Jaune thumped sand, landing so hard his aura popped.
His pocket rumbled. A soft, robotic voice announced, "Warning. Aura shock. Please refrain from strenuous-" He slapped his scroll, acknowledging and ignoring the training program.
He had to get up. He had to keep moving. He'd always been the weakest link, and that meant The Team was depending on him to not break. He had to prove that he belonged among Huntsmen, that he wasn't just a lucky cheater with a sad story.
He found his feet, and felt the tingle crossing his skin, shield reforming. It pressurized, and his ears bubbled. He stretched his jaw, trying to fix the pressure.
And then he stopped to contemplate the desert.
The nearest landmark was a woman with blue hair, staring at him. Just beyond her, a big disco ball ate everything. He stared at it, not comprehending.
The woman stared at him, just as dumbly.
The desert poured into the disco ball, like water down a drain. The horizon was moving towards him. When it reached the woman, terror and impetus shoved him into action.
"Hey! HEY! YOU HAVE TO MOVE!"
He charged, sheathing Crocea Mors and sprinting thoughtlessly into the danger. He grabbed the stranger around her waist, hefted her into a fireman carry, and turned to run.
Eternity nipped at his heel, and a piece of his shoe crossed that threshold forever.
The sand slipped from under him, and he leaped away, aura burning through his legs and granting superhuman strength.
He didn't want to die.
The desert was vanishing behind him. And around him, strange eddies of light warped until it seemed other places were overlapping here. Cities. Islands. Streets at midnight. Farms. Living rooms. Pure Darkness. Yellow eyes blinking to life and turning his way.
"What are you doing?" The woman on his shoulders hit him. "Stop running!"
He stopped. "I don't know! How do we get out of here?"
He turned on a heel, looking for something familiar. These orbs were other places, and he REALLY wanted to be somewhere else. He was willing to grasp at intuition.
The Woman wiped her eyes clean, looked at a place, then another. "Do you recognize any of these?"
She looked behind them. Jaune followed. The sand-slide was catching up.
"Nevermind, keep running!" she shouted.
He did. And a place caught his eye.
A trail on a hill. Rocks stacked atop each other. On the highest, a child had carved the Emblem of Vale.
He saw it in color. Not dim and dreary like the muted world around him, but real and stimulating. Beyond that mirror-thin barrier, the trees swayed in wind.
Jaune leaped, and passed into Remnant.
They landed rough, skidding on patchy grass. Jaune ate dirt, and Aqua sprawled out like a snow angel, facing the sky. The door to darkness closed behind them, entropy zipping it shut.
And for a long time, they panted, and listened to a calm breeze blowing in the trees.
Aqua felt her heart beat. She saw a blue sky, bright with daylight, and squinted her eyes shut. And when oxygen stung her lungs, she understood that she was free. That this was real.
She smiled and breathed deeply. Dirt. Grass. Oak.
She couldn't hold it. Her air burst as laughter.
Jaune groaned and pushed up from the ground. "You okay?"
Aqua held a thumb up.
Jaune nodded, took off his shoe, and dumped sand from it.
Aqua sat up and shook grains from her hair. She rolled her bare shoulders, stretching her muscles for the first time in… King Mickey had said ten years. But how long ago was that?
A banner waved beside her, pinned atop a small rock shrine at the cliff's edge. A gentle breeze made it display to the world below.
The banner's emblem: two axe-blades crossed, olive branches behind.
This symbol had stood out to her rescuer.
She looked at him. In the darkness, she'd seen Ventus. In the light, she saw a different blonde kid with spiky hair. She rubbed her eyes, shielding them from sunlight, then blinked at him.
"Jaune," he said.
"Huh?"
"Is my name."
"Oh." She nodded. "Aqua."
"A what?"
"Aqua. Is my name."
"Oh. Right."
Jaune lifted his other shoe to empty it.
Aqua tilted her head and read "Left," written under the sole.
She raised an eyebrow. "Get 'em mixed up?"
Jaune looked at his shoe, then blushed. "Oh. Uh. No. Not anymore. Hey, you didn't happen to see anybody else, did you? In that… Place?"
He gestured where the portal used to be. Then, remembering himself, did a hopping spin on one leg, to take in his surroundings. Looking ridiculous. He put his shoe back on.
Aqua shook her head. "Sorry. And you're not the only person looking for your friends."
"Okay. Well, we got separated, so…" he took another look at his surroundings. "Oh. I know where Shion is from here."
"One of your friends?"
Jaune pointed. "It's a settlement down this hiking trail. What city you from?"
Aqua stood. Dizziness caught her. Jaune offered a hand for stability, but she refused. There was a lot going on to deal with. She didn't feel like breaking bad news about his friends, that separated was an understatement.
She breathed, enjoyed the sensation.
Then her stomach growled, empty, and she did not enjoy the sensation.
"Hungry?" Jaune reached over his shoulder and waved his hand around behind his back. "I've got some jerky strips in my… My, uh…"
He looked over his shoulder. "Oh, great. Lost my pack."
His stomach rumbled.
"Well then," Aqua giggled. "Nice to meet you, Jaune. Let's go find food."
He led them down the hill, forest canopy as their vista.
Aqua gathered her thoughts- her feelings. A moment ago, she'd been ready to die. Now she felt like she'd missed the train; A little embarrassed that she couldn't die properly- that she'd given up- that she'd been caught in the act.
She was better than this.
She brushed a tear from her cheek and looked ahead. Jaune was alert, head on a swivel, walking tall. This boy was a new friend from a new world. So it was time to pick his brain.
Hi? They'd already covered that.
Who are you? Jaune.
Sorry about your friends, they're probably dead? Bad topic.
The trail reached the hill's bottom, and levelled out into forest.
Aqua finally asked, "Did you pick a world at random?"
Jaune gave her a glance, then kept alert as he talked. "Did I what?"
"When we were on Tatooine. You jumped into a portal to here. Do you know what world this is?"
He looked at her like she was an idiot. "Remnant. Where else would we be?"
"Tatooine," she didn't say.
Some people didn't' want to know about the big universe. She didn't have the enthusiasm to explain it.
"Almost Winter," Jaune noted. "Fall was kinda rough. Hey, what city are you from?"
He glanced her up and down, and gestured to her leotard. "Not Atlas, I'm guessing."
Aqua folded her arms across her chest. "How should I take that?"
"Well… It's cold there."
The trail ended abruptly, overgrown by brush. Jaune stopped and stared at it. "Uh oh."
He crouched, and noted with a gesture the trodden dirt beneath the flora. "Huh. Recent. I guess we're hacking through."
He looked up at Aqua, then paused and stared.
She asked, "What?"
"You gotta keep a lookout, you know. We don't want anything to catch us off guard out here."
"Anything like what?"
She turned to check their surroundings, and caught motion behind them. A pool of shadow slithered to the middle of the road. Two eyes blinked to life, then twenty more, and their owners climbed into three dimensions.
Jaune drew his sword. "Grimm!"
"Heartless!"
Jaune put himself in front of Aqua. "Get behind me. I'm a Huntsman!"
Aqua summoned her keyblade and charged. "You get behind me! I've got a keyblade!"
"A what? Oh, I guess that's what I'd call that."
The monsters were still forming, first claws extending from their bodies. Novashadows, with red emblems across their chests. Aqua surged and swiped three with a singular blow. Jaune shouted a warcry and charged into ten more, absorbing hits with shield and armor.
Aqua danced with three and found them lacking. Three strikes, three kills. She glanced to Jaune.
He had one climbing on his back. He pulled it off and used it as a club, forgetting the sword in his hand.
She remembered a time that Terra fought that way. Before he got good.
At the battle's end, Aqua cringed and watched Jaune shield-bash the last monster to death. For a swordsman, he lacked even the basic concepts of elegance.
Jaune stood and panted, then flashed a smile at Aqua. "Wow. Those were young ones. Real young. Didn't even have bones."
He walked to the brush, and began chopping their way through. "You coming?"
Aqua nodded. She glanced across the forest first, checking for more. Jaune's words tumbled through her mind. Bones. Bones?
She stepped into the brush and followed him. "Heartless don't grow bones for years."
"Huh? Yeah, well Grimm don't die of old age. Some have been around for hundreds of years. And those are just the ones we know about."
Chop.
Aqua raised an eyebrow. "You study them?"
Chop. Jaune puffed out his chest. "Oh, they teach you that kind of thing at Huntsman Academies. I'm a student at Beacon." Chop. He deflated a little. "Was. I was a student at Beacon. On my way to Haven, now." Chop. "In Mistral." Chop.
Aqua shrugged. The names didn't mean anything to her. She dispelled her Keyblade.
Jaune saw the shimmering, and stopped to admire the weapon as it vanished. "Whoa. High tech."
"Magic," she corrected.
"Right. Okay." He rolled his eyes. Chop.
Aqua noted a scratch on her elbow. When she'd slid on the dirt. She mumbled, "Cure," and watched her skin seal.
"Huh?" Jaune asked.
"Nothing."
He shrugged. Chop.
Aqua's mind caught up with a problem. "Grimm… Have been a problem for… Hundreds of years?"
Jaune stopped and turned to her. "Are you serious right now? You didn't know that?"
She had to tell him eventually, about other worlds- That she was a long way from home. She asked, "How long have Grimm been around?"
"Since… Forever?" Jaune turned back to his task. Chop.
Aqua held her chin and thought. Heartless weren't very common outside of The End. Weren't supposed to be. Not until recently. The emblems on the Novashadows… They were artificial. But the emblems were all identical, not hand made by some alchemist in a shed. Was someone mass producing Heartless?
She asked, "And, Jaune, you've never seen a Keyblade before?"
Chop. "No. I mean, it looks cool." Chop. "Everybody's got a unique weapon, right?"
Aqua looked at Jaune's short-sword.
"Except me," Jaune sighed.
Aqua blurted, "How do you survive?!"
Jaune stopped chopping. But he didn't face her. His tone dropped. "I guess you're not from Vale," he said. "How do we survive? We fight."
CHOP.
"We fight, and we never stop fighting."
Aqua swallowed. She wiped sweat from her brow. It was chilly here, but not too chilly to sweat on a hike. Jaune was strange, she still believed. But not everyone could swing a sword when the time came.
"I can't wait to meet the locals," she answered.
Beyond the brush, someone asked, "What was that? Contact! CONTACT!"
Jaune cupped his hands. "Human! We're HUMAN!"
"Come out!"
Jaune surged through the brush. Aqua followed.
They'd found Shion.
The settlement smoked. Fires had long since run their course.
Three men with rifles waited for them. None wore uniforms.
Jaune sheathed his sword and gripped his head. "Oh, no. What happened here?"
One of the men-at-arms gestured into the forest. "I don't know. Random people keep wandering out of the woods. And every time they do, we get another wave of Grimm. We already had a whole tribe of bandits yesterday. Then the swarm. Now these stragglers. That was our only Huntsman."
He pointed, to a Huntsman propped against a ruined wall. Ragged breathing. A medic kept pressure on his chest wound. Despite this, blood poured down him into the dirt.
The medic, "Do we have anymore gauze?!"
Jaune pointed at the huntsman. "Hey. You're Ruby's Uncle!"
The huntsman, pale and weak, shook his head. "Not for long," he smirked.
Jaune ran to his side. Aqua followed.
"Oh, this is bad," Jaune strained.
The pain on his face was too familiar for Aqua. She wished someone stronger had come to save her friends.
Jaune didn't believe in Magic. Likely, no one here did. And maybe using it would get her almost burned at the stake again.
The medic hit Jaune. "Gauze! Coagulant! Do you have any?!"
"I lost my pack. It's- No. Mister Branwen, you're gonna be okay, right?"
"Not if we can't stop this bleeding!"
"This is nothin'-" Branwen mumbled. "At least I'm not this guy."
He gestured down the wall, where the second-to-last huntsman sat dead, staring blankly at his boots. If Aqua didn't act, Qrow would soon join him. The wound gushed, even under pressure.
Jaune grabbed Branwen's lapels. "You can't die! Ruby's about to get here with-"
Aqua reached out her hand and intoned, "Curaga."
Emerald energies wrapped his wounds and wiped away his blood. Bones regrew, sinew spun, muscles and skin knit into place. The medic removed his hands- looked awestruck at a man remade.
And Branwen breathed easily. He looked down and poked his healed chest. "Huh," he grunted.
Everyone turned to Aqua, and gaped.