RWBY Through Worlds (End)

BC95: Bait (Heroes)-8

Cinder took over flying till they landed in the clear space in the middle of nowhere.

"She's crazy," Mino said to Hypnosia. "She actually thinks we're helping her."

"I am helping her," Hypnosia said firmly.

"What?" Mino frowned darkly. "This was a trick, wasn't it?"

"No," Hypnosia replied. "I'm serious. Maybe you can live with what you've done for the tribe, but I can't. Not since they pulled those demons out of my soul."

"The tribe can put them back..." Mino said.

Hypnosia suddenly slapped him, hard.

He reeled, stunned.

"You giant idiot!" she said. [My sister reads her with an irish accent and that makes the insults so much funnier.]  "Is your head still up your arse?"

"OW," Mino winced. "What's gotten into you? The tribe is the only place people fit who fit nowhere else."

"I don't know about that," Hypnosia said. "I'm not so dense as you, I suppose. I've begun to wonder why the people we've been trying to destroy are the ones defending the outcasts; or why those who were once the same as us are working with them and have tried to at their own risk; or why you nearly got the daughter of your own ally, Dawkins, killed and gave her not another thought."

"I would have saved her if she wished it."

"And what then? And would it have been different if she was any other child, people who've technically done nothing to us yet? You would punish them just for being born and being alone and vulnerable? Doesn't that seem like hypocrisy to you?"

"But it didn't bother you before."

"That's just it--why didn't it?" Hypnosia said. "Is all I could see my own greed? My selfish wishes to get on top? And it almost destroyed me also to boot. Menagerie may not have welcomed you, but I have no reason to target it other than it served my purpose. There has to be a line somewhere...or are we already like the Grimm? Are we mastering them, or are the Grimm mastering us?"

"You're really taking this hard," Mino said. "We got carried away a little maybe, but we still need the tribe."

"No...it needs us," Hypnosia said. "What is it really helping us anymore? We should have left when we could have made a clean break. Now we can't. They made me into a monster, and I intend to make sure they suffer for it... As for you, haven't you given thought to the things you've done just in the last few months since they really began to implement this? What you did to those girls..."

Mino stopped. "There were worse..."

"Oh, yes, there's worse," Hypnosia said, pointing at him. "You weren't the worst...but you crossed the lines. Once, you didn't do that. Once, you liked me and only me, I thought. Not anymore."

"So you're jealous?" Mino said. "Is that it? Huh, I'm surprised you'd be jealous of a mongrel like myself."

"If you'll recall, my own grandmother was a Faunus," Hypnosia pointed out. "I told you before how, once the family found out, they threw my father out, though he had no control over what his father did on the side... Atlas is no friend to my family." She clenched a fist. "Once I'd have been inclined to agree with Fall about them...but then she destroyed everyone...and Salem... Well, that's no friend to us. Yet, we've become them. How I did not see it before is what scares me the most. Do what you want, but I cannot do this anymore. Why, my father would roll over in his grave if he knew what we did to Menagerie...where he grew up."

"The same place that he left because you looked fully human and they didn't like that," Mino reminded her.

"There's blame on both sides, but it was kinder to him than his own people," Hypnosia said. "He wouldn't have destroyed it. I won't say he was the most scrupulous of individuals, just as I'm not, but he had some standards. Do we? Do you anymore? I don't think I even know you now, which is nothing--I don't even know myself. Dawkins was just the same. You heard him when they brought us in. Do you think he'd appreciate that you nearly got his daughter killed just out of anger?"