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| “ | You still don't get it do you? It's not a place you go, it's a place you know. | „ |
| ~ Curious Cat describing the true nature of the Ever After. |
| “ | I'm afraid I haven't been entirely honest with you, Ruby. I'm not like other Afterans here. I am cursed with curiosity! I need to know everything, but more than anything... I need to know why my makers left me here only to leave, and make all of --OW! | „ |
| ~ Curious Cat revealing their (literal) true colors before being bitten by Little. |
| “ | You’re broken! You break everything you touch! Like all humans… Weak! Confused! Incomplete! | „ |
| ~ The Curious Cat after its defeat. |
The Curious Cat is the main antagonist of Volume 9 of the American animated web series RWBY. They're also the arch-enemy of Jaune Arc.
The Curious Cat was the creation of the Brother Gods, created to take over their role of fixing Afterans who forget their purposes. However, after the Gods left the Ever After, the Cat spent eons suffering from its need to know everything, driving it insane. After it was betrayed by Alyx, the Cat instead resolved to take over any other Humans who came to the Ever After, which it tried to do with the series main protagonist, Ruby Rose.
They were voiced by Robbie Daymond, who also voices Goro Akechi in Persona 5 and Hubert von Vestra in the Fire Emblem franchise.
Appearance[]
They are a purple glowing quadrupedal cat. Their torso is patterned with a light blue checkerboard pattern, the same color used for their eyes and markings on their face. Their legs and tail gradually turn into the same light blue color near their ends. They have white whiskers on their face, and purple digital pads on their paws.
Personality[]
They are very curious and ask questions about whatever they can. They possess a very mysterious and enigmatic personality and take delight in speaking in various riddles and rhymes to confuse friend and foe alike. They also enjoy listening to other people's stories and, befitting their curious nature, will ask a wide range of questions some of which are seemingly minor and inconsequential ("What happened to Ciel?") to very serious ones that nobody has any answers to ("How will you save Remnant now that Atlas is gone?"). Unlike most of the other inhabitants of the Ever After that have been shown so far, who seem to be mostly content with staying in their own respective acres, the Curious Cat instead chooses to wander freely across any and all of the acres and will explore wherever they please.
However, it's later revealed that they already knew that Team RWBY were just using them in order to get home due to prior experiences with Alyx and her brother Lewis and was just going along with them in order to learn new knowledge. Once they reveal that Alyx lied to them about taking them with her to Remnant and that he doesn't know what happened to Lewis, they decided to leave Team RWBY while telling them that they learned what not to do thanks to them. As shown from these confessions, the cat was deeply hurt by Alyx’s betrayal and later showcased active heart break and pain upon admitting that they knew that Team RWBY was using them the same way they had always used others for their own desire for knowledge and amusement. Showing pain, betrayal and sadness at admitting their faults and the true intentions of Ruby and her friends.
It was shown by the Blacksmith that the Curious Cat was at first truly a kind and noble creature, happily performing it's duty of helping Afterans that needed to ascend, but after being abandoned by the Brother Gods and spending eons cursed with an insatiable need to know everything, more importantly why the Gods left them in the Ever After, the Cat slowly started to lose their sanity, and lost their sense of morality after Alyx broke her promise to take them to Remnant.
Biography[]
Background[]
The Curious Cat was the secret creation of the God of Light and God of Darkness, who created the Cat to take over their role of fixing the broken parts of the Ever After while they experimented with their creativity. At first, the Cat happily performed their duty, helping any Afteran that forgot their role and ensuring its residents were happy. However, after the Brother Gods began to argue after the rampage of their other creation and the Cats counterpart, the Jabberwalker, a violent creature that cancelled the Ascension of any Afteran it devoured, the Great Tree made them leave the Ever After to go and create their own world, leaving all their creations behind. Over the eons, the Curious Cat's insatiable thirst for knowledge, combined with its hurt over being abandoned by their makers, slowly corrupted them.
Eventually, the Curious Cat met and helped guide two siblings, Alyx and Lewis who had arrived in the Ever After to the Great Tree. During this journey, the Alyx promised the Cat that she would bring them to Remnant so it could potentially gain its answers, however, Alyx was a cruel girl who thought the Ever After was not real and she could do whatever she wanted, therefore causing incidents wherever she went. Along the way, the three came across a time displaced Jaune Arc, who had once read a fairy tale about the Ever After in Remnant and, realizing he was now in that fairy tale, tried to help the siblings reach the tree. They soon met the Herbalist, who was not mentioned in the story, and he caused Alyx to become paranoid and distrustful, even of the Cat. After Alyx's paranoia led her to poison Jaune, she left with her brother and the Cat who she continued manipulating to get to the Tree.
However, at some point, Alyx found herself in the void and met the Blacksmith, the manifestation of the Great Tree, and had become horrified at what she'd done in the Ever After, deciding to secretly help her brother leave while she stayed behind to fix the damage she'd caused. However, this meant betraying the Cat by breaking her promise to them. The Cat, between its thirst for knowledge, abandonment by their creators, and then Alyx's betrayal caused the Curious Cat's heart to break, and they murdered Alyx after Lewis left and she revealed her intentions. Without anything to send the Curious Cat to the Great Tree where it could ascend and heal from its trauma, it turned into a malicious creature. The Cat then waited for years for more Humans to arrive so it could steal their bodies and escape through the door to Remnant.
After Lewis escaped the Ever After, he wrote a popular book titled The Girl Who Fell Through The World, about how he wished the adventure had gone, excluding himself from the story and writing his sister as the main character who was merely petulant and naïve instead of cruel and selfish and hadn't meant to cause any of the conflicts she started. Due to not knowing of the Curious Cat's true nature nor it's murder of his sister, he kept it in the book as a helpful figure who guided Alyx throughout her journey.
Volume 9[]
The Curious Cat eventually intrudes on the Red Prince's party where he witnesses Team RWBY beating the Red Prince at his own game. The Curious Cat comes and briefly distracts the Red Prince before escaping with Team RWBY.
The Cat begins to travel with Team RWBY while occasionally being easily distracted by little things and asking them many questions, both trivial and serious. Ruby asks the Curious Cat to lead them to the Great Tree, believing it can get them back to Remnant. The Cat says they've already been there and does not have a desire to return, but agrees to help her teammates get back to normal size by finding ingredients for a Growgurt Parfait.
The Curious Cat later returns just in time to break Team RWBY out of a hallucination induced by the Herbalist. The Cat gives the Herbalist "a piece of their heart" which causes the ground to open up and suck the Herbalist in, shocking Team RWBY. The Cat explains the concept of Ascension, which is what happened to the Herbalist, where Afterans are reborn from the Great Tree with new purpose. Once they arrive at the market and make the ingredients for the Growgurt Parfait, a series of fireworks go off signaling the arrival of the Jabberwalker. Rather than one, however, several Jabberwalkers, copies made by Neopolitan, attack the market, and after Team RWBY is saved by Jaune Arc/the Rusted Knight, the Cat stays behind to fend off the Jabberwalkers.
When the Cat reunites with Team RWBY and Jaune Arc, Jaune reveals that the Cat has been misleading Team RWBY... the concept of "Ascension" actually changes Afterans by wiping their memories, and leading Team RWBY there would likely change them as well, while also revealing that Alyx had a brother named Lewis, who was sacrificed to the Tree by Alyx in order for her to get back to Remnant. The Cat defends themselves by saying they didn't technically lie, saying Ruby had only asked about Alyx, while also revealing they knew Team Ruby was just using them to get to the Tree, just like Alyx did, and they disappear.
The Cat returns to Neo's hideout while Ruby confronts her and the illusions she summoned. However, the Cat then "gives his heart" to Ruby, causing her to scream out in pain. The Cat then reveals they have slowly been trying to break Ruby the entire time, revealing they are cursed with curiosity and the need to know why they were abandoned by their makers. Ruby is briefly saved by Little, who bites the Cat's tail, until Neo stomps on Little, crushing them to death. Once Neo's mental torture convinces Ruby to drink the tea from the tree and "ascend", Neo finds herself empty, giving the Cat an opening to possess Neo's body. The Cat, in Neo's body, then taunts Jaune over his own 'sob story' and his inability to help others before they start heading towards the Great Tree.
When Team RWBY and Jaune arrive at the Great Tree, they find the Curious Cat unsuccessfully trying to pass through the door to Remnant, being thrown back each time. The Cat reveals that due to Neo lacking anything to return to on Remnant, she couldn't be used as a means as escape, causing the Cat to write her off as failing them just as Alyx had. Upon Team RWBY's confusion, the Cat reveals the truth of what happened, regarding killing Alyx as "What anyone would do with a broken, useless thing", causing Jaune to call them a monster. Manifesting blue claws, the Curious Cat was about to attack before they looked behind Team RWBY and saw that Ruby was still in the process of Ascension and therefore still in the Ever After. Elated, the Cat refocused on its original mission on using Ruby as a vessel, intent on carving her out of her wooden shell and attacked Team RWBY and Jaune when they refused to let the Cat get to her.
The Cat used it's mastery of Neo's semblance to avoid serious damage and proceeded to taunt Team RWBY and Jaune. First it mocked Yang by showing several zombie like versions of Ruby, questioning if she wanted to risk that becoming her sister's ascended form. Then, when confronting Jaune it rebuffed his accusations at them being the true culprit behind Alyx's crimes by citing him as not a brave knight, just "fairy tale nonsense". After Jaune gains the upper hand, the Cat morphs into a scared Penny, triggering his PTSD and then uses an illusion of Pyrrha to slice his back. When Weiss sends a fireball at the Cat, it shatters and the fireball hits Jaune, who is sent flying off the Great Tree, causing his own Ascension.
The Cat then gained the advantage over Team RWBY, but before it could kill them, Jaune returns and knocks over a branch of the tree, telling Team RWBY to shoot the leaves, setting off a mist as they do so. The Cat brushes this off at first as the mist doesn't affect them, but after Jaune reveals that it would while they were in Neo's body, the Cat then falls to the floor in pain as it is flooded with memories of Neo's past. Unable to cope with this, the Cat is ejected from Neo's body, and she flees. Overcome with rage, the Cat undergoes a monstrous transformation and quickly regains the upper hand. Before it can kill the four, Ruby finally ascends and returns. The Cat, gleeful that its target had returned and attacks, but Ruby, having regained her resolve, is able to fight the Cat on equal footing and overwhelm them, with the rest of Team RWBY joining the battle. The Cat tries firing powerful blasts of purple lightning from their mouth and jumps into the air, but the girls are too quick and, upon surrounding it with Weiss' glyphs, slash repeatedly before they slash it to the ground, defeating the Cat.
The Curious Cat suffers a mental breakdown over their failure to force Ruby through one, despite the tragedies and losses she'd suffered. Team RWBY inform the Cat that they were wrong about their leader who lets the Cat know that while they went back to Remnant, it would be left behind. Unwilling to concede defeat, the Cat makes one final launch at Ruby before being grabbed by a group of Neo's Jabberwalker clones, realizing what was about to happen, the Cat begs for mercy, but this falls on deaf ears as the Jabberwalkers tear it apart in front of a horrified Team RWBY. Despite being clones, the Jabberwalkers still possessed the original's powers, mainly its ability to cancel the Ascension of those it devoured, meaning that the Curious Cat could never undergo Ascension and return, ending its threat forever, as well as avenging Alyx's death.
Powers and Abilities[]
- Healing: They have an ability to calm a person down by sharing a piece of their heart. They use this on the Red Prince to calm him down after he loses the game, and on the Herbalist after he uses his mist on Team RWBY. This allows the recipient to decide either to continue performing their role or seek a new one at the tree.
- Transportation: They have the ability to transport to any place they wish to go. They can do this in two ways: a quick burst of movement that results in them turning into purple and blue polygons as they travel, or in a bright flash of light that teleports them and nearby people to a completely different area.
- Invisibility: They are able to turn and remain invisible, and selectively make body parts visible, such as their eyes, mouth, and face markings.
- Body Separation: The upper and lower halves of their body can split off and reconnect easily, functioning independently of each other.
- Levitation: They can levitate in the air with great mobility.
- Purpose Alteration: They have ability to change the purpose of Afterans and give them new ones. The Afteran emits a cyan line flare eyes which was seen when they used it on Hawker.
- Emotion colors: In “Confessions Within Cumulonimbus Clouds”: They can change the tone of their fur depending on their current moods. When they feel sad their fur patterns start slightly faded away.
- Transformation: They are capable of transforming into a larger, more menacing form.
- Possession: In "Tea Amidst Terrible Troubles", they can possess anyone as long as they are hollow in emotions. Victims possessed have jagged teeth and his eyes.
- Size Enhancement: They can increase their size.
Weaknesses[]
Due to their curious personality and their nature as a cat, they get distracted very easy at little things like chasing butterflies. They had little physical strength in their ordinary form, and their ability to change the purpose of others did not work on non-Afterans. Also, although they were immune to the effects of the Great Tree's leaves, they could still be affected if using a host such as when they felt all of Neo’s regrets and pain manifesting itself and forcing the Cat to experience them alongside her, overwhelming the Cat and quickly causing them to eject themselves from her body.
Trivia[]
- Although voiced by a male actor, the Cat is nonbinary.
- The Cat wouldn't have been happy if they found the Brothers; their purpose was just to do the job that the two were too apathetic to do now.
- While possessing Neo, the Cat shows the ability to bypass or even heal physical impediments like Neo's inability to speak; a girl's voice can be faintly heard echoing with theirs when the Cat speaks.
- The Curious Cat is an obvious allusion to the Cheshire Cat from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.
- Unlike every other character, they are not rendered with an outline.
- The Curious Cat may reference the proverb "curiosity killed the cat." And it did.
External Link[]
- Curious Cat on the RWBY Wiki
