“Though they may appear familiar on the surface, these branching paths are made up of twists and turns. What is taken for granted in one, may not hold true in another.” The sourceless voice rang out.
Weiss understood on an intellectual level what this… Jinn meant about the branching paths. With Second as Jaune’s semblance, the topic had come up quite a few times over the course of the school year. A single difference in choice could yield a vastly different outcome later down the line, each choice creating a branch in the flow of time.
And yet, as she watched the scene play out before her, she got the distinct feeling that this was the result of far more than a single change. All of the previous visions… she felt safe in saying that they were on the same branch. Not her path, but a single path. This was the first deviation. Understanding it as an abstract concept was one thing, but seeing it…
It made her quite uncomfortable to watch as Jaune threatened the lives of Professor Goodwitch and Headmaster Ozpin… for her sake.
“Ironwood. He chose Pyrrha. I know,” the false Jaune glared at his headmaster from the man’s own seat in the clocktower office, his expression looking one wrong move away from cutting Ozpin down… or dying in the attempt.
Headmaster Ozpin must have picked up on the malice emanating from the blond, but he acted as if it wasn’t there. “You certainly know some interesting things, Mr Arc. Yes, General Ironwood was all for Miss Nikos, as was I at first. Our choice changed, however. Miss Schnee was chosen instead.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Pyrrha is the strongest, she’s a championship fighter. Why would you choose Weiss? It doesn't make sense. You’re lying.”
“Why would I lie?”
“Why would you choose Weiss over Pyrrha?”
Though the lack of full context was rather infuriating, Weiss felt that she had been given enough clues to know what this was about.
Something that Ozpin would choose Pyrrha for. A rather important matter, if the tone here was anything to go by.
And just a moment ago, she had watched as a Pyrrha was murdered over a power that was “never truly hers”.
This was a timeline where it had been given to her instead.
But even then… Jaune’s reaction didn’t make sense to her. Sure, he’d had his little crush on her in the past, but to go so far as to threaten the Headmaster…
She had missed some of the conversation, distracted by her musings.
“What is it you truly wish to know?” the false Ozpin asked.
“I want to know why you chose Weiss to be the Fall Maiden.”
“Not what the Fall Maiden is, or why someone needed to be chosen, or why we were the ones to do so in the first place?”
The false Jaune glared at him.
Somehow… it seemed that this version of Jaune also knew things he should not. But Second Thoughts was nowhere in sight, and there were no awkward pauses as the boy listened to his semblance, as she had long grown used to.
It was unsettling.
The blue mist settled in once more.
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While Ren wasn’t one to often get caught up in his emotions, he was certain that the rest of… the group, because he wasn’t sure how else to refer to such an eclectic gathering, was experiencing whiplash.
Where in the last scene it had been an intense standoff, before him now was…
“So, you’re the owner,” another version of him asked Jaune. Only, it wasn’t Jaune as he knew him. “That’s quite an accomplishment for someone your age. How long have you been doing this for?”
They seemed to be in a small shop of some sort. He would guess at their main selling point being coffee, with how much of the stuff was around, but he couldn’t be certain of that. And somehow Jaune owned the place?
What sort of bizarre circumstances would be necessary for that to happen?
The store looked busy enough, so their friend must be doing well for himself… but even with the sight right before him, Ren struggled to think of Jaune as anything other than a huntsman. Or, huntsman in training, rather.
It made him wonder just how strange these alternate timelines might get. He’d expected different team makeups maybe, but different professions entirely? Perhaps he’d need to ask Second Thoughts what other professions that he and Nora had taken up.
The coffee shop faded away.
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Neo wasn’t very amused by most of what had been shown so far. If anything, watching that stupid brat get Roman killed had pissed her off, and seeing Cinder get her way over the Nikos girl had been annoying, but…
She felt a smile forming on her lips as that same scene played out before her, in a very different way. Cinder and Pyrrha were in the tower, fighting to the death, but this time there was some rabbit faunus on Pyrrha’s side, and also a dragon grimm perched on the side of the tower.
Dragons were pretty cool on their own, but she was a much bigger fan of the Atlas battleship that crashed straight into the thing and opened cannon fire at point-blank range. A huge fan of the sight of three figures breaking the glass on the bridge, jumping down to join the fight. Especially when she saw the horror on Cinder’s face. Seeing that smug bitch finally get a taste of her own medicine was a real treat.
“No… No. No. NO! This isn’t possible! I dealt with you! You should be dead!” Cinder whined like a little bitch.
The blond dork… hmm… now that she was getting a good look at him, maybe this version of Jaune actually wasn’t half bad? He might even be… good looking… but regardless of that, he stood tall against Cinder, with a duplicate of herself and Roman at his sides?
That was odd enough, and she was even more confused when the other students called Jaune Professor of all things, because he was obviously still the same age as them… but she could look past that when she acknowledged the fact that she and Roman were on the winning side, leaving Cinder looking like she was about to have a meltdown.
“But I… No.” The psychopath took a step back in delicious fear. “You… but… so far ahead? That’s impossible! You planned all of this. Me framing you, the arrest, your being placed on Ironwood’s ship. You fully intended to be stuck beside Roman, to sway him to your side. You’re the one who deactivated Atlas’ Paladins. You let me think I’d tricked you. You wanted to draw me out… to make me commit. You planned this from the start. You planned this, didn’t you?”
Neo didn’t think she’d ever even imagined Cinder so flustered. Caught off guard? Yes. Bleeding out and crying in pain after Neo finally put her in her place? For sure. But looking like she was about to piss herself because of someone like Jaune? Not in a million years.
She wished that she had popcorn to enjoy this show with.
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The things she had seen so far had been shocking, but none had hit as close to home as this.
Nor were they as disgusting. As frightening.
The showdown on the clocktower had been replaced by what she instantly recognized as a White Fang raid. The facility was foreign to her, and for some reason Jaune was there, and accepted by Adam no less, but she knew a White Fang raid when she saw one.
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Or the remnants of one, at least. It was just her, Jaune, and Adam who were up and fit to fight. There was a little girl with them, unconscious and draped over Jaune’s shoulder, one that looked like she might be a relative of Jaune’s, but Blake didn’t recognize her.
There were explosions and gunfire in the distance.
“Damn it!” her ex cursed. “How are their reinforcements here so fast?”
“We need to catch the Director before he gets Hazel out!” Her counterpart yelled.
Director of what? This obviously wasn’t an SDC facility. And she didn’t know the name Hazel.
She watched as the small group ran toward the gunfire, even with the unconscious child in their care.
They rounded a corner, and Blake was almost sick.
Bodies. A pile of them. There was some sort of… soldier crouched over them, inspecting another young blonde girl, who seemed to be the only one left alive.
“Subject acquired. Beginning extraction.”
She couldn’t watch this. She’d left the White Fang to escape all the bloodshed. But even as she closed her eyes, she could still hear it all.
“Targets sighted. Subject 000 sighted. Moving to neutralize. Lethal force authorized for non-essential personnel.”
There was a hissing sound.
“Gas!” Adam yelled out. “Kill them quickly!”
She hated this. All of it. But the part that worried her most was the fact that neither she nor Jaune protested the kill order.
What sort of sick timeline was this? In what sort of sad world would she not only stay with the White Fang, but have Jaune join her?
She didn’t think she actually wanted those questions answered.
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A backstory as weird as Oz’s supposedly was? Qrow could handle that. Alternate timelines that Second apparently knew because they were fucking cartoons were he came from? He was struggling with that one, but given his semblance he was used to rolling with the punches.
He did, however, draw the line at the disturbing scene before him.
It was a dinner table. Lots of people gathered around. Normally that’d be a good thing, he might not be a father man himself, but he was at least a good uncle, and he knew the importance of family.
But at this table, Jaune was sat with Cinder, various people he was certain were criminals and was desperately trying to memorize the faces of, and… Salem.
Why the fuck would Jaune be eating dinner with them?
“I want to be a huntsman.” The boy declared, as serious as he’d ever seen him.
Qrow tried to ignore the Beowolf trying to eat the boy’s food like Zwei did every night with Tai.
A crazed looking man with a scorpion tail laughed.
“Sweetie,” Salem sighed. “I thought we talked about this. You are the Prince of the Grimm, my heir and only son. I know your father’s an odd case but to become a huntsman?”
Qrow’s thoughts froze.
Son?
He was being punked. Fucked with. There was no way in hell that Oz’s little “truth-teller” was trying to seriously pass off Aurelius fucking Arc as a man who would willingly knock up Salem, the personification of all evil, and raise children with her as something that was even remotely plausible.
Arc was a good huntsman. He wouldn’t do something like this.
Could Salem even have children? She was part grimm or something! He might be jumping to false conclusions, but he didn’t think it crazy to assume that a grimm… whatever she was lacked the necessary functions to reproduce.
He tried to block that thought out. Better yet, all thought of whatever fucked up shit was happening in front of him. He focused his efforts on his inspection of the strangers. The one looked an awful lot like the pics Jimmy had shown him of the Watts guy. That gave a bit of credence to the idea that these might be Salem’s minions in a timeline that made a lick of sense.
“I mean, you’re seventeen now,” he unfortunately heard Salem say. “Cinder is only three or four years older and has a fantastic figure. Have you considered being a house husband or something?”
Huh. Salem trying to marry off her and Aurelius’ son to Cinder.
This really was some sort of fresh hell on Remnant.
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Yang should have known that things would only get weirder after seeing Jaune eating dinner with Cinder with a Beowolf at his feet.
This, though? She was trying very hard to look at it like a funhouse mirror, if only to keep herself from freaking the fuck out.
It was team RWBY, but with Jaune instead of Blake. They were in a kitchen, though only Ruby was eating.
But instead of inhaling cookies, she was gnawing on a bone.
And instead of being, you know, normal huntresses in training, the girls of RWBY were grimm abominations.
They were still recognizable at least. Humanoid forms, capable of speech, wearing proper clothing.
But their skin was a bleached, bone white. Their eyes were blood red. They had horns sprouting out of their heads. One of her grimm counterpart’s arms was grotesquely huge.
She wanted to vomit.
And that was before she started listening to their conversation.
She tried not to think about how she was pretty sure everyone was seeing this when she heard her counterpart say “Think what you want, I don’t care. I don’t mind a good lay once in a while, but I don’t want any of that romantic shit. I want to be free, go on adventures, and not have to worry about a dumb snot nosed little brat.”
A funhouse mirror. A funhouse mirror. That’s all this was. Or maybe a nightmare? Yes, that made sense. This was all a dream. There was no naked blue lady in a magic lamp. Second wasn’t from another world. There was no cartoon about their lives. She did not have a slu- er, an adventurous grimm counterpart.
She just hoped that she would wake up from the nightmare soon.
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This was awesome! That last scene was going to haunt her for a while, even if she hadn’t seen some sort of weird grimm version of herself, but Nora couldn’t help the smile on her face as it was replaced by what looked like a video game world!
Teams RWBY and JNPR were at some sort of port town, all of them dressed up in clothes that belonged to some high fantasy world rather than anything a huntress would wear. And while that was neat, what really caught her eye was the fact that above each of their heads was their name and a class!
Renny was a Monk, she was a Barbarian, Pyrrha was a Champion and their glorious leader was a Knight! The Champion class wasn’t something that she was familiar with, but it was probably some sort of special kickass class that Pyrrha had because she was so much stronger than the rest of them.
She wanted to know everything about this world! Timeline? She didn’t know, nor did she really care! Did they go on quests? Fight monsters? Maybe they used magic!
She watched as Jauney haggled with a shopkeep, who for some reason had “Chef” floating above her head, over some rooms for them to stay in. And he was great at it, too! So confident, he was a far cry from her awkward, lovable leader!
“H-how!?” Weiss cried out, pointing at him when he went back to the group successful in his bartering. “How did you manage that? There’s no way five hundred lien should get us that much!” The word “Mage” was above her… was Nora actually going to see some magic?!
Jauney shrugged. “I just haggled with her. It’s no big deal.”
Yang laughed and slung an arm over Weiss’ shoulder. “He did this with Ruby’s scythe too. He got it for a fraction of the price with some big speech about doing work for Heroes and how that would spread the smith’s name across Beacon.” The word “Brawler” floated above her, and wasn’t that fitting? But it could also fit her, couldn’t it? She wondered what the difference between a Brawler and Barbarian was in this world…
“Is this the Charisma of a Knight at work?” Pyrrha asked. “It’s… impressive. Incredibly so.”
They had stats, too! This really was like a video game! Fighting the grimm was awesome and all, but Brother Gods what she would give to live in a world like this!
Her thoughts were interrupted as, for the first time in quite a few scenes, the blue lady spoke up again. What was her name? Jim or something?
“Though the people within were quite consistent, the paths he knew varied greatly. What if the timeline Second had found himself in borrowed elements from multiple? What if he assumed he knew something incorrectly? Details were not always consistent between these worlds, and an error could mean death.”
The video game world faded, and then Nora found herself in a snowstorm. Except… the snow wasn’t moving at all, frozen in the air.
Ruby was holding the lamp thing, and the situation seemed even more tense than what she’d seen in the Atlas airship. All of team RWBY was there, alongside Ruby’s drunk uncle, some old lady, a scrawny boy, and Jim herself.
Weiss had her rapier pointed at Qrow.
“But even in all of that uncertainty, he figured that some details were from so far in the past that surely a timeline as familiar as the one he found himself in had at least those in common. If time is a branching river, then every branch should flow from the same source of water.”
“Do whatever you think is right, kiddo.” Qrow held up his hands in surrender.
Ruby turned to Jim.
“Jinn.”
Oh. Oops. Could Jinn read her thoughts? She hoped not.
“What is Ozpin hiding from us?”