Chapter One: Falling

A/N: This is my first fanfic. I will try to write it well, and have good grammar. Please review, I am going to be editing older chapters so if anyone is OOC please let me know. Canon-compliant through the end of Volume 8. Some shipping, but unless it is canon (so Arkos, Renora, and Blacksun/Bumblebee [the fun thing about time travel with two sets of people is that ships stop being mutually exclusive]) I will be picking my favorite ships and shoving it to the background because this is not a romance fic.

Disclaimer: RWBY belongs to Rooster Teeth.

Third-Person POV

Time and space are weird. There are many versions of events, so let's see what changed with this one?

Everything happened as normal, until we came to the gateways between Atlas, Mantle, and Vacuo. In this timeline, Blake was a few feet closer to the edge when Yang was thrown off of the platform.

Yang

I grabbed Gambol Shroud. Whew. A few feet further and I would be dead. I swung back up onto the platform, punching at Neo and missing. As usual. Penny flew over towards Cinder, and tried to fight her with Jaune and Weiss's help, while Blake and Ruby started fighting Neo with me.

Weiss

We had been fighting for a while. I was getting tired, and then Cinder charged. She rocketed towards me faster than I could react and grabbed the staff, blasting me with fire. My aura dropped by a large amount.
"Weiss!" Ruby yelled.

Neo took the distraction to grab the lamp from Ruby's belt and then started running, hiding behind her stupid illusions. She raced to an entrance portal and jumped through. Cinder, however, had other ideas. She flew over to Penny and launched her grimm arm, to try and siphon the power of the Winter Maiden.

Jaune

I stood over Penny's body, Crocea Mors in my hand. (A/N I am skipping over part because I don't want to Play-by-Play what's basically the cannon fight but with more gunshots being dodged by Cinder.) Cinder showed up and started attacking me.

"What did you do?!" She screamed.

"I gave her a choice."

Cinder did not take this well, and tried to break Crocea Mors. I blocked her strike with my shield, activating the pulse to slow her attack. Then Winter (!) came flying out of a portal using maiden powers, slamming into Winter with her saber covered in ice. So that's who Penny gave the power to. Cinder brawled with Winter for a bit, and then Ruby managed to snipe Cinder. She tried again, but Cinder unleashed a fire blast. She tried to go for Winter with her Grimm arm, but then a shriek echoed throughout the space. It was shrill, inhuman, and too loud. I held my hands over my ears until it stopped. Cinder paled at the sound, grimaced, and flew through an entrance portal. Almost immediately, the bridges started collapsing. Oh no.

Ruby

Winter started flying towards the entrance. I activated my Semblance and gathered the group. Ever since Penny explained how my Semblance worked, it had gotten easier to bring lots of people. I raced towards the portal, moving faster than the bridge disintegrated. I felt that it wouldn't be fast enough, so I pushed my Semblance to its limits. Then I felt for a moment like I had hit a wall, a wall made of light.

Then the wall broke, and I slipped into oblivion.

Blake

The party was winding down. Good.

Sun was a surprisingly good dancer, all things considered. I noticed Ruby disappeared earlier in the night - where did she go? - and Wiess was dancing with Neptune. I wonder what made him decide to dance with her, after she came alone. Probably a pep talk from Sun or someone. I had read a few romance novels with similar plots, after all. Team JNPR had finished their elaborate dance routine, and had moved off to dance as couples. Yang was looking over the dance and smiling. Then it happened. The sky outside turned red, and I heard a loud noise that sounded like a cross between a thunderclap and a gunshot. Then a vibrant red projectile that almost looked like Ruby's semblance streaked out of the sky and rushed past the windows. I ran to the open building doors, where a crowd had started to gather. I heard gasps and someone shouting to Ozpin, and after pushing my way past the group I saw them. Five figures, in a crater strewn with rose petals.

The first to stand was wearing a white coat, and she looked like… I gasped. She looked like an older version of me. Her - my? - our? - hair was shorter, and she wore what looked like a black jumpsuit with zippers and a weird belt, and no bow. Oh no. My secret was about to be revealed, and there was nothing I could do about it. She looked around, dazed.

Sun had followed me. He looked at the group, and asked, "Is that your sister or something?"

"No," I responded slowly. "I think that's me from the future."

The others began to stand up as well. One looked like Weiss, but with a blue outfit, more elaborate hair, and of course looking older. Then there was - okay might as well start thinking of like this now - Future Yang, who had an odd outfit that looked like a fur coat and modified brown overalls, and she still had a metal arm. Why did she have a metal arm? She also looked prettier (dammit Blake, focus!). Future Ruby is wearing what looks like a mixture of a gray shirt, her hood, and the dress she wore to the dance. She was also still unconscious. Future Jaune was wearing what looked like his normal armor with modifications, and also was apparently taller. And buffer. He also had a kind-of-stupid-looking haircut. Seriously, he looks like he's wearing bananas on his head!

By this point, most of the dancers had joined the crowd at the door. I could see Team JNPR and Yang from where I stood, and then I saw Ruby rush out of the CCT tower with Ironwood. Why are they there? If they are from the future, where are Pyrrha, Ren, and Nora? How did they get back?

V8! Jaune

I stood up. Where were we? My head hurt, and we were standing in a crater. I looked around, and saw… Beacon? How? I saw that Blake had already stood up. She was looking around panicked, her ears flat against her head.

"What happened?" She said, sounding scared.

"I think we might have time travelled," I said.

"This - this can't be happening." She said.

"But it is. Somehow." I replied.

The others woke up.
Yang immediately started hitting things.

"Yang, what are you doing?" Weiss yelled.

"This is one of Neo's illusions. We just have to get out."

I was looking around at the area. It was night, and there was a large cluster of people. I looked around in the crowd.

The first person I noticed was Weiss. She was wearing the dress that she wore to the dance, and looked confused. Had we travelled back in time? Was this the night of the dance? My theory got some credence when I saw Blake, wearing her dance outfit. Then I looked a few people down, and my heart skipped a beat.

Pyrrha. I felt a surge of happiness and sadness, guilt and too many other things. Her. Alive again. Memories flashed by, of the kiss at the tower. Before she died.

Then I looked to the person on her left, and sighed.

"No, this is real." I said.

"How can you be sure?" Asked Yang and Weiss.

I pointed. "Because I don't think Neo ever saw me in a dress".

A/N So, what do you think? I wrote it this way so that instead of Team RWBY hiding from everyone, they show up with lots of witnesses and can reveal some stuff. New chapter next week.