Ruby Rose vs. Carnage

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The death of a parent can have tremendous effects on the mind of a child. For some, it can inspire them to become the greatest of heroes, and for others, it can darken them to become the worst of nightmares. Ruby Rose, the red and black monster hunter of Beacon Academy, and Carnage, the red and black monster of New York.

Ruby Rose

The world is full of heroes. Whether they are heroes to legends, to themselves, or to others, one thing is certain: as long as there are heroes, there are those who inspire them, for inspiration creates heroes, and heroes create inspiration. And sometimes both are the case, especially when it comes to little girls made out of rose petals training to be monster hunters.

Ruby Rose was never your average child, probably because she didn’t come from your average family. It’s hard to be average, after all, when the world you live in is plagued by nightmarish monsters called Grimm. Each Grimm is basically a way more powerful and evil version of an animal, mixed with a little sprinkle of the essence of death. They’d tear apart cities, kill everybody they found, and, you know, generally be a nuisance. As such, the four nations of Remnant decided to band together and create, for lack of a better term, super soldier monster hunters. Each country had schools that taught children how to protect people and kill the creatures of Grimm, and those who dedicated their lives to the deed were called Hunters and Huntresses. Ruby’s father, Taiyang, belonged to one of the greatest teams of these Hunters the world had ever known: Team STRQ. The four members of this team (Summer, Taiyang, Raven, Qrow) would continually shape Ruby’s life for years to come. Well, starting on that trend, Taiyang got together with Raven, who eventually had a girl named Yang – and then just kind of took off to lead a band of outlaws. Kind of a jerk move. But Taiyang got over it really fast (like, way too fast, it’s kind of scary) and had another child with Summer. Summer actually turned out to be a great mother and was idolized by her daughter, Ruby. But then one day she disappeared under mysterious circumstances, making life way harder on both Taiyang and his two children. The two half-sisters bonded together for support, becoming almost inseparable. Yang found solace in her training and ability to have fun killing monsters, while Ruby found it in stories of great heroes, justice, righteousness, and people who were able to face the dark and defeat it. Needless to say, both were well on the path to becoming huntresses.

A man wielding a red sword in a Dust Shop points his blade at the back of a headphone-wearing Ruby’s head. “All right, kid. Put your hands where I can see them.”

There’s no response.

“Hey, I said hands in the air!” He moves forward. “You got a death wish or something?” He grabs her cloak, demanding her attention.

Ruby turns and pulls down her headphones. “Yes?”

“I said,” growls the man, “put your hands in the air! Now!”

A confused look crosses Ruby’s face. “Are you…robbing me?”

“YES!”

Understanding dawns on her face. “Ohhhhh.”

Then she kicks him twenty feet away through several bookshelves and a stone wall.

Now knowing what to do with her life, Ruby sought training from her step-uncle, Qrow. As another father figure who also happened to be an insanely powerful warrior, he decided to take Ruby under his wing and teach her how to be one of the most dangerous monster hunters to ever wield a blade. Because in a family full of legendary warriors and heroes, what else did you expect her to be? Qrow was primarily a scythe fighter, and so when Ruby designed and forged her own weapon, that’s what she went for. Through his training, Ruby rose to the top of her class at Signal (basically a high school for future hunters and huntresses) and was let into Beacon, the best college-level training course for hunters and huntresses in the world, two years ahead of her peers, where she proved quickly that not only could she hold her own against students with far more training, but she could surpass almost all of them. She even ended up leading her own team, Team RWBY (Ruby, Weiss, Blake, Yang), which grew to be considered one of the most powerful teams at Beacon. Oh, yeah, her sister, Yang, was on her team. So that’s convenient.

Ruby typically wears black and red to symbolize the impact that her mother’s life and death left on her, and completes the look with a hooded cape that can extend and…just looks awesome in combat. Ruby is a pure-hearted little girl with a strong sense of right and wrong, an indomitable will, an endless capacity to make friends – and the ability to kill a monster a hundred different ways. Over the single year she trained, she killed dozens, no, hundreds of Grimm in a variety of situations and saved thousands of lives by extension. This is almost entirely thanks to two things: her Aura and her weapon. Let’s focus on Aura first.

Aura is a spiritual force that comes from the user’s soul. Everyone has some amount of Aura, though it usually remains locked until either it comes out during training or another Aura user activates it. Think of it as a form of spiritual pressure that can manifest itself by altering some slight aspects of reality. Aura is used by almost every hunter and huntress, and, in a typical case, grants superhuman strength, speed, senses, a minor healing factor, and an invisible, skintight forcefield that takes a lot to break through. Think of the forcefield like the overshield, or maybe a video game Health Bar. When a blow hits the field, the Aura level is lessened by the appropriate amount, but the fighter isn’t hurt the slightest bit – and when it comes to Ruby specifically, she feels little to no pain when her Aura takes a blow. Her Aura has made her strong enough to chop right through a tree without even trying, fast enough to dodge point-blank gunfire, and tough enough for her forcefield to take an explosion that could destroy a one-story building without a noticeable difference. Even if her Aura is drained completely, it’ll regenerate within an hour, so it’s really hard to put her down. Ruby herself has also learned to use her Aura to jump at least twenty feet into the air, form temporary invisible shields, sense others’ presences and, in some cases, predict her opponent’s next moves. Also, her Aura naturally extends to any weapon or object in her possession without losing any power, making them essentially indestructible. However, her most prominent use of her Aura (and everyone’s favorite) is when she activates her Semblance.

After seeing the last of her teammates knocked out by Team JNPR, Ruby becomes determined. She kneels on the ground for a moment, then tears ahead with a sonic boom, creating air waves around her that catch every loose object in the lunchroom and rams it forward into a tornado following Ruby’s pure speed. As she gets faster, Ruby wraps herself up in her cloak and turns into a mass of rose petals, racing ahead through the air. The currents of her movement force all four members of Team JNPR to go flying through the air and end up pinned against a wall which then shatters like glass, all before the typhoon of miscellaneous lunchroom objects hits them. Ruby stands in front of the now knocked-out team, having defeated them all with only a single move.

Every Aura user has a Semblance, a way they can utilize their Aura in a manner that no one else can. A Semblance is often considered related to the user’s personality, and, aside from skill, is what ends up winning most human vs. human battles in the world of Remnant. Think of it like a superpower. Yang, for example, can add the strength of every blow she’s received thus far in the fight and add it to her own. Others can nullify emotions, block off their pain receptors, create shadow clones, manipulate electricity, and so on. Ruby’s Semblance is the ability to burst into rose petals. Sounds boring, and pretty ineffective, right? But seriously, this Semblance is way more powerful than many have given it credit for. Ruby’s already faster than just about anyone else at Beacon, being able to move up to Mach 3, but with her Semblance, that speed increases tremendously and is able to create massive whirlwinds in her wake (as you saw up there), lift her off the ground (enabling limited flight), and move so fast not even the other students, or sometimes the teachers, can see her, making it seem like she teleported. Given U.S. Air Force eye tests, this would put her top speed at over 9,000 MPH. However, she can only move short distances in this form without overexerting herself – the farthest she’s yet moved is around 300 feet, though she can do so rapid-fire. Of course, she can also burst into petals in order to avoid an incoming blow and can separate into multiple parts and reform while doing so. And while using her Semblance can drain her Aura forcefield somewhat, it usually doesn’t affect it at all unless she’s overexerting it.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of her Semblance, though, is that this usage of it isn’t all there is. Unlocking the Semblance seems to have had some sort of passive effect on Ruby, as she often leaves rose petals wherever she goes, and they continually drop from her cape in a seemingly endless amount, though she can halt this if she needs to, say, sneak up on a Grimm. Most fascinating of all, though, is the effect the Semblance has on blood. Whenever she inflicts an injury onto another person or a Grimm without the use of Dust (don’t worry, we’ll get to what that is), they seem to bleed out rose petals instead of blood. It’s been made clear over the years that her Semblance somehow continually transforms her enemies’ blood into rose petals. Note that it isn’t a spreading effect – if it was, just nicking a fighter would be an instant death.  Instead, it seems to turn the leaking blood to rose petals – by estimating the amount of petals on-screen at once during this slash to a Beowulf (a stronger, deadlier, eviler wolf), it looks like blood is transformed throughout the length of the blast or cut and the transformation is just over a centimeter deep. Not that it matters against her typical opponent. It doesn’t matter if a Grimm bleeds blood or roses – after a good hit with Ruby’s weapon, it’s dead regardless.

Right, we should talk about Ruby’s weapon. Crescent Rose was hand-made by Ruby to both emulate her uncle’s incredibly powerful weapon and still fit with her fighting style and personality. She loves the thing just as if it were a real person, or even as if it were her best friend, but, to be fair, when the day comes that a weapon this powerful ends up saving your life this many times, you might tend to agree with her. It has three main modes. First up is the Carry Mode, where it’s…um, smaller and easier to carry. I mean, I guess it could be used as makeshift shield, since it’s essentially indestructible even without Aura…but that’s it. Yeah, this mode sucks. Hence why she only ever uses the other two in battle. In the aptly named Sniper Mode, Crescent Rose transforms into a sniper rifle! Ruby has used this mode many times to tag opponents nearly as fast as her with high-caliber bullets capable of blowing off a Beowolf’s  head. She has pinpoint accuracy with this thing - once, after going flying into the air via Rose Petal Burst, she aimed downward, and without setting up any kind of a line of sight, shot a Grimm dead through its eyesocket over 200 feet away. Yes, she’s capable of using this thing to its fullest even while falling through the air. This rifle fires bullets kept in a 30-pack clip, of which Ruby has several. She also has an additional type of clip, called Cross Rounds, which explode and are even deadlier and faster, but more capable of mid-air variance, which is why she doesn’t always use them. Still, they’re extremely powerful – one of them obliterated a large section of a giant stone pillar, which, given the size of the pillar and how much was left after the blast, could have taken up to 250 lb of TNT! And, after becoming the leader of Team RWBY and going on just a ton of adventures, she’s added four other types of rounds to the mix. Each one of these uses Dust, a mined mineral that’s a source of power and holds elemental value (see, I told you I’d get to it!). With Gravity Dust Rounds, the force of the impact of the bullet is multiplied exponentially, with Fire Dust Rounds, she shoots out balls of flame, with Electric Dust Rounds, she can shock her enemies, halting their movements and forcing them onto the floor, and with Ice Dust Rounds, her bullets cover the target in a surprisingly durable ice cube. When she previously used Ice Dust to enhance her bullets, the ball of ice it formed was tough enough to restrain a Paladin mech, which can punch with over 1,400 tons of force!

But she almost always has Crescent Rose out as it was meant to be – in Scythe Mode! In this form, Crescent Rose becomes a massively large and deadly scythe that she wields with insane amounts of skill. That blade is about six feet long, and it’s sharp enough to easily slice right through…just about anything. Grimm, concrete, robots, solid steel – very little has stood up to its power. And when she swings the thing with all her little might, you better get out of the way real fast. It doesn’t matter how tough you are – unless you’ve got Aura, you’re dead. But even if that somehow isn’t enough power, it’s still hiding one more secret. The pointed end of the scythe, you know, right where the blade starts, is also a shotgun. Ruby can use the same rounds as she can in the sniper form, and with nearly the same effectiveness. True, it lacks the power and range of the sniper form (though it has been customized as another sniper rifle in the past), but the power it grants is more than enough to one-shot several different kinds of Grimm, including Beowolves, Ursa (stronger, deadlier, eviler black bears), and Griffons (stronger, deadlier, eviler lion+eagle combos). And the scythe’s head can bend and lock into different positions with a single wrist movement, even to the point of transforming it into a spear or glaive. But most impressively, shooting the shotgun-like shots from Crescent Rose induces a huge amount of recoil. This doesn’t seem important – until you realize that most of Ruby’s fighting style is entirely based off of this fact. She uses the recoil for extra-powerful slices, forcing the blade backwards at the right speeds and angles to kill multiple Grimm at once, and she even uses it to freaking fly. Well, not exactly – she stands on the back of the blade and fires the shots, sending the scythe and her soaring upwards. With multiple shots in a row, she can cover great distances, and send herself up to three thousand feet into the air. And, just like nearly every other Hunter/Huntress-in-training, her fighting style is intricate and, honestly, beautiful in its execution, mixing together several martial arts in order to make one that’s entirely her own, dodging and blocking any and all attacks her opponent unleashes and getting in several slices or gunshots in the same breath without a step missed.

All of this together proved really, really helpful during the Fall of Beacon. Yes, that’s a thing that happened. So, long story short, when the gods created people, they gave them four powers: Creation, Destruction, Knowledge, and most importantly, Choice. But they also gave those four things physical forms called Relics. Think Infinity Stones. And, obviously, some big bads wanted to collect them, so the four greatest combat schools (including Beacon) were built on top of vaults that held the Relics, making them nigh-impossible to get to, especially since you had to be a Maiden to open a vault. Oh, yeah, a long time ago, a wizard made the seasons and made infinity stones for them, too, except the infinity stones were young girls called Maidens. When one died, the power is transferred to the next young girl in her thoughts, and so on and so forth. Maidens not only could open those vaults, but also had crazy elemental and weather powers, and could kill people with just one touch (assuming the victim’s Aura was down). So Cinder Fall, Ruby’s villainous rival, staged an enormous Grimm attack on Beacon in order to get the Fall Maiden powers and the Relic. It pretty much succeeded, though Ruby by herself killed dozens of Grimm and destroyed entire airships during the battle. And, when she learned one of her best friends, Pyrrha, was in a duel to the death against Cinder, who now had the Maiden powers, she raced to get there as fast as she could. And she got there just in time…to see Cinder kill Pyrrha with one hand. And that’s when it happened. Blinded by anger and sorrow, Ruby’s greatest power awoke. With a shout of her friend’s name and a gasp, a blinding white light spilled out from Ruby’s eyes, destroying every Grimm that came into contact with it.

This was the hidden ability of the Silver-Eyed Warriors.

According to legend, those born with Silver Eyes were meant to destroy evil. At full power, a silver-eyed warrior could kill a Grimm with a single look. Clearly, Ruby doesn’t yet have that kind of control, but the few blasts she has made have been incredibly powerful – burning off one of Cinder’s arms, horribly ruining her face, and forcing her to lose her voice for over a year. That same blast transformed a skyscraper-sized Dragon Grimm into stone – a feat that has never been replicated. However, she doesn’t have much control over the Silver Eyes, as they only come out during extremely stressful situations. And they can’t hurt people, just evil Grimm, and, apparently, Maidens. I don’t know; it’s weird. But even without those eyes, Ruby’s accomplished an awful lot. Her sense of justice has carried her through more fights than you can imagine, and her willpower is really surprising, even for an anime protagonist.

She’s strong enough to kill a Griffon with a single kick, fast enough to outrace a sniper bullet after firing it, and her Aura is so tough, she took a bullet that shattered concrete and the forcefield didn’t even blink. She’s killed four Ursa with one move, murdered the crap out of a pack of over a hundred Beowolves, and is one of the only RWBY characters to kill a Beringel, one of the toughest Grimm out there. She’s sent people flying dozens of feet into the air with just a kick, defeated five armed guards in combat at the same time in under fifteen seconds, took blows from lasers and building-sized explosions, survived a five-thousand foot fall thanks to Crescent Rose, and even survived a full-on beating by Tyrian, an incredibly powerful fighter who can drain away Aura and is capable of matching Qrow in power. She’s led both Team RWBY and Team RNJR to victory over legions of Grimm and other threats, broke straight through a metal door with just a kick, and once caught a 1200 lb Nevermore (giant bird of death) in Crescent Rose, dragged it up the sheer side of a cliff that she was running up via glyphs and shotgun recoil, and decapitated it at the top with a forceful shove. Heck, after her training from Beacon, she was powerful enough to hitch a ride on one of those things and then murder it with one slice. She’s been hit by blows that can break through steel, pulverized giant rocks by falling on them, and was once thrown back so hard she was sent flying high into the sky, landing against a Nevermore with enough force to instantly kill it, and then jumped back down to the ground like nothing had happened at all! With her teams by her side, she’s defeated giant mechs, a small army of trained rebels/mafia grunts, blown up several airships, fought off a giant Grimm invasion, killed a giant rock monster, held off a full-fledged attack on Haven Academy (during which she equaled and helped defeat many powerful foes, including Mercury, Emerald, Hazel, and Leo), murdered up a eight-headed snake the size of a city block, and killed the Nuckelavee, the deadliest Grimm in the entire franchise. Even by herself, she’s survived a 400 foot fall, cut through an entire forest, and defeated both Roman Torchwick and Neo at the same time, two of the most powerful and skilled fighters in the whole series. Well, she did have a little luck at the end there, but then she killed that Grimm with one blow and destroyed the airship she was on. I think she had victory in the bag.

So, you may be wondering, can anyone beat her? Well, yes. Her win-loss record isn’t perfect, and there are many reasons why. She’s exceptionally naïve and easily taken aback by surprise attacks. She’s ready to throw down at a moment’s notice, but stubbornly refuses to retreat when she’s outmatched. Her Aura does have a limit, and after expiring, the next blow is sure to be fatal. And her fighting style and experience is almost all due to her use of Crescent Rose. If she loses her weapon, she’s pretty much useless, only having had some very basic hand-to-hand combat training from Ozpin and Yang. And she can be overwhelmed by opponents faster than her, like the time she tried to use her Semblance to get past Mercury, only for him to knock her out of the Rose Petal Burst form with a perfectly placed kick. Finally, she’s still a huntress-in-training, and has yet to reach the level of fighters like Qrow or her father.

But she’s done more than anyone could have ever predicted at her age. Any monster that’s out there, spreading fear, had better be afraid for its own life if Ruby Rose comes after it.

Disarmed and seemingly defeated, Ruby hangs off an airship five thousand feet above the ground as Neo and Torchwick circle above her, weapons out.

“I may be a gambling man,” Torchwick announces, “but even I know there are some bets you just don’t take.”

Neo puts her sword to Ruby’s throat.

“Like it or not,” Torchwick continues, “the people that hired me are going to change the world. You can’t stop them. I can’t stop them. You know the old saying: if you can’t beat ‘em-“

Ruby suddenly reaches up and pushes a button on Neo’s sword, transforming it back into a parasol. The wind currents instantly send Neo hurtling off the airship with a gasp.

Neo!” Torchwick cries out as Ruby climbs up.

“I don’t care what you say!” Ruby shouts at him. “We will stop them, and I will stop you! BET ON THAT!” She rushes ahead, full speed.

Ruby Rose:

Full Name: Ruby Rose

Species: Human

Age: 16

Height: 5'2"/157 cm

Weight: 105 lb/48 kg

Occupation: Huntress-in-Training

Likes books

Likes cookies more

Likes heroes even more

Likes her lethal killing machine most of all

Crescent Rose:

Carry Mode

Sniper Mode

Scythe Mode

-Normal Rounds

-Cross Rounds

-Ice Rounds

-Fire Rounds

-Electric Rounds

-Gravity Rounds

Abilities:

Aura

~Superhuman Strength

~Superhuman Speed

~Superhuman Senses

~Superhuman Jumping

~Forcefield

~Shielding Projection

~Healing Factor

~Predication

~Semblance: Rose Petal Burst

Incredible skill

Knowledge in at least four martial arts

Pinpoint Accuracy

Some kind of Blood Manipulation

Feats:

Once ate eleven cookies in five seconds flat

Sliced through a large tree with a swing from her scythe

Sliced through a forest over time w/ Crescent Rose

Kicked a man 37 feet away

Kicked a man through a metal door

Led two separate teams to victory against hundreds of Grimm and hopeless odds

Without Semblance, fired a bullet, then outran it

With Semblance, moved fast enough to be invisible to the trained eye

Cut off Tyrian’s scorpion tail

Defeated the entirety of Team JNPR with one move in a food fight/training session

Killed off a pack of around 100 Beowolves with ease

Killed four Ursa with one shot

Killed at least eight Beowolves with one move

Killed a Gryphon with a single kick

Killed a Nevermore with a single slice

Was recoiled hard enough to get sent flying into the sky, hit a Nevermore hard enough to instantly kill it, and blasted back like it was nothing

W/ Crescent Rose shotgun blasts, dragged a Nevermore up the sheer side of a cliff and decapitated it

Defeated Roman Torchwick and Neo by herself (w/ a little good luck via Griffon)

Fought evenly against Mercury, Emerald, Hazel

Killed the crap out of an eight-headed city-block-sized snake

Walked from one nation to another

Traveled a city block in less in a second

Killed thousands of Grimm

Killed a Beringel

Rode a Nevermore, twice

Killed robots

Led evacuation of Beacon

Led both Team RWBY & Team RNJR

W/ Team RNJR, killed the Nuckelavee, deadliest Grimm ever

Matched and exceeded friends in combat

Survived a blow from an Ursa w/o activated Aura

Survived a fall from 5,000 feet up via shotgun recoil

Smashed through a 104 ton stone

Ran 3.7 blocks in one second

Destroyed a stone statue by falling on it, wasn’t even affected

Survived reading a book based off of Twilight

Somehow managed to not be a Mary Sue

Weaknesses:

Impulsive

Childish

Naïve

Show-off

Not fully trained

Speed can be outmatched

Over-reliant on Crescent Rose to deal damage

Aura has a limit

Carnage

The world is full of victims. Whether they are victims of circumstances, of themselves, or of others, one thing is certain: as long as there are victims, there are monsters, for monsters create victims, and victims create monsters. And sometimes both are the case, especially when it comes to mass murdering aliens made out of blood bonded with psychotic serial killers.

Cletus Kasady was your average everyday kid. He went to average schools, had an average best friend, murdered his average grandma, tortured and maimed his average dog, and led his average dad to kill his average mom for trying to kill her average child for said torture of the average dog. Strange how everything comes full circle, isn’t it? Believe it or not, Cletus was actually anything but average. I mean, when you realize his family is filled with nothing but psychotic murderers, what else did you expect him to be? As a child, he was obsessed with the ways of death, and, after everything you just read about, he was sent to an orphanage, where he got to experiment in more ways to kill people when he threw his crush in front of a moving bus, burned down his orphanage, and brutally murdered anyone who tried to escape. And he was just a kid! By the time the police finally caught up with him, he was a full-fledged adult and had committed dozens of murders over the years. Even though they could only get him on eleven of them, that was still enough to get several life sentences without parole. And so, the story ends, with yet another crazed criminal off the streets forever.

Or so it would have gone if somebody hadn’t made the world’s worst decision and gave this guy Eddie Brock as a cellmate. Now, as many of you know, Brock was host to the symbiote Venom. Venom was a Klyntar, also known as a symbiote, an alien race of creatures created by the deity Knull to basically expand his reach around the universe. But then they became all benevolent and boy scout-like and rebelled, trapping their creator in the center of a planet made out of symbiotes. Since then, all that symbiotes have wanted is a living host, someone who can join them and sustain them in exchange for their crazy shapeshifting powers. However, symbiotes are notoriously susceptible to taking on the mindsets of previous hosts - and the Venom symbiote had previously bonded with a bunch of evil and insane people, and then to Spiderman, before bonding with Eddie. This gave him all kinds of messed-up thoughts and confusion, which manifested itself as the sometimes-villain, sometimes-anti-hero Venom. Then the story got interesting. When Venom came to rescue Eddie from prison, it decided, for whatever ridiculous reason, to reproduce (asexually, of course) right then and there. Because everyone knows that if you’re going to have a kid that you want to grow up to be a better man/symbiote than you are, you should totally leave him in a prison filled with the most insane and dangerous serial killers on the planet (especially if he’s easily influenced by the thoughts of others). I mean, Venom knew what he was creating, right?

Regardless of whether he knew what he was doing or not, nobody could have predicted the horror that came from what he did. As it turned out, this new symbiote had retained all of his father’s horrific experiences and personality traits – and none of the positive ones to provide perspective. This made it absolutely insane from pain and anger from the get-go, and the only release it felt was forcing others to feel that pain as well – particularly Spiderman, since Venom was kind of hatefully obsessed with him. The new symbiote immediately merged with Cletus through a cut on his arm and tried to take over his mind, only to stop when he and Cletus both realized just how like-minded they were. Somehow, these two’s perspectives on the world, and…well, murder, were so similar that Cletus and the symbiote were able to merge on a molecular level, literally becoming one person. And thus the two died – and Carnage was born.

Carnage sees a couple in a car and, feeling the irresistible urge to kill, jumps right at them. “Locked doors? Closed windows? C'mon! It's CONVERTIBLE weather! LIVE A LITTLE!” Upon saying this, he shoots his arm through the glass, impaling both in one blow and, with a shake of his hand, reducing them to little more than blood splatters. “Okay, very little."

Having received all the regular Klyntar abilities and more, Carnage has been granted incredible strength, amazing speed, and durability that’s…just a little bit stupid. He’s strong enough to pick up and throw a seventy-ton iron pillar, fast enough to outrace and catch bullets out of thin air, and, when solid, tough enough to be thrown through four solid oak trees in a row and act like it didn’t even happen. Yes, I said “when solid.” See, most symbiotes are liquid-like by nature, and can shapeshift and harden in order to deal actual damage (and take it) while with a host. However, Carnage is bonded to his host through his bloodstream, and, apparently, at a molecular level, which has turned Cletus and Carnage together into a weird, horrifying, humanoid mass of blood, human, and symbiote…but mostly blood. So he almost always has a consistency of something like melted Play-Doh or Oobleck. This means that while he can be torn apart by something as ordinary as a bullet, it can’t hurt him. He’s been blasted apart by missiles, sliced into dozens of pieces by Deadpool, smashed into by a train, and obliterated by a falling building, and every time, he’s just come back, no different from before. He can’t regenerate, per say, but so long as there’s some scrap of him remaining, he can just…pull himself back together instantly or form whatever’s left back into his body, barely any weaker than before. So you have a crazy strong monster made of blood that can’t really be killed. That’s terrifying.

It gets even worse when you realize that we’ve covered nowhere near his full list of abilities. The blood-created Carnage symbiote is a shapeshifter by nature, and so can do things like melt into a puddle to seep through air vents, remake his body to look exactly like Cletus’s, or toughen up to become pretty much impossible to break (which is how he took the tree-throwing thing and didn’t splatter all over). Worst of all, Carnage is a deranged serial killer whose one true passion is finding and experimenting with new ways to murder people, of which there’s a seemingly endless amount thanks to that shapeshifting.

Carnage stands up and shouts out for all to hear. “My name is Cletus Kasady! I kill people and I LOVE IT! I know nine million ways to kill a body and I love EVERY ONE OF THEM. All dull day every day right up until I hit the hay I think of bodies! Bodies slit right up the middle and shared across a hundred nice little gardens!”

He continues talking for a while before coming to his point. “You're probably asking why I kill. Well, simple answer. It's PRETTY. Waking up in the morning and knowing you're going to kill someone... it's a beautiful thing! Makes me feel like a gunship, like my engine's only turning over when I'm moving and killing…I've told you about the worst things in the world, because that’s what the world's made of! EVERYTHING IS SICK! Am I getting THROUGH to you? EVERYTHING IS SICK AND I LOVE IT!!”

Carnage’s most common way to kill people is with tendrils. His body can form dozens of massive tendrils reaching over two miles in length that can pierce straight through flesh, rock, and even metal like they’re nothing. Said tendrils are capable of smashing apart stone pillars, knocking out Spiderman with a single blow, and outracing explosions, which generally move at over 6,000 MPH. That last one’s particularly important, since Carnage can transport his mind and being through any extension of himself, tendrils included. While he himself can move up to 2,400 MPH, his tendrils are clearly much faster. Heck, on more than one occasion, they’ve moved fast enough to appear invisible to the human eye, making them able to potentially move up to 9,000 MPH. Seriously, you could be 145 miles away and Carnage could appear next to you in less than a second. Well, he could if his tendrils could stretch that far, which they can’t, but you get the idea. He can also shapeshift his body, forming webbing so strong, not even Spiderman or, in some cases, even Venom can escape from it, or he can just crawl on walls the same way Spiderman does. He can also form dozens of different weapons out of himself, whether they be as simple as swords or axes or, on one occasion, as complicated as a freaking chaingun! How is that even possible?! He also commonly throws dozens, even hundreds of metal-piercing projectiles at his enemies, essentially making his own bullets out of…himself. And, with a pierce via tendril, he can show a person the world from his perspective, almost always driving them insane, or he can release a portion of himself inside the victim, taking control of them, and even, should he somehow be destroyed, infecting their blood with his symbiote, essentially remaking himself from inside their body. It’s twice as disturbing as it sounds. He can also change size at will, shrinking to the size of a small puddle or growing to the size of a skyscraper, though his speed does take a significant dip as he grows larger.

With all that insanity backed up by all that power, he’s won battles against plenty of powerful foes and, over his years of murder, supposedly killed over thousands of people. He frequently goes up against and defeats both Spiderman and Venom, and sometimes both at the same time. Once, the two punched him full force at the same time, and Carnage just caught their punches in his arm and pushed them back. Keep in mind that Spiderman can catch airplanes and Venom can hold up massive carnival rides. Oh, yeah, and he then knocked out both Spiderman and Venom with one blow. He’s able to keep up with and even predict almost any opponent, including other insane people like Deadpool – a dude who’s so crazy, not even Taskmaster, whose literal power is predicting his opponent’s moves, can predict him. Actually, Carnage is so unpredictable that while he was able to predict Deadpool’s thoughts and movements, Deadpool wasn’t able to predict his. This is further helped by the fact that his suit can sense everything around it in the same way we can see everything around us. As the official Death Battle has said, it’s pretty much exactly as if the suit was made of eyeballs. He can even see through his tendrils, weapons, and projectiles! And even then, his shapeshifting is still capable of more – he can transform into a living cage, split into multiple pieces and reform, turn his arms and face into a massive wall-like shield that’s almost impenetrable, glide through the air, or just sprout wings and fly! But even if you are able to avoid his tendrils, duck under his flight, dodge his self-made gunfire, and not be seen by the all-seeing suit, if he wants to kill you, you still aren’t safe. I presume you’re using the internet to read this, right? Well, that’s unfortunate, because, due to all the electrolytes in blood, Carnage is able to travel through electronic pulses – literally entering a computer, traveling through the internet, and coming out of the computer of the person he wants to kill. Yes. That actually happened. And no, it doesn’t make any scientific sense.

He’s powerful and deadly enough to defeat other symbiotes, Man-Wolf, Mr. Fantastic, Iron Man, Nightcrawler, Wizard, Scarlet Spider, and even Deadpool. During a fight with Wolverine, things weren’t really looking so good for Carnage, so he decided the best course of action would be to bite through his bone claws, which are tougher than most metals. It…worked, surprisingly. He also fought Nova, a being who can move faster than light and destroy planets. However, it should be noted that Nova’s helmet, which is where he gets his power from, had been heavily damaged in an earlier fight, so he was nowhere near his full power when facing against Carnage. Still, the fact that Carnage managed to survive at all is impressive, but to be expected. After all, we’re talking about a guy who’s strong enough to throw around a helicopter, obliterate a one-story building, and smash straight through a 94 ton boulder like it was thin air! One time, Spiderman tried to resist his strength by attaching himself to a concrete wall, but Carnage just pulled hard enough to smash the wall to pieces and grabbed him anyway. He’s outpaced and dodged soundwaves, gunfire, a missile can could potentially move past Mach 3, and even the occasional laser blast! He’s insane enough to outwit Batman, freak out the Joker, and even try to possess the Silver Surfer, an incredibly powerful being his entire race is programmed on a genetic level to be afraid of!

But his deadliest trait is his sheer indestructibility. He just…won’t die. He’s survived radiation, asphyxiation, decapitation, suffocation, separation, bifurcation, emancipation, near-incineration, electrocution, being blasted apart by missiles, being blasted apart by grenades, being blasted apart by solar energy, being blasted apart by the unibeam, being blasted apart by land mines, being blasted apart from everything in an Iron Man suit’s arsenal, being blasted apart by a C4 bomb, being blasted apart by a swallowed bomb, being blasted apart by a gene bomb, being blasted apart by a living bomb, bombardment from microwaves, bombardment from the Thing’s punches, bombardment from giant blocks of concrete, bombardment from five symbiotes, bombardment from sound guns, bombardment from blows by the Hulk, and being ripped in half by Sentry and left floating in outer space for a year!

At this point, you’re probably asking “What can take this guy down?” The answer is: not much. After his first escape, Spiderman had to enlist the help of Venom and the Fantastic Four just to imprison him again, and, when he escaped from a different prison some years down the line, he was able to fight, defeat, and kill the four members of the Mercury Team, a team of special forces trained specifically to take down symbiotes, each of which had a member of the symbiote Hybrid bonded to them. Basically, he managed to defeat four other symbiotes at once while they were bonded to people specifically designed and trained to kill other symbiotes. That’s insane!

Carnage is unstoppable – until high-frequency soundwaves or fire enters the picture. These two things are able to force Carnage to reform Cletus’s body and separate from him – or, well, they used to be able to. The fire weakness still applies, but he got rid of the sound weakness and instead became weak to some sort of magic that will probably matter exactly 0% of the time. Still, even if the two are separated, Carnage is so incredibly bonded with Cletus’s blood, he’s sometimes able to come back out of him anyway, even from something as minor as a scratch. And even if you separate the two and manage to completely kill Cletus, the Carnage symbiote will survive and seek a new host, like the time he took over Green Goblin. Together, they did all kinds of crazy things, like defeating Spiderman, Human Torch, Silk, Clash, and Miles Morales all at the same time, surviving a 125 ton explosion, defeating Anti-Venom (the most powerful symbiote…just ever), and easily taking on mountains of fire and sound. Even when there’s only a drop of him left, he can always use the blood of a victim to come back – though the symbiote by itself can definitely be killed by enough heat or, well, anything that can completely disintegrate it or remove it from existence. Also, he’s not perfectly better than his parent symbiote – he doesn’t have a Spider Sense, for instance, and still hasn’t learned how to turn invisible or change color. However, just like his parent, he may also require a steady diet of phenethylamine, which he can typically receive by eating his victims’ brains. Yep. Well, maybe he just eats them because he wants to, but his chemical requirement seems more likely. To top it all off, he’s bonded to Cletus’s blood on a molecular level, so anything that can kill blood (aside from poisons) can probably kill him.

But he’s shown, over and over, again, that killing him is way harder than the heroes give him credit for. No heroes and no villains have been able to forever stop him from completing his one true wish – to just kill everyone and everything for no real reason. Carnage is easily one of most terrifying monsters in Marvel history.

Carnage stands over the doctor of the mental institution that has been treating him for days. His tendrils are out; he’s ready to murder. “Any last words, sweetie?”

The doctor stands, unyielding. “Let me help you, Mr. Kasady. I’m your only hope. I can ease your pain. I’ve devoted my entire life to curing people like you and ridding the world of serial killers!”

Carnage tilts his head sadistically. “I am deeply touched by your obvious sincerity, Doctor Pournella. Unfortunately…” his head snaps back into place as he spits out his next words. “Your entire life has been a sick joke! A TOTAL WASTE! Not only have you irresponsibly released the worst serial killer of all, but I’m going to CELEBRATE my newfound freedom by SLAYING EVERY INHABITANT WITHIN YOUR PRECIOUS INSTITUTE!”

He sends a tendril flying through her head and slinks off to begin a new murder spree.

Carnage:

[Host – Symbiote]

Full Name: Cletus Kasady - Carnage

Species: Human – Klyntar

Age: ??? – ??? minus at least 25

Height: 6’1”/185 cm – N/A

Weight: 190 lb/86 kg – N/A

Occupation: Mass Murderer – Mass Murderer

Likes heavy metal

Likes brains more

Likes murder even more

Likes his stuffed teddy bear most of all

Abilities:

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Superhuman Stamina

Superhuman Senses

Superhuman Evilness

Regeneration-ish

Shapeshifting

Telepathy

Wall-Crawling

Cloning-ish

Possession-ish

360-degree Perception

Some kind of Blood Manipulation

Feats:

Defeated Deadpool

Defeated Iron Man

Defeated Spiderman

Defeated Venom

Defeated Scarlet Spider

Defeated Agent Venom

Defeated Hybrid

Defeated Scream

Defeated Man-Wolf

Defeated Mr. Fantastic

Defeated Nightcrawler w/ OHKO

Defeated Wizard

Defeated Magneto

Defeated Wolverine

Defeated Anti-Venom

Defeated Toxin

Defeated a lot of other people

Killed 3,000 people

Killed a guy through a computer screen

Infected the entire Avengers, turning them all into more Carnages

Escaped from prison at least forty times

Lifted a 50 ton tank

Broke through an 94 ton boulder

Tossed a helicopter

Threw a 70-ton pillar

Did some more strength stuff

Dodged lasers

Outran soundwaves

Caught up to bullets

Equaled speed with a 2400 MPH missile

Dodged hundreds of bullet at once

Tendrils moved faster than the eye can see

Survived just about everything you can imagine

Went toe-to-toe with underpowered Nova

Weaknesses:

Fire is a huge weakness

Chthonic Magic is a huge weakness

Anything that kills blood

No resistance to magic spells or transmogrification

Way weaker without a host

May require a steady diet of phenethylamine

Intermission

All right, the combatants are set. Let’s end this debate once and for all – or until RWBY Volume 6 comes out and changes everything we know about Ruby, or a new Carnage comic series comes out and changes everything we know about Carnage. Who cares! It’s time for a Death Battle!

Death Battle

Ruby wandered through the town of Ilkton, looking for anything that could contain medical supplies. The rest of Team RNJR had stayed behind at Kuroyuri to protect Qrow from Grimm – that poisoned wound was getting worse by the hour, and taking him all the way here to a potentially Grimm-infested village was just too risky. Since she was team leader and the fastest, she’d elected to scout ahead and bring back anything she could find.

But there was nothing.

It was strange – the buildings weren’t destroyed. The well still drew up water. Some of the places were still freshly painted. But nobody was here. Why had they all fled?

She came upon the town hall. It was massive – probably because it was also a sort of bunker. Many towns did that – building one important building to also be able to serve as a bunker in times of huge Grimm invasions. Maybe this is where everyone was – or, if not, the bunker had to have plenty of medical supplies in it. She tentatively opened the front door. “Hello?”

Somewhere in the darkness, there was quiet laughter. Good, somebody was here. She grabbed a match and lit some candles, lighting up a good portion of the room, though plenty of it was still covered in darkness. Up ahead, she made out a small patch of space in the darkness that looked almost like a hole. They had to be stairs leading to the bunker. She stepped ahead to the edge of what she could see. “Is anyone there?”

“I’m right here,” said a voice from the darkness.

It sounded…off, but Ruby couldn’t worry about that right now. “Can you help? I need medical supplies!”

“You’re not bleeding. Who is bleeding?” The voice almost sang it, which sounded kind of creepy, but it was really her only hope now.

“My name is Ruby Rose. My uncle was poisoned. The rest of my team stayed behind at Kuroyuri to look after him. Please, we just need some supplies – just enough to last until we get to Haven. Please, will you help?”

“Of course,” the voice slithered. A human hand – female, looked like – stretched itself out from the darkness. “Shake my hand.”

Ruby excitedly ran up to the hand and grabbed it. Surprisingly, she felt no resistance. When she pulled on the hand to shake it, the body attached came into the light – and Ruby screamed. It was terrifying. Eyes were gouged out, the throat was slit, there were gaping holes all around her face, and several horrible blood-soaked tendrils wrapped themselves around her forehead and arm. Then a face out of her worst nightmares shoved itself out from behind the body. It was a mass of blood, bone, and teeth. It didn’t look human. It barely looked alive. But it spoke in that same voice she’d been hearing.

“Tricked you!” He laughed maniacally as he leapt over her head and ran for the door. “Fresh blood awaits!”

A Grimm. Dr. Oobleck had always said that the longer they lived, the smarter they became. She couldn’t let him get to Qrow!

Ruby burst into rose petals and zoomed around Carnage, stopping in front of him. She pulled out Crescent Rose and instantly turned it to Scythe Mode. “You’ll have to get through me, first!”

“Snack, snack!” Carnage yelled out as if reciting a schoolground chant. He laughed so hard, he threw his head back – and somehow accidentally snapped his own neck. One twist later, though, and it was like nothing had happened. “THE SNACK ATTACKS!”

-FIGHT!-

Carnage leapt forward, arms immediately forming into double-axes, ready to impale Ruby through the head. But she wasn’t so easily caught. Ruby burst into rose petals and moved behind Carnage. She swung Crescent Rose at him, but Carnage saw her perfectly well, and leaped into the air above her. He launched several tendrils at her, but she just zoomed out of the way. He threw out hundreds of blood bullets, only to watch Ruby twirl her scythe around so precisely, it caught and destroyed every bullet. Carnage grew seven tendrils and shaped them like arms, then launched a huge flurry of punches at Ruby, striking absolutely everywhere. Ruby, however, thanks to her training, was able to block and deflect every punch that came near her. He lashed out his tongue in a surprise maneuver – and Ruby sliced right through it faster than he could predict. The fallen half dissolved into rose petals and Carnage dissolved into goo, sliding under Ruby and unleashing a flurry of tendrils, every one of which Ruby quickly and deftly avoided. Carnage reformed and formed a sword out of his body, slicing and dicing away at where Ruby should be – but she ducked under and jumped over every swing with grace and ease.

In absolute fury, Carnage screamed out “WHAT ARE YOU? WHY CAN’T I HIT YOU?!”

Ruby backflipped out of the next swing and decided to hit back for once. She swung her scythe and cut right through the blood-sword, then shot out several bullets into Carnage. Carnage took the bullets as several rose petals went flying out and laughed. “Mmm! Tastes like rosewater! WHAT DO YOU TASTE LIKE?” He spat the bullets out back at Ruby, with them moving just as fast as when she fired them. Ruby sliced through both with two moves, flicked her wrist to transform her scythe into a glaive, and rushed forwards at speeds breaking the sound barrier, impaling Carnage through the chest.

Rose petals spilled out of the other side of him as he gasped in pain. “Yowie! That thing’s dangerous!” In a surprise move, he threw his arms around her, coating her middle half in blood and tendrils. Ruby gasped and tried to escape, but his grip was too strong. “But I’m even more dangerous!” He formed an axe on his head and slammed it into her face. He expected the thing to stick into her head, separating it permanently, but instead it stopped right at her skin and didn’t go any further. “What? Why aren’t you dead? It’s so fun to be dead!”

“Let’s see how you like it!” Ruby shouted back, and pressed the trigger. The recoil from the shot forced the glaive backwards and caused Ruby to tear through Carnage’s arms and go flying back. Carnage cried out and jumped at her. Big mistake. Ruby jumped and met him in the air, where she proceeded to slice right through him with a swing of her scythe. Carnage pulled himself back together instantly, minus what little had been turned to petals, but Ruby used his head as a springboard, jumping higher into the air. As she went soaring up, she transformed Crescent Rose into Sniper Mode, pointed it at Carnage’s head with one hand, and shot him four times straight through the eye. Carnage hit the ground rolling, and stood back up, no real difference to him.

Ruby landed perfectly. “You’re a lot harder to kill than you look.”

“I know! Glorious, right?” Carnage launched a tendril at Ruby, who jumped over it, but as it passed right by her, he transported his being through the tendril, instantly appearing right next to Ruby. He grabbed her out of the air and pinned her to the ground. With several blood-soaked webs, he tied her down and began whaling on her face. Swords, axes, maces, tendrils, claws, nothing worked. Sure, she was being hit faster than she could react, but it all just bounced off of her skin. “Why won’t you just die?!”

Ruby burst into rose petals, escaped the webbing, and reformed several yards away. She cocked Crescent Rose, still in Sniper Form, and pointed it at Carnage. “You think this is a game?! There are people out there, being hurt! I know that’s what you’re made for, but you’re smarter than the rest of them! Can’t you understand that killing is wrong?!”

“Wrong, right, wrong, right,” Carnage sneezed out. “That stuff changes all the time. ‘Oh, you can’t kill that guy! Wait, he’s a murderer, you can! Wait, he only kills in self-defense, you can’t! Wait, he’s about to try to kill you, you can! Wait, his kid’s here, you can’t! Wait, we’re at war, you can!’ WHO CARES? I skip all that cuddly-huddly junk! I do what EVERYONE wants to do! Killing is fun! It’s crazy! It’s chaos! KILLING IS WHO I AM!” He threw forward fifty tendrils at once, covering so much space so fast, there was no way Ruby could avoid them.

She didn't.

She held her sniper rifle behind her and fired, using the recoil to dash ahead at enormous speeds. She fired again, and again. She hit plenty of tendrils full force, but all of them bounced off of her Aura. She reached a shocked Carnage and held the point of the gun up to his head. “I don’t care what you say! You can reason! You can think! You’re not like the others. Deep down, you have to know the truth. You can’t be so broken inside that you like doing this!”

“Broken?! I’m more complete than YOU, dearie!”

Ruby fired the bullet, but Carnage just threw his head to the left, forcing the shot to miss completely despite being fired point-blank. “You want proof?! I’ll show you something you’ll never forget!” He jumped into the air and threw out a bloody web, grappling to the ceiling and swinging into the dark.

Ruby put in her Fire Dust Rounds and shot out one, granting some light to the dark for a split second. All she saw was a set of stairs leading down into darkness. That must have been where he’s gone. She grabbed a candle and made her way downward, being exceptionally careful so as not to be surprise attacked. Her Aura could take a fair bit more, but not enough to guarantee her life if this conflict lasted a whole lot longer. She needed to find him, and end him, fast. As she came to the bottom of the stairs, she noticed that there was a doorway where the iron door had been forced off of its hinges and lay to the side, broken – and badly dented all over. Something had given it an incredible beating. Right next to the door, there was a light switch. So, this bunker had a dust-infused light of sorts – and, given the place’s condition, it very well might still be working. She flipped the switch, and dim lights began to shine.

And they shone on a sight so gut-wrenching it forced Ruby back and had her trying desperately not to vomit.

Bodies…bodies were stacked everywhere. Disassembled, mutilated, with organs, throats, ribcages tossed around the place and stuck to the walls like flypaper. Right next to her were two bodies, a couple, huddled together, with all their skin from the shoulders up carefully filed off so you could see exactly how they died – both had their tongues ripped out, and stuffed down the other’s throat, choking them to death. Other people had blood pouring out of cavities where their ears belonged, or their hands forcefully shoved through their own throats, or had their facial features rearranged and mismatched with other people, like a horrible Mr. Potato Head set.

And from somewhere, she heard a voice.

♪Poor little flies♪

♪Never said goodbye♪

♪Drawn to the blood♪

♪Caught in the flood♪

Ruby transformed Crescent Rose into a scythe again. “You…did you do this?!”

Carnage roped down to meet her. “I know nine million different ways to kill a body, and the only thing I love more than using them is finding new ones! See, there!” He pointed a quivering, bloody finger at the couple and laughed. “They’re kissing!”

Despite her swirling stomach, Ruby noticed something…interesting. He was smaller than when they started this. Only slightly, but still. “You…really are just a monster.”

“Guilty! Guilty! GUILTY! THAT’S WHAT I AM! We know the truth! We know what we are!” He stepped forward, and, having seen all the terrible things he’d done, Ruby stepped back, suddenly afraid. “You know it, too. I see it in your mind. Black out the sky. All things must die.”

“Why?!”

“WHY? BECAUSE IT MAKES ME HAPPY! They saw the creatures, those black bears and wolves, and they saw me kill them. The creatures didn’t leave a body, so I decided to kill something that does!” He laughed again. “They tried to escape. Tried to hide! BUT I SAW THEM! I SAW THEIR BLOOD! And now…I SEE YOU!”

Carnage leaped at Ruby, claws slashing at empty air before she burst into petals and dashed away. She unleashed several rounds into him – ouch, fire! That hurt far more than anything she’d tried before. And it still left those rose petals! That was annoying – whenever she turned part of him to roses, he couldn’t call it back. But he could kill her. That sounded…delicious. He remembered now. A few of the people down here…they’d been hard to kill, too. Not as hard as this little girl was, but his stabs still bounced off of them for a bit. So, just like any other human, if he hit her enough, one day, she’d break. Delicious.

She swung her scythe at him, and, for once, he decided he didn’t want to be carved like a wild turkey. He toughened himself up to become nearly impenetrable, causing the scythe’s blade to try to cut him through the shoulder – and come to a grinding halt. He laughed. “Can’t bend me, can’t break me! Can’t mend me, can’t take me!”

Ruby fired the scythe, and pulled it down with all her strength. The recoil plus her added physical abilities forced the blade to slice right through the symbiote without resistance.

Carnage’s top half went flying upwards as more rose petals flew through the air. That annoying little dead girl. He pulled himself back together. “I’LL KILL YOU!” He formed a chaingun out of his blood and began firing. Thousands of blood bullets rammed ahead, aimed directly for her. The girl wasn’t expecting it. A bunch of them hit her before she could do anything, but it wasn’t long before she put up her hands and the bullets bounced off of some kind of invisible shield. He hated shields. They stopped people from dying and sometimes got stuck in his head. Wait, what was happening? Oh, she’d jumped onto the wall and started zooming around as that mass of rose petals. He turned and kept shooting away, his bullets just barely missing her at all times. She leaped at him suddenly, scythe pointed gun-end at him, and he instantly called back all the splattered blood bullets to him. They formed a blockage in front of him that look like his face – he liked that very much. All her bullets, even the fire ones, just bounced off of the blockage, until she herself hit it, jumped off, and shot it with a bolt of electricity. Carnage dropped the blockage as he fell to the floor, writhing in pain. It didn’t damage him, really – but it hurt…so bad… ugh! Can’t…lose…to little girl! Must beat her! Must EAT her!

Ruby unloaded several more electric rounds into Carnage as he was on the floor, but he still managed to get up and attack. Twelve tendrils shot at her faster than the eye could see. She instantly cut right through them all with one swipe from the scythe and watched as the ends turned to petals. “You’re made of blood. I can kill you if I just keep hitting you!”

“I can do that, too!” Carnage shouted excitedly. “We’ll both be all blood soon!”

Ruby switched to her Cross Rounds and tore ahead at incredible speeds. She sliced straight through Carnage, sending him flying into two places. Before he could blink, Ruby shot two explosive rounds into both halves, scattered them both into pieces. Carnage called all his scraps together, but as they were about to join, Ruby summoned an Aura Shield between them, refusing them passage. She used the recoil from a shot to send her flying at the scraps and sliced and diced each one several times. As she fell back down to the ground, Carnage was finally able to reform – but the petals had taken a toll, and he was nearly half the size that he was when they’d began their battle.

Ruby stood back as Carnage shouted “Hey! That almost hurt!” He cackled and declared “That thing you have is pretty dangerous! I want one! Actually,” Ruby watched in horror as one of his arms formed itself into an exact duplicate of Crescent Rose, “I have one!”

Ruby launched herself forward with a shotgun blast and swung with all her might, but her blade was stopped by the blade of the fake Crescent Rose. This…Blood Rose fired off several potshots at her with blood bullets, two catching Ruby by surprise. Her Aura flickered – it couldn’t take a whole lot more. She fired her own gun, carefully and precisely hitting every bullet out of the air – but as each one splattered, it moved past the rounds and reformed itself, only slightly smaller. Ruby panicked and leapt up into the sky, but was shocked to find that Carnage had sprouted wings and done the same, and the two matched scythes again. Carnage, in all fairness, was a surprisingly fast learner – capable of emulating almost every move he’d seen Ruby make thus far with his Blood Rose. He spun it to block the bullets, twisted it around to capture her weapon and turn its weight against her, and used recoil from false gunshots to add power and speed to his strikes. And every time Ruby summoned all of her strength to cut the thing, it just reformed itself immediately. After catching Ruby’s blade for the umpteenth time, he slid underneath both scythes and transported the Blood Rose to him right away, catching Ruby in the stomach and throwing her against a wall. Ruby burst into rose petals and zoomed ahead to catch him again, but Carnage had become used to her tactics now. He took aim and, with a blood bullet moving faster than a mortal eye could track, shot her out of the air. She fell down into a pile of mutilated bodies with a shriek and a cry.

“Ooh, my snack is inside my other snacks! How delicious! Delectable! Divine! Delightful! Duh…sgustingly good?” He cracked his small neck, and stretched it out. “Come on out! It’s time for me to kill you! Carnage is hungry!”

Ruby was afraid.

Her Aura was really, really low, and she was facing a monster unlike anything she’d ever heard about. It was smarter than any other Grimm out there, stronger than anything she’d faced, and impossible to kill.

And it had already killed all these people.

An eye popped out of a severed head next to her and landed on her hand. She shook it off in an instant, but the motion accidentally stirred her position. She slid down into horrible swamp-like amounts of blood, organs, and other gore. She tried to scramble up as fast as possible, nearly fainting from the smell, look, and feeling alone. Unfortunately, her attempts were seen by Carnage.

“There you are!” He jumped into the air and raised the Blood Rose. “Come greet your friendly neighborhood Carnage-Man!”

Ruby screamed.

And everything went white.

Carnage burned. He screamed in unbelievable pain, and was thrust backwards. He smashed his claws into the floor to keep from being moved – but he didn’t have claws anymore. In horror, he looked down to see a human hand where his should be. He felt himself being ripped apart, dissolved, and destroyed. He screamed. He shouted. He pleaded with the white void that was erasing him.

But it didn’t answer.

And he burned.

Ruby slowly opened her eyes, her head throbbing and her body aching. She slid down from the pile of dead bodies and tried to take a step, but fell to her knees. It hurt. She hadn’t meant to use the Silver Eyes, but she was glad she had. That creature had needed to be stopped, and this is what had been required to do it. With a good deal of effort, she managed to grab Crescent Rose from off the ground. She looked up, looking for the statue of her foe, but instead was greeted by a man, knees on the floor, gasping for breath, muttering “Carnage…” over and over. With a jolt, she suddenly realized that the Grimm…Carnage, it was called, had been possessing this man. She walked over, stumbling a few times, and bent down.

“Hey, it’s okay. He’s gone now.”

Cletus looked around the room, bleary-eyed, then back at her. “Why…why did you do it?”

Ruby glanced around and saw all the dead bodies once more. “Oh! No! I didn’t do that! It was that Grimm. He possessed you. Used you to do what he wanted.”

Cletus blinked rapidly. “You…me…Grimm? I…did-”

Ruby shushed him. “It’s not your fault. You’re free of him now. There’s no more Carnage.”

Cletus snarled. Surprising Ruby, he grasped the blade of the scythe and sliced open his hand, spilling blood everywhere. “You idiot! I AM CARNAGE!”

The symbiote spawned from his blood and wrapped itself around him once more, now normal-sized again. Ruby backed up, absolutely shocked, as the monster in front of her laughed. “Can you guess who’s about to die? Here’s a hint: she’s red as blood, white as death, black as hate, and yellow as sickness! Get it? CAUSE YOU’RE SCARED!” He grabbed Crescent Rose, flung it aside, and then snatched her with several tendrils that formed together as one giant arm. He spun her around, and around, and around like the blade of a helicopter, moving at speeds way faster than sound, before launching her up into the air, where she smashed straight through the first floor, then through the roof, and then fell all the way back down, landing on the floor next to Carnage hard enough to form a crater. Her Aura cracked and shattered – it was gone.

Ruby, in incredible amounts of pain, managed to stand up. “Why…”

“Huh? Still alive? Gee whiz, Batman, this kid’s one tough flower!”

“Why…are you doing this?! You’re not a Grimm…you’re a human. SO WHY?!”

Carnage stared at her. “I’m gonna explain it one last time, but only because I’m about to murder you to death. Actually, no, I’m not gonna explain it. Hold on – I got some words I wanna stab in your ears.” With that, he threw out two tendrils that entered through Ruby’s ears and, with a scream, pierced her brain.

And she saw everything.

His history.

His power.

His world.

“Now, tell me, sweetums,” Carnage mockingly sang to her, “isn’t that just grand? The world calls me crazy, but it’s the crazy one! Humans murder each other every day, inside and out! It’s in their nature! Their blood! All those ‘heroes’ try to stop me, but I’m just doing what everyone else is doing – what they did to me! What’s so bad about that?!”

The last time he did this, a professor with an IQ of 200 ended up becoming a cannibalistic murder machine. He didn’t expect this girl to fare much better. He waited for the first sweet little evil words from her mouth.

“You’re wrong.”

Not the words he was looking for. “Excuse me?”

Ruby grabbed his tendrils and ripped them out, shutting her eyes to block out the pain. “I realize that the world’s full of pain and suffering. That it’s hard to go through life without feeling like you’re lost, or that the battle for good is hopeless. But if I gave up every time I lost something, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I’d never have the chance to see the good things in life. Yeah, you do what a lot of lost people do, but that’s why heroes are always standing in your way. That’s why we exist – to try to make the world a better place. And we can’t do that by embracing the worst of what it is now. You aren’t proud of your kills. You don’t really love killing. You’re hiding. Hiding from what might happen if you’d just stop trying to gain everything you can from how miserable you are. I’ve been through what you have. But I got over it. That’s your problem – why you always feel the need to kill. That hole in you will never be filled – not until you get over what’s happened in the past and look towards what’s happening right now. That’s who you are. Not Cletus. Not Carnage. Just a broken man who doesn’t want to be fixed.”

The horrible thing was, every sentence she said drilled a new hole in Carnage’s mind. She was right. Down to the letter, down to the detail, she was right. Of course she was. He’d shown her exactly who he was – and she was able to deflate that being with nothing but a few words. That’s something nobody, not Spiderman, not Venom, not any psychiatrist, nobody, had been able to do.

She was one heck of a girl.

And for a moment, he almost wished he could feel guilty.

“I’m not going to change because of some weepy little anime speech!” he screamed at her.

Ruby nodded. “I know, and I’m sorry. I had to try. That’s what heroes do, after all.”

“Some hero! Even a mosquito has hurt me more than you!”

Ruby opened her eyes. “This mosquito just saw your past. And she knows how to kill you.”

Carnage backed up. Crap.

Ruby burst into rose petals and moved to grab Crescent Rose. The moment she had her hand on the scythe, she zoomed away, narrowly dodging a barrage of now-very-lethal blood bullets. She switched out the clip for an Ice Dust one. She then used her semblance to her fullest, calling on the scraps of power and energy she had left, to run around Carnage fast enough to send him into the air via wind tornado, then rushed right above him. As he fell, and before he could react, she shot him full of Ice Dust Rounds, freezing the blood-soaked…well, blood-soaked everything into place inside giant ice cubes. By the time she only had three left, Carnage had hit the ground and only his head was free. He spat out what were inevitably his last words.

"I hate you."

Ruby froze his head to join with the rest of the ice, and then, while in the midst of falling down, switched to her Cross Rounds, switched to Sniper Mode, and fired all of them, rapid-fire, down on Carnage.

The ice shattered into dust. By the time Ruby hit the ground, there was nothing left of the once-horrifying monster.

“I did it,” she muttered, surprised.

She had a feeling of overwhelming relief.

For about five seconds.

A voice spoke in her head.

♪Blood red roses fill my dreams♪

♪And bring me to your grave, you pest♪

♪White for death is always yearning♪

♪Burdened by a life suppressed♪

♪Black the ceased one brings in shadows♪

♪Yellow, sickly, burned, cold♪

Ruby’s eyes went wide.

♪It’s me♪

♪I’m starving♪

♪And your brain I’m carving♪

Thick red tendrils burst out of her ears, and Ruby screamed in pain and horror. It was inside of her! It must have gotten into her bloodstream while attached to her mind. She only had one option. She had to use the Silver Eyes agai-

With a burst of might, the tendrils shoved her eyeballs out of her head and climbed through the sockets. Together with the other tendrils, they carved a hole into the top of her head and popped it off. The Carnage symbiote crawled out through her mouth, fully reformed due to a nice bath in her bloodstream, and, with one large, clawed hand, plucked her brain right out of her head.

-KO!-

Carnage gave the organ a tentative lick. “Oh, what sweet thoughts! Delicious!” Opening up his mouth, he swallowed the whole thing in one go. Letting out a healthy burp, he turned his gaze to the open door leading upstairs and muttered “Right…more things to play with. I broke this one.” He melted into a puddle and slinked off towards Kuroyuri.

Results

Ugh. That’s disgusting. Never make me write that again, okay?

You know, I actually wanted the hero to prevail this time. If Carnage was a RWBY villain, the show would have come up with some way for her to escape or win, of course. But this show isn’t RWBY, nor is it about what I want – it’s about the truth. And the truth is…this fight was a fair bit closer than I anticipated.

Carnage did have many advantages, but so did Ruby. Carnage held a wider variety of attacks, but Ruby held more destructive abilities and weapons. Carnage was stronger, but Ruby was more experienced in fighting opponents capable of taking her out. Carnage could infect Ruby with a tendril, but not through projectiles, and he needed to get through Ruby’s Aura first – not an easy feat. Ruby did have the solid disadvantage of being worthless if she lost her weapon, although it’s unlikely Carnage would think to exploit that. She also held a disadvantage by…just being so naïve. She’s seen some dark stuff, yeah, but nothing like what Carnage has done, and she’s been plenty horrified of just what she’s seen, even on occasion reduced to tears. It’d be easy for Carnage to get a psychological advantage. Also, Ruby’s way more used to fighting in a team, where she has multiple friends to get her out of trouble and cover her faults. She didn’t have that here, and Carnage is used to working alone. Heck, half the time, if he does have a team, he ends up killing them off, or at least trying to. It’s pretty doubtful Ruby could have defeated the Nuckelavee by herself, for example, a creature to which Carnage has a surprising number of similarities to (but he’s also…far superior). And her Silver Eyes likely wouldn’t have worked on Carnage, as he’s not a Grimm. He’s more human than anything else, in fact, and they don’t seem to work on humans. Even if the symbiote itself was considered a Grimm, Grimm bonded with humans don’t suffer nearly as much as Grimm on their own when it comes to the Silver Eyes, as shown during her second display of the power against Cinder’s new Grimm arm. Cinder held some pain in the arm, but was up and using it in just a couple of minutes. Since Carnage has recovered from similarly intense blasts that affected him as much as this would due to exploiting his weaknesses of sound and fire, there’s no real reason to say he couldn’t here.

The biggest issue here was that neither could really hurt the other. Whatever attacks Carnage used would just bounce off of Ruby’s Aura, assuming she didn’t avoid them, and whatever Ruby tried to do against Carnage just couldn’t do any real lasting damage. She did, technically, have three possible ways to kill the guy. 1. If she gathered up all of her explosive Cross Rounds and all of her Fire Dust Rounds, made a bomb out of them, and threw it at Carnage, the detonation and heat could POSSIBLY be enough to kill him. POSSIBLY. 2. If she was somehow able to freeze every single part of him (highly unlikely, since he’s always stretched out and/or leaking everywhere) and somehow reduce all the ice to dust so fine that there was no Carnage to come back, then, yeah, he’d be dead. 3. Just keep hacking and slashing away with that scythe.

Obviously, the first two were highly unlikely and the chances of Carnage letting them happen or, heck, Ruby even thinking of them is remote at best, so on we go to hacking and slashing. Now, this is an interesting detail – Crescent Rose is somehow, through Ruby’s Semblance, capable of transforming blood into rose petals. Since Carnage is made up of blood at a molecular level, theoretically Ruby could eventually transform him completely into rose petals. No more blood, no more symbiote, no more Carnage. So it’s important to see just how long that would take, and to see if Carnage had the means to kill her before she accomplished her goal. And that’s where we get into what breaks this seemingly unbreakable match. Both have a limit to their durability, and, factoring in Crescent Rose, it’s based on, honestly, a Health Bar-like system. That leaves the ultimate question as this: Who could kill the other first?

Here’s a casual reminder that, while their fighting styles are decidedly different, both are around the same speed level (Mach 3, possibly lightning if you over-scaled and over-hyped them up, Mach 12 for short distances via Semblance and Tendrils), and both are used to getting in dozens of full-powered hits in just a few seconds. Ruby could do this with incredible travel speed, and Carnage could do this with surprise strikes and stuns. Basically, they should theoretically be able to hit each other the same amount in the same timeframe. Now for the math.

A rose petal is approximately 0.35 cm wide (no joke, I actually went out and bought a rose just to measure it for this purpose), and, judging from her fight against that horde of Beowolves, a cut right down the middle that tears through several layers can make up to 120 petals, meaning each good slice is good for about four layers of rose petals, putting the amount of blood transformed at around one and a half centimeters all the way through. To be fair, Ruby is probably strong enough to completely cut through Carnage with every swing, even while he’s firmed up. Still, measuring Carnage’s length and volume in cube form by approximating it in human form, we can determine that the amount of slices needed to completely transform Carnage into rose petals and win the match (assuming each slice goes all the way through) is 158. A rather high number, but certainly not an unreachable one for as fast a fighter as Ruby. Now for putting Carnage’s strength against Ruby’s Aura.

Carnage has strength equal and even superior to both Spiderman and Venom together, as shown multiple times during their battles. Spiderman’s greatest feat of force is the time he acted as the landing gear for an airplane (holy crap!). When everything is added together, the total weight that he would have been supporting would equal nearly 58 Tons. While we don’t know the acceleration and deceleration forces of the landing of said plane, basic physics tell us that to both continue to move it and force it to halt would require at least as much force as its total weight (though likely far more). So let’s lowball this to about 58 tons of force. While we don’t have many good force feats for Venom, we know that, at the very least, he’s capable of lifting a 200 ton carnival ride (actually, the ride could have weighed as much as 340 tons, but I digress), and that was when he was heavily weakened. Comparing Spiderman’s giant metal mechanism lifting feat (130 tons), which he performed when incredibly stressed and with an insane amount of effort, makes Venom AT LEAST 1.54 times as strong as Spidey, meaning he could probably hit with at least 89 tons of force. Combining the two, we see Carnage’s strength ends up at 147 tons of force. All that’s left, then, is to find Ruby’s Aura’s limit.

Unfortunately, we don’t get a lot to go off of. There’s plenty of times where her Aura survived an impressive blow, but not many times where it breaks. One time her Aura broke after a 400 foot fall, but she’s way improved it since then, so we can’t count that. In fact, the only real fight we’ve seen where modern Ruby loses her Aura is against Tyrian. This isn’t 100% fair, since he clearly had some sort of Aura-draining ability, but given his fight against Qrow immediately after, it can’t have been able to drain Aura by an insane margin. So let’s just highball this and include the hits she blocked with her scythe and double the total number at the end to more than make up for any kind of Aura-draining that might’ve been going on. Doing this estimates she can take about 20 hits from a non-draining Tyrian before losing her Aura. Now, Tyrian nearly matched Qrow in strength, and Qrow cratered a sidewalk before in a drunken duel against Winter. Given the size of the crater and the shearing strength of concrete, this feat would take a minimum of 309 tons of force. So, we multiply that by 20 (even though Qrow proved he was stronger than Tyrian multiple times during the fight), and this puts Ruby’s Aura’s maximum limit at around 6,190 tons of force – which makes sense when scaled to other characters. Yang took two hits from a robot in Volume 2, and, in the process, smashed through four giant pillars that would each take 1,400 tons of force to break, and her Aura was nearly depleted. Ruby’s Aura wasn’t anywhere near as high as Yang’s at the time, but given her training since, it’s likely increased a fair bit. So, nowadays, it should be around or under this level.

So, plugging in the numbers and tripling Carnage’s required hits to WAY overcompensate for Ruby’s possibly superior speed through timeline scaling and the possibility of Carnage losing strength as the battle went on by way of losing blood, even though drops of Cletus’s blood could still make tendrils that pierce metal and he’s never shown strength loss through blood loss, what do we get?

Ruby requires 154 blows to kill Carnage… and Carnage requires 128 blows to kill Ruby.

And that’s really what does it.

Ruby may have an agility advantage, but Carnage is just as fast as she is, definitely stronger, and has way more options on how, where, and when to hit her. The only real way Ruby has of pulling off those 154 cuts is to completely slice through Carnage, which isn’t something he’s going to let happen too often once he finds out Ruby can actually kill him. Meanwhile, Carnage had dozens of different ways to hit Ruby, each with around the same strength level. And recall that the 128 blows was a really overestimated number.

Long story short, Carnage matched Ruby in every way that mattered and surpassed her everywhere else. The two could rain blows on each other until one fell, but Ruby’s Aura would give out well before the Carnage symbiote did, and Carnage was able to take advantage of that. Cletus may be a psychotic killer, but even he has a brain.

And now, he has Ruby’s as well.

The winner is Carnage.