RWBY Through Worlds (End)

BC41: Mercury's Home Insurance (Mercury & Co.)-3

They all sprinted towards the plane.

Wally came back after taking care of the Ursa.

"Did I miss anything?" he asked.

"More of the same," Shine replied.

"What did you figure out about Greg?" Wally asked. "Come on, tell me."

"I'm not sure you'd like it." Shine was grimacing.

"You know I love it when you figure stuff out. Come on," Wally urged her.

Emerald smiled while Mercury looked ready to gag.

"It's just this dreadful story that my college at home assigns people," Shine said. "I've never read it, but I read synopses of it. This place called Omelas has this really tranquil, perfect life--at the cost of one child being tortured continually and shown no love, no words, no humanity, ever. Some people leave the place, others stay and ignore the truth. It's supposed to be this philosophical question about the needs of the many versus the few. It flies in the face of all teachings that if one person is unhappy, then no one else can be fully complete."

"That is the worst story I've ever heard," Wally said. "I hope they save the kid in the end."

"College stories are left open ended. To promote 'critical thinking'," Shine mimed gagging. "But it's really to promote the students trying to leave aside all humane instincts and think about it as if human life is unimportant. And sure, it's an appropriate metaphor. I just hate it."

"I've never heard of this story," Royal said.

Shine glanced at him. "Well, it's in my world."

Silence.

Royal rubbed his head.

"Are...all of us just stories in your world?" Emerald asked her strangely. "You've always hinted at that, but you've never really told us."

"Yes and no," Shine said. "It's part of the shared knowledge of worlds that stories affect them. But they aren't carbon copies. I can't say how far it goes. The Brothers Grimm aren't like anything I've heard about, but I don't know every story. However two brothers named Grimm did collect old fairytales in my world, and they were mostly horrible. Just like the Grimm are. You could say that's the same thing."

"They collected us all right," Mercury said. "And enslaved us."

"Anyone who changes a story to suit their purpose is taking advantage of it in some way, good or bad," Shine shrugged. "Ozpin taught you that, didn't he?"

"Please don't ask us what our favorite fairy tale is," Cinder said tightly.

"I thought we shoved that code." Shine waved dismissively.

"We did," Emerald said. "We don't use codes now. We're not a secret society after all. Weird."

"Still weird that you have stuff like that--and kind of creepy," Mercury commented darkly.

"How many times do I have to say it's not that much of a resemblance?" Shine said awkwardly. "This is why I didn't want to explain. You all will take it so serious now. It's not. Look, we heard the story of The Girl Who Fell Through the World. And that was about our kind of people. Did we take it to mean we'd have to do exactly the same thing?"

"Well, no," Emerald said, "but it did happen."

"It didn't happen exactly like that though, did it?" Shine said. "You can't trust the record of someone who wasn't there. It's like that. For all I know, I'm a legend somewhere already.... I can't worry about it all day. It doesn't matter."