RWBY Through Worlds

5: Where the Fight Begins

Teams RWBY and JNR + Oscar and Qrow and Maria had all gotten into their assigned positions.

At first no one talked about what happened. No one quite believed it.

But after Weiss and Maria had snuck their way into the plane, and Blake was on her way to disable communications, Ruby, Oscar, Jaune, Ren, Nora, and Qrow were all waiting for their turn.

And the silence got awkward.

"Uh...so...are we going to talk about this?" Oscar asked them.

"Can we?" Ruby asked.

"She was...dead, right?" Oscar said. "I mean, you saw it."

"I saw it with my own two eyes." Ruby gestured at her eyes. "The second it happened! That's how my silver eyes activated."

"I didn't know that," Jaune said.

"I...didn't talk about it." Ruby had obvious reasons for not telling Jaune this, and they all knew it.

"Look--" Qrow sounded tired. "--I don't know how this happened...but after what we saw two days ago, we know better than to trust anyone who brings people back to life... I wouldn't get your hopes up. I don't think she's going to stay that way. There has to be balance--you heard the god of light."

"What if he was wrong?" Jaune shocked them by saying. "What if balance isn't what he thought? What if life isn't like that?"

"You're saying that the god was wrong?" Ren said. "You're questioning a god?"

"I can't be the only one who thought what they did was unfair," Jaune said. "To Ozma...to all of us. Even to Salem, even if she has no excuse for what she did about it. What if...what if they aren't all knowing? Didn't the lamp say 'there was some things even the gods didn't understand'? When Salem and Ozma met up again?"

"It did say that," Oscar nodded.

"So what? That was some vague idea of love or whatever," Qrow said. "It has nothing to do with this.... This defies everything we've seen, except that someone is pulling strings... It's a ploy to get us to listen to them. A power play. Look, Arc...I'm sorry, but Pyrrha is not back. Not really. Don't get used to her being here."

Jaune looked so...sad? Angry? Bitter? Disappointed? They couldn't tell.

Then he said in a dreadful voice, because it was so hard to read but still made Nora's and Ren's skin prickle with nervousness--and Ruby didn't like it either--

"Are you saying that you don't think we should take her back?"

"I wouldn't," Qrow said. "There's something unnatural about this, if she follows us... Well, let's hope she won't."

"Pyrrha is still a part of this team." Jaune sounded really defensive now. "If she wants to be back, she's back. End of story."

"Jaune," Ruby said warningly, "Uncle Qrow is just worried for us. It's not that we don't like Pyrrha...it's just that we don't know how to explain this. Maybe it is a miracle."

"Sounds like Salem's kind of idea," Qrow said.

"Salem can't bring people back to life--she only destroys them," Jaune said. "We saw nothing that showed she could bring them back."

"It seems if she could, she might have brought back her children..." Ren said.

"That part was so sad..." Nora said.

"Who knows what she's learned in all this time?" Qrow said. "Maybe it's a trick."

"She had her semblance," Oscar spoke quietly. "Right?"