I live!

Which is actually very surprising!

I planed to have this out in April after Easter but when I went back to Paris I was involved in a car accident that not only put me in the Hospital for months it also destroyed my computer and my phone, I was almost completely off the grid internet wise. To top all this off it was discovered that I was a type 1 diabetic, which is extremely rare for somebody my age and health. So my last six months sucked majorly and have stopped me from being able to work on my stories.

The one good thing about it was that I had all my stories backed up on a hard drive so I didn't loose anything important.

All that being said, I should be able to put out my stories out more quickly now.

For those first joining this story, this chapter is the official first one even though it was posted after chapter 2 which will be edited when I get to that portion of the story, timeline wise.

Story Start

We are the Remnants!

Ages past, perhaps we weren't such but today there is no doubt that we are just a pale imitation of was once a host of mighty civilizations. We once ruled the world, there was nowhere our influence hadn't spread, not even space was safe from us, nothing we couldn't accomplish and no achievement that wouldn't be met, given enough time.

But humanity was never a peaceful race, though we had accomplished more than any other species on the planet, humanity's true nature hadn't changed one bit since the Stone Age.

We killed, fought, warred and destroyed!

All our achievements, our progress, served only to make the scale on which we fought greater. What once was conflict between individuals or groups became war between nations. Once men harnessed the destructive power of rock and bone now they fought with technology and bombs.

Eventually, human nature reared its ugly head once more and our race's killing power surpassed its power of creation.

Details, to this day, are hazy at best. What is known is that it decimated all of humanity till only fragments remained. Where once, we ruled all over the world, now only a few places were still hospitable.

But humanity persevered, not giving up.

Some progress was of course lost; some of it was better left lost. Some progress advanced at unbelievable rates. Humanity was well on its way to recovery, maybe in only a few centuries it would reach the point where it was before or even surpassing that. What could have been was never discovered however because they came!

The Grimm!

Nobody knows from whence they appeared. They could have been a product of the fallout of the previous civilization, leftovers from a time when the moon was whole. They could have been an experiment gone horribly wrong. Perhaps, the planet had simply had enough and created a monster to destroy those who would abuse it.

In the end all that mattered was the Grimm hated humans with a passion and wouldn't rest until all of the species was extinct. They were good at it too.

Humanity was on verge extinction; only a tip of the scales could have sent the entire race into the oblivion of history. Then humans discovered Dust and the world changed once more. Harnessing the power of Nature's Wrath, the leftovers fought back, slowly but surely pushing little by little until they had carved themselves a place in the world.

Now that humanity is centered, safe behind walls of steel and bodies, once more human nature rears its hideous visage; wars once more break out, discrimination, hatred and corruption runs rampant! This is a world of bloody evolution; we climb over the bodies of our foes in order to progress.

Civilizations rise and fall, technologies progress and regress but human nature has not moved forward one iota!

But what can we do about that?

After all, we are but remnants.

"…ne!"

"...ke up, Jau..!"

"..me on!"

What was with the yelling? Ugh, my head hurts so much; can you keep it down you ruddy woman? Let me sleep damn it!

"Jaune!"

"All right, all right, I'm up. What do you want?" As Jaune slowly opened his eyes, careful not to do it too fast and aggravate the headache pounding in his skull, he tried to take stock of his situation through his blurred vision. He was lying on the ground, in a forest of some sort judging by the twigs and roots poking into his spine.

That wasn't too rare, sometimes when he got too deep into his meditation he ended up falling asleep without realizing it. What was odd was the fact that his head hurt so much and his vision was blurry. If he had simply fallen asleep, he might have hit his head without waking up, but by now his semblance should have automatically reset his body to the point where it wasn't injured. He had already reached past the point where the self-healing factor became subconscious.

Jaune didn't consider the possibility that he was assaulted; if anybody ever discovered where his hideout was he would have been shocked, not only was it well hidden, looking only like another mountain from a distance, it was also surrounded by forests filled with Grimm. If that wasn't enough, he was on the Dark Continent, close to the edges, granted, but still well beyond where any person in their right mind should visit. Good thing he wasn't in his right mind, isn't it?

At this point his instincts were so developed from his decades spent in the wild that even when he slept, rare as it was, he would feel any danger approaching long before it got close enough to do him harm.

Besides, if anybody even found him while he was sleeping, he doubted he ever wake up again. The price on his head had reached absurd amounts after last year's escapade. He still had to fight off the occasional bounty hunter but so far none of them had reached far enough into his territory to be a real problem.

"Come on Jaune, are you all right?"

There was that voice again, it sounded familiar but nobody should be here. Had his solitude finally reduced him to insanity? If so, why was his inner voice so feminine? Jaune liked to think himself manly enough that the voices in his head would at least sound like something out of a gritty action movie.

"Jaune!"

"I'm good, I'm good"

Indeed he was, his semblance had finally kicked in, his headache was slowly dying down, which meant he had had it for a while, but his eyes had cleared right up, allowing him to look at the woman yelling at his side.

Pure emerald captured his eyes right away; pools of deep green that were brimming with worry and kindness. Slowly his vision expanded a little more allowing Jaune the opportunity to take in the whole image. Bright red hair held behind a bronze headband, bronze armor, a shield and spear lying off to the side, the woman was very familiar.

"Pyrrha?"

Though what she was doing here he had no idea. Last he had heard, only a month ago, she was being trained by Glynda in order to become the next headmistress of Beacon. Why was she out here in the wilds, weeks from any sort of civilization? How had she found him?

Taking a closer look, she looked very different from the last time he saw her on the news. She looked younger, much younger. While the years had been very kind to her, as it had to all his friends from what he could tell, her beauty had become a more mature beauty than when he had met her. But right now, she looked just as she did the day they had first met.

"Come on Jaune, are you all right?" She asked, shaking his shoulders a little, thinking he was hurt by the way he blinked confusedly at her.

"Pyrrha?" He asked once more.

"Yes Jaune! I'm Pyrrha, are you all right?" She was becoming slightly exasperated by the way he wasn't answering her question.

"I'm fine." He sat up slowly, taking the time to look around before standing up. He was in a forest as he should be but the forest was all wrong, wrong types of trees, wrong temperature, wrong undergrowth, everything he was looking at wasn't to be found anywhere near his territory. As he made to stand, he stumbled slightly, his feet not responding as he thought they would. Pyrrha hastily grabbed him, making sure he didn't fall over.

Jaune recovered easily enough, slowly making sure he was stable and was finally able to stand at his full height.

"What going on?" He asked more to himself but Pyrrha heard and decided to answer.

"When I tried to activate your Aura you just collapsed, you collapsed and passed out for maybe two minutes before you woke up. I was very worried when I couldn't rouse you."

"Aura?" He asked once more, sounding like a broken record.

"You know, the force field I told you about?' She smiled a little, remembering the way he had described the manifestation of a person's soul.

"Oh yeah," he answered slowly, more to stall for time than actual agreement.

"I swear this doesn't usually happen! Awakening someone's Aura is usually a relatively simple process, depending on the size of the Aura then the person doing the awakening might get a little tired, but that's it!" She seemed a little nervous to him, trying hastily to explain herself. Did she think whatever happened was her fault?

"Relax, I'm fine, just a little disoriented is all." He wasn't even lying, his headache was gone and his body felt fine, if a little uncooperative, but he was still terribly confused as to what was going on.

Was he dreaming?

Dreaming about his friends wasn't rare; in fact the few times he actually chose to sleep they were often the source of his dreams and nightmares. But this was too lucid, too clear to be a dream.

Perhaps he had been placed in some form of illusion-based semblance then, he knew something like that was possible, proven by Neo years ago. But if that were true, for what purpose were they doing it? Looking around once more, he didn't notice anything that struck him as out of place.

Maybe it was lure him into a false set of security?

No, anybody who could have gotten close to him while he was asleep would have had no reason to place him in an illusion. They would have simply cut off his head, brought it back to civilization and reaped a profit so huge they would never have to work again in this lifetime or the next.

"That's good," Pyrrha let loose a relieved sigh, shaking Jaune from his thoughts. "I was really worried for a moment there when you didn't wake up."

"I'm alright, really," he was starting if repeating himself was going to be a thing now. "Why don't we just continue?" Continue what he had no idea, but they couldn't simply stay here in this forest.

"All right," the Pyrrha lookalike was still staring at him worriedly but she seemed to accept his answers. "We should get going, the temple is supposed to be in the north so we shouldn't be too far."

"Temple, right!"

"Jaune?"

"Yes?"

"You're going the wrong way."

"… I knew that, just making sure you knew where we were going, that's all."

The next few minutes passed in silence, companionable but no less quiet, broken up by Jaune occasionally stumbling but revering quickly. Pyrrha was still occasionally sending glances back towards her partner, making sure he was all right and still following her.

Jaune on the other hand, was incredibly tense; he had recognized the flora as being indigenous to the area around Vale and wasn't exactly comfortable being so close to a major kingdom capitol with no clue as to what was going on.

Trying to piece together what was going on, he started to think back, trying to think of any reason something like this could happen and how he could be so far from his territory without remembering it.

At dawn the day before, after getting up from meditating, he done the usual routine: clean himself in the spring, which was still as cold as ever, fixed a hole in his shirt he had gotten the day before, using some of the material he had swiped while in the kingdoms a few months back, then killed himself a nice fat boar, enough food to last him the week. He was thankful that Grimm didn't need to eat thus didn't kill wildlife, leaving him plenty of game to hunt.

Then he had headed south, a Nemea had been only a few days from his territory, and so he had dealt with it easily enough. On the way back he had decided to pick a few herbs and spices, he was running low on soap and teas as well so had picked what he needed to from there. He always felt a bit of pride when he did something like that, not needing anybody to survive and even thrive in an inhospitable environment. Granted he still needed to sneak back into the kingdoms every few months to get some tools, thread and other miscellaneous thing that he couldn't produce himself.

And if he checked up on his friends while he was there, so what? Maybe they needed a little healing, getting rid of some scars or sum such. The only time he really needed to do anything was that time Yang and Blake had tried to go on another hunt for him but couldn't make it past the Islands, teeming with Grimm as they were.

From what he had heard of the mission, three weeks after they had returned, they had made it further than anybody else but while Blake, Yang and the other two hunters with them were dealing with a heard of Goliaths they had been taken by surprise by a pair of Crocotta.

Blake had been left to take care of the Goliaths, easily done because she out numbered them but it would still take a while. Yang had taken on a Crocotta by herself easily enough; the other two hunters found themselves out matched by the speed of the other canine Grimm. Yang had finished hers off in time to pull one of them away from its gaping maw but had left an arm behind. From what Jaune heard in the bar, he was disguised and using it to find information, the loss of a limb had given the blonde enough power to not only kill the Crocotta with one hit, it had also reduced the mountain on the island to a large hill.

Feeling guilty about the entire thing, on top of his usual guilt, he decided to return her limb. He knew where she lived, just as he knew where all his friends and family lived. Yang lived with Blake on the edge of Vale, close to Beacon and near the Schnee Vale headquarters, he found out by following them that one time after they graduated, totally not stalking, merely making sure he knew where to go to help them out when if they needed it.

He had waited till Blake had left the house, hiding from her senses was harder than Yang's, before sneaking in, using the skills he picked up on the run to pry open a window in the living room. He had been lucky that Yang had been asleep in their room, having been discharged from the hospital only a few days ago, told to get some rest while they called for a prosthetic limb.

Because she had been asleep and Jaune had been carful not to make a sound, a rather easy thing to do when you live in the dark continent and have to sneak up on your meals, he also had no ill intent so Yang had slept on, completely unaware even as her body was fully restored to post injury status.

Jaune hadn't had a good time about it though, over three weeks of phantom pain from an arm that wasn't there on top of all the other bruises and damages she had accumulated on the way back, even the ones her Aura had healed, then everything that the hospital had needed to do to her arm to make certain it would be able to handle a prosthetic, all of it compressed down into a second.

The pain had been enough to make him pass out for a while, only coming to when he heard the door downstairs open. From what he could tell, he had only been out an hour at most but it was enough for Blake to return home.

He quickly turned his semblance inward, making it recycle the oxygen in his blood, meaning he didn't have to breath. He could keep it up for a half hour easily, an hour if he pushed it. Being like this was incredibly draining but he could manage. Now that Blake wouldn't hear him breathing he had to find a place to hide.

No way could he go back downstairs if the footsteps on the stairs were anything to go by, and the master bedroom doorway was visible from the top of the stairs so that left it out. The window was locked; too much time to get it open and the closet was too much of a risk, which left one place.

Thus, Jaune Arc, Most Wanted Man in all four kingdoms, once leader of famous team JNPR and deemed biggest threat to mankind hid under a girls bed, something he is still ashamed of to this day.

Blake came back in to check on her partner only to discover that she had made a full recovery, Yang was no longer handicapped.

…

Goddamit Yang!

Almost two decades away from the girl and she was still getting him to make bad puns, granted he had come to enjoy them, one of the few people that did, but making them while hiding under a bed with a pair of girls that want to hunt him down not even feet away was so not the time!

Anyway, Yang had woken up by that point and between the two of them it didn't take them long to realize that it had been Jaune that had healed her. Yang had been so mad that he had been in the room with her without even realizing it that she had punched a wall.

Neither realized that the man of the hour was hiding under the bed paling as they described in vivid detail what they were going to do with him when they got their hands on him.

After a few moments of terror inducing talk, both had set out to find him, thinking him to still be in the area. They had easily discovered the open window downstairs and assumed he had already left they immediately gave chase.

Meanwhile, Jaune got out from under the bed, pale but no worse for wear, he restored the hole in the wall, closed the window and, after making sure the coast was clear, walked out the front door, making sure to lock it because they had forgotten to do so in their rush after him.

Thankfully they didn't alert the authorities so he was able to get out of Vale easily enough.

All in all, a good days work!

…

What had he been thinking about again?

Oh yeah, trying to retrace his steps to figure out what was going on. Sometimes he got so lost in thought, a side effect of having spent so long alone with only the occasional visits from Raven or Cinder.

One time he had spent the entire day contemplating the color orange and its place in the universe. That had been an odd day; maybe he had eaten some bad mushrooms or something. But then, wouldn't his semblance have purged it from his body, he knew it automatically did so for poisons but what about hallucinogens, something to test later.

Come to think of it what made his body reverse until things were purged from his body, after all, everything ever eaten contains trace amounts of harmful substances, so how did the body tell what to purge and what was food? Was it something he did subconsciously? Perhaps it was messages sent directly to the brain and …

ARggggh, he was doing it again!

Focus! Retrace your steps!

After gathering some ingredients he had noticed signs of a solitary Goliath passing through his territory on his way back. Goliaths were pack Grimm, they were only alone when they had either just evolved or were about to evolve, judging by the size of the trail it looked like it was about to evolve. Near evolution is always when Grimm are at their most dangerous so Jaune had been cautious even if it was only a single Goliath. He had dealt with it without much trouble though before heading back to his mountain.

By then it had been midafternoon so he had read a few more books from the archives, one on advanced mathematics and how it pertained with quantum physics the other a fiction novel. He had finished them a little past sunset, a perk of being a fast reader, after decades of practice, and so he decided to meditate and practice with his semblance some more.

The night before he had managed to achieve rate of four times the normal speed, today he was aiming to start trying to achieve five times the acceleration. The last thing he remembered was sitting and delving into his semblance before… What? What happened afterwards?

…

He got nothing; he vaguely remembered starting to accelerate his internal body so that he processed time at now four times normal speed. Then he would try and reverse it, slowing down his body to four times it's normal speed without altering his perception of time. Baring a revelation or some other form of technique he wanted to practice, that was his standard meditation, which he usually kept up until morning, not needing to sleep if he had eaten.

Jaune had reached the part where he was going to stop accelerating his perception and started slowing it down when everything went black.

So that direction was a bust, now Jaune tried to look at the situation from a different angle.

He constructed everything he knew about the situation he was in.

He was near Vale.

He was walking with Pyrrha, or somebody who looked a lot like a younger Pyrrha.

He was not being chased down and shot at by Pyrrha.

Pyrrha mentioned something about a temple.

Pyrrha mentioned something about awakening his Aura, which was ridiculous because his aura was awakened years ago…

…By Pyrrha,

… During the initiation,

… Where they had to find relics in a temple,

… To get into Beacon,

… Which is in Vale!

…

Holy Shit!

Either somebody created this entire scenario, either through illusion or some damn fine actors and makeup, in order to make him relive his initiation, something highly unlikely due to the fact that it would be pointless. Or his semblance had screwed up somehow and he ended up going back through time to when his Aura was first awakened which was also highly unlikely.

Though his semblance had to do with time manipulation, it was generally localized. Jaune mostly used it on himself, speeding up himself or his perception to give himself more time in a fight. He had a number of other tricks up his sleeve as well but for the most part he used his power on a small scale. No time travel or mass time freezes or reversals.

It wasn't like he hadn't tried to travel into the past, but it had never born fruit.

When Jaune had made the discovery that his semblance wasn't the simple regeneration like he had thought for years, he had seen it as a way to make right all his mistakes.

Having time at your fingertips was a heady feeling and Jaune wasn't ashamed to admit that the thought that he could go back and change things, to not have to be forced into exile, to stay with his friends, to stay in the arms of the one he loved, had almost completely overrun his mind with hope.

But reality wasn't that convenient.

He had spent month's, years even, exploring the limits of his ability only to realize one thing; he couldn't go back in time. While his semblance would probably called something like Time Manipulation, as cool and powerful as that sounded it wasn't really traveling through time.

What Jaune could do was less about manipulating time than it was about manipulating perception of time. His abilities basically allowed him to trick an object into thinking that time was moving differently for them, not influencing the time of the whole world.

Take his regeneration ability for example: what he did was access information about the object, or body, from its previous state of being. He would then trick the body into thinking that it was once again at the time period he had designated. The pain he felt was because he had to understand, to live through the two points in time: the now and the moment he was trying to reset it at. For objects it wasn't a problem, they had no nerves, no concept of pain, but for anything alive then he had to experience every sensation they did between the two points in time.

Other applications were available too, he had found ways around the limit in his semblance but he had never, not once actually managed to interact with anything in the past, his power was limited to the present, meaning time travel was forever bared from him.

"Do you think this is it?"

Pyrrha's voice shook Jaune from his thoughts, ironically bringing him back to the present. It wasn't hard to figure out what she was talking about, the cave was very prominent, depictions decorating its walls and darkness further in, hiding the real threat behind a veil of velvet shadows.

That didn't stop Jaune from nervously swallowing the sudden influx of saliva in his mouth though.

The Cave was a very important, distinctive, memory for Jaune. Not only was it the first time he had worked with his partner but it had been the first of many terrifying situations that would follow all through out his Beacon career. For the first two weeks in the school, he had nightmares about it, dying at to the claws of the giant bug.

Before he had come to Beacon, he had faced a few Grimm by himself. Falsified documents or not, he wasn't planning on going there completely unprepared. The thing was, he had only really faced a few Beowolves and an Ursa, one at a time at that. He had mainly used his shield, taken his time and eventually took an opportunity to deal with them in one or two hits. It had been very safe, comparatively. It had in no way prepared him for initiation.

Jaune would eventually face larger, faster and far more dangerous threats but nothing really compared to the fear that the Deathstalker in the depths of this cave had given him. It had really opened his eyes to the dangers he would be facing, not enough to ask for help at this point, but enough to make him feel deep, cold, clammy fear.

Jaune was stronger now though; he was faster, more knowledgeable and overall better prepared to face the Deathstalker. He could kill it by himself, with little fuss, little problem and overall way easier. But should he?

If he was in the past, a big if, then did he have to repeat everything the same as he did the first time. Should he really try and change things, especially this early. Jaune knew of the butterfly effect, if he tried to change things now who knew what consequences it could have latter on.

If he didn't alert the Deathstalker then he might not end up on team JNPR, team RWBY might never form, if he wasn't flung by the stinger he might not hit Ruby as she fell, he might not be in a position to catch Weiss as she fell either, Weiss and Ruby might never learn to work together if they weren't pressed like in the first initiation.

Perhaps it was the other way around, maybe no matter what he did events would play out exactly like they had the first time around. The teams might be formed the same as before, the events come to pass in the exact same way, he might be forced into exile once more, leaving all he knew and loved behind.

He didn't know which would be worse: going through all that pain and loss again or the unknown of what could happen if he changed things.

Either way now would be a good time to test things out, if he was in the past as he suspected.

"I don't think this is it, it doesn't really look like a temple. Besides, the relics would probably be more in the open for people to find them, this place is too well hidden for that, I think."

Pyrrha looked a little unsure but thought about it for a moment before smiling and nodding her head.

"You might be right. And if we don't find another place we can always come back here later."

Taking her agreement, Jaune once more set out towards the north, Pyrrha in toe. From what he remembered, it should only take another minute of walking to get into the clearing with the chess pieces.

"So what made you want to come to Beacon?" Jaune had asked the question mostly because he wanted to test whether this was an illusion or not, he still wasn't entirely convinced that this was the past so sought to test out whether or not this was the real Pyrrha. At his question the champion blinked in confusion.

"What do you mean? I'm trying to be a huntress just like anybody else."

"What I meant is why Beacon specifically why not Haven. You are from Mistral right? That's where those tournaments you won were so I guessed that's where you were born and with your track record you should have had no problem getting into any school you wanted to."

From what he was told by Pyrrha, very few people knew why she had chosen Beacon over Haven in order to get her Hunter License. There had been mass speculation of course; some people thought that since she hadn't found anybody that could beat her in Mistral that she had sought out other and stronger foes in Vale, others believed that she had a lover in Beacon and was going to school there to be closer to him, those were only two of the many wild theories thrown around about Pyrrha's choice of school.

Before he had gone into exile only Jaune and her family learned the true reason why she chose Beacon. The truth was that she had chosen to go to a school out of her kingdom because she disliked her fame. While she was known throughout the world, Vale was nothing compared to Mistral. There she probably couldn't walk down the street without getting mobbed, here she at least could skirt by with a lot less fanfare, even if people still treated her differently.

This made it a good test to see whether this was really Pyrrha or someone else. While there was a chance that Pyrrha had told other people after he had left, Jaune found it highly unlikely that she would tell too many people because of how secretive about how much she disliked her fame. There was also the chance she wouldn't answer truthfully to Jaune right now for that same reason, after all they had only been partners for about twenty minutes now, not really enough time to build up to much of a bond.

Jaune was confident however that he would be able to tell if she was lying or not. It may have been over a decade ago but he had been her partner for four years, four years where he had been trained by her, slept in the same room as her, eaten with her and talked with her, Jaune doubted there were many people in the world who knew her as well as he did.

"It's a little bit awkward," she started with bit of strain in her smile, "but I wanted to get away from Mistral for a while, I just felt stifled there, and Beacon had such a good reputation that it was my first choice."

That was a good answer, telling a little of the truth without getting too close to home, but it wasn't her words that convinced Jaune that this Pyrrha was the real deal. The knight doubted even his partner was aware of it but when holding her weapons, when she was at her most comfortable, they acted as a sort of mirror to her mood. When cheerful or at least not burdened, she tended to keep her spear resting on her shoulder, when she was wary, her shield would unconsciously drift towards her chest, ready at a moments notice.

She also had a slight tick he noticed when she was lying or trying to hide something, her eyes would fall to her weapon, as if inspecting it or refilling the ammo and she would avoid eye contact and her words would come out only a tad slower. Here her eyes had fallen to the side rather than to her weapon and her words had come out at the same speed, indicating she was hiding something but the words were truthful enough.

"Well, I for one am glad you decided to come, I doubted I would get as nice a partner otherwise."

Her eyes came back up to look into his and her smile returned to full mast and her cheeks flushed a little from the compliment.

"Thank you."

"No problem, I think this is a start of a beautiful friendship." They shared a chuckle for a moment at his wording before the sounds of gunfire just ahead of them interrupted it. They shared a look before nodding to each other and rushing forward into a wide clearing.

Once able to see past the trees, they took stock of the situation from what they could see.

The clearing was rather wide, giving a lot of area to maneuver around. The forest surrounded it on the north, east and south sides. To the west was a large cliff face, atop which Beacon stood. In between the cliff and the clearing was a large gorge, a ruined stone bridge being the only link between the two places.

A round ruined structure stood in the center of the clearing, ruined white marble pillars held up large chess pieces, both black and white, though some were missing from the set. Around them stood two young women, one dressed in black and yellow respectively, though it was difficult to see their details from here. In front of the two women a girl dressed in red was running towards them and off to the side another woman was standing atop the corpse of a dead Ursa, Jaune and Pyrrha were just close enough to hear her when she spoke in a dejected voice.

"Aw, it's broken."

A panting boy ran up from behind her, while he tried to capture his breath he turned to his partner.

"Seriously, don't do that again Nora." To which Nora only stuck out her tongue at the young man.

While this was going on, Jaune paused for a second to do some quick math.

During the first initiation, if he really did come back in time, the blond had been flung in the air and had collided with Ruby, preventing her from being injured. This time however, Ruby was already on the ground when they arrived which meant that they were a few moments behind.

Jaune had been unconscious for a few minutes according to Pyrrha, meaning that would be behind from the start, but Jaune was pretty sure he was walking faster this time around, even if he did stumble for bit, so they regained some time there. They also hadn't gone into the Deathstalker cave so they gained a few minutes there but because they weren't being chased by the scorpion they hadn't run and instead had walked, meaning that they had lost a little time.

All in all it mostly should equal out so it wasn't a surprise that they were only a few seconds behind the original timing. The gunshots they had heard was probably Ruby using the recoil from Crescent Rose to allow her land mostly unharmed.

That meant that Weiss was still on the back of the Nevermore.

Sure enough, a faint scream could be heard from the sky. Looking up, Jaune could see a giant raven circling in the sky, a faint white dot on its back. As he watched, the young woman on the massive bird's back yelled something down at the trio of girls surrounding the temple, though what she said was lost in the wind from the distance.

"I told you to jump!" Yelled Ruby back towards her partner in the sky.

What followed was Weiss falling from the sky as she was shaken of the big bird's back. She was falling closer to the wooded area where Jaune and Pyrrha were than the center of the clearing so Jaune moved a little to into position then bent his knees.

"I got her!" He yelled making those present only now realize that they had two new people with had arrived. Jaune paused for a moment to time it just right, and then, with some Aura reinforcing his legs and a minor application of his semblance for extra speed, he rocketed upwards towards the falling heiress.

Jaune had timed it just right, he made contact right after the apex of his jump, meaning when he started falling down himself, this meant that there wasn't a collision from the upward and downward force, allowing him to grab Weiss in his arms without hurting her from the impact.

The two of them hit the ground only a few moments later; Jaune's Aura infused legs absorbing most of the momentum. Looking down dark blue met pale blue as Weiss tried to accept what had just happened.

"Just dropping in?" He really, really, reaaallllyyyy couldn't resist the pun, it was simply too strong for his weak will.

"Ha!" Yang snapped her fingers and chuckled when she heard him say that.

"… Put me down." Weiss mumbled as she stared at him incomprehensibly.

He put her down and aided her to her feet.

Not looking at him once, the heiress smoothed out her skirt before making her way over to her partner.

"You left me!" She yelled, point her finger accusingly at Ruby.

"I said jump."

"I don't think this is the time." Blake pointed out as she looked towards the sky, the Nevermore having turned around and was now coming back towards the group.

Jaune and Pyrrha quickly made their way to the temple as well, before turning to look to the sky, but not before Jaune quickly picked up the white rook piece resting on one of the pillars. He still wasn't certain whether things would play out the same way as they had the first time, if he was reliving the past, but that didn't mean he wanted to be on any other team than his own.

The group quickly laid down suppressant fire. Pyrrha and Ruby had the two longest-range weapons so they kneeled in front of the group, unloading bullet after bullet at the bird, for all the good it did. The two girls were geniuses when it came to fighting but this simply wasn't the best place to show off their skill set. Pyrrha's rounds were too small of a caliber to do anything than sting the beast, Ruby's crescent rose on the other hand had a much higher caliber and pack a much larger punch. It still wasn't enough to tear through the steel like thickness that was the Nevermore's feathers though, but it would give the bird a nasty bruise.

These problems could be overcome in a year's time, second year students would eventually learn how to infuse their Aura into their bullets and weapons making them much more effective, it was one of the reasons for the disparity of strength between school years. Of course all of that would be useless if the group didn't survive initiation.

Thankfully both girls managed to deter the Grimm from swooping down, now it just circled in the air above the temple, waiting for its chance.

As the eight initiates huddled in-between the pillars of the temple, keeping one eye on the flying Grimm and the other searching for any more threats, Jaune decided that now would be a great time to break the ice.

"So!" He said, an all to cheerful smile on his face as the rest of the group turned to look at him. "Introductions!"

The resulting deadpans he got from Ren, Blake and Weiss were glorious.

"The name's Long," Yang said, making her voice slightly deeper like in an old black and white movie. "Yang Xiao Long."

"Arc, Jaune Arc." He was more than willing to play along with his fellow blonde's game.

"I'm Ruby Rose." Goddamit, Jaune really thought they had a thing going there for a minute. He couldn't even be mad at her because she was just too damn cute.

"Hello, my name is Pyrrha Nikos, pleased to meet you." Pyrrha had the most wonderful quality of being able smile the sweetest smile even in the direst of circumstances.

"Blake Belladonna." Short and to the point, with a hint of sarcasm, that was definitely Blake all right.

"Weiss Schnee, an honor." Whenever she said that, Jaune could never tell whether she meant it was an honor to meet them or if they should be honored to meet her. Bah! First world problems!

"Nora Valkyrie, I like long walks on the beach, pancakes, sloths, hitting things, pancakes, Ren and pancakes!" This was all said really fast, like she thought they wouldn't catch it if she was too slow, or she was on a major sugar rush for one reason or another.

"Lie Ren." The boy barely acknowledged his partners strange habits, as he introduced himself clearly not the first time she had gone on a tangent like this.

"Now that we all know each other, what are we going to do about that," Weiss nodded her head towards the circling Nevermore.

"Well," Jaune began hesitantly, knowing full well that he hadn't made the best of impressions the day before initiation so there was a chance that they wouldn't take his advise seriously. "We could just wait for it to dive down and try to take it out then, but we risk other Grimm arriving while we wait. Or we could make a run for it now that we have our relics. The Nevermore will dive, and we can take it out while it is chasing us. Either way, we will have to kill it if we want to be able to climb the cliff and get back, otherwise it will try to shoot us down while we climb."

The group paused for a moment to consider Jaune's words before, one by one they nodded in agreement, having seen nothing wrong with his assessment of the situation.

"Alrighty then, lets go before anything else shows up!" Blake, Ren and Jaune all simultaneously sighed at Ruby's cheerful words.

"What?" The little reaper was quite confused when, in an odd form of synchronicity between two people who had just met, both Jaune and Ren put three fingers into the air before lowering them one at a time.

Three!

Two!

One!

As the last finger fell, a mighty crash resounded through the clearing. As the group turned, they saw a giant scorpion bust through the tree line. The Deathstalker Grimm was covered in bone white armor, its thick plating protecting it from head to tail, leaving only its eyes and mouth exposed.

"Lesson one on being a hunter: don't tempt fate, what can go wrong will go wrong." Jaune sighed once more before continuing. "Change of plans guys, can you four," he nodded towards Yang, Blake, Ruby and Weiss, "deal with the Nevermore while we" he pointed towards himself, Pyrrha, Nora and Ren "take care of the Deathstalker."

"Why those teams?" There was no challenge in Lie Ren's voice, merely curiosity at the choice of assignment. The other six teenagers once more turned towards the wayward time traveler for his explanation.

"It is probably better not to separate partners," the others nodded in agreement "Ruby has the weapon with the longest range so she is the obvious person to fight the airborne target which means that Weiss goes with her. Yang is Ruby's sister thus they probably know each other's fighting styles so she could provide aid rather easily and she would bring Blake with her. Besides, you four look agile enough to dodge the feathers Nevermore are known to shoot.

On the other hand, Pyrrha and me are the only two people with shields that will be needed to deal with the more physical might of the Deathstalker. That leaves Nora and Ren to helps us out and Nora's hammer will be a big help getting through the armor."

Once more agreeing with his reasoning, the group nodded and separated into their two groups. The four girls luring the bird away by making a run for the cliff as had been talked about before, while Jaune's group decided to take the initiative and rush toward the approaching insect Grimm.

In the few moments before his group was able to engage their foe, Jaune thought furiously over the situation. While he knew that tempting fate as Ruby had done was a bad idea, the Deathstalker hadn't simply appeared out of nowhere. That meant that it had already been advancing towards the clearing for a while, which meant it had left the cave for some reason. Had it sensed him and Pyrrha and chased after them? No, that couldn't be it, they had be walking at a relatively moderate pace once they had moved on from the cave, plenty of time for the scorpion Grimm to catch them. That meant that something had disturbed it in its cave, and then led it towards the clearing, all the while not being noticed at all.

There was another possibility, one that scared him to consider with all its implications.

When discussing time travel, if he really did travel through time, he still wasn't entirely convinced this wasn't some weird dream or illusion, there were always a few theory's discussed but the two most popular had to do with changing the past. The first was that if you go into the past and change something, even something insignificant in the larger scheme of things, the time line branched creating a fork in the road so to speak, one path leading to the original future where nothing changed and the other having been altered in some way.

The second theory was the possibility that freighted Jaune at this moment. The possibility that relied on the concept of fate or destiny, if you go into the past and try and change something then you were simply ensuring nothing changed at all. Like if you went back to the past to try and save someone's life but instead were the reason they died in the first place. That kind of thing, as if something was forcing events to occur in so great plan, terrified the present Jaune because it meant that he had no hope of ever getting the ending he wanted.

Jaune could picture it now, without the Deathstalker appearing, the eight students would have easily handled the Nevermore. That would mean that they wouldn't be as close to their teammates right off the bat due to the tribulations facing such powerful Grimm early on forcing them to rely on each other. This could have great consequences latter, leading to teams breaking up or even leading to someone's death because they could trust their teammates or communicate properly with them when they needed to. Both teams JNPR and RWBY would later play huge roles in shaping the world so any event that threatened their destiny could very well have forced whatever cosmic entity that controlled fate to simply nudge the Deathstalker out the door.

His thoughts halted as he finally met the scorpion, his teammates only a few moments behind.

It first lunged at him, aiming to impale Jaune on its poisonous stinger. Jaune skillfully deflected it with his shield, not slowing down in the slightest as he rush through the opening to deliver a slash to its unprotected face that destroyed two of its eyes. It growled in pain as it attempted to capture him with one of its pincers only for him to nimbly hop backwards just out of its reach.

His friends arrived then, Ren and Pyrrha firing their weapons at the creature, not really doing any damage to it but distracting it for Nora to fire a few grenades under its belly. The Deathstalker teetered for a few moments, off balance from the force. Because it was unstable, when it went to grab Ren with its pincers, the young man was able to nimbly jump onto the claw before running up onto the Grimm's back. Stormflower opened fire onto the armored shell, further annoying the scorpion.

As Pyrrha switched her weapon to its sword form and engaging it in close quarters in order to further distract it from the martial artist on top of it, Nora switched to her hammer to try and break one of its hind legs.

An idea came quickly to Jaune's mind.

To tell the truth he still wasn't certain he was actually in the past and not in some sort of mind control situation and so he didn't want to reveal too much about himself, his strength especially if you could use it later to escape from whatever was going on. That was the reason he hand simply carved the deathstalker in two with his first strike and instead fought it defensively. But, if he was in the past or was being made to relive and recreate his initiation, then why not defeat the scorpion Grimm the same way they had done the first time around? Or recreate it as closely as he could get at least.

"Ren," with that in mind he shouted to his only male teammate. "Aim for the bottom of the tail, prepare to dodge! Pyrrha, distract it! Jump back when I say so! Nora, jump, hit the nail!"

Perhaps it was Jaune falling into old habits, not really elaborating on his plan and simply giving orders in short words, he was used to being so in sync with his teammates that they could tell what they each wanted from just a look. He had forgotten that if he really was in the past, then these three would have only known him for less than half a day and barely trusted him. Any other time they might have ignored him, not understood or failed to carry out the orders. But for some reason, against common sense all three of his companions grasped what he meant and nodded visibly even as they continued their fight.

Ren moved immediately, standing in the center of the creature's back and aiming at the point where the tail met the main body. Most people don't know this and even a good deal of hunters are unaware the between the tail and the torso, there is a patch of the body unprotected by armor. This is because the stinger has to lunge in front of the insect and armor plating at the joint would limit maneuverability. Not only wasn't it encase in the bug's shell, it was also extremely sensitive, comparable to the armpit on a human. So when bullets started piercing the soft tissue, the bug roared in excruciating pain and bent its stinger forward over itself, trying to use the armor higher on its tail in order to cover its sensitive area.

When it did this, Jaune jumped backwards slightly but still in the range of its claws. Trusting Pyrrha to protect his back, if she didn't he would know this whole situation was fake, he crouched down and raised his shield at an angle and called out "Nora!"

Sure enough the hyperactive Valkyrie ran towards him, her hammer deployed and ready to be swung. Once she was close enough, she swung it with all her might towards his shield while performing a jump that would put her almost perpendicular to the ground. Once her hammer made contact with his shield, she released one of her grenades, creating such a concussive force that, had Jaune not braced himself on the ground, he might have been sent flying. But because he knew what was coming and was prepared, instead of being sent flying, at the moment of impact he used his shield to push upwards, transferring the energy into momentum that sent Nora flipping through the air with a "Wheeeeeeee" of excitement.

As soon as she was in the air, Jaune once more jumped backwards, this time out of range of the Deathstalker while calling out "Pyrrha!"

Understanding immediately what he wanted, she too hopped backwards out of the pincer's range. Momentarily stunned at the cease of hostilities in front of it, the beast used this opportunity to try and rid itself of the annoyance on its back that was even now still aiming at the juncture between the tail and body.

"Keep firing" Jaune ordered to his teammate as he keenly watched the stinger move. "Right, crouch, left, backwards, now backflip off."

Ren did as he was told, intense concentration clearly displayed on his face as he never took his eyes of the week spot in the tail. First he sidestepped to the right, avoiding the stinger that wanted to gore him, and then he crouched as it swiped over his head, trying to smack him off. As he rose from his crouch he angled to the left, once more avoiding the stinger that sought to stab his chest. He then stepped backwards, he was now right above the thing's brain. Ren continued to fire at the tail at it was raised up above him in order skewer him, at the last second he performed a magnificent backflip off the creature's head, avowing the stinger completely.

When he landed he would be right in front of the beasts face, well within range. This would have been a problem had Nora, descending from the sky with a shout of joy, not swung her hammer down with extreme force magnified by her decent right onto the back of the point of the stinger, that had just before been poised to end Ren's life, now instead was smashed downwards into the Deathstalker's brain, killing it before Ren even had the chance to land himself.

The Grimm never even knew what killed it.

There was a moment where the four friends held their breath hoping that it was dead. It lay there, like a puppet with its strings cut before wisps of black smoke rose from its body as it started to decompose. The teammates finally let out a sight of relief once they realized it was dead, before cracking smiles at each other and even letting out a few chuckles.

"We got to go help the others!" Pyrrha said as remembered that there was a second Grimm to be dealt with.

"I don't think they really need our help." Said Jaune as he turned to watch as the future team RWBY dealt with their first real foe as a team.

Because Jaune's team took a lot less time to defeat the Deathstalker this time around, they were able to catch the final moves of the fight. They watched as Blake used the ribbon on her weapon to whip Yang into the air, where she collided with the Nevermore. The blonde kept its attention by firing numerous slugs onto its skull before onto its beak and, while holding it open with her considerable strength, released shell after shell into its open maw from Ember Cecilia.

Taking advantage of the distraction provided, Ruby and Weiss took the time to set up the final blow. Ruby was being held in place in some form of makeshift bow created by Weiss' semblance. Complex calculations passed in moments as they adjusted their aim in order make certain they wouldn't miss their opportunity.

With a yell, snow white released little red ridding hood as if an arrow from the bow. Goldilocks jumped free even as her sister crashed into the giant raven Grimm, her scythe extended in order to hook around the neck of the beast. The momentum of the attack brought Ruby and the Nevermore onto the side of the cliff nearby. There was a pause for a moment; the short girl then activated her semblance.

She became pure speed, running upwards on the face of the cliff, firing her weapon to create even more upwards momentum, going so fast that she overcame the nine point eight meters per second that gravity demanded. The Nevermore on the other hand was still too heavy for her to lift and so the bird was being pulled down by gravity and upwards by an even greater speed. Normally gravity would have eventually won through sheer persistence but the difference hung in the fact that the object-connecting Ruby to the Nevermore was in fact a scythe. A scythe with a rather sharp blade, the beast's neck never stood a chance as the blade cut through it like butter.

The body and head, now separated, tumbled down into the gorge below the cliff as Ruby continued her accent to the top.

Sharing smiles with his teammates Jaune, happy that the ordeal was over, they moved to join their compatriots on top of the cliff and complete their initiation.

If the others had known Jaune for longer they might have noticed that his smile wasn't one of relief but rather a small sad one, filled with nostalgia.

"Cardin Winchester, Russel Thrush, Sky Lark and Dove Bronzewing, you brought back the black bishop pieces, from here on out you will be known as team CRDL led by… Cardin Winchester."

Once both teams managed to make it back to the school with their respective chess pieces, they were led towards the auditorium and made to stand on the side as one by one the pairs that managed to make it through initiation were then put into teams by Ozpin.

"Jaune Arc," the headmaster called as the blond advanced to center stage. "Pyrrha Nikos, Nora Valkyrie and Lie Ren, you chose the white rook. You are now team JNPR led by… Jaune Arc."

"Congratulations Jaune." Pyrrha gave him a rather hard pat on the back.

"Way to go boss!" Nora gave him an excited pair of thumbs up.

"Good job." Ren's response was more muted but a small smile was still present.

Jaune barely acknowledged any of this except to give his new teammates a small smile that didn't reach his eyes.

Ever since they had reached the stage, emotions swirled in his heart. Longing, grief and most of all love fought each other for dominance. He had steadfastly tried to keep his eyes forward as he fought to not look at her. Jaune had no idea what he would do if he saw her now, he wanted to rush over to her, wrap his arms around her once more and kiss her so hard in order to convey the emotions that almost two decades of separation had welled up in his breast.

The problem lay in the fact that the woman he had at one point wanted to ask to be his wife barely even knew he existed, let alone remembered the two years of love they had secretly shared together.

By this point Jaune had accepted that it was probable that he actually was in the past, too many coincidences otherwise. This both filled him with joy and dread. On one hand, he could spend the next four years with his friends and those precious two years of love and happiness.

On the other hand Jaune was certain he could go through the pain of separation again. Again watch his friends hunt him down like a dog, watch his family be forced to hand their head in shame and watch helplessly as the woman he loves become engaged to another man.

He felt helpless; because the more he thought of it the less he believed he could do anything else than repeat the same actions a second time around. If he didn't become wanted millions of people would die, possibly humanity itself.

At the same time, Jaune couldn't really not try and reform the relationship with the woman he loved. The two years they had spent together were what had kept him going, helped him wake up in the morning, and helped him continue on even as the whole world turned against him.

Not only that, if he wasn't there he feared she might have gotten over the pains in her heart that stopped her from finding happiness. One of the only things Jaune was really proud of in his life was the fact that he had helped her get over the heartache that had plagued her. The proof lay in the fact even after his disappearance she still found happiness with someone else.

And so, with a self-depreciating smile, Jaune turned from looking at the stage where Ruby was once again made leader of team RWBY and instead looked towards her for the first time in almost two decades.

Looking just as beautiful as he remembered, she stood to the side stage, observing the proceedings.

Future Headmistress of Beacon Academy, world-renowned huntress and the woman he had once hopped would become Ms. Arc.

Glynda Goodwitch!

Well, there you go, once again I apologies for the long delay, my next story updated will be The Beast, then the others. Hopefully I can get the next chapter for this story out by mid November.

Hoping to see you all soon,

Reiders out!