Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-10390252-20130728185452/@comment-4830106-20130731235326

BenRG wrote: Here's a thought: As the show turns dark, maybe Crescent Rose will be destroyed in an epic fight with Crimson and Ruby only survives because Glynda as well as JAUN and the rest of RWBY get involved. This is the 'downer' cliff-hanger and mid-season ending that makes one wonder what will happen next.

Similar to the start of season 3 of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Ruby suffers an incredible crisis of confidence from being so totally beaten. She steals a standard-model sword from the academy and goes AWOL from Beacon. The others would search for her if things were not going downhill really quickly and they were needed on the front lines. The rest of the season will be intersperced with very brief shots of Ruby far, far away.

The final episode(s) are a massive battle that our heroes are most certainly losing when, suddenly, a red-cloaked scythe-weilder appears. It is Ruby but she's changed in the months she's been away. She's suddenly a Dust-mage; she's suddenly beyond expert with a variety of unarmed forms and bladed weapons built into her new armour-like costume. She's built a new Crimson Rose and CR-II takes all the features we know and love and scales them up to 11 as well as adding new Dust-based functions like deflector plating and the ability to sheath the blade in various elemental energies. Naturally, the bad guys are curb-stomped and only by luck does Crimson escape with her life. However, when everyone rushes over, Ruby is formal and all business as if she doesn't know any of them except as collegues. Yang later tells Weiss that it was like "hugging a statue".

The season after that will all be about our heroes trying to help Ruby rediscover her humanity. Maybe (like in Angren's story "Cloaked in Roses") she's encountered something that has changed her perspective of the world and turned her into this uber-Huntress, all battlemage and no real person underneath. However (as the opening narration warned), Ozpin perceives that there is no victory in strength alone. He tells the RWBY girls that, if they cannot reach the soul of Ruby inside this new warrior, then the cause of the light is doomed. Yang understands, pointing out that her sister would never normally be so utterly brutal and objective-oriented without caring about bystanders or her fellow Hunters.

Maybe it's Jaune who reaches her heart or maybe Weiss somehow puts together a Dust mix that allows them to enter Ruby's mind and try to untangle the web of fear, anger and inadequacy that has consumed her.

Of course, ultimately, it is her rediscovered compassion, love and unbiassed kindness that is the thing that saves the day... Victory was in a simpler soul. Nice, I really like that theory (thanks for referencing my own 'episode', by the way). I just have a problem with your timing. I mean, it would be a helluva downer if we finally saw Ruby in full after like two months' worth of episodes, only to find out she turned into a sociopath while we were gone. And whle that would be a really good plot twist for a chapter or mid-season ending, I couldn't deal with it as a season finale. Cliffhangers in season finales are good, but so is a bit of closure, which I feel like you wouldn't get from a character development that drastic.

That technical detail aside, I liked it, especially the tie-in with Ozpin's line from the EP1 opener. And I suppose as hard as it would be watching Ruby turn into a soulless murderer, her eventual return to life would just be that much better.