Chapter 1: Arrival

"Break a leg, sis!" Ruby Rose yelled at her sister Yang Xiao Long, who was just about to start her fight against Mercury Black. The first fight in the finals of the Vytal Festival Tournament. She and her Team had fought bravely in the previous rounds, and now the victory of the Festival was coming closer and closer.

"Would all other combatants please leave the stage?" Port's voice came through the boxes in the Amity Colloseum, a giant, floating battle arena. Like said, all the other combatants left the stage. The floor around Black and Yang opened, and a ring of spotlights rose up into the air.

Yang was stretching her arms. "You better not go easy on me."

"You wi-" Without finishing his sentence, a bright light engulfed Mercury, and he disappeared.

"Uhm, what?" Yang muttered.

"Mercury!" Emerald yelled out from the ranks. The leader of the two, Cinder Fall, was just about to leave, but this turn of events was rather interesting.

"Where did h-" Cinder could not finish her sentence either, as she was suddenly gone too. "C-" And then Emerald vanished.

The people that sat around them just starred at the now empty spaces.

"What in Remnant is going on?" Oobleck yelled into his microphone. The next one to vanish was Yang. Then Ruby, together with Weiss and Blake. Team JNPR, consisting of Jaune Arc, Pyrrha Nikos, Nora Valkyrie and Lie Ren, vanished next.

Everything around Ruby went pitch black. It was like reality itself was ripping apart, and repairing itself, only to repeat the process. From time to time, she could see blue, white and purple lights before her eyes.

When she opened her eyes again, the air tasted different. Warmer, and wetter. The calming sounds of an ocean entered her ears, and she slowly got up.

Ruby realised that she woke up on a beach. The hot sun shined down on her. The huntress fully got up, and looked around. There were some palm trees behind her, and a small cliff with an deep jungle on top.

She looked down at herself and noticed that she was still wearing her red and black combat skirt. Her weapon, Crescend Rose, was gone though.

But there was something else. Like a tickling feeling in her wrist. She pulled back her sleeve, and looked with horror at the implant in her arm. It was black, with orange highlights. Out of instinct, the girl scratched the implant.

Ruby let out a huge breath to calm down, and accessed the situation. She was on a beach, somewhere in the tropical regions of Remnant, which meant she was either on Anima, near Vacuo or on Menagerie. That was the best case szenario. In the worst case, she was stuck somewhere on an island in the middle of nowhere. Her weapon was gone, and an implant was stuck in her arm. This could mean someone kidnapped her.

She came to the conclusion that the best first step would be to find any clue as to where she was. There was no point in trying to remove the implant, as it would just result in a open wound. If it was even possible to remove it. Thus, she started to walk along the beach, until she found something near the water. It shimmered golden.

Ruby ran toward it, and even faster when she realised what it was. "Yang!"

The girl kneeled down next to her sister, and took a bit of saltwater to throw into Yang's face.

The blonde opened her lilac eyes, and starred at her sister. "Ruby?" She got up and held her head. "What- What happened?"

"I'm not sure." Ruby noticed that Yang was missing her gauntlets, but also had an implant. "Yang, don't freak out, but look at your wrist. "

Yang did like told, and surprisingly kept her calm. "Huh. That's unusual."

"Is that all you've got to say?"

"Yeah, pretty much. I mean, there's nothing to do about it." She stood up. "So, where are we? And where are Weiss and Blake?"

"Here!"

They turned around, and saw their teammates sitting in the shadow of a palm tree. "How long have you been there?" Ruby asked.

"Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen." Weiss answered.

"Do you know where we are?" Yang approached them, followed by her sister.

"Nope." Blake deadpanned.

"And do you have…" Ruby said while pointing at her implant.

"Implants? Yes, we do."

Ruby sighed. She started scratching her implant again, and accidently pressed on it. Suddenly a blue, holographic panel appeared over her arm. She could see herself in the middle of it, her implant on the right, together with some information. Under it was a digital map, with a little patch of land with her position on it. The rest of it was completely blank. On the left side was a blank space with a little bar above it. Under the blank space was information on the temperature, level, armor and so on. "Whoa."

"What the-" Weiss did the same, and a holographic panel appeared over her. She looked at the information around the implant and read them out loud. "Name: Weiss Schnee. Specimen: Homo Sapiens. Epoche: Seventyfive. Attributes: Intelligence, Dexterity, Adaptability, Aura. Sample Number: 03."

The others did the same. The info on everyone was the same, except name, specimen and number. Ruby was 01, Blake 01 and Yang 02. Blake was categorized as Faunus instead of Homo Sapiens.

"What is this? Some kind of sick experiment?" Blake asked, and read through some of the information about the time and temperature.

"Possible. Atlas maybe?" Yang guessed.

"Unlikely." The heiress replied. "Atlas would never just take people away from the Vytal Festival. Especially not the heiress of the company that runs their economy."

Blake looked around, and her eyes widened. "Uhm, I'm not sure that we're even on Remnant anymore."

"What do you-" All looked into the same direction, and their mouths went wide open. There was a giant Obelisk floating in the air. It was bigger than Beacon Tower, or anything they had ever seen. A red light shined through it, and went into the air.

"What in the actual fuck." Yang muttered.

Suddenly a loud noise was heard, and their implants glew. Ruby opened her UI, and saw that the previously blank space changed into some kind of drop-down menu. There as a little blue box in the corner, a number saying "8 EP" and 10 pictures. Two of them, which depicted a pickaxe and a torch, were labelled as "0 EP". The other eight pictures were all labelled with 3 EP each. There was a hatchet, a spear, a campfire, paper, clothes and stuff that looks like parts of a house.

"I think we just leveled up, girls." Blake said, and pointed at one of the numbers, near the temperature.

"What?" Weiss was starting to panic. Understandable, considering their situation.

"Look at your level." Everyone looked down, and saw that their level now was two.

"I think I understand." All heads turned to Weiss. "I guess we can 'buy' these things with those EP. And with every level we get more."

"But what would we do with this stuff. This just looks like surviv…" Yang gulped. "Survival equipment. Oh no."

"You mean we are supposed to survive here? Like in a movie?" Ruby asked, and also began to panic.

"It's my best guess."

"Well then." Now everyone looked at Blake. "Since we don't have any other leads by now, I'd suggest we discuss who spends her points at what."

"Okay then. Since the pickaxe and torch are free, I'd say everyone buys them. I'll take the hatchet and the spear." Ruby explained and pulled down the pickaxe into the box. The hologramm worked like a touchscreen. She felt weird for a second, and a new tab appeared. She clicked on it, and now saw a new menu, with the pickaxe in it. There was a material list next to it. It listed wood, thatch and stone. Ruby opened the buy menu again, and repeated the same with the torch, spear and hatchet.

"I'm gonna take the clothes then." Weiss said. Even though they all still had their normal attire, they could get new clothes in case their outfits would get ruined, or destroyed.

"I'll use the building stuff." Blake said.

"Great. I get the crap." Yang said and pulled the note and campfire in the box.

"So, what now?" Ruby asked while looking at her engrams.

"Let's build pickaxes. We appearently need stone, thatch and wood." Weiss suggested.

They looked around. There were stones laying on the beach, and the palmtrees could give wood as well as thatch.

"Well, and how are we gonna get the wood without-" Blake was interrupted, as Yang punched a tree into bits.

"I've got wood!" She picked it up and threw it on the beach to the others.

"More thatch than wood honestly." Ruby noted, and picked up a stick. Blake brought stones and opened her engrams list. All the ingrediants for the pickaxe were in green letters. She clicked on it, and suddenly knew how to make a pickaxe. Like she knew it forever, Blake made a pickaxe in mere seconds.

"Whoa." Ruby said and did the same. Weiss and Yang followed. "So, this things loads up information into our brain? Kinda?"

"I guess so." Weiss replied.

"Okay, girls. Then let's get some resources!" Ruby yelled. Everyone agreed by nodding. After thinking for a moment where to get flint, Yang just started hitting a rock with a pickaxe, and flint came out. As soon as Ruby had crafted a spear, the loud noise appeared again. Everyone looked in their list, and found new points, and stuff to learn. The rest needed for a full building and set of clothes, a wooden club, a waterskin, a sign and a sleeping bag.

Blake took the wall, the door and the roof. Weiss learned the boots, hat and gloves. Ruby chose the club and sleeping bag. Now she had 3 points left, and decided to save them for later. Yang learned to make the waterskins, and spent her last four points on a sign.

"Uhm, new problem. The sleeping bag needs hide." Ruby said.

"So does the waterskin." Yang added.

"Then we'll have to skin animals?" Weiss asked worried, while handing out hatchets she made for everyone.

"I hope not." Ruby told her and gave everyone a spear.

"Wow, we look like cavemen." Yang joked.

"Yeah. The only thing left are dinosaurs." Ruby replied, while making one last spear.

Weiss facepalmed as a response. "Dinosaurs and cavemen didn't live during the same time, you dolt."

Suddenly, something irritated her. A bright, white light came down from the sky, together with a black, rectangular box. They slowly approached it, and as they came closer, their implants began to glow. Ruby opened hers, and found a button labeled as 'open'. When she clicked on it, the box dissolved, and left behind a bunch of hide, fiber, wood, thatch, stone and flint.

"This is helpful." Yang said and made a waterskin for everyone.

"So, there are crates coming down from the sky?" Weiss said. "This whole thing is getting weirder and weirder."

"Here." Yang handed everyone a waterskin.

"Where are we going to get water?" Blake asked.

"Easy!" Yang told her and went down to the water, only to drink from it.

,,Yang! This is saltwater!" Weiss yelled.

"Calm down, Icequeen. Rubes already threw water in my face. I think I know if it's saltwater or not." She took a hand full of water and drank it. "Yep. Drinkable." The rest of the team shrugged and filled their waterskins.

"Now we need food." Weiss pointed out. They looked around for something edible, and Ruby inspected some plants.

"Team! There are berries growing here!" Her friends came to her, and everyone started picking berries. Thankfully, Blake knew from her time with the White Fang how to find out if a plant was toxic or not. After some time, they had a stack of red, blue and yellow berries. At the same time, the sun began to set. Thus, Blake started constructing a little shack while Yang prepared a campfire.

"But we could totally break it." Nora yelled.

She and the rest of her Team were looking down at a strange little creature which crawled over the beach. It had a brown color, and looked like some sort of arachnid.

After figuring out how their implants worked, Nora had made herself a club as a replacement for Magnhild. Pyrrha had made spears for herself and her friends, while Ren learned everything from the constructions. Nora just took the stuff she liked. Jaune learned the clothes, and already made a hat for everyone.

As it was already getting dark, Ren had already begun to build a little shelter under a tree. They where able to see a island in the distance, and a snow covered area to the east. Judging from their map, they woke up somewhere on a northern shore.

While Ren was constructing the shack, the creature crawled out of the ocean and caught everyone's attention.

"I'm telling you Nora. This is not a vacuum cleaning robot." Ren tried to explain to Nora. Emphasis on trying.

"I still think it's a trilobite." Jaune suggested.

"But they are extinct, silly." Nora said.

"Yeah, I know. That's why I'm worried."

"How do you even know it is one?" Pyrrha was the only one to believe their leader.

"I had quite a lot of dinosaur books back in the day." Jaune was a bit proud of this fact.

"So... can I crush it?" Nora asked again.

"No."

"But what if it is some advanced form of robotic parasite grimm?"

Jaune sighed. "We can't change her mind, can we?" he looked at Ren.

"No, I don't think so." He turned to his childhood friend. "Nora. Do what you want."

"Nice!" She held up her club. "Time to die, evil robot scum!" She let her weapon down, and the creature was crushed under the cracking wood, and bits of it flew everywhere. Nora just stood there, the club still in her hands, shocked.

"Robot, eh?" Jaune smiled. He picked up a piece of the creatures carapass, and looked at it. "Welp, at least we've got some chitin."

"I'll go and finish the shelter." Ren deadpanned.

"And I'll get some berries" Pyrrha said and walked of.

"Then I'm just gonna, uhm, make a torch, or something." With that, Jaune walked of too, leaving Nora alone.

She picked up a bit of meat that landed next to her. "Maybe I can cook it."

"Blake, I've got to say, this isn't a bad shelter."

The Faunus smiled. "Thanks. How do you like the two floors?" Yang and Blake sat on the upper floor of their little shack. It was shaped like an upside down 'L'. The whole process also granted her and Yang a new level. While Yang used her points to learn a hatchet and spear herself, Blake learned a sleeping bag and wooden sign. Both saved the remaining three points.

"It's great. Gives it a little bit of perso-"

A scream caught their attention, and the two ran outside. They saw Ruby and Weiss, who were picking some more berries, and a torch laying on the ground. The light of it enabled them to see a little, four legged creature eating some berries. Two large teeth stuck out of its mouth. The one screaming was Weiss, and Ruby looked curiosly at the little guy.

"What the hell is that?" Yang ran to their aid, and pulled her sister away from the creature.

"A- A Lystrosaurus." Weiss stuttered, and left everyone staring at her with disbelief.

"A dinosaur?"

"Not exactly." Weiss started to explain. "Lystrosaurus were part of dicynodont therapsids. They've lived around 250 million years ago where Vacuo is located these days." She looked at her teammates, and saw the asking faces.

"So, it is a dinosaur?" Yang asked.

"No, it's a relative of us. It actually lived before the time of the dinosaurs."

"And is it dangerous?" Blake wondered while looking at the animal.

"No, it's entirely herbivorous." She looked down. "And you said taking the paleontology course at Beacon was a waste of time." Weiss muttered to herself.

"But if it lived before the dinosaurs, how is it here?" Yang let go of Ruby, since the animal did not pose any threat.

Weiss had to admit, she didn't know. The heiress looked at the therapsids again, and watched Ruby feeding it some berries. "I'm not sure. Maybe this is some kind of reservoir."

"For extinct animals?" Blake wondered.

"Possible. But then again, if that were to be the case, we wouldn't be here."

Yang yawned. "This is pretty cool and all, but can we go to bed?"

"Sure." Blake replied.

"Also, we should have one of us standing guard at night." Ruby explained. "If Weiss is right, then I don't want to be eaten by a raptor in my sleep."

Everyone agreed. As they walked back to their little shack, Ruby noticed the Lystrosaurus following them. Yang laughed. "I guess he likes you, sis."

"Yeah." She got on her knees and petted the little guy. "You want to come with us, buddy?" The Lystrosaurus made some happy sounds and danced for a second.

"Hmm. This is an odd behavior for a animal." Weiss muttered.

Ruby picked the therapsid up and carried him back to the shelter. "I'm gonna call you Puffy."

Cinder was sitting on a rock on top of a cliff, overlooking the beach below her. In the distance, the stars reflected in the ocean.

This turn of events just crushed all of her plans. What would Salem, her Mistress, say if she found out? How did they end up here? And how could they get back?

Cinder's thoughts were, much to her annoyance, interrupted by one of her henchmen. "Ma'am. We've got a problem."

The half-maiden sighed. Of course there would be a problem. "What is it Emerald?"

"I'm." She paused for a second. "I'm not sure. It's, like, a bird. And it eats our food."

Cinder got up, and followed Emerald to the berries they picked. Their makeshift camp was made in the middle of a field on a cliff. A river rushed through close to them, and went down into the ocean.

Mercury was the first one to wake up, and used his time to test the implant. He explained everything he could find out to the others, and they tried to part up their Engrams. Cinder had learned clothes, Mercury weaponry and Emerald buildings. Mercury already made a hatchet for everyone.

As Cinder was back at their camp, which consisted only of a campfire and a foundation with one wall and roof, she saw the thief. It looked like a turkey, with a bigger beak. And without the tall feathers. "Is that a Dodo?" She asked.

"I think so." Emerald scratched the back of her head. They weren't really surprised anymore, as they already saw a pteranodon flying over the ocean. "So, what should we do?"

"I don't know. Ki-" Before Cinder could suggest anything, a familiar, pink and brown haired girl ran out of the near jungle and started to cuddle the bird.

"Neo?" Emerald yelled surprised. The mute looked up and waved with a smile.

The last voice Cinder wanted to hear right now was coming out of the jungle. "Neo. I've told you not to run off." Two man came out of the forest, and looked at Cinder and her helpers.

"Roman? Adam?" Cinder muttered, already annoyed.

"Oh, it's you guys." The proffesionel criminal answered.

"Did you three wake up here too?" Mercury asked them.

"Yes, we did." The high member of the White Fang explained. What followed was a one hour long story of how Adam woke up first, saw both sleeping, and decided to wait until they woke up. It would be unhonorable to kill them in their sleep, he said. Once they were awake, they talked, and decided to stay together. He also explained how they found an knocked out Dodo, and Neo started to feed some berries to the poor thing.

"So, are we working together or what?" Torchwìck asked out of the blue, once the story was over.

"Why? We survived the day without you." Cinder crossed her arms.

"Sure. But if there are Dodos here, who knows what else lives in the jungle." Roman gestured at the woods.

"As much as I hate it, I have to agree with him." Adam added. "We have better chances of survival if we work together."

Cinder had to think for a moment. Sure, she didn't like Roman or Adam, and the feeling was mutual, but considering that there could be things like Tyrannosaurus in this jungle, the more the better was probably the best strategy. "Okay, we'll work together. Better make yourself useful and start working."

Roman rolled his eyes. "Excuse me? As far as I'm concerned, nighttime is sleeping time. So good night." He went to the single foundation, and layed down.

Cinder growled, but didn't stop him. Or Neo, who sat down next to him. He was right with that. There was no point in working in the dark anyway.

So, some explanations.

First: The implants. The changes I made to it are mostly to balance it a bit with the Aura. The main change is that none of them has an inventory, so they have to carry the material they collect.

Second: Unlike in the game, there aren't dozens of dinosaurs every five meters. They are a bit more spread out, and more realistic in terms of herds and travelling. I think it will work better in a story.

Third: I take most of the mechanics of the Ark from the information available in the dossiers. This includes the implants and behavior of the animals. Of course, the teams will also find the notes eventually.

And finally, about the schedule: New chapters will be released without any schedule, which means there could be two per week, or one per two weeks. I'm writing this as a little side project, since my other fanfiction is my main focus right now.

With that, I hope that you have fun reading this.

RWBY belongs to Rooster Teeth; Ark: Survival Evolved belongs to Studio Wildcard.