Chapter Thirteen: Tailor and Time

Ruby was having a weird day.

It wasn't necessarily a bad day —just a weird one. Over the course of the day she'd led her team to victory in a fight, managed to get herself aged up to 20, discovered Jaune had a secret time-kingdom-thing he'd not told her about and had seen creatures she thought didn't even exist.

At the moment, she was wearing what she guessed was a winter coat over her nightgown as Jaune led her through the strangely empty streets, heading for a small building just a few blocks from the palace in the center.

When they reached it, Ruby had the odd feeling that she should take her shoes off (despite the fact that she wasn't actually wearing any). The place was organized to the point of being unnerving —even the few plants looked to be completely trimmed and organized properly.

Jaune shut the door behind them, "Give it a few seconds, they should be out in-"

"Who's there?"

Ruby looked up, eyes widening as she saw the woman walking down the staircase. She was clad in a pair of skinny jeans, a white sweater covering her torso that blended almost perfectly with her hair.

A tape measure was draped around her neck, annoyed blue eyes gazing at the two… "Is that Weiss? Wait, but… how is she here?" Ruby asked, more questions piling onto the pile she was going to ask Jaune when she got dressed.

The older woman looked down, eyes widening a bit as she saw Jaune and Ruby. Then she groaned, "Not another one! I'm running out of red fabric to clothe all these dolts you keep bringing in!" she glared at Jaune, the older man only shrugging.

"Wait… others? There are more of me here?"

Weiss sighed, "You have no idea. I swear all I've made in the last two millennia is cloaks! Red cloaks! That's all they ever care about!" she turned to Jaune, "Why do you always bring me the Ruby's? Why not take them to one of the other tailors? I'm pretty sure one of the Ruby's is a tailor now! Why not her!?"

Jaune chuckled, "I bring everyone to you. I don't control who the rescue teams bring out of the dying branches. Take it up with them." he gestured outside.

Weiss glared at him, "I'll be sure to keep that in mind… anyway," she took a breath, "What's the story with this one? A recent acquisition from a destroyed time tree? A death that was supposed to happen that you circumvented? What am I dealing with?"

"Visitor."

Weiss blinked a few times, eyes blank… then she slowly sat on the nearby stairstep. "Twenty-thousand years… I've been here twenty-thousand years, and you've never brought someone here as a visitor…"

Ruby pulled the coat closer, her face turning the same red as her hair… she'd known she was something of a rare thing for Jaune but… twenty-thousand years!? He'd been alive that long and never once brought someone with him on a visit!?

"What's going on?"

Ruby and Jaune turned, watching another woman walk down the stairs. This one was clad in a fitting green kimono. Long, black hair —with a single pink stripe along the back —flowed down to her waist, pink eyes looking at Weiss before turning to the others.

Weiss stood, standing a bit straighter before coughing, "Lily! Sorry, did I wake you? I know it's been a few-"

Weiss stopped, seeing the small smile on the newly named Lily's face. She shook her head, "I was already awake. Jeanne called to say she'll be coming in a few hours to have us fix her hoodie… again…" Lily sighed, yawning as she rubbed at her eyes.

Weiss frowned, eyes hardening as she casually swept the taller girl off her feet. When Lily immediately rubbed against Weiss's neck (prompted said ice queen to blush) she started walking up the stairs, "Come on, let's get you to bed," she looked back at her customer, "I'll be with you in a moment."

They disappeared up the stairs, leaving Jaune to wait for the inevitable torrent of questions Ruby would no doubt ask.

He didn't have to wait long.

"So… there are more of me? More of Weiss? More of… whoever Lily is?"

"You'd know her better as Ren."

Ruby's next question died on her lips, replaced with a more pressing one: "There's a girl version of Ren here?"

Jaune chuckled, "Ruby, there's a girl and guy version of everyone somewhere. Every timeline is a little different —not everything stays the same. Sometimes certain people are different genders than they were last time. Or sometimes people have different skills or interests. It's…" Jaune frowned, trying to think of an easy way to explain it.

He snapped (his fingers), "Think of it like a… you know what a sonic boom is, right?" Ruby nodded.

"Well… wait —that doesn't help at all… hmm…"

Jaune frowned, "Think of it like… a pond! But it's also a tree! Every different outcome is another branch on the tree-pond, but whenever someone does something that makes ripples —like me traveling through it —everything's changed. Not much, but enough to get some really different timelines than the first time around."

Jaune took a breath, "Does that make sense?"

His response was a blank stare.

He sighed, "I knew you'd do that… Ruby, I'm trying here, but I don't know how to explain some of these things in a way you'll understand. It's just… it's… weird and… complicated." Jaune stumbled through his words, trying to think of something that at least made sense for how time travel worked.

Ruby frowned, laying a hand on Jaune's shoulder, "No, it's okay. I think I get it… so if in one branch I put my hand on your shoulder, in another I didn't, right?"

Jaune smiled, "Yeah… well, in a branch anyway. We're kind of outside of… well, all of it right now. Weiss said twenty-thousand years, but she still looks twenty. This place exists outside of time itself… about the only place for people like Weiss."

Ruby slid to the ground as Jaune did the same, a faint smile on his face as his eyes drifted to somewhere else (or sometime else… hard to tell with him). "This place… whenever I converted Gamor and we made the barrier, the first thing I did was start bringing in people from the dying branches. But…" he looked down, squeezing his hand as the smile fell.

"It's never enough… there are millions of people here but… it's just never enough. We can never get everyone… never enough time…" he gave Ruby a wry smile, "How's that for irony, huh? The time traveler running out of time?"

Ruby didn't join Jaune's humorless laugh, "Why did you come to mine?" that was something that didn't make sense to her. Jaune had this place, could go into dying timelines (which she assumed hers wasn't) and rescue as many people as he needed… why come to hers?

Jaune sighed, "I keep thinking I can stop it… keep thinking I can stop her from doing what she always does…" he shook his head, "I never have… so many timelines and… never…"

Ruby wrapped her arms around Jaune, pulling him into a hug against her shoulder. Jaune reciprocated it, wrapping an arm around Ruby, laying his head against her shoulder.

"Who?"

"Someone I hope you'll never meet."

Jaune looked down, blue eyes meeting silver as Ruby leaned up slightly, their foreheads nearly touching, "Are you okay?"

Jaune looked down, face slowly burning as he looked away, realizing what he was looking at. Ruby, of course, was oblivious… at first. When she looked down and noticed where her body was pressed against Jaune's arm… well, suffice to say her face matched his a moment later.

"Alright, Lily's a… sleep."

The blushing duo turned to see Weiss slowly making her way down the stairs, freezing just before reaching them. Her eyes flicked between the two, her face tinting pink as she wondered just what she'd walked in on.

Jaune broke from his stupor first, standing up as Ruby followed suit, "I'll leave it to you, Weiss. Get her something she'll like."

Weiss smiled, "What time is this one from?"

"17."

Weiss nodded, taking Ruby's wrist and guiding her back through the house, past countless paintings and decorations before at last arriving in a meticulously kept craft-room. Mannequins in all manners of dress were all perfectly spaced about the room, many with names stitched onto their foreheads.

Weiss went straight to the 'Ruby' one, tapping on the name a few times. It started glowing, the other mannequins suddenly replaced with similar ones, now all with Ruby's name on them and each with a different style of dress.

Weiss turned to her, "Since you're a Ruby, I'll assume you like a lot of black and red, right?"

"How did you-"

Weiss held up a hand, gesturing to the many mannequins with the word 'Ruby' stitched on, "Kid, I've been doing this for millennia. In case it wasn't obvious, you aren't exactly the first Ruby I've had to deal with."

Ruby slowly nodded, letting Weiss guide her to the center of the room before the woman whistled, a chair flying toward them. Ruby sat down at Weiss's urging, watching the woman seemingly fly around the room, pulling outfits from the mannequins before shaking her head. She wasn't sure when Weiss managed to slip the coat off of her, exposing the cyan gown.

Ruby waited until she stopped moving (and that took quite a while) before finally asking a question, "How many Ru-"

"Five-hundred. Minimum."

Ruby's eyes widened.

"That's only the girl one's like you. If you mean older ones it's more like two thousand."

Ruby's mouth opened a bit.

"Even though the male ones are usually named Garnet, I guess you could count those too… so about four thousand."

Her jaw hit the floor at that one.

Weiss frowned at a dark-red dress in her arms, "What do you think of this? This is a '470 BA' style dress —so to you, it probably looks rather old fashioned. Still, might be fitting to have in a new body."

Ruby looked over it, noticing the large frills, the long sleeves. She shook her head, "No thanks… what did you call it? An era 470 BA? What's that mean exactly?"

Weiss tossed the dress aside, walking around as Ruby turned her head to watch, "Time doesn't exactly work the way you understand it out here. The present to one person could be years in the past to another. So, we came up with the 'Arc' system to help avoid confusion."

Weiss pulled what looked like a black duster, "This one's a bit more recent —more and era 320 BA. This is just the duster —though if you believe some of the girls downtown-" Weiss rolled her eyes "this may as well be the whole thing."

Ruby shook her head, "What's the 'Arc' system?" Ruby asked as Weiss tossed away the duster, ignoring a few more mannequins before tapping on one of their foreheads, each mannequins' outfit changing to things more similar to Ruby's normal clothes.

Weiss grabbed a long, red, silk dress, "The 'Arc' system is a unified way to tell time that's based on something that doesn't change: Jaune. I asked Jaune what year you were from, and he said '17', so that means in your time he's seventeen years old. Anything before or after is either BA —before Arc — or AA —after Arc."

Ruby ran a hand along the silk, smiling at the soft feel to it, "Okay… mind if I try this one on?"

Weiss slowly shook her head, a faint smile on her face, "I've been waiting for millennia for a Ruby that doesn't ask that question… yes is the answer, by the way. Since you're going to ask anyway. There's a changing room just down the hall —since unless you're like the 470 AA Ruby, you won't want to change in front of me."

Ruby frowned, "What's the-"

"Don't ask."

Weiss tapped on one of the mannequins again, its clothes shifting into a black pair of underwear with a red rose emblem along the rear, along with a similarly colored bra. "Given you'll need underwear too, I'm assuming you'd like something more 25ish, right? The cookie print 9's aren't going to do you any favors."

Ruby's face went red as she nodded, watching Weiss slip the underwear and matching bra from the mannequin before handing them to her, motioning her down the hall.

Ruby followed the woman's gesture, eyes flicking to some of the many… many… many pictures hung up everywhere —honestly, it was hard to tell what color the wall was with so many. Most of them looked to be of her and Lily —a few with them working on dresses, a few of them talking with Jaune.

One, in particular, got Ruby to stop. She took a step closer, frowning as she saw… well, her. Three of her, to be exact. The picture was of three 'hers' standing in the room she'd just been in, each of them with slight variations.

The one on the left was shorter, seemingly younger than the other two. It looked like Ruby when she was maybe twelve. She was clad in a beowolf jumpsuit, held in the arms of another Ruby.

The middle one —holding the smallest one —had an eyepatch with her rose emblem over it, a bright red cloak covering an outfit that had some slight modifications compared to the one she wore in the present.

The last one looked vaguely like her mother —though the red cloak kind of gave away it was her. Beneath that cloak she was wearing a simple white sweater, a cup of what Ruby guessed was hot chocolate and/or coffee in her hands. She had a larger bust than the other two, comparable to the one Ruby currently had —well, thanks to Jaune's time-watch-thing anyway.

"Is that what I'll look like when I get older?" Ruby thought, finally turning from the photo and going into the dressing room. It was… weird, seeing someone who looked so much like her —that was her in a sense.

The dressing room was a bit less covered in pictures than the hallway outside. The walls were mostly white, the only objects in the room a small bench and a full-body mirror opposite each other.

She stripped down, laying the gown she'd been wearing on the bench. She pulled on the underwear before looking up, gazing into the mirror. Her face went red at the tall figure within —one she had a hard time believing was her. She even slightly moved her hands, making sure it was a mirror and not some kind of painting.

Sure enough, it moved with her. That sexy, underwear-clad woman wasn't someone in an Atlesian fashion magazine —that was her. "Still find it so hard to believe it's real…" Ruby muttered, slipping into the silk dress.

She'd been thinking like that a lot lately. Since the moment she'd met Jaune she'd been thinking like that. Every time she closed her eyes she thought she'd wake up that morning, hear her father calling her downstairs, and complain about Yang using the hot water —just like always.

"How's it-"

"Ah! Don't look!"

Despite being fully clothed, Ruby covered herself over anyway as Weiss walked in, the older girl shaking her head. "You know, the Blake, Pyrrha, Ren —hell even Yang variants usually have some personality differences. So how is it every Ruby is embarrassed when someone walks in on her?" the slight smile on her face offset the angry tone.

Ruby gulped, looking at herself in the mirror. The dress was certainly comfortable… but given she could see her underwear plain as day, she wasn't sure if it was practical. "Umm… I don't know about this…"

Weiss shrugged, "Not much for showing off then, noted. Hmm… sit down," Ruby complied, "Now give me some ideas. What do you normally like doing? Who are you?"

Ruby looked at the ground, "Well I uh… I like strawberries. Cookies too —cookies with strawberries in them are amazing… umm I… I'm a huntress! I like hunting grimm, using crescent rose… video games! Video games are fun too! Um… what else…"

Weiss chuckled, "More help than the last Ruby at least. I'll be right back." at that she walked away, leaving Ruby in a somewhat revealing dress, waiting for the designer to return.

It took her maybe a minute, walking back in with something very different from Ruby's current attire. Rather than a nearly see-through silk dress, Weiss came back with something far more modest.

In her hands was a light green button-down, just over a somewhat long beige skirt. Weiss handed them to Ruby, "Here. If you normally dress for action, I think these might be a nice change of pace for you."

Weiss walked out the door before Ruby could ask, the younger girl slipping out of the dress before pulling on the clothes. Definitely less comfortable, but also far less revealing. The skirt came up to her belly button and ended right at her knees, tied with a brown string between two darker frills.

The shirt would've been completely against her normally —though given her larger figure she was showing a bit of cleavage. She gave a twirl, smiling as she looked in the mirror. The clothes weren't exactly combat-ready… but for once, Ruby was fine with that.

She draped the gown over her arm before walking out, seeing Weiss leaning against the nearby archway, "Like them?" her answer was a nod.

Weiss nodded, "I thought so. One more thing," she walked around the corner, coming back with a black purse with a brilliant red rose emblem on the side, "I'd planned on giving that to the last Ruby that came in, but she didn't want it. You might as well have it —matches your hair."

Ruby smiled, "Thank you. So… what now?"

Weiss shrugged, the two walking into Weiss's room with all the mannequins. She'd just tapped a few of their foreheads when Ruby spoke up, "What's up with these mannequins' anyway? How do they… well, do that?" she said as one shifted to a black hoodie much like Jaune's.

Weiss chuckled, "Right, year seventeen… if you want to know, I'd talk to year 6230 Weiss. All I could tell you is they use… think it was something about a 'Kugelblitz' —whatever that is. I'm year 20 —my grandchildren wouldn't have seen things like this."

Ruby nodded a few times, "Okay… thanks again!" she waved at Weiss before making her way back through the home, finding Jaune sitting perfectly motionless, his eyes closed as he seemingly meditated.

Ruby crept closer, stopping only when he turned to face her —eyes still closed. When they opened, he gave her a faint smile, "That's a good look for you."

Ruby's face tinted pink as she looked away, giving a nervous giggle as Jaune stood. He looked behind her for a second before his smile widened, "Wondering what a 'kugelblitz' is, right?"

"Yeah… and a lot of other stuff…"

Jaune chuckled, gently taking Ruby's hand, "Well, I'll answer whatever I can. Follow me."

Ruby raised an eyebrow, "Where are we going?"

"Nowhere… well, I don't plan to go anywhere anyway."

Ruby slowly nodded, turning her attention to the streets around her. In a weird way, it reminded her of Vale. Kids playing in the streets, people walking by on the sidewalk —some occasionally giving Jaune and her a friendly wave —the only way it was really different was the fact that the buildings were far larger… and, you know, the sky was white.

"So," Ruby started, looking up to see Jaune turn to her, "What exactly is this place? I know you said we're outside of time but… what is it really?"

Jaune scratched his chin for a moment, lost in thought as they walked along the sidewalk.

He answered a minute later, "Well.. originally it was sort of like a refugee camp —a place for the people whose timelines were destroyed. Now though… well, it's more like an ageless city. Time doesn't move here, so no one ever ages without meaning too… well, except you."

Ruby frowned, "So I'll age here, but no one else will?"

"Did you mean to age yourself up five years?"

Ruby's face suddenly matched her namesake, her eyes finding the ground very interesting. Jaune chuckled, laying a hand on her shoulder and pulling her slightly to keep up with him.

Jaune looked to the sky, "When me and Gamor first made this place, I never thought it would get this big…" he gave Ruby a bright smile, "Just goes to show that even I can't tell you everything about the future."

Ruby giggled, "Yeah… how old is this city, exactly?" if there was any question she wanted answers —and there were many —that was a big one. If Weiss had been here for twenty thousand years, how old was the city itself?

"The city or the dome?"

"Wait, what?"

Jaune sighed, "The city itself has been here longer than any human has been alive. The dome is something me and Gamor made to make it habitable for normal humans. That was made… hmm, let's see I first turned Gamor in… time doesn't really work that way so… hmm…" Jaune looked in the air, eyes lost in memory.

Eventually, he turned to look at Ruby, "I wish I could tell you… actually, I wish I knew how to tell you this. The oldest residents here have been around for maybe 100,000 years? Even that's a rough estimate. The dome's older but… can't really say how much…" Jaune scratched his chin.

Ruby slowly nodded… after the 'twenty thousand years' thing from Weiss, she wasn't even shocked anymore. He could say it was a billion years old and she wouldn't be surprised (okay, maybe a little surprised).

"Anything else?"

"Why were the gowns there?"

Jaune's brows furrowed at her, eyes widening a bit as he realized what she was talking about. Then he raised one, "Really? You've seen so much —Gamor, Miko, Weiss, the City —and you care about the dressing gowns?"

Ruby nodded, "I kind of want a more mundane answer so —you know —my brain doesn't melt in the next five seconds… so where did they come from? Did someone leave them there? Are they yours?"

Jaune frowned, "Ruby, none of those gowns would even fit me. Why would they be mine?"

Ruby shrugged, "I've seen weirder things today —I am a weirder thing today."

Jaune sighed, running a hand through his hair, "If you must know, they belong to my wife… well, they did anyway…" he trailed off, looking at one of the nearby buildings.

Ruby put a hand on his shoulder, "I… thought I was the first person you brought here. Did you bring someone else?"

Jaune shook his head, "You're the first I brought to Weiss… you're the first that made it out of the palace…" He muttered the last part, but Ruby heard regardless.

Ruby gulped, "Uhh… what do you mean 'made it out of the palace'? Are your a… guards really protective or…" She trailed off, not sure if she wanted to know the answer.

Jaune took Ruby's hand, looking over it for a moment before turning his gaze to her face, "I've brought people that were important to me here before… that's why those gowns are just sitting there now."

Jaune stepped back, "When someone whose timeline is still intact comes here and the timeline keeps going, they just… disappear. The first time I brought someone in, I couldn't do anything but watch as she just… faded away…"

Jaune leaned against a nearby wall, gripping his hands into fists as Ruby leaned against his side. Ruby frowned, "So… that's why you stopped time with me? So it wouldn't happen?"

He shook his head, "That didn't stop it, Ruby. I just delayed it. A few days, maybe. Long enough for me to deal with the breach and for us to leave."

Ruby froze, "So… I'm dying? While I'm here?"

"You'd wish you were if you knew what happened to them…"