Author's Note: Fair warning, you will definitely need to have seen Volume 8 for this story to make any sense as it's a direct continuation of where canon RWBY last left off. That being said, I'm not following canon completely. All the same events happen, but the order and timing are slightly different. Really it's just a small tweak that won't even be relevant for several chapters.

This story is the first one in quite a while that I've been inspired to write directly by the events of the show, so I hope you enjoy it. And if you're reading this in the future when Volume 9 has already aired feel free to marvel/laugh at how close/wildly off I was to what actually happened.

This is the Teen and Up rated version of the story. The Mature rated version has been posted over on Archive of Our Own.

As mentioned above, this story was written during the interim between Volumes 8 and 9.

Chapter 1: Fall

Yang realized the danger before anyone else did. She recognized the malice glinting in the stranger's eyes. Then she saw a familiar blade being drawn as Neo's illusion fell away.

"Ruby!" Yang shouted. She dove across the platform suspended in the endless void, the "central location" as Ambrosius had called it, and threw herself in between her sister and Neo.

Neo's blade connected with Yang's back. Even though the blow wasn't meant for her, Yang still felt the seething hatred behind it. The blade's razor-sharp edge cut deeply, but Yang's aura held on just long enough to keep her safe before it gave out. Yang was sent flying by the attack. Her back hit the platform, she bounced once, and then she went tumbling helplessly over the edge.

Floating platforms and pathways rushed past Yang as she fell. She caught a glimpse of the citizens of Atlas and Mantle scampering across them. The people were all running toward the portal on the far end that would take them to Vacuo and to safety. It seemed, against all odds, the rescue plan was working. However, not everyone was safe yet, and aura or no, Yang knew she needed to get back into the fight.

Right on cue, Yang heard the sound of Gambol Shroud firing. She looked up and saw Blake's pistol come whizzing toward her from the platform above. Yang had known that Blake would find a way to save her. She stretched out her arm as far as it would go, ready to catch Gambol Shroud like she had a hundred times before. But then the unthinkable happened. Yang watched in mute horror as Gambol Shroud's ribbon ran out. The gun stopped dead in the air a hair's breadth from her hand. Her hope and salvation literally slipped through her fingers, and she plummeted down into the yawning abyss.

A calm feeling settled over Yang as her demise rushed up to greet her. If Blake couldn't save her then there was nothing to be done. She'd always been willing to die to protect those she loved: her family, her team, her friends. The only regret she had was that she'd never told Blake how she truly felt. Staying silent had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but now Yang couldn't remember why.

Suddenly, an anguished cry reached Yang's ears. She knew it belonged to Blake. She wished she could tell Blake not to worry, that none of this was her fault. But there was no time left for words and no one close enough to hear them. Yang caught one last glimpse of the chaos unfolding above her. Then the void swallowed her up.

Yang was plunged into total darkness and complete silence. The emptiness around her was so absolute that she could no longer see her own hands in front of her or hear the sound of herself breathing. If she was still falling, she couldn't tell. There wasn't any indication of motion or the passage of time. She didn't feel a chilling cold like she'd expected, but she didn't feel warm either. There was simply nothing. Yang began to wonder if she was dead.

Suddenly, a blast of hot air hit Yang like a hammer blow to her chest. Light pierced her eyes, and the deafening roar of wind assaulted her ears. The bombardment of sensations left her stunned, but she did her best to shake it off. She realized she needed to get her bearings and quickly, because unless she was mistaken, she was still falling.

Yang pried her eyes open, blinking away tears. Wherever she was, it was a bright, sunny day outside. All she saw at first was a blur, but when her eyes finally adjusted to the light, she found herself hundreds of feet up in the air and falling fast toward some sort of tropical island.

Yang's instincts took over, pushing aside any fear or confusion that she might have felt, and she began formulating a landing strategy. It looked like she was plummeting toward the edge of a beach where the sand met the ocean. There wasn't anything there to break her fall, and she'd picked up so much speed by this point that not even her aura would've saved her from a direct impact even if it had been up. However, there was a forest of palm trees not too far from the beach, and they might just be what she needed. Regardless, one thing was clear; if she was going to walk away from this landing she would need to change her trajectory.

Yang pointed her arms behind her and pulled the trigger on Ember Celica, but to her great shock, her gauntlets didn't fire. They just made a useless click.

Yang frantically looked at her gauntlets. They didn't appear to be damaged, but when she pointed them behind her and tried to shoot again, they still refused to fire.

The ground was getting alarmingly close, and Yang was on the verge of panic now. Out of time and out of ideas, Yang turned herself around in the air and thrust her prosthetic arm forward. She did her best to angle it away from the ocean and ejected it from her body at full force.

The artificial limb shot out of its socket and pushed Yang in the opposite direction. By some miracle, she had just enough time to twist her body back around before a palm tree which she was now rocketing toward swatted her out of the air. Yang kicked off of the tree and sent herself flying deeper into the forest. However, Yang wasn't in the clear yet. Rather than the nice, orderly landing strategy she'd had planned, she found herself dancing on the edge of disaster as she ricocheted from tree to tree, trying to get her momentum under control.

It took an impressive number of bounces before Yang felt like she was getting a handle on things, but the trees were thinning out in front of her, and she suddenly realized why. A rocky cliff was jutting into the air up ahead, and Yang was flying toward it at a patently unsafe speed.

Yang did her best to slow herself to a stop, but she realized her efforts weren't going to be enough. There was only one last tree between her and solid rock, so she thrust both of her feet forward and planted them against the tree's trunk, hoping with all her might that she'd be okay.

Yang felt the impact travel up her body, all the way from her ankles to the top of her head. The tree's trunk bent under the raw force, and it sagged almost all the way to the ground. Yang, realizing that she was now standing on the business end of a makeshift catapult, scrambled to get off the trunk in time. However, as soon as one of her feet slid off, the trunk went springing back upward, catching her other foot in the process and sending her tumbling through the air.

The world spun around Yang in a nauseating blur as she somersaulted like a rag doll. Then her flight came to an abrupt end when she smashed face-first into the wall of the cliff. Fresh pain erupted all over Yang's body. Then she limply rolled down the solid, unyielding rock all the way to the ground, at long last coming to a stop.

Yang lay there, sprawled out on her back on the island's grassy soil. She softly groaned as her vision slowly came back into focus. Between falling out of reality, appearing over a mysterious island, and giving a cliff a high-velocity hug, she had not been prepared for today. But as tempting as the idea was, she knew she wasn't going to make the situation any better by lying around.

Yang started to sit up, but as she did, a jarring pain that was intense enough to make her eyes water shot up her left arm. She let out a yelp and collapsed back down to the ground.

After a minute or two of heavy breathing, Yang lifted her head as best she could to get a look at the left side of her body. Her arm was sticking out of her shoulder at an odd angle. It was very clearly dislocated. The good news was that Yang's aura would be able to heal her relatively quickly once it had recovered, but it wouldn't be able to do its job properly without the bones being reset first. Yang reached over with her right arm to do just that, only to find that it was nothing more than a stump.

Yang looked at her stump in mild confusion for a moment before she remembered that she'd used her prosthetic to save herself from her fall, and she was now halfway across the island from the useful bit of her right arm.

"Great…" Yang muttered. She laid her head back down on the ground with a weary sigh.

Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, exhaustion was taking hold of Yang. She really, really wanted to just close her eyes and pass out. But she couldn't. She needed to find her mechanical arm so she could fix her other arm so she wouldn't have to rebreak the thing to get it to heal properly.

A look of determination crossed Yang's face. She slowly raised herself up into a sitting position, hissing in pain all the while. Then, with a grunt of effort, she rose to her feet.

With one arm dangling uselessly and her other arm misplaced, Yang started trudging in what she dearly hoped was the right direction.

There wasn't any way for Yang to tell what time it was, but if she'd had to guess she would've said about an hour had passed between her landing on the island and now. She pushed through some undergrowth and finally emerged from the palm tree forest. She found herself looking at the island's beach from the ground for the first time. Had Yang been in a better mood, she might have described this mysterious place she'd landed on as a paradise. The weather was a little hot, but there was plenty of shade to go around thanks to the numerous trees. Most of the island was carpeted in soft, vibrant grass. The ocean was crystal clear. And there wasn't a cloud in the sky. There were even birds hidden away in the treetops singing happy songs that no one from Remnant had ever heard before. However, Yang was in no condition to take in the sights and sounds. The whole left side of her body was absolutely throbbing in pain, and blood had been dripping from her nose. She suspected her nose was broken, but without any good arms she hadn't been able to check.

Yang trudged out onto the beach. The urge to lie down and give up was weighing heavily on her now, but she wasn't willing to surrender just yet. She scanned the coastline, and to her great relief, she saw the glint of something yellow and metallic.

Yang shuffled over to the object she'd spotted. It was half-buried in the sand, but it was clearly her prosthetic. She'd been quietly fearing that it had ended up in the ocean despite her attempt to keep that from happening. It was about time a little luck came her way. Even better, the arm had landed socket-side-up.

Yang dropped heavily to her knees in front of her mechanical arm. She maneuvered her stump into position and shoved it into place. She gritted her teeth as she felt the intensely unpleasant tingling sensation that always accompanied reattaching her prosthetic, but the feeling quickly passed as it always did.

It took some effort, but Yang pulled her right arm out of the sand. She flexed her fingers a few times to make sure they were working. The joints felt a little stiff—she'd probably have to clean sand out of them later—but that wasn't her priority right now.

Yang looked over at her left shoulder with trepidation. She wasn't looking forward to what came next, but there was nothing for it. She sat down on the beach, took a firm grasp on her left arm, and gave it a twist.

There was a dull popping sound as Yang's shoulder bones slid back into their proper alignment. Yang let out a howl of pain. The loud noise startled nearby birds out of their treetop perches, and they took to the air in a disorganized flock.

Yang fell to the ground, sweating profusely and breathing heavily. She closed her eyes and finally accepted the sweet embrace of unconsciousness.

"Blake!" Yang shouted. Her eyes flew open, and she bolted up into a sitting position. "Ruby? Weiss?"

Yang looked around, confused and disoriented. It was nighttime, that much was clear, and she appeared to be lying on a beach.

Suddenly, memories came flooding back into Yang. She jumped to her feet. She could feel that her aura was back to full strength. She lifted her left arm, testing it. It was still sore, but it had otherwise healed. She touched her nose next. It was tender, but it clearly wasn't broken anymore. She had hardly come through her landing unscathed, but she was more or less put back together now. She shuttered to think about what she would've done in this situation if she hadn't had an aura to take care of her.

On a whim, Yang pulled out her scroll and flipped it open. "NO SIGNAL" was displayed prominently on the screen. Yang supposed she shouldn't have been surprised, but she was still disappointed. She glumly put the scroll back in her pocket.

Yang glanced up into the darkened sky. Away from the lights of civilization there were a breathtaking number of stars in the sky, although something about the view unsettled Yang. She didn't recognize any of the constellations, but that wasn't entirely unexpected. Astronomy had never been her strong suit, and for all she knew, she could have ended up in Remnant's southern hemisphere. No, Yang felt like there was something much more obvious that she was missing.

It finally hit Yang. There was no sign of Remnant's moon in the sky, or any moon for that matter. Yang's lips pressed together. A whole host of frightening possibilities of where she'd ended up marched through her head, but she pushed them aside. Now was not the time to panic. She needed to be smart if she was going to survive this.

Yang's first thought was that she should wait for rescue. Her teammates had the Staff of Creation after all. Surely they could use it to save her. However, it was obvious that at least several hours had passed since she'd fallen unconscious. Ruby, Blake, and Weiss's battle with Cinder and Neo would be long over by now. Yang wasn't willing to entertain the thought that they'd lost. However, she was willing to believe that they were having difficulty giving Ambrosius exact instructions on how to create some sort of device to rescue her. Who knew how long that might take.

The wind started to pick up, and a shiver passed through Yang. She wrapped her arms around herself. With the heat of the day gone, it had gotten surprisingly cold. Even if her teammates were coming to her rescue, and Yang knew they were, she realized she'd have to take care of herself in the meantime. It wasn't nearly as cold right now as it had been in Atlas, but Yang still didn't want to depend on her aura to keep her warm. For all she knew, she'd need it later.

Yang glanced over to the nearby palm trees. Outdoor survival had been a mandatory course at Signal Academy on Patch Island and again at Beacon. After all, huntsmen and huntresses frequently traveled through the wildernesses between kingdoms and settlements. It looked like Yang was about to put those lessons to the test.

About half an hour later, Yang had gathered up a pile of wood that she'd scavenged from the island's palm trees and bushes. She'd stacked it up into the shape of a campfire, complete with kindling ready to ignite. Yang was holding one of her special Red Dust shells from her ammunition pouch in her hand. She carefully peeled back the plastic crimp that held the shot in place. Then she pulled up a large, flat rock that she'd found and dumped out the contents of the shell. The metal shot rolled across the rock and fell onto the sandy beach, but Yang didn't care about that. What she did care about was the small pile of Red Dust that poured out of the shell afterward.

Yang gently pinched a bit of the Red Dust between her fingers and tossed it sharply at the firewood. But just like before when Yang had tried to fire Ember Celica, the Dust failed to do anything at all.

Yang sighed. There was only one reason she knew of why her Dust wouldn't be working. It was all but confirmed now. She wasn't on Remnant anymore. She hoped now more than ever that her teammates would be able to use the Staff to save her. It was very clear that she wouldn't be walking home.

Fortunately for Yang, she'd anticipated the unhappy possibility that she wouldn't be able to light a fire using Dust. She tossed the empty shell aside and picked up another pair of rocks that she'd found. These particular rocks looked similar to flint, and Yang was praying that they would behave similarly too. She held them close to the firewood and started clapping them together.

It took several tries, but soon a few sparks did start jumping off the rocks. Unfortunately for Yang, the kindling wasn't catching fire.

Many failed attempts later, and all Yang had to show for her effort was some sweat and no fire. She let out a frustrated sound and said, "I bet you'd know how to do this, Blake. You probably camped out on Menagerie's beaches all the time when you were a kid."

Despite herself, Yang's mind began to wander. She'd never considered it before, but how great would it have been if she'd been friends with Blake back when they'd both been kids? She pictured herself, Blake, and Ruby stalking through the woods of Patch together, pretending to be legendary huntresses who would defeat the Grimm forever. Then they'd all come home where Taiyang would have hot chocolate and marshmallows waiting for them.

A gust of cold air blew past Yang, bringing her back to reality. She chided herself for losing focus and started clapping her rocks together again. She was getting pretty good at making them spark now, and after several more minutes of effort, the kindling finally caught fire.

Yang set her rocks down. She'd apparently remembered her campfire building lessons well because the flames were already rapidly growing. She stared at them as they hungrily licked at the wood. The sight was mesmerizing, but it was also unnerving. The longer Yang stared, the more she saw the cities of Atlas and Mantle being ravaged by Salem and her Grimm.

Yang finally tore her eyes away from the fire, convinced that it wasn't going to go out. She lay down on the beach, staring up at the moonless, alien sky. Her teammates would save her, of this she was certain. But until then, wherever she was, whatever had happened to her, she would have to do her best to survive. And right now that meant getting some sleep.

"Goodnight, Ruby. Goodnight, Weiss," Yang said. Then with a pang of sorrow, she softly added, "Goodnight, Blake."

Author's Note: Since this story is basically my version of what could (but won't) happen in Volume 9, I was really worried that I wouldn't start getting it up in time before the new volume began and rendered it obsolete. And then…Volume 9 got delayed. I guess I accidentally wished on the Monkey's Paw. Sorry about that! I'll try to be more careful in the future. On the plus side, you now have a pseudo-Volume 9 to tide you over. That's a nice consolation prize, right? Maybe?

As always, I welcome constructive criticism. Please feel free to leave a review. And if you like what you've read, taking the time to favorite and/or follow really helps me out. You can also find me on tumblr (electronicyarn) if you want to send me a message or be notified of updates.