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marcmarcmomarc · 3 months ago

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I told you I would bring up @pmpknsoup’s post more times.

Feel free to comment or reblog how you think this would have gone.

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(In Theodore’s office in Shade Academy at early evening, Team RWBY and Jaune Arc face the main members of the Remnant Alliance, consisting of Team JNPR plus Oscar Pine/Ozpin and Emerald Sustrai, Team STRQ, the Ace-Ops, the Happy Huntresses, Winter Schnee, Team SSSNN, Team CFVY, Whitley Schnee, Willow Schnee, Klein Sieben, Maria Calavera, Dr. Pietro Polendina, Ghira Belladonna, Kali Belladonna, Ilia Amitola, Bartholomew Oobleck, Peter Port, Glynda Goodwitch, Theodore, Xanthe Rumpole, and Zwei.)

RUBY: Listen. Thanks, everyone, for your patience.

RUBY: It took a while to figure out how to tell you, and I know being left in the dark about our whereabouts over the remainder of the winter, the whole spring, and the summer has left you anxious, but now, I’ve decided it’s time to reveal what’s been going on. Robyn, I’ll need your Semblance to prove all of this correct.

ROBYN: Uh, okay.

(Robyn steps away from the group, removes her glove, and joins hands with Ruby. Her Semblance turns on and glows green with every piece of information Ruby gives.)

ROBYN: So, you guys didn’t make it out of the pocket dimension before it collapsed. Where did you guys fall to?

RUBY: Well, after I fell, I regained consciousness on a beach surrounded by giant seashells. I tried to hone in on a giant tree, but just ended up looping in circles. Eventually, I had to stop, then found a mouse trying to pull a plant out of the ground. I pulled the plant, which turned out to be a cheese plant, out for the mouse, and fed it to them. After the mouse revealed that they could talk, I named them Little, and they decided to stay by my side as I tried to get home. Then we found Weiss and Blake captured in vines by a whole village of talking mice. It didn’t take much convincing to get them to let them go. Then we went to look for Yang and found a creepy Grimm-looking creature moving jerkily. And I mean very creepy. (IMITATING JABBERWALKER) “Stalking. Searching. Waiting. Listening.” (NORMAL VOICE) Then Yang came barreling out, already fighting the creature while missing her arm. Then Blake realized we were in our favorite childhood fairy tale, The Girl Who Fell Through the World.

(Confusion and wonder all around. “That fairy tale?” “The Ever After?” “It’s real?”)

OSCAR: That fairy tale actually happened? And the Ever After is real?

RUBY: Which means the creepy Grimm-like creature was the Jabberwalker from that story. Also, Weiss had a very hard time wrapping her head around the Ever After’s absurdities.

(Weiss blushes with embarrassment.)

WEISS: I did not.

RUBY: Our hands are glowing green, Weiss. Robyn’s Semblance never fails. Then we went to the village in the King’s Acre to barter with the Jinxy Peddler, who had stolen Yang’s arm. Well, they don’t “steal”, they just “take things others aren’t looking at”. Fair is fair, right, Little?

ROBYN: Sounds like a legitimate businessperson.

WEISS: Right?

EMERALD: So, what was the Jinxy Peddler like?

VELVET: Was he cute?

WEISS: Cute? He was adorable!

RUBY: And, despite being older than he was in the book, his strategy was the same, selling treasures that are really other items in disguise. If my memory serves me right, he had a yellow scepter, a pink rabbit statue, and a marionette-like doll. Toy soldiers won the scepter, and we only got it back from them because Little tried stealing the marionette, exposing Jinxy’s treasures as fakes. The rabbit statue was another mouse, the scepter was Yang’s arm, and the marionette was one of Penny’s Floating Array swords. The soldiers followed us to arrest us for stealing Yang’s arm, or “royal property”, before I traded Penny’s sword, and told them she was the greatest warrior to ever live. “She was touched by magic, and she gave her life for thousands. She took a message of hope to the stars, and she saw the world through better eyes.”

(The gang gets emotional, especially Winter and Pietro, who are comforted by their loved ones.)

RUBY: The soldiers escorted us to the Crimson Castle for the birthday of who we thought was the Red King, but turned out to be the Red Prince, who was more of a spoiled brat than Weiss was at Beacon.

YANG: (nudging Weiss) Heh-heh.

RUBY: We challenged him to a game of chess, where he shrunk the girls to the size of chess pawns. Not that it hindered their performance against the Prince’s pawns. When we revealed that we’re humans and beat him, he threw a tantrum and wanted us beheaded, and the Curious Cat rescued us.

(More interested chatter. Nora Valkyrie gets giddy.)

NORA: The Curious Cat?!

REN: Were they as chatty as the book made them out to be?

RUBY: Mm-hm. Not to mention easily distracted. Anyway, they took us to look for ingredients for a Growgurt Parfait in the Garden’s Acre, and we told them our life story, but because we kept getting distracted with our internal conflicts, we kept losing them over and over again. After the third time, when they asked me how I’m supposed to save the world now that Salem has two out of four Relics and that Atlas is gone, we met an herbalist, a caterpillar named Herb. He seemed to be asking us questions to figure out what medicine he needed to make to help us. Looking back, he was being reasonable, as too little medicine is useless, but too much medicine is toxic. Eventually, Herb just decided to smoke a hookah for a bit and drugged us with leaves that made us see our past selves tempting us to “go back”. To be free. To be simple. To be whole. To be different. The other girls rejected and had already accepted their failures as something to learn from, but I almost gave in, before the Cat stopped me, then got Herb swallowed by a hole in the ground.

(The gang chatters in moods ranging from confusion to nervousness.)

TAI: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up. You guys did drugs?

QROW: Don’t let alcoholism be next, girls.

RUBY: Anyway, the Cat led us to a market to keep looking for the Parfait ingredients. Along the way, they told us about a process that occurs when an Afteran is no longer doing their assigned role, triggered by them losing their ways, wearing out, doubting themselves, or even just finishing their assigned tasks, upon which they are taken to the Great Tree and repurposed into someone or something else with a new identity, personality, and role. Their memories are erased in the process, but the heart very rarely forgets. They don’t die. They ascend.

(Such a concept catches the interest of the gang.)

REMNANT ALLIANCE: Ooh.

EMERALD: Talk about a potential existential crisis.

RUBY: Hence why there was no Red King when we got to the Castle. He lost his game and ascended into the brat we encountered. And the hole that swallowed Herb was him starting his own Ascension. Anyway, after we arrived at the market and got all of the Parfait ingredients, the market was attacked by Jabberwalkers using Neopolitan’s Semblance. Oh, yeah, Neopolitan fell with us, too.

(Nora, Ren, Oscar, and Emerald grow worried.)

REN: Uh-oh.

TAI: Neopolitan? Who’s that?

RUBY: Remember Roman Torchwick, the criminal from Vale? Neo was his partner. She held me responsible for his death at the Fall of Beacon and wanted me dead to avenge him. She expressed herself through gestures and facial expressions because she couldn’t talk.

RAVEN: Was she that chick I saved Yang from on the train on Mountain Glenn?

RUBY: Yep. Then I disposed of her by opening her umbrella on an Atlas airship in the sky during the Fall of Beacon. Apparently she survived that fall without any of those Grimm surrounding us eating her.

OSCAR: Team JNPR and I last fought her right after Ironwood declared us fugitives.

RUBY: Then she fought us in the pocket dimension between here and Solitas. Heck, she was the reason Yang, Blake, and I fell. Anyway, we made the Growgurt Parfait and the girls grew back to normal size just as we got assistance from the Rusted Knight riding his white rabbit.

WHITLEY: Did Weiss go goo-goo eyes the second she laid eyes on him? She had a crush on him when she was younger.

BLAKE: I think everyone had a crush on the Rusted Knight at some point.

RUBY: Well, things didn’t help when he turned out to be a grown-up Jaune with longer hair and a beard, who grabbed a fruit that sent him back in time twenty years right after he landed.

(The gang gasps at the new knowledge of the Rusted Knight being not only Jaune, of all people, but Jaune thrown backwards in time, grown older, and living without his friends for so long.)

NORA: Oh, my Gods!

REN: Jaune, that really happened to you?

JAUNE: I was stuck there isolated from other human contact, too.

YANG: Weiss certainly loved how mature he was.

RUBY: And the white rabbit was a jackalope Jaune named Juniper.

NORA: After his team? Aww!

RUBY: Then Jaune told us his perspective on the Tree, that he believed it was death, that Alyx backstabbed her brother Lewis, the author of the fairy tale, who wrote the story the way he wished it happened, and that the Cat couldn’t be trusted. Before long, we got caught in a “punderstorm”, which creates a physical manifestation of a mental or emotional problem. Jaune, Weiss, Juniper, and I were sent to metaphorical and literal crossroads, while Yang and Blake were sent to two broken, wooden, rickety bridges connected to a giant pillar that they could only make more planks to advance toward if they were honest about their feelings for each other. Yeah, Yang and Blake are girlfriends now.

(As Yang and Blake blush at each other, everyone’s hearts melt, all proud for the Bees.)

REMNANT ALLIANCE: Aww!

NORA: See, Ren? I told you there was more going on!

KALI: Our baby girl found love?

TAI: With my sunny little dragon?

RAVEN: Wow. She really is your daughter, Tai.

TAI: What’s that supposed to mean?

RAVEN: A tall overconfident blonde flinging dad jokes and puns and a brooding dark-haired beauty? A tale as old as time.

RUBY: Then the Cat bailed on us after mistaking us for selfishly using them to get home, and once the storm passed, Jaune let us spend the night in his house in the Origami Acre, then he introduced us the next morning to a village of paper stars called the Paper Pleasers. They seemed very dumb and clumsy at first, because of the daily disasters they were causing, but, at the end of the day, were very hospitable. He also named them after all of us. On his to-do list, I saw Ren, Ruby, Oscar, Nora, Neptune, and Pyrrha.

(Not a word is spoken as everyone exchanges concerned and uncomfortable looks with each other.)

RUBY: Anyway, a Paper Pleaser told us they kept causing disasters because they wanted to ascend, because their purpose was long since finished, but Jaune was stopping them because of his belief that the tree was death. They told us that the Tree isn’t death, but resurrection, rebuilding, and rebirth.

JAUNE: That must have been our waiter, the Blake Paper Pleaser.

RUBY: Then Neo’s Jabberwalkers attacked, and while we were distracted, the Paper Pleasers finally managed to off themselves by destroying the koi pond dam and drowning in the flood, then when the girls asked me to help comfort Jaune, I blew up at them for caring more about everyone else’s feelings or getting home, taking my mental health for granted and ignoring my problems…

(Everyone leans in anxiously. Things are getting even more interesting, but not in a good way.)

(Weiss, Blake, Yang, and Jaune exchange looks of guilt.)

RUBY: …then I ran away, came across the Abandoned Acre, and entered a mansion, where Neo had made clone illusions of Roman Torchwick, Penny, Pyrrha, Professor Lionheart, Clover, Ozpin, and Ironwood, and used them to physically and psychologically abuse me, beating me up ruthlessly and blaming me for their deaths, and when the chaos was over, I felt no will to live or be myself anymore, not helped by Torchwick’s question: “Do you really think you can stand to watch more of your friends fall? Or are you ready to admit the truth, that the world would just be better off without you?”

(The gang regards Ruby with sorrow over her being trampled by her trauma. Ozpin can be heard sniffling.)

RUBY: Then Neo offered me tea made from leaves from the Tree intended to wipe me from existence. The Cat blasted her away, but then turned out to be evil and tried to possess me, while revealing that they had been trying to wear me down the whole time, then Neo fought them off and stomped Little to death, then I finally gave in, drank the tea, offing myself, and got swallowed by the Tree.

YANG: (tearing up) Oh, Rubes.

RUBY: Then I met a Blacksmith, who I also found at the market, or, rather, she found me, and then she presented me with a choice to either change my identity or be myself. I saw my mom’s weapon and was treated to a vision of the night she left with Raven on another one of Ozpin’s secret missions and never came back.

(Tai turns accusingly at Raven.)

TAI: Raven?

YANG: She lied? She left with you?

RAVEN: Yeah… Hey, like I said to her, “First time for everything.”

(The gang gives her a look.)

RAVEN: Really? Sheesh. Tough crowd.

HARE: (to Ruby) Wait. What did you say your mother’s name was again?

RUBY: Summer.

HARE: (muttering) So, her uncle is Qrow, her father is Taiyang, and her sister’s mother is Raven. All are members of Team STRQ. Summer, Summer, Summer… (out loud) Summer Rose, the leader of Team STRQ, was your mother?

REMNANT ALLIANCE: (walla) Summer?…Summer Rose?…The previous silver-eyed Huntress?…That’s Summer Rose’s daughter?

RUBY: And then, I remembered my mom’s words, “I love you just the way you are,” chose to be myself, and came back to help the girls fight the Cat. And we won.

(Cheers and applause all around.)

RUBY: And then Neo killed the Cat by using the Jabberwalkers to eat them. By the way, Jabberwalkers are the only creatures to prevent Ascension if they eat Afterans.

BLAKE: On my count, there were a whopping five of them.

REMNANT ALLIANCE: (walla) Five?…Five of them?…Five Jabberwalkers?

SUN: Talk about overkill.

ELM: (after doing the multiplication math in her head) That’s gotta be over ninety teeth!

RUBY: And, according to the girls, Neo was possessed by the Cat, and she chose to accept Torchwick’s death and undergo her own Ascension. Oh, and Little ascended, too, into who we called Somewhat, and succeeded Jaune as the protector of the Ever After. By then, we had made it to the Tree by coming to terms with the truth, we’ll never be perfect, that even the most skilled Huntsmen and Huntresses have failed, and we walked through the door back home, landed inside the plane of the Tree, and met the Blacksmith again at her workshop. When we noticed two statues of the Brother Gods, she told us their backstory. That the Ever After was overfilled with plants and dangerous wildlife in its primordial years, but the Brothers were created to clear it out. Then they created the Afterans as well as the different acres for them to live in. They designed new creations that would replace them in maintaining the Ever After. This was how the Cat was created. They later created the Jabberwalker as a form of destruction. However, the two disagreed on whether it disrupted the balance or not and began to wage war.

OSCAR AND OZPIN: (both scoff) What else is new?

RUBY: The Blacksmith told us how balance isn’t supposed to be two opposing forces locked in battle; balance is an ecosystem, an organism, and a living thing, thus balance isn’t restored with force or manipulation, it’s restored naturally, requiring love and patience to see it through to the end. The Gods got to Remnant because the Ever After created a door to a “greater beyond” for them, so they can leave and experiment in creating new worlds as much as they like.

REN: Huh. So the Ever After existed before Remnant.

NORA: (snickering) So the Tree basically said, “You think you have life sorted out? Then get out of my house”?

RUBY: Pretty much.

(Everyone laughs at the Brother Gods basically being “kicked out of the house” by their “mom”. Some Gods they are.)

YANG: Oh, my Gods, that’s such a hilarious way of looking at it. Thanks, Nora.

RUBY: Anyway, the Blacksmith told us that we impacted the Ever After significantly, just like Somewhat, Alyx, and Lewis, and that the Cat caused a bad impact. Then she de-aged Jaune, but let him keep his memories, which explains the white streak in his hair, and made us a portal in the desert on the outskirts of the city, and now you’re all caught up.

(Ruby lets go of Robyn’s hand. The freedom fighter rejoins the rest of the Alliance.)

RUBY: So, I’m happy to announce that I’m not giving up the fight to save the world anytime soon! Between Academies and Kingdoms going down and our friends’ lives being forced to abruptly end, we’ve had a lot of ups and downs over the past two years, but we always pulled ourselves back together at the end of the day, and we won’t stop now! With global unity right at our fingertips and the ability to keep moving forward and accept our failures as things to learn from, things the villains would never even fathom, we can stand up to Salem and her forces! And no longer will we be putting the entire burden of the world’s safety on one individual! My name is Ruby Rose, and I am a Huntress!

REMNANT ALLIANCE: (walla) Yes!…Great!…Alright!…Thank goodness!…Welcome back, Ruby!…Good to have you back, kid!…Way to go, Ruby!…That’s my girl!