Another one!

Honestly, this is more of a break for me from constantly writing for Ascendancy. Think of me putting all of these ideas down as my way of starving burnout and getting back into the mood of writing.

So be grateful.

Anyways, let's go!

After the End

(Inspired by Halo: Infinite)

It is the end of an era.

Salem and the Grimm have been defeated, and they are all gone. The final battle has come and gone. Ozpin is now gone from the world, the kingdoms are free from Salem's tyranny...

And Jaune Arc wakes up in the heart of the Land of Darkness- The Dragon Continent- With no memory of what happened, how Salem was defeated, or the battle itself.

All he knew was that the final battle in their war against Salem was over, as was hers and the Grimm rule over Remnant, Ozpin was gone, life was growing all over the Grimmlands once more...

And his friends were missing.

Nora, Ren, Oscar, Ruby, Weiss, Blake, Yang, and all of the allies that they had gathered over their fight against Salem... All of them were missing, and he was left on his own to wander across the Grimmlands.

As he walked through the lands that Salem once controlled, he realised that all he remembered from their battle before Salem was them charging into the Grimmlands with the armies that they had assembled... And nothing else. Not their plan, not the battle itself, not how Salem was defeated... Nothing.

He was left on his own, to pick up the pieces, though the scattered wrecks and ruins of the airships and machines that scattered the Grimmlands from the battle before.

No corpses, though. Not even skeletons. That only added to the mystery, not helped at all by his finding of the four relics, all of them drained of their power, and now left as empty, hollow husks.

However, Jaune would find further problems arise in his path to discovering the truth by the arrival of a new faction into the former Grimmlands, being not a powerful empire or terrorist cell that he and his friends had fought against before, but a loose confederation of scavengers and pirates known as the Endless, whom had taken to setting up outposts across the entirety of the Grimmlands and sorting through the remains of the wrecks and ruins that covered the Grimmlands, much like they had reportedly been doing with ruins of Atlas, apparently.

Now forced to content with this ruthless organisation of scavengers and salvagers, whom had taken to attacking him on sight, Jaune Arc is forced into a corner, and must rely on himself and his own skills to battle against them on his own and without any kind of assistance from his allies, and forcing him to forge and create his own tools and weapons from the scraps and ruins that littered the Grimmlands as he tired to uncover the mysteries of who the Endless were, what happened to his friends, how the end of the war came to pass, and why he is the only one that was left.

Mystery would be the most important aspect of this story, as well as flashbacks, as Jaune would continuously receive disjointed and muddled flashes back to the past, revealing small bits of information regularly to him as he began to piece together the truth, whatever that might be, and helping to reveal what was happening across the rest of the world as well, as a strange new era for mankind would begin without the Grimm to impede them.

However, Jaune would eventually find help in his quest by a wounded Huntress known as May Zedong, an old opponent from the Vytal Festival, and a woman who had been recruited, along with so many others, to help in the final battle against Salem, and now acted as his only and closest ally and helper in discovering the truth of what happened to Salem, Ozpin, and his friends.

Only May Zedong isn't real.

She died in the Fall of Beacon.

This version of May is a hallucination, created-

She wasn't created by Jaune. Jaune thinks that she's real, and doesn't know of her death, and yet she wasn't created by Jaune.

She was created by something else- Someone else, and it is heavily implied that she knows so much more than she is letting on.

And yet, as the story continues on, it is revealed that she was created and implanted into Jaune's mind not by Salem, but by Team RWBY and their allies themselves, without Jaune knowing at all.

They wanted him to stay alive beyond anyone else, though why they chose him to live, why they implanted May into his mind, and why they chose May- An obscure fighter from all the way back from the Fall of Beacon- To be the template of this hallucinatory avatar within his mind, would be another of the greater mysteries of this story.

And yet, this illusion of May does not bring harm to Jaune. In fact, she does nothing but help him over the course of their adventures through the Grimmlands and against the Endless, as well as helping him through his guilt over being the only one left alive.

And here we find the other major theme of this story: Survivor's guilt. Jaune is the only one left behind from a battle that he couldn't even remember, and he is wracked with guilt and trauma over it, as he cannot even remember why he is the only one left alive.

It is through this guilt that Jaune and May must swim through in order to uncover the truth as to why Jaune was the only one left alive after the end of the war against Salem, as they work to discover what happened to Team RWBY and their allies, why they are all gone, how the battle ended...

And what happened after the end.

Yeah, this is going to be a serious mystery story, so if any of you like mystery, then please go nuts with this story.

Seriously, I'm just leaving these story ideas out for you guys, and none of you are taking them. What the heck.