The Ever After arc…it may be recency bias, but I frankly love this arc. It's such an emotional rollercoaster, and I had a lot of fun writing it with Matt. This could be seen as a small 'detour', but this is a needed one in my eyes.
Anyways, please enjoy this chapter. Here's the Discord: /cgFmXz3qJ5
This is the story of a girl with a lot of problems.
More than she could handle.
It's getting clear
You're never coming clean
So I'll lock you up inside
And swallow, swallow the key.
Ruby bolted upwards, panting. Holy crap. She was alive! And…and that meant-
Ruby shook her head. She'd deal with that in a few. She needed to get a good angle on where she was, exactly. Which turned out to be…a beach.
Large conch shells and six-armed starfish intermittently dotted the shore that seemed to stretch for miles in either direction. Up in the sky, Ruby saw two very distinct suns seemingly circling each other as they slowly orbited wherever she was. She stood up and wrung out the water from her cloak, soaked as it was by the gently lapping waves.
Directly in front of her, a tropical albeit equally strange forest sat. The palm trees had formed peculiar bulbous shapes, with some having been entwined while others seemingly comprised two or three trees cunningly stacked upon one another. There was one tree that seemed to tower over not just the jungle in front of her, but everything else in this bizarre place. It stretched so high into the sky that only the bottom section of its canopy was visible from where the red-robed reaper stood. A flock of large birds had burst out from the top of the forest, snapping Ruby's attention to them for a quick moment. When she saw they were just normal birds, for this place anyway, her gaze shifted to a not quite as distant cliff edge on the other side of the jungle.
Ruby stared at the giant tree that towered ever upward and started walking through the jungle. First rule of survival, always find a landmark you can use to get your bearings. As Ruby continued to progress through the foliage, she squeezed through a group of trees into a clearing. An oddly-colored bird that resembled a much friendlier-looking shoebill screamed as she entered the clearing, seemingly annoyed by her interrupting its nap. Ruby caught sight of the towering tree once more in the distance, its presence awe-inspiring and mysterious, but it was her only lead right now. With cautious determination, she advanced, deftly maneuvering through more clusters of trees as if navigating an enigmatic labyrinth.
In an odd sense of deja vu, Ruby was squeezed into the same clearing again, leaving the Huntress utterly perplexed. The bird from before screamed again and began to babble nonsense. The hooded Huntress looked up to the giant tree again, her heart sinking a bit as she realized she wasn't getting any closer. She proceeded forward once more, passing by a mouse that slept upon a grand seashell. She had squeezed through the same trees again and the bird had flown away after squawking its discontent. Ruby grunted in frustration as she walked forward again.
At that point, the mouse had awakened, observing Ruby as she went through the same thing repeatedly. It was utterly infuriating. Ruby gritted her teeth, feeling the frustration bubbling up inside of her. This was ridiculous, why couldn't she make any progress? She had to get to that tree and figure out where the hell she was but it seemed like she was just stuck in some kind of loop. Her mind was racing with questions and the lack of answers was driving her insane.
Eventually, Ruby made a hard decision: stopping. She glanced up at the tree one final time, before venturing off to lean and settle at the base of a nearby palm tree. She curled up and started to sob, this small failure the cause for the proverbial dam to break. Her tears seemed to cause some thunder to sound and raindrops to fall in response.
The mouse scurried over to Ruby, its tiny paws scraping the sand as it approached her. It hesitated for a moment then climbed onto her lap and sat there, watching her cry. Ruby wiped her tears away and looked down at the mouse, surprised by its presence.
"Hey little guy," the hooded Huntress whispered, reaching out to stroke its fur. "Do you know what's going on here?"
The mouse just looked up at her with its beady eyes, as if understanding her but unable to respond. Ruby sighed and leaned back against the tree, the rain continuing to fall softly around her. She closed her eyes and tried to calm her racing thoughts, focusing on her breathing and the sound of the waves crashing against the shore.
But then her mind then drifted off and she thought about Ben.
And it seemed to rain harder.
After what felt like hours, the rain finally stopped and the sun began to peek through the clouds. Immediately after the rain stopped, the mouse hopped out of her lap and ran over to something.
Ruby then noticed the mouse attempting to extract a sprout from the earth, but its efforts were in vain. Ruby walked over and then picked up the mouse, pulling the vegetable out with ease. Making this place stranger, she found that the vegetable was inexplicably made out of cheese. The Huntress stared at it in confusion before handing the cheese plant over to the mouse who clearly wanted to eat it, given the wild gesturing and grabbing motions it made. Ruby smiled as the mouse ate its food.
But that smile quickly turned back to a frown. "Now if only you could help me..." Ruby sighed.
The mouse then looked to Ruby, gulping down its food.
"I could try," a small voice spoke up.
Ruby stared at the mouse wide-eyed for a moment, before suddenly screaming out, startling the mouse as well.
"Why are you yelling!?" the mouse asked.
"I. Uh. Because. You. Oh! You're-" Ruby stammered. Yes, Ruby Rose had fought monsters, aliens, cosmic gods, robots, and Grimm, but never had she come across a talking animal.
"I've just never really spoken to, uh… a mouse before?" Ruby sheepishly explained.
The mouse hummed. "Hmm, well, I guess I've never spoken to a…well, a you before. What are you?"
Ruby blinked at the question. "I'm… Oh, uh, I'm a human. A girl?A Huntress?" She tried to explain herself as best she could, but the mouse tilted their head at every answer.
"That's a lot of things," the Mouse pointed out, curiously.
Ruby sighed and introduced herself. "I'm Ruby Rose," she said.
The Mouse looked up at her expectantly. "And to Ruby Rose is... your purpose?" Ruby shook her head in response.
"No, that's my name. Do you have a name?" Ruby asked.
"I'm still young, so… not yet," Mouse replied.
Is it like the Revonnahgander culture? Ruby wondered, before shaking her head. "How about I call you…Little, for now. Would that be alright?"
The mouse scratched its chin. "What is…to 'little'?" They asked. Ruby giggled a bit before frowning again.
"Something wrong?" the newly named Little added.
"I'm… uh, have you seen other people? Humans, like me." Ruby explained.
"Do they look exactly like you?" Little asked.
"No, no. Um, one would have long, blonde hair, the other has… well, uh, cat ears…another would have white hair-" Ruby described, but Little was suddenly shivering. "O-oh! What's wrong?"
"C-cat?" The mouse trembled.
"Sorry! I-I should've known. I've seen plenty of cartoons." Ruby sighed. "Um, another one has a pink, brown and white get up, one of them is dark skinned with green hair and red eyes…um, yeah."
"Well, I've never seen anyone who does, or doesn't, look like you." Ruby's new companion answered, "but, maybe someone in my village has. They're always out foraging, you know, since we need food and stuff."
Ruby sighed in relief. "Maybe that'll help."
"Speaking of which, a few more of these wouldn't hurt!" Little pointed to more of the cheese sprouts planted in the ground.
Ruby sighed again, before a small smile returned to her face. "Alright, alright, gimme a sec."
"You really think it's around here somewhere?" a familiar voice spoke up, as she and her snow white friend traveled elsewhere in this tropical jungle.
"I wouldn't exactly say I'm certain about anything at the moment…"
Weiss and Blake had found each other on the same beach, and were now wandering through the same thicket of woods before them. The two were very, very relieved to see one and other, especially alive. How did they survive the fall? Even if it was a miracle they wanted to question, that was, by far, the least of their worries.
"Did…anyone else fall in?" Blake asked.
"Just you, me, Emerald, Neo and Yang. If Ben and Ruby were…angry enough to send Vilgax into the abyss too," Weiss frowned. "I want you to be armed."
"Fair enough." Blake frowned. "Do you think Yang-"
"I know Yang is alright." the heiress cut off her Faunus friend, "We just need to find her and anyone else who might be here."
Blake took a moment to look up at the sky, and felt sadness wash over her anew. "How do you think they're…doing?"
Weiss recalled her last sight before she fell, how Winter reached out for her and the horrific scream of sheer agony that followed.
"...Not good." the heiress mumbled.
"Do...do you think everyone else made it thr-" Blake began, before she stopped herself and noticed something further ahead in the brush. She picked up the pace a bit, Weiss following close behind when she noticed her feline friend make a dash forward into the tree line. The monochrome duo emerge from the palm forest to find Gambol Shroud entangled in a tower of vines, almost like a more natural version of a sword plunged into a stone. The vines were densely woven together into this tower, sporting golden-hued thorns that would make tearing it apart difficult but not impossible.
"Well...it could be worse," the ninja of team RWBY sighed.
'Well, good news," Weiss unsheathed Myrtenaster and tapped the revolver chamber in the middle, "Almost out of Dust."
"That wasn't an invitation, Weiss..."
"Sorry...but at least the blade's still sharp," the heiress pointed out.
From there, the W and B of RWBY began trying to free the latter's weapon from the vine mound. Blake grabbed hold of one of the vines and simply began pulling with all her might, to no avail, sadly. Weiss, with a small flourish of her rapier, began cutting away at the vines. A small smile came to her lips, thinking she'd found the answer, only for her victory to be stolen away from her. The vines regrew, winding themselves together even tighter, making it harder to cut through them.
"Oh, you must be joking..." the heiress groaned.
Blake dropped the vine she was pulling on and looked around, her eyes eventually coming to a small tree. An idea came to her and, while maybe not the best, it was on brand for their little friend group. With one hand grabbing hold of a leaf and the other reaching out for her weapon's hilt, the Faunus girl leveraged herself on the palm tree to try and grab her weapon. Weiss cheered for her friend in the back, encouraging her.
"Yeah! Woo!" the heiress cheered.
"Come on...come...on…!" Blake groaned, her fingers barely brushing against the hilt of her weapon. The vines then shuddered and then shot out towards her, catching the Faunus off guard. Weiss barely had time to react herself before the vines came for her as well, wrapping her up and tying her and Blake together.
"Stupid...vines!" Blake cursed, struggling against her bindings.
"If I can just...get-" Weiss struggled to activate some of the remaining fire Dust in Myrtenaster, but she was stopped when she and Blake heard what must've been a stampede approaching them, along with savage war cries. The two braced themselves to meet their captors, only to be greeted by the largest swarm of mice that either of them had ever seen.
"The trap has been sprung!" one of the mice shouted.
"It worked! I never doubted our fearless leader for a second!" another cheered.
The leader, taking the front most position in the swarm, was a black, green, and cream furred mouse with a damaged right ear and scratch-marks on the same eye, rendering them partially blind. The head mouse then climbed up the vines while holding the broken upper portion of Gambol Shroud's blade in their tiny hands. They quickly stood before Weiss, blade held high in one hand while the other gestured to the trapped girls.
"JUSTICE BEFALLS OUR PREY!" they shouted in triumph.
"Are...are they talking?" Weiss asked.
"You know what? This is not the craziest thing we've ever come across." Blake sighed, totally accepting this fate. "Put that blade down, you'll hurt yourself with it."
"Lies! The cat creature tells lies!" The leader squeaked. "I AM AN INVINCIBLE MOUSE! A GOLDEN GOD- ow..." The mouse shook its hand. "I gripped it too hard..."
"See?" Blake said, allowing herself a bit of smugness.
"Ok, one exception! My new blade is very sharp and I haven't been able to get a proper hilt for it yet," the leader admitted.
"Wrap some string around it, maybe?" one of their fellow mice suggested.
"Ooh! Ooh! Or some leaves from the Cheese Plants!" another chimed in.
"Hmm...the leaves do make for good nets, hard to tear through. I'll take your suggestion!" the leader announced.
"Yes!"
"Cheese...plants?" Weiss repeated, watching the little mouse scurry off. As absurd as those words in combination were, that sounded oddly familiar. Where had she heard that before?
"I have a weird feeling about this place, all of a sudden." Blake admitted, struggling to free. "Any chance you could summon a knight to cut us free?"
"I can try," Weiss admitted, closing her eyes and focusing. She started to hear the formation of a small glyph behind the pillar of vines the monochrome duo were caught up in, but her focus was broken when she heard something else. Blake heard it too, her cat ears twitching and swiveling in the direction of the sound.
"Now, where was I?" the leader muttered, lowering their blade and rubbing their chin, "Oh! Right! The speech!"
Ruby shoved aside some of the foliage in her way, brushing past all manner of tropical plant and flower as she walked on through the forest. By now, however, Little had fallen asleep, all nestled up in the scarf of her cloak. Her guide was snoring away without a care in the world.
"Are...are you drooling on me?" Ruby asked, before sticking her tongue out a bit in disgust. She pushed aside one of the low-hanging leaves to reveal the tribe of mice surrounding Blake and Weiss, the members all looking up to their leader. It seems the little mouse that ran off was quick, having already affixed a makeshift hilt of Cheese Plant leaves around the bottom of the broken blade.
"Hear me now, my fellows! For on this day, we no longer need to cower and hide before the ferocious felines that stalk our shores! For on this day, we are not the prey...but the HUNTERS!" the leader decreed, earning cheers of adoration from all those watching them.
"Ruby!" Weiss gasped. "Y-you fell in too?!"
Ruby blinked. "Y-yeah. I did."
"Oh!" Little squeaked, waking up. "Oh, these must be your friends! And the...cat one..." The poor mouse suddenly went pale and whimpered in fear, hiding behind Ruby's head.
"Well…I made a new friend."
The other mice all turned to see Ruby and Little, gasping in shock.
"What's this? What's this?! A new adversary approaches!" the leader announced, "And they possess a hostage! We must liberate our kin! I know not from whence you tall folk come, but I hereby declare war upon it! Your stores of food shall be ours and neither lock nor wall shall protect them!"
Ruby stared down at the mice before her. She pulled out some cheese from behind her back, and gave a small, sheepish smile. "May I offer a trade, then?"
The mice stared and began mumbling.
"That's so much cheese..." One muttered to their friend. The mumbling evolved into a cacophony, which was quickly silenced by the leader raising their paw into the air.
"...you have a deal." The leader agreed.
After Blake and Weiss were freed, the leader humbly apologized to them. "You have our sincerest apologies! Please understand that our kind is a bit skeptical of cats. And snakes. And cats."
"We understand. If… we could ask, have you seen anyone else who looks like us?" Blake asked. "Long, blonde hair, big chest, nice purple eyes-"
"Blake." Weiss sighed.
"What?" Blake asked, acting completely innocent of her choice of words.
"Hmmm...I'm afraid not. If we had, she would've no doubt been captured in our mighty trap alongside other tresspas-I mean lost travelers such as you!" the leader answered.
While RWB were speaking to the leader, Little was regaling the other members of the mouse tribe with the tale of how they first met Ruby.
"At first, I didn't know what to do because she seemed so sad," Little recounted, their ears drooping a bit to sell the mood before quickly perking back up, "But then I talked to her and she seemed less sad! And then she pulled the cheese out of the ground all on her own!"
"Really?!" one of the listeners gasped in disbelief.
"You saw the cheese plant yourself, didn't you?" their friend asked.
"Oh yeah...I did. Still though. Being so strong...nothing must be able to stop her!"
Ruby looked away, trying to hide the frown on her face. She looked big and strong to them, but...it was hard to honestly match their image of her after everything she'd been through. She had no idea what was going on without her there. Was Ben still fighting Vilgax? Did everyone make it over safe? What if there were stragglers still in Mantle and Atlas?
What if...
What if this was...all for nothing?
"Alright...well, thank you, anyway," Blake said, obviously disheartened by the news. She sighed a bit before turning back to her team leader.
"Ruby?" the Faunus girl asked. For a moment, she took note of the more slumped posture Ruby had, looking much more...defeated. The red-hooded huntress straightened up and hid the frown away for now before turning around to meet her teammate.
"Yeah?" Ruby answered.
"Were you just wandering, trying to find us?" Weiss asked, cutting off Blake before she could ask if the silver-eyed girl was ok.
"Uh, no. Before I found you, I was trying to get up there," Ruby pointed to a nearby cliff, "Try to get my bearings on some higher ground. Figured it'd be a good start."
"Sounds like the best option for now." Weiss agreed.
"If you wanna go to the cliff, I can help with that!" Little declared, climbing up Blake's shoulder and startling her. "I don't have anything to do yet. I can be your trusty guide!"
"Yet?" Ruby repeated.
"Yeah! Now!" Little scurried up to the top of Blake's head. "...go up!"
"...they're gonna be a great guide." Blake said, as the group started on their journey.
"Aw, thanks!" Little smiled.
Five minutes hadn't even passed after that before Little had fallen asleep again. The other hunters had provided some more directions than just "go up," thankfully. The reunited trio were marching up the grassy trail that would take them to the top of the cliff, having followed the mice's directions through the palm tree forest.
"Can a mouse have narcolepsy?" Blake wondered, "Considering how fast they fell asleep..."
"I...don't know? Never really thought about it. But never thought I'd have a conversation with one either, so..." Ruby just shrugged. By now, their would-be guide had moved to Ruby's hood which was much more comfortable than Blake's head.
"Fair enough."
"So, what happened after we fell in?" Weiss asked. Ruby looked back to her friend and sighed.
"I...well..." Ruby took a deep breath. "They...found out the truth about Eunice and..." Weiss and Blake shared a quiet look, not even needing for Ruby to say the rest, "Then, I got thrown in."
"Did...did anyone else-?" Blake began.
"I don't know," Ruby quickly cut her off, "But when we find Yang, we can go over everything together. And...and then figure out a way back home."
"That tree...I feel like it has something to do with our way out of here." Blake said. "I can't explain why, though."
"Can you really explain this place? It's so weird and that's saying something considering our lives. Need I remind you, I've been an alien twice." Weiss frowned.
"I get what you mean, Blake. There's this weird familiarity about this place." Ruby looked around. "Like I've been here."
"A...dreamscape." Blake hypothesized. "We're in a dream."
Ruby motioned to the sleeping mouse on her head. "Doubtful. No Nolan nonsense here. At least, I hope-"
Suddenly, the trio was startled by a deafening roar reverberating in the distance. They'd heard plenty of savage calls before, from the howling of Beowolves to the shrieks of Teryx. This was something that made them actually freeze up.
"The hell was that?" Blake asked as they hurried to the top of the cliff. When they crested the edge of the cliff, they found their answer, almost waiting for them. The trio's gazes were all fixated on a strange, eccentric, and masked purple creature writhing in weird, erratic convulsions.
The Purple Monster stood unnaturally tall, with a gaunt frame, visible ribs, a bony pelvis, prominent collarbone, and shoulder-blades. Its dark-purple body, bordering on a black hue, was adorned with two sets of purple and dark-yellow striped horns that jutted out from the back and lower portions of its skull. Dark-yellow stripes additionally coloured its forearms and hips as well as its hands and feet, which each bore pointed claws. Its long, fan-tipped tail featured dark-yellow stripes and an unsettlingly gray lupine or reptilian masque with white highlights covered its face.
"Seeking… sEarChing… Scouring… sTalkInG… Searching… sCouriNg… sTalKing…" The creature muttered, looking around wildly.
The trio froze in place upon seeing the strange creature. Blake and Weiss were ready to draw their weapons, their hands hovering over the hilts of their respective weapons. Ruby slowly moved to grab at her weapon on sheer reflex, before she realized she no longer had it. She stopped and looked down at her empty hand, slowly closing it. It felt so strange to not have it, like a part of her was just…missing.
Little rubbed their eyes as they began to wake up, their eyes fluttering open as they stretched a bit. Such a good nap, they thought. They looked up at Ruby's worried face and tilted their head, before following the girl's gaze and seeing the crouching horror.
"Eep!" Little gasped, ducking back down into Ruby's scarf. The purple creature's jittery movement came to a halt, slowly tilting its head to one side.
"Detecting...sEeKing..." the creature growled.
The creature's head suddenly swiveled and turned to face Blake directly. It roared, before scurrying on over to Blake at full speed. "DANGER! DEATH! BITE! RIP! TEAR!"
The creature's fighting style was unlike anything the girls had fought before. Even the Grimm fought in a manner Hunters could understand. This thing, in comparison, was crazy and unpredictable. The creature slashed its claws at Blake, but she blocked it with Gambol Shroud. With its first strike blocked, it unleashed a brand new flurry of strikes, with the strength of each seeming to increase.
"Blake!" Weiss yelled, running forward to assist.
"HEY!" A voice yelled, before a giant rock smashed into the back of the creature's head. "I said I wasn't done with you yet!"
The beast hissed, jumping away from Blake and nursing the back of its head. The rock hadn't drawn blood, but even to a beast like this, it must have stung. The ninja of the trio looked in the direction of the rock and her eyes widened in both surprise and relief. There Yang stood, panting heavily, before she looked up to lock onto the monster. She seemed fine, if a little winded. The only big concern was the fact that Yang was missing her prosthetic arm. With the arm she still had, though, she activated Ember Celica and closed in on the beast. Weiss and Blake joined her, the former leveling her blade at it and the latter taking aim with her weapon's pistol form.
The purple-hued monster's gaze shifted from each of the three girls closing in on it and began to slowly back up.
"Recede...rEtReat...Wait...ReTurN..." the monster growled, before turning and making a break for it. It leapt up to another great cliff that was behind it, digging its claws into the stony surface, climbing up and disappearing over the edge.
The creature made its retreat as it jumped high to the next cliff and disappeared into the forest. Giving chase, Weiss and Blake ran after the thing. Yang panted heavily and started to kneel, exhausted. Ruby ran towards Yang.
"Yang! Are you-" Ruby began..
"D-damn it," Yang muttered. "You weren't supposed to be here…"
Ruby knelt down next to her sister and, without a single second of hesitation, pulled her into a hug.
"If you really think I wouldn't come looking, then you must've forgotten who raised me," Ruby said in a quiet tone.
Yang took a second, before hugging her back. "Please tell me you and the other girls are the only ones down here."
"Um...well..." Ruby grit her teeth. "Mercury kinda fell in-"
"Good. If I find him, I'll punch his teeth in, one last time." Yang vowed. "...once I get my arm back."
"Whaaat happened to it, by the way?" Ruby asked, looking at her sister's empty 'socket', prompting an exasperated sigh from the blonde brawler.
"I don't think you'd believe me if I told you… " Yang huffed.
"Is it gone?" Little peeked up from Ruby's scarf, their eyes darting around as they shivered in fear.
"Try us," Ruby smirked.
"...what is that?" Yang asked, pointing at the mouse, but before Ruby could answer, the brawler of the team was practically tackled back to the ground.
"Yang..." Blake sighed, relieved to see her best friend and girlfriend alive and well.
Yang's eyes went wide, her brain catching up with reality before her expression softened. She looked down to her girlfriend, hugging her as tightly as possible, and embraced her back. With the arm she had left, the brawler gently held the back of Blake's head.
"Not going anywhere, Blake," Yang promised.
" I sort of thought you'd be a little happier to see us." Weiss pointed out.
"I…I am. Just...It must have gone pretty bad, huh?" Yang frowned.
Weiss turned to Ruby, hoping that the team leader would explain everything that they missed. Little looked up to their new friend, the girl's gaze fixed on the ground, one of her hand's gently rubbing the silver rose emblem clipped onto her belt.
"...Ruby?" Yang asked. Blake let go of Yang and turned to face Ruby, the black and yellow getting back on their feet.
Ruby's mind raced as her team turned to her for answers. She felt the weight of their expectations crushing down on her. Suddenly, she felt like she couldn't breathe. The sound of her own frantic heartbeat echoed in her ears as her chest tightened and her vision blurred.
She stumbled back and fell to her knees, gasping for air. Her eyes widened with terror as she tried to control her breathing, but the harder she tried, the worse it became. Her team gathered around her, calling her name, but she couldn't hear them over the sound of her own panicked breaths.
She felt...horrible right now.
"I...I..." Ruby stammered, trying to say something about what happened, but to her, the words were drowned out by her own thundering heartbeats. She started to feel light-headed, her vision becoming hazy. The red-hooded Huntress swayed on her knees before she completely fell to the ground with a thud. The last thing she saw was the concerned faces of her friends before everything faded to black.
Ruby's eyes began to flutter open slowly, with no idea how much time had passed since her panic attack. Little was all curled up on her chest, asleep, no doubt waiting for her to wake up. As her senses returned, she heard Yang speaking with others about their current situation.
"So, no idea what happened to the Relic or everyone in Vacuo. And if we're here then that means Emerald and Mercury are probably here too, but they could be anywhere in the jungle," Yang recapped.
"Maybe everyone else made it? Maybe the gate worked?" Blake suggested.
"...what if it worked too well?" Weiss realized, "Ozpin said that we needed to be careful with our words. And that means that Ambrosius doesn't get expressions. Stupid, Weiss! Stupid, stupid, stupid!"
"Weiss?" Yang asked.
"One-way...I told him 'a one-way ticket to Vacuo' and he must've-!" the heiress trailed off in her own frustration.
Little was gently fanning Ruby with a blade of soft, green grass as the hooded Huntress slowly began to awaken from her unconscious state, eyes fluttering open.
"Neo's here too..." the scythe-wielder mumbled, still groggy.
Yang perked up. "Hey, you alright?"
"Y-yeah...yeah I'm...I'm fine. Heat must've gotten to me," Ruby lied, "Winter clothes on a tropical island and all."
"Alright, so," Blake stood up and began pacing, "Crescent Rose is still missing, Yang's arm was stolen somehow... ok, I say we focus on getting everything back first. Once we're back at full strength, we can figure out where Neo and Emerald are and then find a way out of here...wherever here is."
"But what if we can't leave? What if...what if..." Weiss stammered, scared to finish the thought.
"What if we're dead? Until you all found me...I thought I was for sure," Yang chimed in.
"No way we're dead. Ben said-" Ruby paused before she clenched her eyes shut, reopening them soon after. She didn't hear that part. "I think he would've said something about this place being unable to destroy. It's the Relic of Creation, after all."
"That makes sense," Weiss agreed.
"So, I think we're in a way point or something. An in-between that exists in the middle of somewhere else and Earth, like Min's home or the Null Void."
"I think...I think it's more than that," Blake said, noticing rays of light seep between a curtain of vines. The Faunus girl moved towards the natural curtain and pushed them aside, her eyes going wide at the sight she was greeted with.
"Guys...you might wanna see this," Blake gasped.
The group followed Blake to see quite the spectacle. Peeking over the hill, the giant tree Ruby saw from the beach was surrounded by a myriad of other unusual environments including a red forest with a red castle, an area made entirely of creamy desserts and sweets, a forest with giant colorful mushrooms, and other countless locales.
"Woooah." Ruby muttered.
"I think we're...in a fairy tale."
"A fairy tale?" Yang repeated, looking out over the strange and somewhat impossible environments, mainly that dessert island off in the distance, "Know the place is weird but that- that's impossible, right?"
"I mean," Ruby booped Little on the head gently, emphasizing her point.
"Hello! Still here!" Little waved.
"Oh...right," Yang conceded.
"Ok. Let's reword it a bit. What we've seen is...improbable, yes, but we're not actually going to entertain the idea, are we? A fairy tale?" Weiss asked.
"You have a better explanation for what's happening?"
"Let's just try and look at things from a more logical perspective, ok? We all fell from the sky, Ruby made friends with a tiny mouse."
"Friends!" Little cheered.
"Blake and I were captured by giant vines set up as a trap by a tribe of more militant mice," Weiss continued, "And Yang got...her arm stolen by, uh a...what, what did you say it was again?"
"A...talking raccoon riding around on a purple wagon full of trash," Yang deadpanned.
Weiss blinked and her left eye twitched a little.
"Yes, that." the heiress said, through grit teeth. "Okay, I see your point of view."
Weiss just stood there, bluescreened and befuddled. "I am going to go over here now." She announced, walking away and talking nonsense to herself as grappled with the team's current situation.
"As crazy as it sounds, I think I *know which fairy tale we're in. Everything's just felt so…so familiar since we got here." Ruby frowned.
"Exactly. It's 'The Girl Who Fell Through the World.' I… I think we're in the Ever After." Blake surmised.
"But that whole world's just make-believe. It was part of the story we all read as kids." Yang scoffed.
"It's not make-believe, it's where I live!" Little squeaked.
"Can you tell us all about it? Have you ever heard the name Alyx?" Blake questioned.
Little tilted their head. "An..."Alyx"? Is that a purpose?"
"In the story, Alyx fell from the sky and met with the Hunter Mice, got trapped in vines, fought a Jabberwalker and got her knife stolen by...a talking raccoon." Blake recapped, cautiously finishing since Weiss was still in earshot. Hearing those last three words just made the heiress groan, her migraine only worsening the more she thought about all this.
"Then she beat the Red King at a board game, met the Curious Cat, the Rusted Knight, and finally got out through," Yang and Blake turned to look at their escape. "The tree."
"So what now? Do we go to the tree? Look for Alyx? Yang's arm? Ruby's still missing Crescent Rose, too!" Weiss questioned.
"The Jinxy Peddler might have it!" Little announced. Weiss looked ready to snap, frightening the tiny mouse. "W-well, they're the only talking raccoon I know."
"Where might he be?" Blake asked.
"In the town!" Little declared. "And I'll lead the way righ-" Little suddenly yawned, and immediately fell asleep.
The group stared at the little sleeping mouse.
"...let's just follow the road out of here." Weiss huffed, accepting her brain was going to hemorrhage in this place if she tried to think about the logic behind it for more than a minute.