Team CLMA, An RVB and RWBY fanfic

V.3 Epilogue

After a few months pass, Ruby steps outside, wearing a backpack, and quietly shuts the front door. Her hair was a tiny bit longer and she sports a white high-neck décolletage blouse with brown studded wristbands on the arms. She still wore her black dress with a red toile but also wore a black corset over it with red stripes holding it in place.

"Hey." Ruby looks up and sees Jaune, Nora, and Ren in front of her, the last two wearing new outfits.

Nora wears a white sleeveless turtleneck top that has  heart cut-out on the top which also has a diagonal cut through it.  open cropped, short-sleeved navy blue bomber jacket with a damaged print of her emblem visible on the back and pink stripes along the sleeves alongside pink buckled cuffs.

Ren wore a longer, sleeveless tailcoat. Under it he wears a black, sleeveless turtleneck with red, tasselled ropes over the hips, pants that get tighter below the knees, and calf-high open-toed sandals. From his middle finger to his biceps run gradient pink-to-black detached sleeves ending in metal armbands. He had a pink-ending ponytail which reached his butt.

"Hey, Jaune," greeted Ruby. "Haven's a long way to go."

"I know. It's the only way we have," He responded.

"Are you sure you want to come along?"

"The journey will be perilous, and whether we'll find answers at the end is entirely uncertain," added Ren.

"But we wouldn't be here if we weren't up for it," added Nora, confidently

Ruby smiled before noticing something. "Hey, where's-"

"Where do you think you're going, young lady?!" shouted her father's voice.

Ruby turned wide eyed and turned to the sound of her father. "Dad, I'm sorry, you weren't supposed to find out like..." She quickly stopped herself, her shocked expression turning sour at the sight of a smug, grinning Church, proud at his imitation. "That's not funny!"

"Not to me, Rubes, not to me," He said laughing. He also had a bew appearance, sporting a cobalt bandanna around his neck, a blue unbuttoned overcoat with his sniper strap around it, brown cargo pants and combat boots. The faded hair around his mohawk, grew out a bit more, and a soul patch started to grow on his chin.

Ruby checked where he came from and saw where. "What were you doing in our garage?"

"As thank you gift for your hospitality for the last few months, I decided to help out and fix up your old car over there." Ruby smiled at this.

"You mean we, right?" Simmons and Grif came up behind him also with new appearances. Simmons was repaired and wore a buttoned up maroon jacket, and black cargo pants. He also had a small tied up brown ponytail on the back of his head.

"Yeah, give us some credit." said Grif. He was wearing his old torn orange hoodie, large grey jogging pants and orangish-red leather shoes with straps. He was starting to grow a beard as a bandage laid on his nose.

"You?" asked Simmons. "Church was fixing up the wheels, I was fixing the engine, you were just sleeping at the back of the car."

"I was making sure the seats were still comfortable!"

"Oh come on!"

"Hey, can we not alert my dad right now?!" asked Ruby in a hushed voice before turning normal. "How's the arm, Simmons?"

Simmons pulled back his sleeve revealing his new Atlas arm, flexing the fingers. They reacted faster but were skinner and less durable. "Pretty good, shame Yang can't get one."

"It's okay," said Ruby, saddened a bit.

"So we all set?" asked Simmons.

"Yep," said Ruby, a bit more chipper.

"It's gonna be a long walk," said Jaune.

"Whelp, let's get started," said Church. The seven begin their long trek, down the road leading away from Taiyang's home.

Somewhere else, a pale woman looks down at a pair of glasses and a torn green scarf. "A smaller, more honest soul... It's true that a simple spark can ignite hope, breathe fire into the hearts of the weary. The ability to derive strength from hope is undoubtedly mankind's greatest attribute. Which is why I will focus all of my power... to snuff it out."

Taiyang walks into Ruby's room, bringing breakfast to his youngest daughter, but suddenly drops it when he sees she's not there. The concerned father then runs out of the room, unaware of the note Ruby left behind on her bed. As Taiyang runs past Yang's bedroom, she notices a raven perched on a branch, before watching it fly off.

"How does it feel, knowing that all of your time and effort has been for nothing? That your guardians have failed you? That everything you've built will be torn down before your very eyes? Your faith in mankind was not misplaced. When banded together, unified by a common enemy, they are a noticeable threat. But divide them, place doubt into their minds, and any semblance of power they once had will wash away."

Somewhere in the ruins of Beacon, Sarge, a few teachers, students, and soldiers watched as Grimm marched into its grounds from a far. Sarge cocks a shell out of his shotgun, chuckling.

In Vale, Glynda is tries to repair a shop with her telekinesis, but fails to hold it together. Nearby, Caboose walked along the broken pathway, sighing to himself before a blade from an umbrella pressed his neck.

Elsewhere, Blake is seen running across rooftops. She stops to notice Beacon in the distance before continuing onward.

Not too far from Vale, soldiers and salvage clean up the wreckage of the Atlas airship. One of them came across a torn up robot they never seen before. She picked up its brown head and stared down at its cracked, smudged golden visor. She then shrugged and tossed it into her cart, along with the other parts.

In the air, Weiss sat in a passenger plane with her father next to her, feeling nervous about him and back home.

In the opposite direction, a plane flew towards Chorus. Inside, Donut looked down at his phone, reading old text messages from his mothers, smiling. In the next class, Tucker stared at the old picture of him and a grumpy Blake in class as the plane he was in flew. He looked up to see President Kimball beside him deep in thought about what happened to Vale.

"Of course, they won't realize it at first. Like you, they'll cling to their fleeting hope, their aspirations. But this is merely the first move."

Elsewhere, Ruby stood over her mother's grave one last time before the journey. She then turned to her new team and walked towards them.

As Church watched her approach, a memory of his mother flashed by. He shook his head into reality before continuing the journey.

"So you send your guardians, your Huntsmen and Huntresses, and when they fail and you turn to your smaller soul, know that you send her to the same pitiful demise." Behind the pale woman was a widow, revealing a barren dark wasteland, filled with waves of Grim. As they roared, her dark red eyes glowed as she made an menacing grin. "This is the beginning of the end, Ozma... And I can't wait to watch you burn."