RWBY ENTERS THE MOIST ZONE

Glory Hole Repair

Charles White, known as Charlie, was more than what he lets his internet audience believe. Sure, he's known for his best-selling books, his fundamental role in The Hunger Games series as an extra, his hit songs as a songwriter with his band The Gentle Men, and his artwork masterpieces. But they were all red herrings. They were distractions from the truth – one that would easily make him the most important man alive, but he's simply too humble for that. The reality is that Charlie is a god – a god of fixing things. Like Fix-It-Felix, he single-handedly restored the YouTube algorithm so that evil garbage on the platform was no more. Charlie's protein was the cure when the world cried for a vaccine during the COVID 19 pandemic. Depressed children come home from school bullies and mean principals and venture through the hallways of abusive parents and empty beer cans. Why? They come to his streams and YouTube channels for the treatment. But the actual job description of his title was to be a janitor. Wormholes open up across universes from time to time, and they can create problems in the long term should the wrong subjects cross them. His handiwork was to help solve such a crisis and send the guests back home.

This was the hidden side of Charlie White. Today, he's about to solve a new case.
-----
No one wants to wake up at 4 AM. Unless you were a doucheTuber, no one ever has it on their New Year's Resolution. As much as Charlie rivaled the power of Jesus Christ, he, too, needed his 8-hour sleep. Unfortunately, he didn't get that tonight as his spidey senses tingle on his chest hair. His eyes shot wide open, and with his fourth-dimensional powers, he phased out of existence into the unknown.

His body arrived at the void – a place between universes. This was where Charlie's job was supposed to happen, and he hated it. As stupid as it sounded, wormholes worked a lot like living PVC pipes. If there's a clog in the septic line, the shit has to be cut open, and the crap must be removed. Charlie conjured his infamous sword into his two hands. He threw all of his 5'6" force into the universe's invisible walls, and a gap was opened. It opened from the fabric of the void as if it appeared out of thin air. Splurges of ectoplasm spilled out of the wound like vomit, and it splattered all over Charlie's feet. "Eww," he said to himself. Charlie settled down over goo before he poked inside the veil. "Alright. Let's see what Christmas brought in today-" he grumbled before his face paused. From both ends of the wormhole, he witnessed a horror worse than the occasional cockroach infestation. Lines of clot capsules filled the passage, and each one contained an unfortunate soul. "Fuck. This is gonna take a minute."

It took more than a minute. Half an hour later, Charlie has emptied the womb and sealed the cut. A whole array of people were born, and he needed to get them home. But Charlie didn't want to start working on that right now. He was cranky from waking up too early, and the process would take several hours. Charlie really wanted to put his eye mask back on and return home. If he left his unwelcomed guests like this, however, that would have been an asshole move. Charlie decided to compromise by postponing the away trip, but he left a wake-up gift in a large box. He returned to his bed and tried to recuperate some lost sleep.

Hopefully, nothing like a wet fart would bring rampage to the void.
-----
The first to awake from the mess was Cinder Falls. She coughed out a substance that choked her throat and took steady breaths. Once her eyes found focus, they widen at a horrible epiphany. Ruby was right in front of her, unconscious. She raged in her mind, "How did she get here?" Cinder quickly stood up and saw more bodies: the crow, the young farmer, the rest of Ruby's team, and Jaune's team. They were laid out before her, and they were wrapped in some sort of mucus. Speaking of such, she noticed that she was covered in it, too. Cinder tried to shake it off but to no avail.

"Ugh, this will never come off. Wait, they're all asleep! I can end Ruby right now!" Cinder tried to summon her Fall Maiden powers and form a blade, but to her surprised, nothing happened. "Where's my maiden power?" She tried again, but Cinder was met with nothing. Not even a spark fell from her hands. "Fine. I'll use my semblance on her." She walked up to Ruby and pulled her half-immersed body out. From above, she tried to activate her semblance – to break the little Rose down into molecules of ember. To her dismay, not even her semblance seemed to work. "What?! What's happening to me?" She let go of Ruby as she staggered back. Cinder stared at her curled hands in horror.

Ruby's head slammed against the floor, and it was enough to wake her. Ruby coughed a few times before she stood her head up. "Ow..." she grumbled. Ruby's eyes also expanded to a horrible epiphany – her archnemesis stood before her. She backed away on all fours for a bit before getting up. "What did you do to Yang?" Ruby asked quietly. Cinder answered with a frown. "Where's Yang?!" Ruby shouted with desperation.

"Look around you first," Cinder finally answered. Ruby didn't follow at first until her curious eyes caught the sight of a yellow-headed woman. She soon found her teammates and her uncle around her, but she kept glancing back at Cinder as she did. Ruby wasn't going to give Cinder a chance to strike.

"What did you? Where are we?" Ruby commanded. Her tone held a fraction of anger.

"Like I would ever tell you," the False Maiden countered with a smirk. "How did you end up here?"

"I guess I should say the same thing," the Rose countered. The two of them began to circle each other with their hands up. "You're outnumbered, Cinder. In a few moments, my friends will wake up, and then you're in trouble."

"I could easily kill them." From the ankle, Cinder reached down and revealed a small knife. She took it out from its sheath and wielded it backhand-style.

"Not if I take you down." Behind her back and under her cap, Ruby pulls out her trusty scythe – Crescent Rose. She unfolds it and takes a stance.

They both stop their tracks. For a moment, they stared down each others' eyes with fire brimming. Then, Ruby charged Cinder with a roaring cry and didn't stop until her scythe swept too far from Cinder. It was part of her plan – a fluke. She predicted that Cinder would jump over her, so she quickly swung her scythe backward. With this opening, Cinder, with her dinky knife, was forced to play defensive. Ruby's range outmatched her's, so she kept dodging Ruby's attack for now. Cinder was able to keep it up as she leaned down to avoid a side sweep. Her nose barely escaped Crescent Rose's blade.
Cinder landed a jab to Ruby's back from this position as she stood up. Now, the odds were in her favor. The Fall Maiden narrowly dodges a forward thrust and an upper swing before finding herself behind her opponent. Effortlessly, she swung her knife into Ruby's neck and dealt heavy damage to her aura. Ruby was knocked forward to the muddy ground.

Cinder was so sure that Ruby would not pick up from this near-fatal blow. A stab to the neck should have reduced the aura by a considerable fraction, in addition to stunning Ruby. She hoped to spend a few seconds stabbing her knife into her archnemesis to reduce the remaining aura into ashes. Instead, as she approached, she was welcomed with a splatter of ectoplasm into her eyes. "AHH!" she cried in pain as the substance stung in her eyes.
Ruby had quickly gathered a pile of the muddy ectoplasm and threw it at Cinder. With the enemy stunned, she reassembled herself up and moved towards the priority – moving her enemy's weapon away. After ducking the swinging knife from Cinder, she positioned one of her hands with the two most extended fingers and forced them under Cinder's armpit. It was a technique from Ozpin on how to disarm a mugger. By natural reflex, Cinder dropped the knife. When she finally removed the slime from her eyes, her red eyes were not ready for a scythe to sweep her off her feet and send her flying back. She landed hard on her butt.

Cinder groaned as Ruby slowly approached her. "Lucky hit, child," she patronized.

Ruby anchored her scythe right next to Cinder's head. "You're going to explain to me how exactly we got in this place, and then you're going to show us the way out of here. Understood?"

Cinder laughed. "Oh, you're so funny, Ruby. Your naivety is endearing, but it blinds you so often. You think I know where we are?"
"You're the one that took Yang! Is this the relic's doing?"

"Oh, I wish it was," Cinder sneered. "In case it wasn't clear: I. Have. No. Idea! I never even got to the relic before Raven intervened."
"How do I know that you aren't lying?" Ruby asked with suspicion.

"Well... I do have a gun to my head."
Ruby stood there thinking, but she didn't waver her eyes away from Cinder. In a sense, Cinder could have been right. Whatever portal that they found in front of the relic vault seemed beyond the powers of a Maiden. It sucked everyone that descended the elevators: Qrow, Weiss, Blake, Team JNR, and Oscar. And the last thing that she remembered was being surrounded by these weird objects before she was drowned in them. It didn't even seem to feel like magic.

The entire space felt weird, too. Ruby felt as if she lost her ability to use her semblance. That hit to the neck could have been prevented had she turned into roses, but she couldn't. And wasn't Cinder currently the Fall Maiden? If so, why hasn't she used her powers at all?

That was when a voice familiar to her called her name. "Ruby?" The girl turned around and found her sister standing upright. Her hair was drenched in mucus and slime, but she was alright aside from the missing arm.
Before Ruby turned to meet Yang, she gave a harsh glare at Cinder. "If you raise a hand, I will pull the trigger," Ruby threatened.

"Oh, I would love to see you try," Cinder teased. Ruby folded her weapon back before running towards her sister. Cinder would have taken this opportunity to eliminate the silver-eye girl. Still, she figured that, in a way, she lost. Without her leverage, she would be easily be beaten by the siblings of Team RWBY. Cinder was also alone without her mooks: Emerald and Mercury. Most likely, the heroes have forced them to abandon her, and, therefore, she was alone in the void. Exhausted, she collapsed onto the ground in defeat. Still covered in slime. "Yuck," she groaned mentally.

"Yang, are you okay?" Ruby asked as she checked up on her sister.

"Yep, I'm fine," Yang answered with a groan. "I didn't quite find Raven and Cinder."

"Yeah, about that." Ruby pointed behind her to Cinder, who was lying on the ground.

"Oh great, she's here, too?"

"Don't worry. I beat her up. She won't move a muscle."

"Wait, you did? How? Doesn't she have maiden powers?"

"See, that's the thing! I feel like this place has disabled my semblance, and Cinder wasn't summoning weapons by her side or casting fire."

"Really? Shoot, that's strange. Here, try it on me!" She offered her bicep towards Ruby.
"What?"

"Punch my arm, and see if my eyes turn red." Ruby proceeded with a strong jab at the bicep, and Yang recoiled a bit. The area flared up as if the aura was there, but nothing happened. Yang's hair didn't light up, and her eyes didn't change to red. Even when she blinked, there wasn't a color change. "Did it change at all?"

"No, not at all," Ruby answered.

"Damn, that is weird. I didn't feel a thing either. Anyway, where are we?" Yang turned around before she stopped at Raven. "Oh, great. She's here, too?"

Ruby followed her eyes to the one person that she forgot to recognize – Yang's biological mother. "Oh right. She was with Cinder when they went down the elevator. I guess the portal must have opened while they were fighting."

"Well, I don't even want to go near her," Yang said bitterly.

"Alright, well, can you at least watch Cinder while I go wake up everybody else?"

"Fine by me. At least I can boast at her," Yang smirked before leaving Ruby to her task.
While Yang kept overwatch, Ruby woke up everyone who hasn't already been awake. She went for her team first, then Team JNR, followed by her uncle, Qrow, then Oscar, and finished with Raven.
-----
Everyone was huddled around Cinder as if they were interrogating her. Ironically, Cinder had nothing to add aside from glaring at Raven. "I have nothing more to say. My sword clashed with Raven, and that's when everything went white," she answered for the fifth time.

"Well, that portal right in front of the vault was awfully convenient," Jaune countered with his cross eyebrows. "Let me ask: was killing Pyrrha convenient for you, too?"

"It was mercy," she retorted. "She was weak and fell before me. I only made it easier for her."

"Mercy? To hell with mercy!" Yang yelled. "We should end her right here and right now!"

"Yang, no!" Ruby objected. "We can't kill her!"

"Why not?!"

"She's a murderer! If you kill her, your hands are going to be covered in blood just like her!"

Cinder scoffed. "I knew it. You're too soft, Ruby. You never could pull the trigger and finish me off!"

"Shut up!" Yang shouted. "You don't talk to my sister like that!"

"Yang, control your temper!" Ozpin scolded. He has already taken the driver set for Oscar as soon as they were awakened. "I prefer if we use her as a source of intel, not as a punching bag."

The dragon pointed her finger at the boy. "You're not my headmaster anymore! I..." Yang realized what came out of her mouth, but it was too late. She clapped at her mouth. "Shit," was all she managed to make behind her hand. It came off muted, but the void was silent enough for everyone to hear.

Ozpin took a deep, disappointed sigh. He calmly continued, "I see you still have some ways to go. You are right, however, that I am no longer your headmaster. Therefore, I shouldn't need to teach you this lesson you seem to be still learning."

"Yes, sir," Yang quietly said. Her head hung low.

Ozpin turned to everyone else and spoke nothing more than, "You've heard what I said. I only wish that you think about it." The boy's iris returned to forest green, and Oscar resumed command of his body.

A voice drew the huddled group's attention. It came from Blake, who was unnoticeably away from the group. "Hey, get over here! I found something!"

"Well, who's going to look after Cinder?" Raven inquired.

"We can toss her in front of us," Qrow suggested. "We can all keep an eye on her that way."

Agreeing to the suggestion, Yang rudely pulled Cinder up and pushed her forward. "Move it, murderer."

"Don't touch me!" Cinder yelled, but she was met by disagreeing stares from the rest of the group. She kept quiet and involuntarily walked forward. She previously came up with ways to escape the group, and there were many ways she could have gone about it. But where could she have gone afterward? The space that encages everyone was vast and seemingly endless. The floor that they stood on was intensely black and without texture. Anywhere she ran, she would have been followed. For now, she had to concede to their power.

Blake was showing them a large gift box to the approaching group. "I found this on the outside of this vomit we're all covered in."
"I hope it has towels inside the box," Weiss complained. "I would love to get some of this muck out of my hair."

"Open it up, Blake," Ren said.

Blake removed the lid and set it aside before peering into the box. She pulled out a couple of towels bundled in rolls and tossed one to everyone. The last one Blake kept to herself, and she began to wipe herself down with it. "There are the towels you were looking for, Weiss."

"Finally!" the ice princess cheered. She quickly took the towel from midair and unrolled it before wiping it on her hair. "This slime is coming off!"

Blake resumed to the box. "There's a laptop, a video cable, and a monitor? That's all that was in the box." She began to take out the laptop.

"Why would someone leave those in the box for us?" Nora asked.

Blake opened the laptop and found a piece of laminated paper. As she skimmed through it, it appeared to be a short note belonging to the person who left a box. "There's a letter inside of this laptop."

"Read it out loud," Ruby commanded as she finished scraping as much of the slime.

"It says, 'I'll be back in a couple of hours to explain. In the meantime, use the towels to wipe yourself off. There's a laptop you can use to watch YouTube for entertainment. The monitor is there for a bigger screen, and you can connect it with the cable to the laptop.' That's all from the note."

"So we're supposed to just watch from this 'YouTube' while we wait?" Yang asked as she wrapped her towel over her neck. "Does it has a name at the bottom?"

"No, it's blank," the cat faunus answered. "Here, look." She hands it to Yang, who shared it with everyone else.

"This 'YouTube' sounds a lot similar to 'DustTube,'" Ruby summarized.

"What's DustTube?" Oscar asked. As a farmer boy, he was isolated from much of what technology brought to Remnant. Oscar never had a scroll before Ozpin became a mental companion in his mind, so the name 'DustTube' was a foreign concept.

Ren answered, "It's a video platform where people can upload videos so that others can watch them."

"Maybe the two are similar platforms," Jaune suggested. "The name is similar enough."

"So are we going to just stand around here, or what?" Qrow complained. "Whoever they are, they're not coming back for a while. We might as well watch something." Everyone, except Cinder and Raven, visibly agreed to the idea.

"Yeah, I'm not sure if I can wait in solitude for hours," Yang said. She took the video cable and connected it to the monitor. Blake, with the laptop, took the other end and hooked it up to the computer. She opened it up and turned it on.

Meanwhile, everyone was gathering around the large monitor. Yang, Jaune, and Weiss ordered Cinder to sit in the center front. Except for Cinder the captive, the arrangement was logical: small ones in the front and tall ones in the back. Yang, still uncomfortable about her mother, kept a far distance from her. Between them was Qrow and Blake, who the latter was still on the laptop.

When the device finally booted up, she was welcomed to a desktop screen with only one application: a browser called "Opera GX." Clicking on it, she was greeted with the YouTube home page. Everyone was awed with their mouths open. There were a variety of videos from various ranges of entertainment. There was a make-up tutorial video, a timelapse of two guys making an underground water slide, a movie trailer, a gaming montage video, and so much more! There were even videos with specific and enticing titles like "TikTok vs. Youtubers," "Satisfying videos," "ASMR Deep Sleep Audio," and a news clip from "DW News." To them, this variety of content was a surprise. DustTube pales in comparison to the possibilities that a content creator could make!

"Wow," Ruby sighed. "There're so many videos!"

"Look at that one." Nora pointed at one video in particular. "That one has at least 300 million views! We don't even have that many people on Remnant!"

"There's no way this YouTube comes from Remnant," Weiss concluded. "Wherever this website comes from must be paradise!"
Even though Cinder and Raven kept a closed mouth, they couldn't stop their eyes from widening. The amount of variety on YouTube was something to behold. How did this website achieve such a feat?
Blake kept scrolling down the front page looking for something to start. "Um, where do you guys want to start?"

"I-I don't know," Jaune stuttered. "Just pick something at random. Maybe just start with that mo-" But he never finished when Qrow interrupted him.

He shouted, "Stop it! Over there!" He pointed to a video at the corner of the screen. "That one!" he confirmed.

There was a particular reason that Qrow chose that video, and it wasn't because the video had 17 million views. Nor was the reason that it was uploaded a couple of years ago. What drew him to this choice was because of what the title read: "Glory Hole Repair." The video was uploaded by a username named "penguinz0."

Ruby and Yang, ashamed of their uncle, turned to him and unanimously said, "Really, Uncle Qrow?"

"It looks entertaining!" Qrow defended.

"Sure," Ruby rolled her eyes. "It's definitely not because of its title."

"Maybe we should watch something else," Ren added. "Perhaps we could start with something not offensive?"

"No, I want to watch it," Raven blurted. Everyone did a quick turn to her in shock. "If this video has seventeen million viewers about repairing glory holes, it has to be for a good reason."

"Thank goodness you're not my mother," Yang groaned internally.

"I also want to watch it," Cinder added.

"No one asked you!" Weiss screamed back. Her face portrayed an evident annoyance at her attempted murderer.

"But I also want to watch it!" Nora shouted.

"Nora, please," Jaune pleaded with his hands folded like a prayer. "Don't do this."

While the rest of the group was arguing, Blake was enthralled while she watched. However, she accidentally clicked on the video through the mouse pad. When she turned around to check it, it was already loading the video. "Um, guys," Blake warned with unease. "I think I already clicked on it."

"Yes!" Qrow cheered. "Don't back out! It's too late!" To the children's dismay, they groaned (except for Nora.)

"Well, we're already here," Ren huffed. "Might as well see it through.
-----
The video begins with a woman staring at a nail hole on her wall. She slumps in defeat.

Over the background footage, a narrator, in an undertone voice, begins to speak.

"Oh shit, there it is. A glory hole right next to the settling cracks and the door dings."

"He actually called it a glory hole," Jaune commented with surprise. The students, except Nora, collectively cringed at the term. Meanwhile, Qrow silently chuckled.

"This calls for your secret weapon. You break out the marshmallow paste, but it's not shutting down that hole. The penises are still flying in."

The woman tries to apply paste spackling to the nail hole, but it seems to be making a big white mess over a coffee-brown wall.

To Blake's shame, she chuckled a little bit at the metaphors. Calling the spackling marshmallow paste? That was admittedly genius. And though the term "penises" was quite disgusting, at least the narrator was consistent with the title. As she looked around, her teammates seemed to share the same thought, though less visibly.

Weiss, however, was clearly holding it back. "Ugh, disgusting," she remarked.

A man walks into the next scene while a title card displays his name. Below the card was his role as "host."

When the narrator resumes, one thing becomes clear to the audience. This video is actually parodying an advertisement of a product. Why? For instance, the narration does not match the movement of the man's lips.

"Hey there, I'm Beau Rials – glory-hole virtuoso."

Everyone took a double-take. Some of the audience gasped, and others cackled in confused laughter.

"Did the narrator just use the term "virtuoso" with "glory-hole?" Qrow wheezed before breaking into laughter. "Oh my Oum, that is smart!"

"I never thought I'd hear those two words together," Weiss coughed as she nearly choked on her spit. "How did he come up with that?"

"It's like he's expecting us to think that it's a refined art," Ren added after he finished gasping for air.

But while the good guys and gray guys were recovering, Cinder chuckled to herself quietly. "Oh my, this is a dream!" she thought to herself.

Beau Rials demonstrates the product – the Liquid Dry Wall – before the audience. After quickly showing the product towards the camera, he takes the cap off and sprays the paste from the can. He uses the blade-shaped cap to fill the paste into the hole.

The narrator describes the demonstration in a colorful way.

"If you're trying to shut down operations on a glory hole, look no further than the Liquid Dry Wall. Just spray our whip cream on there, and bingo-bango-bahngo vanishes in seconds."

"Bingo-bango-bahngo?" Ruby repeated while chuckling. "Why was that so funny?!"
"I'll give it to him," Jaune admitted. "His vocabulary is good!"

A series of the Liquid Dry Wall demonstrations play in the background while the famous narrator continues.

"The portal to the dick dimension may be closed, but those cherished memories of sucked wieners will live on in you forever."

"