You are one in a million, Little one. Where the vast majority remain ignorant of the true vastness of existence, you can freely explore it. Where others see boundaries, you see only new places to reach. This is your right, but beware, for... Ruby, pay attention. And stop trying to set my tail on fire.
— The story's description on Fanfiction.net
Through the Eternities
is a RWBY and Magic: The Gathering crossover story by Unseen Lurker, writer of Ere We Go, Pluz Ultra!, where a young Ruby ignites as a planeswalker at the cabin, and is found and adopted by Ugin.
Contains examples of:
- Adaptational Personality Change:
- Being raised by Ugin, with help from Sarkhan and Narset, has significantly changed Ruby's personality here, giving her a more witty, direct personality.
- Yang is a lot more morose here, having blamed herself for Ruby's apparent death for years.
- While still fairly gruff, Qrow is a lot more responsible and sober than in canon due to having to step up and take care of Yang in place of Tai.
- Adaptational Superpower Change: Yang's Semblance is still Burn here, but the mechanics of the ability are apparently somewhat different than canon. Ruby, meanwhile, has the ability to teleport as her Semblance in addition to magic.
- Armor-Piercing Response: Ruby revealing to Weiss that she honestly had no idea who the Schnees were and that her dislike of Weiss was solely caused by how Weiss acted throws Weiss through a loop, to the point that she honestly has no response and chooses to go to the library rather than continue the conversation.
- Artificial Limbs: Cinder lost her left arm in her failed attempt to steal Amber's powers, so she has a mechanical replacement.
- Badly Battered Babysitter: Ugin is run ragged trying to take care of the hyperactive and speedy Ruby before calling Sarkhan and Narset.
- Beware the Quiet Ones: Normally, Yang is a shy, nervous, guilt-ridden Shrinking Violet who can scarcely say a single sentence without stuttering. All of that goes out the window in combat, where she pretty much loses all emotion and shows just how dangerous someone raised and trained by Qrow Branwen is.
- Big Brother Instinct: Inverted. After they reunite, Ruby is very protective of Yang, and does not take well to people being mean to her.
- Boring, but Practical: Ruby tends to stick to simpler and more subtle displays of her magic in battle, like boosting her physical abilities. This by no means makes her less of a beast in combat.
- Broken Ace: Taiyang is an extremely skilled Huntsman, and his efforts alone have resulted in Patch having one of the lowest concentrations of Grimm on Remnant. He is also basically dead inside, having crossed the Despair Event Horizon after Ruby's apparent death, and part of why he can achieve such results is that he doesn't do much besides kill Grimm.
- Death by Adaptation: In this story, Liliana Vess died in the War of the Spark.
- Despair Event Horizon: The combined strain of Summer's death and Ruby's apparent death broke Taiyang, causing him to simply stop doing anything for a week before going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, slaughtering nearly every Grimm on Patch. He never really recovered, only going through the motions, hanging out with Zwei (his emotional support dog in this universe), slaughtering Grimm (Patch has one of lowest concentration of Grimm thanks to his efforts alone) and cleaning Ruby's room so it looks exactly the way it did the night she disappeared. He barely even reacts to meeting Ruby again, acting more like Ruby had been living in Vale and was just visiting rather than her having been missing for over a decade.
- Didn't Think This Through: Ugin decides to take in the amnesiac Ruby, both as a Start My Own towards planeswalkers like the Gatewatch that would let her become a force for good in the Multiverse, while being more mindful of the long-term consequences, but also to keep her safe from Bolas. It takes him all of a minute after this to realize that he has no idea how to take care of a young human, and he quickly sends for Narset and Sarkhan to help him.
- Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: Yang of all people often has these because of her guilt over believing herself responsible for Ruby's death.
- Everyone Can See It:
- Ugin assumed that Narset and Sarkhan were mates. Their blush when he says that indicates that he's more right than he knows.
- Ruby easily spots that Amber has a crush on Qrow. Qrow himself is oblivious.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- Ozpin deeply regrets how he mishandled Ruby's disappearance, which lead to Qrow distancing himself from his group and no longer trusting Ozpin to the same degree. He makes it clear to Qrow that his offer of a teaching position at Beacon isn't part of some plot to bring him back into the fold, but simply him trying to help keep the recently reunited family together out of genuine compassion and remorse for his mistakes.
- Winter doesn't like Qrow, but she tells Weiss not to stick her nose into Ruby's past, as she had seen what Ruby's disappearance did to her family and believes that, if Ruby truly has returned, the family deserves to have their privacy respected, especially after what they've been through. Qrow also mentions that she was quite considerate towards him in the immediate aftermath of Ruby's disappearance, even trying to pull him out of his despair-induced binge-drinking. Unfortunately, Qrow was in such a bad place at the time that it lead to him permanently ruining their relationship, something he regrets.
- Famed In-Story: As one of the heroes of the War of the Spark, Ruby is famous enough on Ravnica to be recognizable on sight.
- Forced Sleep: When Ashiok attacks Beacon looking for Amber, they cast a spell that puts most of the campus to sleep. Ozpin passes it off the next day as someone with a sleep-inducing Semblance.
- Loophole Abuse: Ruby ensures she and Yang will be partners by grabbing onto her when they are launched during Initiation and using her powers to ensure they land safely. As Goodwitch notes, nobody has ever tried such a reckless thing before, meaning that, as Ozpin notes, they never bothered actually making a rule against it despite it defeating the purpose of launching them into the forest (to randomize who they partner with).
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- Yang thought that she had gotten her sister killed for years.
- Nahiri is horrified to realize that her home plane was saved, and that she sought revenge for nothing.
- Open Secret: Weiss is perfectly aware of who Blake is, and is fairly certain Blake knows she knows.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- Ruby notes that Ashiok's attack on Beacon to kidnap Amber is well outside of their usual methods, as is their mention of an associate and implication that they were going Amber on their behalf, given how much of a team player they aren't.
- Ugin intervenes when Bolas is about to attack Ruby after she restored the will of the God-Eternals.
- Point of Divergence:
- The story diverges from RWBY canon when, at the old house, Ruby wakes up and ignites as a planeswalker before Qrow can rescue her and Yang, ending up right near Ugin in the Dragon's Throat, not remembering much besides her name, let alone where she came from.
- Ruby's presence means that Sarkhan and Narset are there to delay Nahiri long enough for Ugin to arrive, allowing the two of them to talk and for Ugin to reveal that the Eldrazi were defeated and her home plane saved. This prevents the events of Shadows over Innistrad from ever happening.
- Taiyang going over the Despair Event Horizon forced Qrow to stop drinking his sorrows away, shape up, and raise Yang. Ozpin's mishandling of the situation caused him to leave the inner circle, though he still helps Ozpin from time to time.
- Related to that, while her fighting style and the weapon itself are different (more focused on strength and momentum than speed, and part shotgun rather than part rifle), Yang is the one wielding a scythe, called "Cinis Rose", here, due to being trained by Qrow, while Ruby fights hand-to-hand (and with magic of course).
- Qrow saved Amber from having her powers taken, and Amber is a junior professor at Beacon now (a cover to allow her to stay there where it's safe). Cinder also lost her arm much earlier in the process, and has a mechanical replacement instead of her canonical Grimm arm, and isn't in as high esteem with Salem as in canon due to not managing to steal any of the power.
- Due to Ruby's quick thinking, she and Yang get partnered up, with Weiss and Blake being each others partners. Due to her drawing attention to herself after wiping out a horde of Grimm during initiation using magic, Ozpin decides not to make Ruby a team leader so she won't have even more attention drawn her way. Weiss is made leader of their team, SBRY (Strawberry).
- Liliana Vess died during the War of the Spark, instead of being saved by Gideon's sacrifice.
- Somehow Ruby's Silver Eyes restore Oketra's mind during the War of the Spark, and the minds of the other God-Eternals as well. This then results in Ugin getting directly involved.
- Poke in the Third Eye: Fox tries to use his telepathy Semblance on Ruby and gets firmly ejected from her mind.
- Prefers Rocks to Pillows: Ruby, to the point that instead of suggesting making bunk beds, she just throws her bed out the window in order to free up room in their dorm.
- Psychic Block Defense: When Ashiok attacks Beacon looking for Amber, Ruby is able to largely keep them out by channeling her fear into anger at the Nightmare Weaver. Even when Ashiok manages to get through a crack, she just ends up transforming into dragon form.
- Role Swap AU: In this AU, Yang is the one who fights with a scythe, while Ruby is the one who prefers hand-to-hand combat. Yang is also more withdrawn like canon Ruby, while Ruby, though not as outgoing as canon Yang at the start of Volume 1, is more socially confident than her canon self.
- Sarcasm Failure: Weiss undergoes one when she finds out Ruby has no idea who she is, or what the SDC is. She was so used to people disliking/sucking up to her for being a Schnee that the idea that Ruby neither knew nor cared and simply disliked her stuck up attitude never occurred to her, completely throwing her through a loop.
- Security Cling: Yang sometimes does this to Ruby, usually when something happens that causes her to fear Ruby will disappear again or be killed.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: As Qrow notes, almost every Hunter that survives more than a few years becomes this to some degree, with the various coping mechanisms they develop being the reason why all the teachers at Beacon are so strange.
- Shrinking Violet: Yang is one in this universe, the guilt of believing herself responsible for Ruby's death having haunted her for years. She dislikes attention, often stutters, and her default mood is being nervous.
- Spanner in the Works: It's noted that Ruby restoring the minds of the God-Eternals is something that Bolas never dreamed of happening in all his plans.
- Start My Own: Part of why Ugin decides to take in Ruby is because, worried about the recklessness of the younger planeswalkers after the Gatewatch destroyed two of the Eldrazi against his warnings, he hoped that he could train her to be a force of good in the Multiverse like the Gatewatch, but more mindful of long-term consequences. Along with keeping a planeswalker with her potential safe from Bolas, of course.
- Training the Gift of Magic: One of the things that Ruby does while at Beacon is train Amber in the use of magic, so she can do more than just throw the power around all willy-nilly.
- Trauma Button: Ruby's teleportation semblance is one for Yang, as it reminds her of the night she disappeared.
- Villain Team-Up: Ashiok mentions an associate during his attack on Beacon to kidnap Amber, implied to be Salem.
- Weredragon: Sarkhan taught Ruby his dragon-shifting ability at some point, and she transforms into her draconic form to fight Ashiok.
- Wham Episode:
- While Chapter 13 starts fairly normal for the story so far, the last scenes have a mysterious figure, who turns out to be Ashiok, putting the city under a sleep spell and infiltrating Beacon in search of Amber. And Blake ends up running into them and sees their face when Ruby confront them.
- The following chapter has Ashiok name-drop a number of Ruby's past feats to Blake, and presumably to Qrow, Amber, and Ozpin who are watching over the security cameras, Ruby reveals that she can turn into a dragon like Sarkhan, and Ruby summons an ally from another one of the author's stories to heal Blake.
- The next chapter has Ruby reveal the truth of her being a planeswalker to Ozpin, Yang, Blake, Amber, and Qrow.
- In chapter 16, not only is it confirmed that Ashiok is working with Salem, but the Grimm Queen learns of Ruby, and said girl shows that she can take others with her on planeswalks, something nearly unheard of since the Mending.
- In Chapter 20, during a flashback to the War of the Spark, Ruby's Silver Eyes reflexively activate, and somehow restores the mind of Oketra and the other God-Eternals.
- In Chapter 21, Ugin personally and openly intervenes in the battle to protect Ruby.
- Chapters 22 and 23 have Blake and Weiss see Ruby planeswalk back from Ravnica, and get clued into the existence of magic.
