The granite authority in Commander Zavala’s voice pinned the Ghost in mid-air. Its light flickered, and Team RWBY tensed, weapons half-raised, caught in the silent, gravitational pull of the two newcomers. This was not a rescue. It was an arraignment.
Before Zavala could press his interrogation, the Warlock, Ikora Rey, raised a hand. A simple gesture, yet it carried enough weight to halt the Titan Commander’s momentum. “A moment, Commander.” Her voice was a calm river flowing through a battlefield, and she turned her intense, analytical gaze not to the leaders or the soldiers, but to the patient.
She moved toward the gurney.
Yang shifted her weight, a low growl rumbling in her chest. Ruby’s knuckles were white on Crescent Rose’s handle. But Ozpin, ever the placid eye of the storm, gave a minute, almost imperceptible shake of his head. *Let this play out.*
Ikora stopped beside Jaune’s unconscious form. She did not touch him. Instead, she held her palm open a few inches above his chestplate. A soft, golden Light, warmer than the Ghost’s electric blue, bloomed from her hand. It was not a weapon or a tool. It was a question, being asked in a language no one else in the room understood. Faint motes of light drifted from her hand, cascading over Jaune’s armor, seeming to map every scar, every dent, every desperate patch-job.
While the Warlock was absorbed in her work, Zavala turned. He faced Ozpin, a monolith of blue armor addressing a man of quiet shadows. The air between them crackled.
“I am Commander Zavala, Titan Vanguard,” he stated. His voice was not an introduction; it was a declaration of rank. “This is Warlock Vanguard Ikora Rey. We are the leadership of the Guardians of the Last City.”
He gave a stiff, formal nod. It was not a bow, but an acknowledgment of a fellow commander. “The actions of this Ghost were outside of established protocol. It was operating without guidance and on incomplete information. Any disruption its presence and the… irregular creation of this new Guardian have caused is regrettable.”
The apology was as rigid and unyielding as his armor, but it was an apology nonetheless. The blame was placed squarely on the Ghost, absolving the Vanguard, yet accepting responsibility. It was a masterful piece of diplomatic maneuvering.
“Your concern is noted, Commander,” Ozpin replied, his own voice a smooth counterpoint to Zavala’s gravelly baritone. He gestured to the room. “And your arrival is… unexpected. Your methods of travel are quite remarkable.”
“Transmat,” Zavala said, offering the word without any further explanation. “We detected this Guardian’s nascent Light as a chaotic surge in an uncharted sector. We are here to assess the asset and the environment.”
Ruby flinched at the word. *Asset.* There it was again. The cold, tactical reality of Jaune’s new existence.
Ikora Rey drew back her hand, the golden light receding into her palm. She turned to Zavala, her expression unreadable. “The Ghost’s report was accurate,” she said, her voice carrying across the silent room. “His Light is dangerously depleted, but stable. He is in a deep conservation state—a healing trance. The initial revival was… crude.” She glanced at the Ghost, not with anger, but with the detached criticism of a master artisan reviewing an apprentice’s work. “A field improvisation. It succeeded in re-igniting the spark, but it severed his foundational connections to his past self. He is, for all intents and purposes, a blank slate.”
The clinical diagnosis landed with the force of a physical blow. It was one thing for the Ghost to say he wasn’t there. It was another to hear a scholar of this power declare him fundamentally broken. Severed.
Zavala’s grim expression deepened. He looked from Ikora, to the unconscious Jaune, and then his gaze swept over the four huntresses-in-training, Glynda, and Ozpin. He seemed to take in their weapons, their postures, the very air of defiance and fear in the room.
“This world is beset,” he stated. “The Ghost’s short-term logs show continuous, high-level combat against a hostile, non-sentient species of remarkable aggression. The Grimm.”
“They are a force of nature,” Ozpin corrected gently. “A constant of this world. We have fought them for generations.”
“They are agents of Darkness,” Zavala countered, the words leaving no room for argument. “We have seen their like before, on other worlds, in other forms. Our mandate, our entire reason for existence, is to defend humanity from such threats. Wherever it is found.”
He took a half-step forward, his presence filling the office, a mountain moving into the light.
“We are cut off from our home. Our connection to the Traveler and the Last City is gone. But we are not without resources.” He looked directly at Ozpin, commander to commander. “We can establish a beachhead. Our Ghosts can seek out other candidates on this world, those with the specific spark. We can raise a new generation of Guardians here, on Remnant. We will help you fight your war.”
The offer hung in the air, immense and terrifying. An army of immortal soldiers. An end to the centuries of fear. An end to Grimm. It was everything they had ever dreamed of.
And it was the most horrifying thing Ruby had ever heard.
She looked at Jaune, at the boy who was the first “candidate.” The price of this gift was the person you were. Her world, their world, would be saved by erasing the people in it and replacing them with soldiers. The weight of Zavala’s offer felt like it was crushing the air from her lungs. This wasn’t help. It was a conquest, even if it was a benevolent one.
Her gaze shifted from Zavala’s implacable face to Ikora Rey. The Warlock was not looking at Ozpin or Zavala. Her piercing eyes were on Ruby. For a fleeting second, through the profound, intimidating intelligence, Ruby saw something else. Not pity. Not sympathy. Understanding. A flicker of recognition, not of Ruby the student, but of Ruby the sister, the friend, watching a loved one lie broken and inert.
In that moment, Ruby’s perception of the room shifted. Zavala was a general, seeing a battlefield and a new army. Ozpin was a king, seeing a rival power and a dangerous alliance. But Ikora… Ikora was a scholar. She had diagnosed Jaune as “severed,” but she had done so with the careful precision of a doctor, not the dismissive finality of a commander.
Hope, fragile and stubborn, rekindled in Ruby’s chest. It was a different hope than before. Not that these people would magically fix Jaune. Not that they would go away. It was the sudden, sharp realization that while Zavala saw an asset, Ikora saw a problem to be solved. A puzzle. And if there was one thing Team RWBY knew about their lanky, lovesick friend, it was that Jaune Arc had always been a puzzle.
Maybe, just maybe, this was a puzzle that could be put back together.