Displaced

1

The brunette uncovered her one good eye as the blinding light faded, her enemy was gone along with the battlefield they had been engaged upon. Gone was the dark earth and purple crystal, replaced with the swaying of beautiful scarlet leaves in the gentle wind. The drastic change in temperature hit her at the same time as the pain from her missing left eye. The golden circlet that adorned her head was torn off and hooked around her belt. Ignoring the pain as best she could she tore a section from her bright red cloak and tied it over her wounded feature, stymying the blood loss.

Forever Fall? It can't be.

"Jaune?" She called out, her voice cracking in her dry throat, "JAAAUUUNEE!?"

The only sound that answered her was the breeze whistling through the trees. The brunette coughed, her lungs burning as she spit up some blood.

That's not good. She idly remarked at the blood on her hands matching the dozen or so cuts and gashes across her body. Luckily, the adrenaline coursing through her body was keeping her on her feet despite the pain but as soon as it stopped, so would she. The woman could feel the exhaustion in the body she had pushed far past it's limits. She thought back to her blond friend, the last she had seen from him was the nasty blow he'd taken to his head.

Ruby Rose tried to calm down her panicked breathing as she listened carefully to the forest, straining her hearing, hoping against all hope that her friend had ended up nearby. Something pricked her ears and she listened to it, a distant cry. In a hurry she moved towards the sound, the only thing she had to go on. Moving at a swift jog the sound came more into focus. It sounded like a young man and as she drew even closer it resolved into a single word.

"Ursa!"

The word sent a fresh jolt of adrenaline surging through her, spurring her tired body on towards whoever needed help. Calling upon some of the last dregs of her power, she sped up even further, rose petals flowing and blending with the crimson foliage. Ruby ran as a blur through the forest, anyone who saw her probably would have marked it off as a trick of the light. Bursting into a clearing she found that she was just in time to see a young swordsman decapitating an Alpha Ursa. She slid to a stop, her breath hitching in her chest as she spotted the blond mop that she'd know anywhere.

Before she could call out to him, two more Ursa burst from the treeline, rushing her friend. Time seemed to stretch on until she felt something was off, he was reacting fast enough. These Ursa should have been no problem for her old friend but he just stood there dumbly in the face of death. Barely registering the cries coming from the edge of the clearing Ruby sprang into action.

In one fluid motion she stuffed the staff she had been carrying into her belt and reached behind her to grab her weapon only to grimace at the fact it wasn't there, the memory of Crescent Rose shattering in her last battle causing a brief pain. It still only took a second to check for her weapon and the Grimm were still advancing on the young man.

In a flash the woman was next to the young man, his face barely registering surprise as she grabbed him by the hood and hauled him behind her. Leveling a single, silver orb at the oncoming Grimm, slipping into that familiar state of mind that she'd gotten so used to over the years. A bright flash of silver light reduced the Grimm to nothingness. She stood ready, one hand clamped around the hood of the young man, boy, actually. As she eyed the edges of the clearing, waiting to find if more Grimm were going to appear, she finally got a good look at the person she knew to be her friend, and her heart nearly stopped.

It was Jaune alright. But he was young, far too young. He looked the same as when she had met him. A movement at the edge of her vision had her head whipping around. It was a plethora of bright colors that greeted her, that and the impossibly young faces of her friends. One in particular caught her eyes, Pyrrha Nikos somehow managed to look both concerned and relieved at the same time. She almost didn't recognize the young woman, it had been over a decade since her friend had died, after all.

Ruby froze like a deer in headlights as a small figure in black and red came around from behind Pyrrha. If she was having a dream then it was a bad one and this couldn't be the afterlife, not if she was already here. Her honed huntress training allowed her to process all of this in a few seconds, in the time it took for Pyrrha to start fawning over her partner, checking him for wounds.

Ruby's eyes never left the lilac orbs of her older (younger?) sister. The young Yang herself seemed to freeze as well and a single word tumbled out of her mouth.

"Summer?"

The one word seemed to unfreeze the older woman and she frantically shook her head from side to side causing a sudden dizziness to overwhelm her. Ruby opened her mouth to say something but found it was full of grass.

Huh? When did I fall over?

"She's wounded!" She could only watch with tired eyes as her partner, youth regained, knelt by her side, "Hang on, Ma'am! I'll begin first aid."

Her silver eye drifted over to the young Ruby that stood back, her eyes wide as silver met silver. It was the last thing she saw before darkness swallowed her.

"Someone get Miss Goodwitch!" Weiss barked out and Ren ran off instantly. The heiress reached for one of that many small containers on her belt and pulled out a small first aid kit. They had already rolled the woman onto her back and Yang could feel her heart squeeze at the bloody sight. It was a wonder the woman had even been standing, let alone doing whatever she had done to those Grimm. Blake moved around to the other woman's side as Weiss began disinfecting all the wounds she could reach, all the while handing patches to the black clad girl so that she could apply clean bandages.

"I didn't know you knew first aid, Weiss."

The heiress only spared a quick glance to her teammate, "A Schnee must always be prepared. When I made it clear I was going to become a huntress, my sister made sure I would be prepared for any situation." As the white haired girl removed the red cloth covering the still bleeding eye she hissed out a breath and the grisly sight. The was an angry red wound stretching from the middle of the woman's brow to the side of her cheek bone, the organ it passed was unsalvageable, "I never thought I'd have to use my training this soon." She got out in a whisper.

Yang plopped down right next to the heiress and started rummaging through the woman's pockets. Weiss was aghast at this, "What are you doing! You can't just go through an injured person's belongings!"

"Can and should, Weiss-cream." The blond brawler absentmindedly replied, finally getting her hands on the object she had been searching for, she held the scroll aloft for her team to see, "Dad taught us that if we ever find a an injured or deceased hunter in the wild to check their scroll for their identity."

Expanding the screen of the device, the blonde quickly pulled up the identification screen. Though other functions were sealed behind a password lock, important information like I.D. was kept unlocked for situations like these. Yang froze as she saw the name of the person lying unconscious before them. Both Blake and Weiss noticed the girl's reaction and were instantly suspicious.

"You said a name, right before she collapsed. Do you know her?" Blake asked, her voice low. Weiss scowled with growing impatience.

"You could say that." Yang said, her voice laced with a touch of hysteria, "Summer was Ruby's mom's name. This isn't her." She added seeing their expression, "But she looks just like her."

"So she's a look alike. It happens." Weiss responded with a roll of her eyes. She did her best to clean the woman's wounded eye and apply a fresh bandage to it.

"Not like this." She turned the scroll so that they could both see it. Blake leaned in over the wounded woman so that should see the scroll. The picture on it was the same as the woman there, but with two beautiful silver eyes. There wasn't a smile on her face in the I.D. but there was no doubt it belonged to the woman. What really caught their interest was the name on it. As one both Weiss and Blake looked over at the leader of their team. The name on the screen was as plain as day.

Ruby Rose

"Impossible. That's ridiculous." Weiss was the first to deny it. There was no way that the woman lying there, bloody and beaten, was their fifteen year old leader.

"What?" Ruby, their Ruby, looked confused she hadn't seen the scroll, instead she'd been staring at the woman's face. She, like Pyrrha, Jaune, and the other students, had been watching the exchange silently. All the students had been taught that if there was someone who knew what to do then they were to stay out of the way unless ordered to do something.

"The scroll says…." Weiss hesitated as she looked at the other onlookers, "We'll wait until Miss Goodwitch arrives."

"But Weiss!"

"But nothing, Ruby! This should be discussed behind closed doors."

Yang was busy staring at the scroll, her attention no longer on the name but rather the issue date of the identification. It had been issued on October thirty-first but that wasn't what caught her eye, though that did line up with her sister's birthday, what had her attention was the year it was issued. The date on the scroll said it was issued five years from then.

"Students!" Their teacher arrived not a minute later, sweeping into the clearing with her weapon drawn and emerald eyes flashing, "The bullheads will arrive momentarily! Please return to the pickup location."

No one wanted to defy their terrifying headmistress and started filling out of the clearing and back to the larger one where the bullheads would land.

"Team RWBY. You are the ones who tended to… her… wounds…." The blonde teacher trailed off as she finally laid eyes on the injured woman on the ground, her eyes widening as she took in her appearance. When her eyes darted to Yang she saw the young girl shake her head in the negative as the student pulled out a scroll and showed the woman's identification to the teacher.

"Miss Rose?" she mumbled.

"Yes, Miss Goodwitch?" She flinched when Ruby responded and looked between the two who had the same name.

"I'm going to need you to give a blood sample when we get back to Beacon." She recovered quickly and feigned addressing her student from the beginning.

Consciousness, when it returned, returned quickly for Ruby. On instinct she kept her eye close and evened out her breathing. Slowly she analyzed her surroundings finding she was on a barely comfortable bed and could smell antiseptic. Some kind of infirmary or hospital, then. Given the bandages she could feel all across her body, she had been tended to. Of course, if it was an enemy she would have been executed already. Faintly she could hear the breathing of another individual, very close too. If she had to guess she would put them within arms reach of her bed. They must be waiting for her, she surmised.

"I can wait here all day for you to stop pretending you are asleep." The male voice sounded out in the near silent room, the tone unfamiliar but the way of speaking infinitely more so. Ruby's good eye opened to see an older man sitting at her bedside, mug in one hand and cane in the other. It was weird, to her, seeing Ozpin once again. This also meant that what she'd seen earlier had, in fact, not been a dream. She'd grown so used to Oscar that she'd almost forgotten what the man she'd originally met what like. He was the same yet different and she had to remind herself that this was the first one she knew, even if not the first him.

Headmaster Ozpin looked at her with a critical gaze from over his spectacles. His dark green suit matching his silver hair and giving him an almost noble image, certainly a mysterious one.

"Imagine my surprise, " He spoke, apparently deciding he'd waited long enough, "When on my academy's ground appears a grievously wounded woman. A woman, who just so happens to bear the same name and appearance of a first year student, wearing this." He gestured with his mug to the golden circlet sitting next to her bed on the small table.

"Hehe, high fashion?" she tried, her mind racing for a reasonable explanation.

The headmaster merely raised one, unimpressed, eyebrow at her, "Miss Rose. Please. Tell me exactly what is going on."

He was anxious. Of course he would be. Two of the most powerful things in the world showed up in the hands of some random girl who also shouldn't exist.

"I'm not really sure, Oz." She answered, slipping into the old nickname for him, "One minute we were fighting Salem and the next…." She gestured around her. At the mention of Grimm Queen Ozpin nearly dropped his mug, eyes widening in a show of surprise she'd never seen in him before.

"You were fighting Salem? Why? No. How?"

"Before that, Ozpin, what's today's date?"

He blinked owlishly but listed it of and her eyes mimicked his from a moment ago, widening, "Eleven years?"

"Pardon, Miss Rose?"

She chuckled to herself, not really believing it but having no other choice she just rolled with it, "It appears, Professor. That I'm a time traveller. You're right. I am Ruby Rose, just a Ruby from eleven years in the future."

"I see." He took a pensive sip from his mug, eyes focused on a distant object.

"You see? Oz, I'm from the future."

"I heard."

"You sound underwhelmed."

"My apologies, Miss Rose, but the… well I wouldn't call it possibility. Ah, yes, the ridiculous notion had crossed my mind after I saw your identification and the bloodwork came back as a match. When divine relics and magic are involved, one tends to need an open mind." She could have sworn she saw the corners of his lips turn upwards before he hid it in taking a sip from his mug.

Ruby closed her eyes, asking for patience as she dealt with man once again. She'd almost forgotten how infuriating it could be talking to the several thousand year old wizard. The silver haired man leaned forward, his face once again serious.

"Why do you have the relics?"

"Oh right!" She snapped a fist into her hand as if just remembering something, "You should probably vault the ones I brought."

"That won't be necessary." She lifted an eyebrow, "The ones you brought seem to have been rendered inert. They are, for all intents and purposes, paperweights now."

She blinked a few times, letting the info settle in as she looked at the circlet near her. If she looked closely there was a lack of lustre to the gem set in the front of it.

"Miss Rose I would like to ask you how much you know and just why you were fighting a creature like Salem."

"As far as how much I know…. Well pretty much everything. How you and Salem became immortal. How the relics came to be and all that." Ruby sat up, fluffing the pillows so that she could lean back and have a conversation with him instead of laying there awkwardly.

"And as for the fight with Salem?"

Ruby grimaced. She knew this wouldn't be pleasant, "We were desperate. Those of us that were left, that is. It was a crazy idea but we were tired of the war."

"War?"

"Yeah." She looked Ozpin eye to eye, the memories of the last eleven years weighing her down. Slowly, falteringly, she began to lay her story out before him. Her past but his future. Or theirs. By the end Ozpin looked to have aged decades, his paradoxically youthful face set from granite and the mug with Beacon's emblem sat abandoned on the nearby table.

"Thank you, Miss Rose." He finally said, voice low.

"Huh?" the brunette responded eloquently.

"Thank you. For everything you've done so far. It can't have been easy."

This wasn't something she'd seen from him before, all his years seemed to catch up to him at that moment looking impossibly old to her. She drew the blankets around her, the recently dredged up memories flashing once more through her mind.

"It wasn't easy. I… I watched my friends die. My family. One at a time. Until it was just me and Jaune."

He stayed silent for a moment, "I'm sorry. I failed you."

Her head snapped up, eyes wide, "No! Oz, no. You're as much of a victim as the rest of us. You didn't choose this life."

He smiled at her, nodding gratefully if not with a hint of sadness as well, "Maybe so, but I have the power, and therefore the responsibility, to change things for the better."

"Then I guess we're in the same boat." She continued when he gave her a questioning look, "I have the knowledge. I can make a difference. What happened to me doesn't have to happen to me. Well, the young me at least."

"Indeed, Miss Rose." Ozpin smiled a little more genuinely, "Which brings us around to what to do from now on."

"I'm all ears Oz."

Yang fast-walked towards Beacon's infirmary, she wasn't running because if Miss G caught her it would lead to a lecture which would lead to her not getting answers for forever longer. Roses kept flying off of her sister as she resisted using her semblance, she'd been caught using it in the hallways by the deputy headmistress.

Once.

The other two tagged along and despite Weiss' insistence that it was on sufferance, neither could conceal the curiosity burning in their eyes. And who could blame them? It had been a few days since the incident in Forever Fall and they hadn't heard a thing from either the headmaster or his deputy regarding the woman they had found there. The other Ruby had been the talk of the dorm as theories flew fast and thick between the team.

Blake seemed to think it was a long lost relative or something while Weiss was thinking it was some kind of clone. Ruby, their Ruby, kept insisting the woman was a time traveller.

They'd all had a good laugh at that, though their leader's pout had been legendary.

Yang couldn't make up her mind at who exactly the woman was. She looked almost identical to Summer. A look alike was a possibility but having the same silver eyes was an astronomical coincidence. The relative angle had promise, though it didn't account for her name. Why would she have the name Ruby Rose unless it was intentional?

The blond looked at her younger sister who was almost vibrating with barely restrained energy as they made their way through the corridors of the school. If this woman had plans for Ruby then she would stop it. It was simple, she liked simplicity. Of course just because she liked things to be simple didn't mean she was, though she was happy to let others think that way. They would learn or they'd get knocked on their ass. Again, simple.

As they burst into the main foyer of the medical wing they were greeted with the stern visage of Doctor Violet, Beacon's Chief of Medical Staff, she got very angry if you called her Head Nurse. She gave them the room number with a strict warning of what would happen if they caused a ruckus, making it clear that the only reason they could even see the woman from Forever Fall was because Ozpin had made the request. They had gotten the message to their scrolls just a few minutes ago from the headmaster himself, telling that answers awaited them.

Ruby was the first to burst through the door, the rest of her team hot on her heels. Yang finally caught a glimpse of the person and the striking resemblance to their mother (Summer was her mom, not her egg donor) washed over her. It made her heart ache as she missed the woman dearly. Even Ruby seemed to falter, though only a step.

"Are you from the future!?" Their leader blurted out causing their resident heiress to slap her palm to her forehead.

The woman in the bed blinked owlishly at the young leader and, side by side, their resemblance was uncanny. If she didn't know better she really would say it was a future Ruby. There were differences, however, her hair was longer, down to her shoulders. Then there was the obvious lack of a left eye. A large patch made of medical gauze covered the remains, or lack thereof, from view as the wound healed. Discolorations from bruised were already faded and nearly invisible while a lot of the shallower wounds were almost fully healed, another miracle of Aura.

"Uhhh. Hey." The woman said cheerfully, politely ignoring Ruby's first words to her.

Dragging Ruby back by her hood, ignoring the protests, Yang introduced herself, "Hey. I'm Yang, This is Blake, Weiss, and my little sister Ruby." If anything it was just to get the conversation started, how did you start a conversation with a potential doppelganger?

"Yeah. I, uh, I kinda know." She said, nervously scratching her cheek, "I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Ruby Rose and I come from the future, eleven years in the future, to be exact."

"Called it!" A young Ruby Rose shouted out, pumping her fist into the air.

A/N: Hey all. A new story by StarYeti. Surprised? Probably.

I decided to release this for a few reasons and before I get to them I wanted to say that this story was heavily inspired by Hysterical Clerical Hiijinks' story "Remnant's Reclaimer" as well as some inspiration from Coeur Al'aran as well.

Please don't yell at me.

Anyways back to why this is being launched. During my earlier hiatus I realized that I was getting really burned out writing the same fic every week. To fix that, instead of slowing down, I chose to write different fics every week.

I will be going on a rotation of Lithium Rose - Displaced - Old Man Jaune - A Cinder in the Wind

If you like this maybe check out my other works? I'd be grateful. Teehee.

In all seriousness thanks to those of you who are giving me a chance.