Penny felt detached from the world. Almost like she was weightless, suspended midair over a very, very long drop. Not over a cliff or a horizon, but over an atmosphere, thick with tension instead of air. The longer she floated there, the more detached she became, becoming one with the atmosphere—the tension—no, the universe!
Untethered and numb, Penny's soul splintered thread by thread, slowly dissolving into stardust. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling, because it didn't feel like anything at all. She simply unraveled, her ego tugged and strung out like a spindle of yarn, until her Aura was pulled taut enough to dot a constellation. At that moment, Penny stopped feeling nothing, and started feeling everything at once. Like she was becoming everything at once. Her consciousness stretched like the ever-expanding boundaries of space, and she had no words that could encompass how unbelievably free she felt. It was as liberating as it was terrifying.
As her soul and ego alike needled through the tapestry of the cosmos, all of her former, mortal limitations were too small, too frail, and too distant to hold her down any longer. Each string anchoring her to Remnant snapped in succession, freeing her just a little more.
Fear was the first to go. Without a vessel to inhabit, without a body that could break, what use was fear? Afraid no longer, she cast off the total accumulated weight of all her trauma and anxiety and worry and doubt, and Penny felt a little less like herself. She felt more free than that. More abstract.
Next was obligation. These strings were more like cables, Atlesian-quality and Atlesian-strong. Alloy bindings so thoroughly designed she almost felt bad as she burst out of them with ease. She had grown beyond purpose, beyond the self-imposed destiny that came pre-packaged with her creation.
Lastly… was attachment. This took longer to untangle herself from, and with good reason—she didn't want to let go of her life on Remnant. Her dreams, her desires, her friends, her family—it was so much to lose all at once, with so little time to savor them before they were gone from Penny's mind for good. But, no matter how much Penny wanted to hold on to them, no matter how much she wanted to relive each moment she spent with them, recatalog every missing shape and texture their smiles and kindness left etched into her metaphorically existing heart… it wasn't her decision to make.
For the first time since her conception, it was not Penny's choice to be free. The wider universe chose it for her, whether she was ready to go or not. Her attachments frayed apart, face by face, shape by shape, until even her own name felt like it belonged to someone else. Names, another form of attachment, weren't strong enough to hold her back anymore.
Penny, though she did not think of herself as such, began to blend into the void. A familiar star, shrouded in tree roots and vibrant leaves, reached out towards her in a welcoming embrace. Its guiding light promising to usher her towards a greater beyond…
But then another star blipped into the void. Smaller than both the familiar star and even "Penny's" constellation, this new arrival could barely pass itself off as a comet, much less a fellow star. Nonetheless, it burned bright and burned fast, streaking towards "her" in a brilliant burst of smoky green light and determination.
It smoked and sputtered, flickering flames fizzling out in a green, pyrotechnics-like explosion. The smoke and plasmic shrapnel spiraled around the complete and total vastness of "Penny's" being, looping around her constellation like a lasso until it squeezed all of her stardust together—
And with one big sen-sational bang, "Penny" became Penny again, and remembered everything. Even the shapes Arthur Watts had stolen and locked away from her came flooding back into her databases. Images of her father, team RWBY, even her own freckled face—all of them came crashing over her like a meteor shower. Each recovered shape made her feel smaller and smaller, scattered stars condensed into a tiny singularity, until she eventually settled into something approaching solid and solitary matter. Not only were her shapes unlocked, but she couldn't feel a single trace of Arthur's corruptive influence, purged from her soul as absolutely as a virus tossed into the center of a sun.
Looking down at her still starry-shelled form, she noticed a single, sparkling stand of emerald string tied around her wrist, stretching off somewhere she could not reach and could not return:
Home.
"Emerald?" Penny pinched the string between her fingers, drawn towards the trajectory of its course like gravity pulling her into orbit. "I can feel you again." Warm yet distantly fuzzy noise buzzed through the string and reverberated through Penny's wrist. She shook her head at its purpose. "I do not understand."
The string buzzed more furiously and feverishly, digging into her hand until it pierced through—
And Penny felt hot lightning pour under her skin and straight towards her soul. Like primordial broth, her Aura bubbled with electricity and uncertainty in equal measure, the unbridled potential of life gasping for shape beneath the cosmic storms of her being. She longed to mold that shape until it was hers, bend it until its curves and creases formed the coastlines of a body she could be proud of inhabiting.
She understood now, Emerald. Penny could see and feel the power shifting inside her like plate tectonics, heating and cooling over and over again until continents and oceans found equilibrium under her skin. This was a chance to come back and come back better—
And Penny was wasting it.
No matter how much she tried to direct the magic, no matter how desperately she dug at her own chest, to reach down and carve the river valleys where her soul could pass like a current through her circuits… the magic refused to obey her. It only erupted and burst, gnawing on itself like a perpetual natural disaster, ceaselessly ripping the bones of her design apart before she could even begin grafting the flesh together. The magic started to fade, the potential of her rebirth cooling with it to lifeless rock.
Penny curled into her chest, both in a last ditch effort to wrangle control of the magic, and because even made of stardust, she didn't know how else to cry. "I-I don't know what I'm doing, Emerald," she said quietly. "Help me more, please."
But Emerald did not answer. The string connecting them together grew more taut, starting to unravel as Penny's body expanded again. She fought against the pressure threatening to boil over, she thrashed against the universe trying to repurpose her for new parts , but she was just one girl—and barely a real one at that.
What was she supposed to do in the face of the inevitable?
Accepting her fate to be scattered across space and time, Penny let go of her fear once again, reigniting her explosive drift towards the bounds of infinity—
Only for her wrist to yank back as something new wrapped around it.
Turning slightly, she could see a tree root twisting around her arm. It hooked itself through her fingers as precisely as a scalpel, holding her in place as its tendrils reached for Emerald's string. It tied them together, even closer-knit than before.
Above Penny, the familiar and gentle star became brighter, more defined. A voice, distant and soft, spoke through the starlight and bark in effortless harmony, as though each material were one and the same. "I am sorry I cannot do more to help you, little one," said the familiar star. "Your home is not mine to meddle with. But, at the very least…" The star brightened again, shrouding the silhouette of a steady hand as it passed through the light. "I can guide you towards one world or the other."
Penny shuddered as the roots stretched once more, taking Emerald's string and stitching it deeper into Penny's body, closer to her metaphorical heart. She felt warmer.
"Who are you?" Penny asked the familiar star. "What are you doing?"
"I am doing nothing," the familiar star replied. "Only you can decide what happens next."
Penny watched in surreal fascination as Emerald's string was stitched even deeper inside her translucent, incorporeal body. She felt rather overwhelmed. "What… happens next?"
"You have two options," the star explained patiently. "You may either choose to return home, with the aid of your companions and their optimistic magic… or you may send their magic back to Remnant, and continue your journey to your own greater beyond."
Penny thought for a moment, not because she hadn't already made her choice, but because, well… she was curious. "What would happen to me, if I let my ego go?" She had only felt the sheer totality of her ego-death for a moment, but even she could tell her transformation had hardly begun before Emerald interrupted it. "What would I become?"
The star sighed wistfully. "Even I don't know, little one. That's the beauty of creating—the not knowing."
Answered (but not really), Penny simply nodded. She didn't know why, but… she felt safe with this star. Like she could trust it with anything and everyone.
"Okay. I… I want to go back." Penny's voice cracked. Whatever journey she had been about to go on had felt wondrous and new, but she wasn't ready for that yet. She wasn't ready to let go of her strings. She realized that now. And, clearly, her strings weren't ready to let go of her, either:
Emerald's string, as faded it was, tugged more and more at Penny's heart, begging her to follow the path home.
The familiar star took Penny's answer in stride, no judgment in their voice whatsoever. "Very well. If we were outside the Brothers' domain, I could shape you myself with little effort. But even if that was the case, I don't think I would make such a decision. Not for you."
That steady hand pushed through the light again, pressing something solid through to the other side. The object slid down the tree roots, and towards Penny. She gently lifted it by its hilt, and examined what it was:
A hammer.
"You deserve the choice to shape yourself."
The moment Penny heard those words, she felt them reverberate against her heart, stoking a fire in her like the billowing flames of a smith's forge. Penny… did deserve that choice. She deserved lots more choices, and especially the one to shape herself. Confidence grew with heat, and the magic that had once refused her direction earlier now took its rightful place above her heart—
And upon the anvil of her soul.
She struck down, hammering the magic into place. Each strike reconnected circuits and servos alike as stardust was packed into silicon and polymer fibers. Penny's body was her body, and it was high time it remembered that. She gave it another enthusiastic smack for emphasis, summoning freckles and overalls made fresh from the forge.
With her shapes returned to accessible memory, she remembered what she was supposed to look like—she even made a few minor changes, simply because she had the power to choose. And choose she did. New clothes, more freckles, longer hair for her to play with later, the whole works! Honestly, she was surprised she didn't want to change her appearance even more drastically, but… there was something comforting to find in nostalgia. It felt safer to return to normalcy.
As the tumultuous state of her body stabilized, the magic that had churned under her skin settled and fizzled out, not a single drop of it left. It all felt so wonderfully worth it, though, as Penny did a little twirl midair, kicking her bare feet with more happiness than she had felt in a long time.
I feel… real.
Penny gazed gratefully at the star and all of its many helpful roots, and gave a shy, fluttery wave. "T-thank you! Whatever you are!"
Though the familiar star had no visible facial features, Penny could tell they were smiling. "No need to thank me, little one. I am merely repaying my debt to you."
"Debt?"
"Do not worry yourself over the details. It hasn't happened yet. Not from your perspective. But it will, one day."
Before Penny could ask for much needed clarification, Emerald's string tugged harder on her wrist and on her heart. The roots had pulled back, and the void held no more weight over Penny's soul. So, naturally, she was pulled towards the only thing that did still hold weight over Penny, back towards her life on Remnant.
Penny felt the hammer tug from her wrist as well, ready to return to… whatever was behind the light of the familiar star. But, before she let go, and before she returned to Remnant, she remembered one last change she desperately needed to make to her body. Namely, a wriggling, cancerous bit of malware that did not belong in her source code. She scoured her software for its nest, focusing on where she felt Cricket buzzing at the edges of her conscience—
And with one motion, Penny struck the hammer down. The silence that followed was beyond satisfying.
When Penny opened her eyes, she could see Emerald leaning over her face, mouth agape and awestruck. That choked expression only intensified when Penny said, "Salutations—"
In a rare reversal, Penny was not the initiator of an Aura-straining hug. Emerald practically tackled into Penny's chest, shattering her own Aura upon impact. Emerald didn't seem to care though, blubbering incoherently as she just hugged tighter. The smothering embrace was so warm and soft and (truthfully) hurt a little, but in the best way possible:
It made Penny feel alive.
"It's good to see you, too, Emerald," Penny said with a manic giggle, still a little high on the universe. "But making your hugs tighter with your semblance is not necessary. It is not as pleasant as I had imagined." Penny still hugged back anyway, thrilled to be alive, and just… herself! Even deep in the uncharted wastelands of the Lost Continent, Penny found the strength to smile again, like there was a weight off her conscience.
Emerald sniffled, wiping her face and snot on Penny's new overalls (oh dear). But as she pulled back from Penny's neck, breath still heavy and warm against Penny's skin, Emerald's relief bent into confusion. "I'm… not using my semblance on you," she said weakly. "My Aura is too cooked for that right now."
It took approximately two-hundred and thirty-seven milliseconds before Penny fully processed what Emerald had said. Even then, with all of her computing power restored, she at first only replied, "Pardon?"
But as she reacclimated herself to her body—her new, chosen body she had bespoken just for herself—she felt more than just Emerald grace her skin. She felt her new skirt graze across her knees, and the rough texture of the stone press into her back. For a moment, she thought she had actually become human, but her flickering HUD display quickly shook herself free of that notion. It wasn't until she lifted her hand, accidentally brushing it against Ruby's unconscious face, that she noticed the green sparks of Aura dancing along her fingertips.
With that one data point, everything fell into place.
"Emerald," Penny began excitedly, wildly flapping her hands against the ground, against her clothes, and against both of the girls within arms reach (because she could). "I think I just unlocked my semblance!"
Emerald, visibly confused and wiping tears off her face, could only sputter as Penny lunged forward and commandeered her hands for further study. "Y-yeah? What is it?"
Penny squealed as she held Emerald's hands close to her chest, testing out the new neural pathways her Aura formed throughout her body, simulating an entire nervous system with her soul as the emulator. A semblance so perfectly her own, she already had a name for it:
"Sen-sational."
Ruby felt like she was either about to die, or wake up. Considering the porcupine-like lump in her gut, she wasn't sure which was preferable. But when her tummy rumbles escalated from excruciating, to excruciating AND hungry, she could only feign death for so long. She stirred uncomfortably to the waking world, every organ aching horribly as she was jostled by something carrying her body very, very slowly. The only silver lining was when she finished opening her eyes—
She immediately made eye contact with the glittering gaze of Penny Polendina. Penny stared down at her brightly, excitement palpable even as she put a shushing finger to her lips. Wherever they were, Penny was walking low to the ground as she held Ruby in a careful bridal carry.
"Hi, Ruby," Penny whispered. "Please keep your voice down. We are being sneaky."
It was a good thing Ruby could barely open her mouth, then, much less speak with volume. Parched and dehydrated, even smacking her lips together felt like folding sandpaper. Even so, she couldn't help but rasp, "Penny… you…" She reached out with one trembling hand, cradling Penny's cheek. "You found your freckles." Ruby thought someone had stolen them or something.
Penny stifled a giggle, shuddering slightly as Ruby's fingers brushed down her chin. "C-careful. I wasn't ready for that. I'm still very sensitive." That was a new feature, as far as Ruby could remember.
Who knew Penny could be improved?
"You two are disgustingly cute, you know that?"
Ruby turned painfully to Emerald, who was crouching ahead of them. She was peering over a small boulder, tracking something with her eyes that Ruby could not see. "How are you feeling, brat?"
Ruby's mood soured again (and not because of her stomach). "As green as your hair."
Emerald scoffed. "Haha, funny. Listen, can you stand, or not? Getting past those things will be easier if you can actually run on your own."
Ruby tried her best to bend her knees, but they felt as sturdy as pool noodles. Penny supported her as Ruby fell back into her open arms with a dejected groan. "What things?"
Emerald pointed past the boulder with her chin, in the direction of a desolate mountain just ahead of them. "Nevermores. A big fucking flock of them, too. I'd use my semblance, but…" She nodded towards the mountain's peak. "There's a bunch of smaller ones nesting up there. I can trick one mind with accuracy, and two in a pinch, but anything past that and I'll blow a fucking brain cell."
Ruby squinted, and she could also see the smaller ones (just barely). "Smaller" being average sized, with maybe a few tiny chicks sprinkled here and there. Fiddlesticks. "Wait, how come they aren't already swarming us?" Being sneaky could only last so long against the Grimm with their trademark negative-nelly sniffers. Especially while staying in one stationary place for too long. "We should just circle around them, if we aren't confident we can take them."
Emerald shook her head. "Tried that already. Nevermores on every peak around us, except if we go backwards. And I doubt any of us want to go back towards the castle right now." Ruby could agree with that (reluctantly). "To answer your first question, well—"
"It turns out you are an excellent Grimm cloaking device, Ruby!" Penny interrupted, hissing directly into Ruby's ear (ow). "The Grimm don't sense our negativity as easily because of your… modifications." Penny didn't sound excited anymore. "I'm so sorry she did that to you, Ruby. I should've stopped her."
"That's not true at all, Penny," Ruby assured her—because Ruby should have stopped Salem. Ruby should've been strong enough for the both of them. Her own weakness was not Penny's responsibility. "It's not your fault—"
"Hey, team friendship-is-magic?" Emerald cut in (again). "We don't have time for this. You two can hash whatever shit you want whenever we're outta this mess. Even with Ruby hiding us like Grimm piss, we can't hide our negative emotions forever."
Ruby had half a mind to throw a rock at her head for ruining the moment, but she was too utterly baffled by one particular part of that last sentence. "How am I Grimm piss? Grimm don't piss!"
"You know, like how some hunters use deer piss to hide from deer?" Emerald tried explaining (badly). Ruby was 70% sure that wasn't the reason that the (less cool) hunters did that. "You're like that, but for Grimm with all your… Grimm gunk you've been spitting out. So you're deer piss, but for Grimm. Grimm piss." At Ruby's judgmental glare, she defended herself some more. "Look, if you want a prettier analogy, you're gonna have to ask Oz later, when he's not as tapped out. He's the one that explained it to us to begin with, I'm just paraphrasing."
Ruby blinked. Right, Oz… spoke through Emerald's mouth earlier. How did that work? As she thought about their escape, though, she couldn't help thinking back to her one-sided fight with Salem. Specifically…
Ruby remembered getting burned. She swore her eyelids sloshed clean off, as liquid as her boiling, pained tears, while her Silver Eyes melted all of the Grimm flesh covering her face. And then after that, she just… woke up, perfectly fine and… and normal, before she joined Emerald and Penny running as fast as possible out of the castle. She even felt normal (despite all of her stomach aches and bile in her teeth). At the very least, she didn't crave blood anymore, so… that was something. Honestly, even her head felt sorta... lighter, almost. Like all the dark impulses in her mind were just stripped away.
Did anything else change back?
She looked down at her hands and, sure enough, her veins weren't black—er, weren't AS black as before. There were still a few black tendrils, spreading down from her shoulders towards her wrists, as though it was reinfecting her all over again.
What the heck is going on with me?
"Ruby?" Penny asked quietly. "Are you okay?"
Ruby, startled, glanced away from her wrists and up towards Penny's face. She definitely looked more normal (compared to the weird, yassified blondie she was before). Was Ruby… misremembering things? Her head had been rather… fuzzy, while working under the weight of all that Grimm. Yet, there was one detail about Penny's new (yet still very much cute) appearance that pointed away from Ruby being crazy:
A small patch of still blonde hair, curling up like a cowlick just above Penny's forehead. It had a strange consistency compared to the rest of her hair, oddly displaced and uneven. The blobby, bleached-out pattern of the patch looked almost like… well, like a stain.
Or a blood spatter.
Ruby frowned. While she had been drugged up and sitting in a hole all this time… what had happened to Penny? What torture had Salem put her through, while Ruby wasn't there to support her?
"Are you okay?" Ruby turned the question around, not bothering to answer Penny first. This was more important.
Penny tilted her head, the crease of her smile slipping briefly before it righted itself. "I'm… I'm doing better than this morning, that's for sure." She paused. "Additionally, I think I met God. That is also a very significant thing that possibly happened."
Ruby buffered. "Wut?"
Penny repeated herself. "I said I think I met God, and—Oh! Also they let me borrow a very nifty hammer—"
"Again," Emerald interrupted. "Can you two please, please focus? We need to figure out a way past these things before—"
A tiny Nevermore chick landed right on top of the boulder Emerald was hiding behind. It cocked its head at Ruby curiously, but glared at everyone else.
Oh. Well—
"Shit!" Emerald tried swinging at it with Crescent Rose (without explicit consent!), but fluttered off before CR could shred it into abstract bird paste. It hovered out of melee range instead, squawking at the top of its lungs—-
Attracting the attention of every Nevermore nesting on the mountain.
Sneaky quickly became runny, Emerald taking the lead of the trio as they rushed forward. She swung CR in clumsy, amateur arcs in every direction, trying (and failing) to clear a path through the Nevermore chicks before the real threats descended. "You can take over whenever, Oz! I don't know how to use this glorified farming tool."
Rude, but now wasn't the time to dwell on the insult (or Emerald's obviously crummy taste in weapon design). Another deluge of Grimm gunk crawled up Ruby's throat, thickening with barbs against her tongue. It only worsened as her heart rate picked up, Penny riling her adrenaline more and more as she maneuvered Ruby under Nevermore talon after Nevermore talon.
Ah, right—negative emotions made her Grimm parts act up. Who could've possibly guessed that?
However, understanding the cause did not prevent the symptoms in the slightest. Brambles stirred under her spine, and squirmed up her throat, each vine poising itself to strike at Ruby's command.
Even if it had to rip through her own flesh to obey her.
Which, now that she thought about it… was that such a bad thing? Especially if her eyes could, like, magically heal herself or something. Sometimes, change means scars. But if Ruby could undo her scars, undo the damage she took from every change the world forced on her…
Why was she even hesitating? Penny and Emerald were endangering themselves in her place as the "average" Nevermores sent a hailstorm of truck-sized feathers raining upon them. Penny let out a squeak of alarm as one of the feather-missiles almost razed her across the back, while Emerald outright screamed as one cut her across the shoulder, shattering her (apparently) already drained Aura.
Taking in the desperate situation, Ruby resolved herself to do what needed to be done, no matter how much it hurt. She'd (probably) get better anyway, so it didn't matter. It was time to do what she was born to do:
Be a hero.
She pulled herself up over Penny's shoulders, scanning for the closest Nevermore, before she locked her eyes onto her first target. The arch of her spin bent itself into a crooked angle as she croaked out, "Kill."
Expecting pain was not the same thing as being ready for it. She couldn't hold back her tears as her bramble vines sprouted out and through the skin of her back. Each stalk lunged towards the Nevermore before it could dive towards Penny.
It seemed almost confused, tilting its beak in befuddlement, as Ruby's thorns punctured through its chest, and out of its back. Wings went limp while Ruby's vines dug deeper into the gaping wound, stretching the puncture hole to its limit—
Until the Nevermore was split in half, already disintegrating into Grimm ash before its dismembered body could hit the ground.
Ruby felt like she was gonna puke again, but she mustered a half-smile anyway. She could do this! "Okay, Penny, get behind me, I'm going for another one—" But when Ruby turned to look at Penny—
Penny was horrified. Completely blue screen-frozen, looking past Ruby like she didn't even know what Ruby was, much less recognize her.
This is fine. Because this is temporary.
Ruby ignored Penny's (reasonable) reaction, instead pushing herself out of Penny's arms, and lining up the next shot. She spat up a wad of loose thorns as she hissed, once more, "Kill."
Vines raked out again and again, swatting Nevermore down like flies. Many of them were completely dumbstruck, not even bothering to dodge Ruby's attacks as she ripped them apart like tissue paper. Even the smarter ones, keeping themselves at distance as they circled back around like vultures, didn't know what to do with Ruby.
As Ruby's Grimm side grew back more and more, almost reaching her eyes again as the brambles sprouted out of her teeth, so, too, did her Grimm senses return. She could hear the muddled, animalistic thoughts of the Nevermore as they kept themselves out of Ruby's reach. No exact words, but she could get the gist of it easily enough: why was one of their own kind attacking them? They couldn't understand it; Grimm don't kill other Grimm. Such behavior wasn't in their nature.
But it sure as fuck was in Ruby's.
Killing Grimm was her family business—hell, it was practically in her blood—and she reveled in the chance of following in her mother's footsteps. She grinned wickedly as she hoisted herself into the air, brambles scuttling her forward like articulated spider legs. If the rest of the flock weren't going to come down so Ruby could rip them asunder—
Then she was going to have to go up.
"Ruby?" Penny said distantly, despite standing rather close behind her. "We can go now…"
Ruby shook her head. "No, we can't." She rooted her brambles into the mountain side, clawing her way towards the weak, cowardly prey hovering under the murky horizon. "Not until I kill them all."
Ruby Rose was a huntress. Even clad in thorns and monster skin, nothing about the core of her character had changed. She yearned for the bitter petrichor-like scent of Grimm ash in the air. She longed to hear the choked, broken whimpers of an eviscerated Beowolf as its maw was rent flying from its throat. She craved to taste whatever Grimm must taste like, tinged with tangy irony.
Ruby Rose was a huntress. And in the Grimm infested wasteland stretching around her to no end…
There was much hunting to do.
As Ruby reached the zenith of the mountain peak, she could barely make out both Emerald and Penny shouting something at her. Their exact words were lost under the pressure of Ruby's current altitude, but she could sense their concern all the same. She didn't know what they were so worried about, though—
This would only take a second.
"Kill," Ruby said with relish. "Leave no survivors."
Her brambles complied with gusto. They stretched out from under her flesh, ripping through tendons and ligaments alike for more room to grow. They whipped towards the nearest Nevermore, serrated thorns at the ready to latch and yank the Grimm out of the sky. It would be easier to kill them all at once, after she clipped their wings.
In response, many of the remaining Nevermore simply flew out of bramble range, fleeing from Ruby all together. But the oldest, adorned with thick battle scars and hard-earned pride, proved themselves as more competent prey. No longer perceiving Ruby as one of their own, the older Nevermore circled in formation, sending a barrage of sharpened feathers from many directions at once.
Ruby cackled as the maelstrom of blades descended upon her—frankly, she welcomed the challenge. Nimbly, her brambles twirled her out of harm's reach, dancing through the gaps between the feathers easily enough. Blood pumping black, adrenaline running colder than her freezing veins, Ruby felt alive. This was what she was born for—this was why her mother even bothered to make her:
To kill Grimm.
Vision tinting red as the nest of thorns dug around her face again, Ruby could only see victory through the bloody haze shrouding her eyes. So confident in her newfound, monstrous strength, she didn't even try dodging the final feather volley before she made her counterattack. Her brambles rose up to defend her like cobra-heads, hissing in a serpentine arc as she slashed them towards the storm of feathers—
But the feathers were far sturdier, and far sharper, than Ruby had realized. They cleaved through her brambles as easily as they whistled through the mountain air, cutting past her defenses without relent or mercy. She ducked under them the best she could without her brambles's support, growling as she prepared to sprout another batch of thorns.
Before she could, Ruby choked as something thick and viscous bubbled out from her throat, staining her chin in a sudden sputter. Glancing down with spinning vision, she realized with epiphanous dread that the fluid spilling from her lips wasn't black, but red. It only took another further glance to find the massive, jagged shaft-end of a Nevermore feather piercing through the side of her chest, just below one of her exposed ribs. She could count at least three of them, bloody and protruding, through the grotesque mess of… whatever organ used to be there a second ago.
A feeble reservoir of her Aura twinged in sympathy, but did nothing more as Ruby fell to her knees, utterly incapable of looking away from the new hole in her chest.
"Oh, right." She remembered, in just that moment, that her Aura wouldn't work over her Grimm parts, and probably hadn't been protecting her at all for the entire fight. It was the last rational and sane thought she had before pain consumed every brain cell she had left. Sound and light and texture became abstract and secondary concepts, inconsequential compared to the tense throbs of her own fading heartbeat. Nerves on fire, her sense of self just as shaky as her wet, wheezing breaths, she couldn't tell if she was the one screaming, or someone else.
Or maybe everyone was screaming, including Ruby. She could certainly see Penny's face breaking into a loud something as she appeared suddenly in frame. Emerald was there, too, off in the blurry background, also yelling while she fired shots from Crescent Rose (poorly) towards the older Nevermore.
While Penny fretted over her, hands frantic and eyes spiraling into pinwheel icons, Ruby could only fight to keep her own eyes open, before she (probably) closed them for good. As her vision blurred and blurred some more, blood and Grimm matter staining her eyes in a black and red swirl, Ruby caught sight of the largest, most ancient Nevermore she had ever seen out in the field. It only had eyes for Ruby, dive-bombing towards her with a talon thick enough the split the mountain in half—
Only for the black and red swirl in Ruby's eyes to solidify into something real, severing the articulated bone from the rest of its Grimm flesh. The ancient Nevermore screeched as its eviscerated talon flew off the mountain side, and down into the dark. In its place, a violent and spinning vortex carved itself into existence, shredding through any Nevermore that strayed too close. After a moment, the vortex stabilized, and Ruby swore an entirely new subtype of Nevermore stepped out from the other side.
A humanoid Grimm, garbed in scarlet red armor and a mane of black, feathery hair. A beaked, bone-white face, emblazoned by the glow of somehow familiar red eyes. Ruby must have started hallucinating as the Grimm-person pointed the long blade of a red odachi towards the sky. The last thing Ruby saw before she lost an important blinking contest with herself, was those red, really, really familiar eyes turn and lock onto her own. From the last vestiges of her numbing Grimm senses, Ruby could feel both a warring tide of both anger and fear shroud the Grimm in bloody red.
"Not again," The Nevermore lady growled. "Never again!" She swung her sword—
And then Ruby passed out.
Even with half of her body still encased in petrified stone, Salem was meticulous in the affairs of her castle's upkeep. Commands were relayed, magic was put into motion, and thus her Seers went to work repairing the damage that Rose girl left in her wake. But, of course, it wasn't just Salem's home or her body that her rebellious little pet-in-progress had cast into ruin—
She had even shook the board of two of her most valuable pawns.
Tyrian, bloody and mutilated, was left a near comatose disgrace. She found him almost instantly after her fall from Arthur's sundered workshop. Splattered against the edges of the transmutation circle that was supposed to keep Ruby Rose contained until her transformation was complete. Instead, both her magic and Tyrian failed her, letting loose a wild Rose before it could be properly pruned.
What a waste.
At least I still have the hound in gestation, Salem thought bitterly, picking with her nails at the layer of stone still swallowing her left arm. Though, with how that Rose defied my influence, she is clearly the more valuable test subject. She may have a more direct bloodline to the brothers than I realized.
And on the subject of subjects—
Arthur Watts was dead.
She had found his mangled corpse strewn upon the wreckage of his modified Aura Transfer Device. With a sigh of both annoyance and magic, she summoned Grimm tendrils from the ground to organize what was still salvageable, from what was not. Mainly, that meant separating Arthur quite literally from his work, throwing what was left of his body to be dissolved and burned away in one of her many Grimm pools.
As she finished (figuratively) scrubbing the stains of Arthur on the floor, one of her Grimm seers descended by her side.
Perfect. Right on schedule.
"Mortimer," Salem greeted warmly. "How goes the search for my family?"
Mortimer warbled and hissed, its thoughts pouring like steam from its porous body.
"I see. That is… rather disappointing." Over an hour, and still no sign of her daughter or her husband or her subject. "No matter. Simply keep relaying the command to our forces—spread the word to the very edges of this continent if necessary. We will not lose track of them, as we did my last Rose experiment."
Mortimer bobbed its whole body in acknowledgement, hovering off to relay that urgency to the rest of her seers. Hopefully, even the younger Grimm, as crude and imprecise as they were, would hear Salem's command before they found her runaways. Otherwise… they would simply execute the simple programming of their base instincts: to destroy.
Salem would rather avoid that.
It would be such a hassle to track down Ozma all over again if he reincarnated, especially while her best tracker was… indisposed.
Her daughter, Penny (as she was currently named anyway) would be a far more noticeable loss. Arthur had never even begun the transfer of Salem's Aura into her daughter. So she wasn't immortal, just… nearly immortal. As long as her Grimm could fetch Penny's core in one piece, then not all was lost—but still, the chances of her dying like a mere mortal were not zero.
As far as Salem was concerned, such a gamble of fate was unacceptable. She had lost too many daughters. Her original four, from before Ozma's betrayal, were only the first to be taken from her. Over the millennia, as Ozma betrayed her trust again and again, crawling back to her but always abandoning her in the end—
They had a total of thirteen daughters. Not all died young, either. It was a crime against nature, to watch one's own children die from old age.
It was not a crime Salem was willing to let the gods commit ever again.
Over the next few minutes, Salem carved more and more of the stone layers off from her flesh, peeling back the sediment like a layer of dead skin. For reasons Salem had not yet fully unraveled, Ruby Rose's silver eyes had been particularly potent, petrifying her even more absolutely than her mother's eyes had in the past.
Another gift from my husband, no doubt.
From past experience, Salem knew she could simply sever her flesh from the stone, and grow a new limb even faster than waiting for her curse to peel back the rock on its own. Yet, there was an underlying itch beneath the stone layered over her left arm, the hand that had been reaching out towards Ruby (and thus had been the closest to the blast radius). The itch was new, unfamiliar, and slightly painful in a way Salem could not find the words to describe.
So, while she waited for her Grimm to continue their search, she continued scraping the stone away, sediment by sediment, careful not to damage the flesh beneath so she could examine the anomaly without contamination. When she finally peeled back the last of the stone, the hand revealed to her was nearly unrecognizable.
Well, this is a surprise.
Her left hand, once deathly pale and clotted with Grimm matter, now pulsed with warm veins and even warmer skin tones.
Ozma wasn't trying to kill her at all—
He was trying to fix her.
It was so hopelessly romantic, so utterly pointless, and so obviously avoiding the inevitable. To think, she almost believed he had made something dangerous. Salem could only smile fondly at Ozma's harmless antics.
Oh, husband, you sentimental fool… this doesn't change anything at all.
In mere moments, her left hand turned pale again, Grimm matter rushing to reinfect her veins with but the force of a single thought.
As she considered lessening the degree of Ozma's next punishment (in light of how he found yet another surprising way to make her laugh), Salem's mood only continued to brighten as the cracked lights of the Aura Transfer Device flashed to life—
And a hollow, familiar voice echoed out from its cold, metal exterior.
"Your grace," drawled Arthur's ghost. "I've made a breakthrough."
Over the course of her life, Emerald had met many scary women. She'd been attracted to some, almost killed by others (with some overlap in between), but none of those encounters could have prepared her for the ruthless swagger of Raven Branwen.
With a single swipe of her sword, a flying Grimm probably older than most kingdoms—a Nevermore almost the size of the fucking Wyvern back at Beacon—was rent to nothing but dust on the wind, whisked up by sudden storm clouds rolling on the horizon.
Emerald could do little but gape as Raven made quick work of the rest, strutting through like fury personified, before she pushed past Emerald without a thought and joined Penny by Ruby's side. The bandit clutched at the many beaded necklaces around her neck, expression hidden behind her mask as she mumbled something quietly but harshly under her breath.
Penny was just as flustered as Emerald at Raven's arrival, but robo-girl was also shaking uncontrollably as she kept her trembling hands on Ruby's chest, trying desperately to stop the flow of blood from Ruby's punctured stomach.
So… diplomacy fell to Emerald. Awesome.
"Uh, Ma'am—"
Raven's eyes snapped towards Emerald in an instant, the bandit's irises so goddamn blood-shot red, Emerald swore they almost looked on fire.
Whatever words came after Ma'am were missing in transit on the trek out of Emerald's throat. Hoping to pass this problem off to someone with more experience in the Branwen department, Emerald reached out to where she recently felt Ozpin nestle in the back of her mind—
"Believe me when I say that bringing me into this is the last thing that you should do," Ozpin interjected, mentally slapping her away from his soul. "Raven despises me, but more importantly, we don't have time for this—check on Miss Rose's condition, now!"
Put between a rock and a hard place, Emerald took a step towards Ruby, only now seeing the literal bones sticking out of the poor kid's abdomen. "Holy shit. That looks bad."
Before Oz could lose his mind at Emerald's obvious remark, Raven beat him to it. "Yeah, no fucking duh." She stood up, ignoring Penny's protests as she hoisted Ruby into her arms. The sudden force of movement prompted both another pained whimper from Ruby, and another gush of blood to spurt from her open stomach.
"C-careful," Penny said weakly, still shell-shocked and barely holding it together as she trailed after Raven.
In response, Raven scoffed, expression still hidden as she replied, "I know what I'm doing, brat. She'll be fine. She has to be fine," she added softly, almost to herself.
At first, Emerald didn't know what Raven was doing as she pressed one of her hands hard against Ruby's wound. But then, Raven began to mutter something, rhythmic and low, that Oz seemed to recognize.
"Oh, thank the gods," Oz breathed. "She still knows the words."
Ruby gasped again, but this time, there was a long choked sigh of relief as her wound flashed in red light—
And Ruby's Aura flared over the gashed opening in her stomach.
The wound did not close, but the flow of Ruby's blood trickled to a crawl, stabilizing her condition. Raven let out a long breath at almost the same time Emerald did. Penny was right there with them, despite not having a breath to let loose.
"How did you do that?" Penny asked in awestruck wonder. "A semblance?"
"No, but I'm not explaining this shit right now, Carrot Top," Raven said quickly, fumbling with her sword while she carried Ruby in her other arm. She used her free hand to slice another portal into the air. "This is a band-aid solution, not real treatment. If she's gonna stand any chance, I need to get her back to the tribe, now." She glanced back at Penny and Emerald. "What the fuck are you two staring at? You coming, or not?"
Penny paused only briefly before following after her and Ruby, mumbling in an odd cadence, "Carrot Top?"
Emerald followed, too, albeit more reluctantly. She didn't know much about Raven, aside from being on both Oz AND Salem's bad side.
"We don't have much of a choice," Oz conceded. "In many ways, we're lucky she found us… somehow." He paused. "Just, whatever you do, do not let her know I am here. She never forgave me for what I did to her eyes."
Wait, what the fuck did you do to her eyes—
But that thought was cut off as Emerald lurched forward, her body condensed through space like matter through a black hole, before she and Penny and Ruby were shunted off to another corner of Remnant. All of them, together, fading into nothing but fleeting yet brilliant sparks in the dark.
