gone worse.

But Aldric didn't need to be alone.

She had access to all of his tools - and she knew that chief among them, somewhere in this bunker was an honest-to-gods time machine. Sure, it would likely be locked up tight, but she could go in there, she could find a way eventually. She could go back in time and be there for him, help guide him to a better path. She could do it herself!

And she almost did. She came so close to stepping away from this computer and being the spanner in the works.

But then she saw, dead center alongside two other folders, a folder whose label stopped her cold for how closely it had mirrored exactly what she'd just thought:

I'll Do It Myself.

Ruby stared at the folder for a long time, unable to bring herself to believe that this was happening - no, that it had happened! Aldric was good, but he couldn't have been that good. Right?

With fear in her heart, she opened the file. This one depicted Ruby - right here! Right now! - appearing to struggle with Aldric's various thought experiments, until she decided the best option was to call an audible - and do it herself. Ruby watched this other version of herself fail to do as she had just done and get distracted by Aldric's most recent display of brilliance. This other Ruby instead got up from the computer and ventured deeper into Aldric's bunker. It was terrifyingly eerie how well this lined up with what she had intended to do. She watched the computer show her what would happen as this alternate Ruby broke through every one of Aldric's safeguards, took the time machine, and catapulted herself back to the days before Aldric landed on Remnant.

It took the Other Ruby some days to make it back to the Emerald Forest, but she made it in time to actually witness the end result of Ozma and Salem's ritual. She watched Aldric's plane fall through the air, get attacked by the Nevermore, and crash onto the ground. By the time she arrived, Salem's lieutenants had snatched up Aldric's father and two other Masters, while Cinder and her allies kept an eye on Aldric. Other Ruby found Aldric, strapped to his chair, hanging from a tree, and rescued him before he could fall and break his neck. Soon, he awoke, and Ruby just as Other Ruby was suddenly hit with the realization that she had two choices in front of her: To tell him everything, or to keep it to herself.

Just as with 'Aldric Quest', the screen split in two. The Liar on one side, and the Honest on the other. The Liar kept the history of things to come from Aldric, choosing to protect him from himself until she could solidify his place on the true path. She tried to nurture his better tendencies, but found herself struggling to do so - both because the very pragmatism that had led to the events she'd wiped out kept rearing its ugly head, and because Aldric was whip-smart. He didn't immediately recognize the Liar as the character from the show he'd watched, owing to her being older than the fifteen year old by more than a decade, but he did pick up quickly that she knew things that affected him, and was keeping them hidden. The end result of this was a falling out between the two that came when Aldric finally put the pieces together and realized that not only did he recognize where he was, he recognized who had saved him - thereby forcing her to reveal the future she'd come from.

This revealed something both Ruby and the Liar had been completely unaware of: Aldric's time machine obliterated the timeline from which it originated, and although 'Rubi-Wan' would reveal there were tools inside intended to protect the time traveler from being erased themselves, the Liar was unaware of this. Because she violated Aldric's trust, by the time she revealed the particular method she used to travel through time, she had burned so much of her limited time trying - and failing - to put out that fire. She then faded away before Aldric's eyes, and he was left alone, sans any and all of the resources he once would have had to pursue his crusade. Due to this utter lack of everything, Aldric's one and only available option was to place himself in the service of Ozma, but as Aldric was already 'tuned' to noticing deception, the same general distrust the real Aldric had of Ozma blossomed much faster in the Liar's timeline. Aldric soon left Ozma, and now lacking in everything, had only one course of action available to him: Attempting to forge ahead to 'The Big One' with nothing.

To Aldric's credit, he - just as his true self - moved Heaven and Earth. Although lacking in everything the real Aldric had acquired, he leveraged his one resource - information - to his advantage, locating each Maiden in turn and eventually acquiring their assistance in achieving The Big One, through outright lies, tailored truths, debts, and dark deals. This led him inevitably into conflict with the Legion of Doom, and additionally had him brush against the Justice League on numerous occasions, but with his own powers and the assistance of the Maidens, he was able to press on, but for all Aldric was able to accomplish despite his absolute lack of resources, it was this lack that led to his failure, as he failed to learn two details that had been crucial to the real Aldric's success: That he could harvest souls for power, and that assembling each artifact would summon the Brother Gods.

Upon acquiring the final Relic, the Liar's Aldric was then confronted by the gods themselves. He fought valiantly, using his co-opted Relics to fight against two deities, but he was short in all the areas that had allowed her Aldric to achieve the same feat. He lay dead at the Brothers' feet, and mankind joined him soon after.

Ruby had hoped against hope that this was just a bad example - that because the screens had split, and one outcome was her refusing to lie, that the second outcome must be better, right?

This Ruby told Aldric immediately, sitting him down and introducing him to the idea that he recognized this world, before working her way towards the future she was working to prevent. Once Aldric was convinced, he bade her show him her means of time travel, and upon recognizing it, revealed to her that her time was, quite literally, limited - that she would begin fading away very soon. This was when they discovered the tools within the machine that would immunize Ruby from her meddling with time, allowing her to stay with him and act as mentor, leading to his dubbing her 'Rubi-Wan'.

The time in which this remained a positive outcome was frustratingly, infuriatingly brief, as Aldric's awareness of his own nature - what he claimed to be his weaknesses - led to a level of self doubt that neither Ruby nor Rubi-Wan had thought even he was capable of. In his endless quest to avoid 'going full Vader', at no point did this Aldric fail to question himself. This did not lead to inaction, but the self-doubt absolutely crippled his powers. As they acted on belief, and he had become incapable of believing himself, Aldric was left with naught but his semblance, which was itself severely lesser than that which Rubi-Wan remembered. Lacking any other options, Aldric and Rubi-Wan turned to Ozma, and though they were able to prevent the Fall Maiden's near-death at Cinder's hands, this led to the stalemate between Ozma and Salem lasting in perpetuity. The other Masters broke away from her when they learned that Aldric had seemingly refused to join her at all, but none of them were able to determine exactly how Aldric had accomplished The Big One in the timeline-that-was. Worse was that two of them, though bolstered by their powers, were still elderly, and their time was so limited that the years in which the War of the White Witch had been dragged out claimed their lives as a matter of old age, leaving only Aldric, who could not use his powers, and his father, whose understanding of his powers was vastly inferior to what his son's should have been. As mighty a weapon as his father's hammer was, it alone was insufficient to turn the tide in Ozma's conflict with Salem, and for all the efforts taken to try and help Aldric differentiate himself with his 'other self', the boy couldn't shake the shadow of fear that he may become that titan of pragmatism and terror.

He thus became enveloped and entrenched in the war for his entire life, resigned to being a pawn, a soldier under Ozma.

With both files completed, Ruby felt numb, as she realized that Aldric had been right. While perhaps not perfect, the sequence of events she'd lived through may very well have been the best things possibly could have gone.

But then… How do I make it right? She asked herself, trying to hold back fresh tears as the one hope she'd held onto seemingly evaporated right in her hands.

She returned to the desktop, but wasn't sure what she was looking for. Everything here seemed purpose-built to tell her that she should just keep moving forward with what she had. She should just turn around, leave, and do right by Aldric by helping his daughter. Was that supposed to be it? She'd 'make' it right by 'doing' right by him? Had Cinder simply held a false hope that Aldric had planned for and determined was impossible?

What I don't know I'm looking for… Was this it? She asked herself, bleerily looking about the desktop, until she landed back on its center, and the two remaining files Aldric had seemingly intended for her to see.

HBO… Doomsday Clock… She couldn't divine any meaning to either of them. The first was gibberish, or perhaps an esoteric reference to Earth, while the latter simply sounded ominous.

He'd said to just… Turn around and leave when I found what I'm looking for. She lifted her hand away from the computer's controls. I… Think I've done that. With a tear-stricken frown, she turned away from the computer.

She made it all of one step away before she looked up and saw that the hologram had returned. Like before, it had changed - Aldric's wounds were mostly healed, some of the scars were still present on his face, but the burns were gone. He was garbed in his old mail suit and shirt, his hands covered in gauntlets, but only one was the black shield she'd recognized as evocative of the latter half of his crusade. The other was covered in a glittering golden gauntlet, radiating a small rainbow of color from the back of its hand.

Ruby frowned and returned her gaze to the hologram's face, wondering what Aldric had recorded this time. All he did was give her an expectant look with a patient smile, and then nod back to the computer, as though silently saying 'Not yet.' Ruby turned to look at the computer again, and then back to the hologram, but found it had vanished again. By this point, Ruby was starting to suspect Aldric might very well have been that good, but the more likely option had been he'd just programmed the hologram to turn her around if she hadn't clicked on something specific on the computer.

This in mind, she turned back, randomly picked between the two remaining files on the center of the screen, hovered the cursor over 'HBO', and clicked on it, half full of anticipation, half full of dashed hopes and the mounting realization that she'd put off mourning and coping with his death, and indeed that of Pyrrha's, Ozma's, and even Cinder's, to pursue something he'd seemingly written off over a decade ago.

She didn't realize until the computer began buffering, that 'HBO' hadn't been a folder, but another executable file. She didn't get more than a moment to consider this before the computer finished loading, and the program fully executed.

What it showed her stopped her in her tracks, leaving her so stunned that even her heart skipped a beat.