And so, here we are again.
Just as a head's up, I remember talking about something like this with Selene Sokal a while ago, so he might get around to doing something like this in a while, but don't let that stop you from doing whatever the hell that you want with this.
And so, as always, let's begin.
Switch
The premise of this story is simple: Summer Rose defected over to Salem's side when she was pregnant with Ruby, and Cinder eventually went on to take Ruby's place as head of what should be Team RWBY, now known as Team FSBY (Frostbite).
However, what is significant about this story premise, is that while the roles of Cinder and Ruby have been swapped around...
Their personalities have not.
Ruby is still an incredibly optimistic and kind person by nature, and Cinder is still an incredibly power hungry and sadistic bully, now just not on Salem's side any more.
The effect of this is obvious. First, with Cinder and Beacon, in the canon, Team RWBY is one of the biggest powerhouses in their year, and one of the best teams out there.
However, in this story, Team FSBY, with Cinder as its head, becomes incredibly toxic and dysfunctional- Cinder manipulates them for her own gain, Weiss and Yang do nothing but argue with each other, and Blake begins to slink lower and lower into the recesses of her own personality, her own traits of cowardice and persecutory delusions becoming more and more amplified as time goes on- Until by the time of the Vytal Festival, they have devolved into a dysfunctional group of bullies that everybody else avoids like the plague, even Team JNPR, and even Team CRDL.
This means that with Blake constantly abandoning her own team and going off on her own, and with her worst traits slowly being amplified by the toxic effects of her own team, this leads to the other teams, Team JNPR, CFVY, SSSN, and even CRDL, to pick up their slack, and they take over the roles of Team RWBY in the canon, occasionally having to drag FSBY along with them just to get stuff done.
However, with Ruby, the effects on the side of the villains is much more positive. Because Ruby doesn't constantly threaten Roman with death all of the time, the relationship between them is a hell of a lot better than the one that Roman had with Cinder, so much so that they like to drink and chat together regularly, and Roman can even get away with taking the piss out of her a few times and get away with it because Ruby's so nice.
And not only that, but because she's such a nice person, she gets Mercury and Emerald, her 2 minions, to mellow out and become better people as well, just because she's so affable with them, and doesn't threaten or manipulate them on the regular.
In fact, she's so nice, that she's been able to use that niceness to build up a lot of connections in the criminal underworld and councils across Remnant, effectively making her own private empire, just because she doesn't have such an inflated ego as Cinder, and is much more willing to compromise and work with others honestly.
Throughout the story, she ends up befriending Team JNPR, because of course she does, and begins to coerce them into joining her and becoming part of her own inner circle, simply by being honest with them, and just by being herself, and all the while, she's just subtly making fun of Ozpin al of the way as her own empire in the form of a private security company ends up taking over security of the Vytal Festival, and he knows that she's an agent of Salem, but he can't do anything about it because reasons, and she's always politely making fun of him and mocking him for it, though she always apologises afterwards.
In the end, the Vytal festival happens, and, as is the natural course of things, team FSBY finally falls apart and implodes on itself. Wherever this be on live television or not is up to you.
Ruby, and by extension Salem, however, end up getting exactly what they want: The Fall Maiden and the Relic of Choice.
But, they don't destroy Beacon in order to do so.
The Vytal Festival comes and goes, Beacon goes back to normal, and everybody is none the wiser.
And all of this is simply because, thanks to all of the trust that she had garnered, Ruby just simply walked into Beacon Academy, went downstairs, transferred the Fall Maiden powers from Amber to herself (Because she's not a cruel person and wouldn't just kill her), nicked the Relic of Choice, and walked out, with Ozpin being utterly powerless to stop her.
In the end, the bad guys win, Team FSBY completely falls apart, Ozpin is fuming, Salem is laughing in hysterics, and everyone is none the wiser to what's going on.
The end.
Gotta tell ya, this is subtly one of my favourite ideas. Someone please PM me and tell me that they're going to pick this up for me, because I would love to read a story like this.
Anyways, if I ever get an idea in my noggin that I need to jot down, I'll see you all then.
Titanmaster117 out!