Chapter Text
Smoke. The first thing that Neo registered was multicolored smoke bordering on hallucinogenic delusions filling her sight. Wha… What happened? she wondered.
One by one, the memories trickled in: creating the Jabberwalkers, attacking the village, luring Ruby into her trap…
Ruby. She was gone, wasn’t she? Yes, that was the plan, and it had gone swimmingly. The only problem there had been the cat–
The cat.
It all came back to her at once. After the deed was done, the cat had… Neo didn’t have the slightest idea about what exactly it did—everything after that was a blank—but she did know it would probably be best to scramble before ever getting the opportunity to find out.
Her fear was compounded by a pulsing white light, and a deep cackle split the air, driving the point home; she needed to get out, now.
Neo blindly stumbled through the colorful fog, barely able to put one foot in front of the other through her disorientation. Still, that was all she needed. Left, right, left, right, left…
Suddenly, she broke through the fog. A tree branch lay before her, dotted with maple leaves the same color as the smoke. And nothing lay below her but a small inferno at the bottom of a pit, billowing the same smoke upward.
Neo was falling.
Ruby was falling.
Crescent Rose plummeted in front of her, tantalizingly just out of reach. There it was: the perfect combination of who she was and wanted to be, staring her in the face. Could it really have been so simple after all of that?
‘Maybe,’ or so the Blacksmith had said. Was that truly enough to assuage the terrible losses amidst the Fall of Atlas? No, Ruby couldn’t lie to herself; intentional or not, she’d given up the idea of an easy life a long time ago.
That didn’t mean that it wasn’t enough to at least take one more leap.
She stretched her arm out, willing herself forward and closing the distance inch by inch until the scythe was scraping her fing–
Out of nowhere, something slammed into Ruby, sending her spiraling off course. As she spun every which way, she tried to identify what it was, but saw nothing but the now-distant sight of rose petals trailing off in the distance.
Now she started to panic. Had something unexpected happened, or was the Blacksmith lying the whole time? What would happen to her now?
Suddenly, a long, thin object drifted in front of her. It appeared murky with colors smeared as if it was a picture with low resolution. Ruby could only definitively make out the details of one end: a black, caned hilt.
It only took a second for realization to dawn on her. No, Ruby thought, this isn’t right, this isn’t me, this is–
A feminine voice rang through her head without warning. “This weapon will do.”
Before Ruby knew what was happening, the hilt was firmly grasped in her hand, and the world dissolved away.
Jaune coughed, sputtering for breath. “Unbelievable,” he grumbled. The life of one of his closest friends—the life that he had endangered by pushing her towards the tree’s… wrath? Mercy? Abstractly defined method of acceptance, probably? Jaune wasn’t sure anymore—was in further jeopardy thanks to that damned cat, and here he was again, unable to continue in the fight for her future.
Well, he had smoked the cat out of Neo, and maybe that was enough to–
His train of thought was derailed by an explosion of white light, so bright he could barely see the outlines of everyone else. They were stationary; the fight had ground to a halt. When the light faded, a new figure was revealed: one clad in red and black, wielding a similarly colored scythe.
Shouts of elation rose up from Ruby’s team. “Ruby!” “You’re– You’re you!” “How?” Jaune smiled and craned his neck a bit further up… just in time to see a distinctive red-lined bowler hat drift down from above and perfectly land on her head. A bolt of confusion struck them all, rendering the three girls motionless.
The cat took advantage and immediately leapt at Ruby to a cry of “How PURRFECT!!!” Yang barely acknowledged the pun, instead jolting herself back into action. Her sister, wearing Neo’s hat or not, was still in danger, and now was no time to stand idly by.
She watched from across the tree as Ruby perfectly parried the cat’s furious swipe. The clash preceded an explosion of movement, as she ripped off lightning-fast slash after slash from every conceivable angle, weaving and leaping in and out of range as a cloud of rose petals at breakneck speed.
Yang’s heart rose as her sister continued to push the offensive. The incident with the Jabberwalkers still resided in the back of her mind, but it seemed like that was well and truly in the past for Ruby; she was swinging the scythe with all the skill and confidence Yang knew came from years of experience and training. Still, the cat managed to hold their own, deflecting nearly every blow, and through it all, the bowler hat somehow remained firmly nested on Ruby’s head.
To her sides, Yang saw Weiss and Blake hurrying into a flanking position, and she joined them, rushing up the middle just as the cat somehow caught Crescent Rose’s shaft mid-swing. Before anyone else could react, they yanked the scythe out of Ruby’s hands and flung it over their shoulder.
“No!” Weiss yelled. She pivoted on the spot and frantically summoned a solid glyph high in the air. It intercepted the flying weapon, sending it tumbling toward the ground right at the edge of the platform. Wasting no time, Weiss turned around to find Yang and Blake holding the cat’s attention with light suppressing fire as Ruby used her Semblance to zoom out of the melee.
Weiss conjured another glyph, spewing a hail of ice shards at the feline. They shrugged each shot off and wildly leapt at her. She quickly dismissed the glyph and raised Myrtenaster to block.
Out of nowhere, Ruby came flying over her head and successfully deflected the attack, a motion so quick Weiss barely caught a glimpse. The glimpse, however, was concerning; Ruby wasn’t wielding Crescent Rose—which made sense on a rational level; there was no way she could have recovered her weapon that fast—but instead held Neo’s parasol.
Yes, minus the hat she had seemed just like herself, but this was something else. Where’d she get the weapon from? How did she use it so effortlessly? And if her hat and umbrella of death were here, then where was Neo? What had even happened in the tree?
Even the Curious Cat seemed fazed. The feline had shifted focus to Ruby and kept attacking, but rather than welcoming the fierce meetings of claw and metal from earlier, she was incredibly evasive, dodging every single swipe with remarkable grace and minimal movement.
Blake was conflicted. On one hand, she was itching to jump to her leader’s aid, but on the other hand, it didn’t look like she needed it. The cat was a formidable foe—Jaune was proof enough of that—but had yet to land a single scratch and was growing increasingly frustrated.
A particularly greedy thrust met nothing but air, and in the moment the Cat was still off balance, Ruby rocked them with a wildly uncharacteristic high kick to the face that was immediately followed up with a parasol-aided backhand, sending them tumbling towards Blake. Shelving her many questions for later, she seized the opportunity, slinging her ribboned pistol around the cat’s leg and pulling the rug out from under them. Weiss added a glyph that rooted them to the floor, perfectly setting up Yang for a flying haymaker aided with another pair of glyphs.
The punch connected, its force cracking the wood directly below and throwing up a cloud of dust. Before it had the chance to clear, Ruby slid in and stabbed the luminescent outline of the prone cat with the parasol’s razor-sharp tip before daintily hopping back out. A little piece of Blake’s mind broke. Did Ruby—the sweetest, kindest soul she’d ever known—seriously just skewer the cat without a sense of remorse? No, something had to be wrong, seriously wrong.
When the dust finally settled, the cat had reverted back to their smaller purple-and-blue form and was struggling to get up from the ground. “You’re… you’re broken!” they pathetically sputtered. “You break everything you touch! I call humans… weak! Con–”
Their diatribe was cut off by a long, spindly four-fingered hand that yanked the cat and Blake’s focus backward. The hand belonged to a Jabberwalker—No, no, no, Blake pleaded inside while the cat screamed the same—flanked by several more of its kind—no no no no no—acting at the flick of a parasol—nooooooooooo!
The Curious Cat was no more, and Ruby smiled brightly. The smile was met with the sounds of weapons redrawn and pointed at her. Weiss, Blake, and Yang alike could barely believe it; Neo had been Ruby that entire time? Then where was Ruby? Did she…did Neo…
She didn’t seem too keen on giving an answer, as Ruby—no, Neo—crossed her legs, took the hat off with her right hand while leaning her parasol on the ground with the other, and curtsied.
Then her eyes shimmered pink for an instant, and she collapsed to the ground.
When her eyelids fluttered open, Ruby was staring up the barrel of not just a gun, but multiple guns and a rapier’s point that were all too familiar. “Y-Yang?” she stammered. Her sister slowly retracted her fists, and Weiss and Blake did the same.
“Ruby?” she replied. It wasn’t a statement or recognition, but a question.
“Yang… what happened?” she wearily asked, breaking the moment of dead silence. Her team glanced among themselves.
“…Do you remember anything?” Blake eventually prompted.
Ruby wracked her clouded brain for memories as she clambered up to a sitting position. “I was… I was in the tree. Well, I was just leaving the tree—I think—when something slammed into me,” she pieced together, “and for some reason, I was holding Neo’s parasol…” She moved to gesture with her arms but noticed for the first time that the exact parasol was lightly clutched in her left hand. “Gah!”
Ruby reflexively twitched her arm, sending the weapon clattering away before coming to rest several feet later. She never let it out of her sight, holding an unbroken petrified gaze. That moment stretched on for what felt like an eternity until someone coughed lightly, breaking her out of the spell. Her gaze was redirected to her team, who were still looking at her with hints of expectation and unease.
“Right…” she resumed. “I came out of the tree, and Crescent Rose was with me again. Then, Curious attacked, and—wait, that was Curious, right?” The three nodded. “Okay. So things were relatively normal until they tossed Crescent Rose away… wait, where is it?”
Weiss pointed to the edge of the tree platform, where the scythe lay unfolded and untouched. Without sparing so much as a thought, Ruby broke into a cloud of petals, burst towards the edge, and returned still sitting with Crescent Rose clutched tightly in her arms.
“Whew.” Ruby let out a small sigh of relief. “Oh, uh, sorry I keep getting sidetracked…” she apologized, tilting her head downward.
Weiss knelt down to her level. “No, Ruby, don’t worry about it,” she reassured with a touch of authority. “Take all the time you need.” She placed her hand on Ruby’s shoulder, and she promptly smiled.
“Thanks, Weiss,” Ruby warmly appreciated before looking back up. “Now where was I? Oh, right, the cat threw Crescent Rose away, and I dashed to retrieve it, but…” She trailed off for a moment. “On the way there, however, I noticed Hush, and suddenly I wasn’t in control of myself.” She paused again, considering how to best relay exactly what had happened—a difficult task, given that she didn’t understand it herself.
“It was like… it was like I was driving Dad’s car and suddenly got thrown into the backseat,” she explained. “I was only able to catch a tiny bit—you were in the middle of our variation of the Ace Ops’ “Prone Enemy Team Attack No. 2”—everything else was… blank, like someone else was behind the wheel.”
The three considered her for a moment. “Wait,” Yang realized, “what did you just call Neo’s parasol?”
“Hush,” rang the feminine voice from the tree.
“Aaaaaaah!” Ruby screamed. Her teammates looked at her in utter confusion. “That voice! Did you hear that?!” Not a flicker of recognition. Did they really not hear the voice?
“They can’t hear me.”
Ruby shook her head in desperation. “Who are you?” she asked with intense exasperation. Silence.
“Ruby?” Blake ventured. “Is everything all right?”
“There’s this voice,” she immediately clarified, “that apparently only I can hear.” More glances. Ruby knew they meant well, and she was just as confused as them, but it still felt off.
She shook her head defeatedly. “Never mind that, I can figure it out later,” she mumbled. “What happened after I lost Crescent Rose?” Yang stepped forward.
“Ruby, we don’t have to do this now, we can try to figure out what’s going on with the voice–”
“No. What happened?” Ruby repeated with all the authority her shaken self could muster.
Yang scratched the back of her head. “Uh… you jumped back into the fight–”
“Don’t bother with her paltry explanation,” the voice again chimed. “Perhaps this will catch you up?”
Suddenly, a sequence of memories crashed into Ruby like a giant tidal wave, drowning her in crisp, exact detail. It was all so clear: making a fool out of the cat, tripping them up, and finishing the job with a brutal thrust. Then… then, the Jabberwalkers–
It was far too much. Ruby clutched her head with both hands and let loose a guttural groan of pain, causing her teammates to flinch before running to her side.
“Ruby?!” Yang called.
“What’s wrong?” Weiss asked.
“Is it the voice?” Blake probed.
Ruby tilted her head up to the sky, her eyes filled with anger. “WHO ARE YOU?!” she yelled. “What did you do to me?!” In response, she instantly felt like she was sucker-punched in the solar plexus.
She threatened to lose consciousness but managed to hang on, toeing the line between collapsing and vomiting just long enough to hear words she wasn’t saying come out of her mouth.
“I’m Neo. I’d say that I’m pleased to meet you, but I think we both know that’d be a lie.”
The world dissolved away, and all became black.