Yo! Welcome to chapter 2 of this!

Still not fully confident on update schedule. Probably tri-weekly atm? So once every three weeks? Might be more or less often, but we'll see!

In other news, I am hopelessly addicted to Metaphor Refantazio. Like, holy shit, it's so good.

Start Chapter 2

Winter was many things, but one to dwell on things outside of her control was not one of them.

Jaune took issue with that.

"What do you mean we traveled backwards in time!?"

Winter didn't look at him as she responded. "I mean that the clouds in the sky moved against the wind. The sun traveled backwards. Both of those data points indicate that time went backwards, not forwards."

"Okay, can you be a bit more specific on how far we're back, then!?"

"Do you think I have the slightest idea as to the specifics of such!?" Winter fired back as they made their way deeper into whatever weird-ass world they'd ended up in. "Do you honestly believe I have any idea what's going on around us!?"

"That…" He sighed. "No."

"Correct." Winter bit out between clenched teeth, looking up at the sky with a furrowed brow. "Wherever we are, it doesn't seem like things obey the same laws that they did back on Remnant. A tree growing clocks that can reverse time is…"

"A bit weird?"

"The phrase 'a bit' is pulling a rather large amount of weight there."

Jaune grunted out an acknowledgement of that. "What do we do?"

Winter considered that for quite a while. He had a feeling she didn't actually know, but didn't want to present a weak front. She was, after all, a Specialist, and someone to whom other soldiers looked to for guidance.

Now it was Jaune doing just that.

"We'll continue on with our original plan." Winter spoke, turning back to him to see if he'd agree to that. "Make our way deeper into the jungle and see if we can't get some idea as to where we are."

Jaune wasn't opposed to that, even if he was, admittedly, a bit less willing to throw himself into a jungle that seemed to randomly have the ability to reverse time.

Still, in terms of options, they had but a scarce few. It was that, or go back to the beach, and risk starving to death if they couldn't catch enough fish.

And hell, that was assuming the fish they did catch were edible. Given they were in some strange, foreign land, they very well might not have been.

But then, the wood they'd burned so far behaved like normal wood, and the fire they'd created had behaved like normal fire.

Maybe some things were the same, even… well, wherever it was they were.

In the end, they continued, irrespective of the fact that they'd been temporally displaced.

They didn't end up making it very far. As much as both of them wanted to make progress, night had fallen, and their visibility had fallen with it. Winter was the one to ultimately call it after nearly tripping over a stray root. She ground the two of them to a halt.

"We're not making any real progress anymore." She sighed out, clearly as agitated as Jaune was with the situation. "Let's make camp. We can continue moving in the morning."

So, they did, although calling what they set up a 'camp' was probably giving it more credit than it was due.

They arranged a set of fallen logs to form chairs, and then a few more to form a firepit. Again, Winter lit them aflame, hoping that the smoke kicked up would attract anyone else that might be present here in this… well, wherever they were.

Sheer exhaustion overwhelmed him. Where before his own thoughts had haunted him too badly for him to sleep, his body didn't give him the option this time. He didn't get nearly as much of it as he probably needed, but then, when he awoke, he was pale, cold, and sweating.

He'd been having a nightmare, apparently.

Winter was looking down at him with concern, seemingly studying him.

"Are you alright?"

"I…" He shook his head. "Honestly, I don't even remember what I was dreaming about."

Despite saying that, he had a pretty good idea.

The sound of the blade piercing through her flesh, the feeling of her skin and muscles and organs resisting his blade, and gods, but the smell of iron and death, and–

"Arc."

He snapped from out of his own head to see Winter looking over at him.

"Are you okay?"

He took a shaking breath, but nodded his head up and down. "I'll live."

Winter watched him for a bit after that before sighing, and eventually speaking.

"I need to sleep as well." She spoke in a way that suggested she didn't really want to, but that she knew her body would be putting up quite a fit if she didn't. "Are you in a state that you can watch the camp?"

"Yeah." He spoke, and he hoped for the both of their sakes that it was the truth.

"Alright." Winter spoke, laying down on the leafy ground and running a hand through her hair exasperatedly. "At least there don't seem to be nearly as many insects here as on remnant. I can sleep a touch more soundly."

"I wouldn't have thought a soldier would worry about that." He said without thinking.

The moment he did think about it, he realized that he wasn't quite sure why he'd said it at all. It was a rather rude thing to imply; that Winter wasn't being a very good soldier by being worried about bugs.

And yet, Winter seemed to seriously consider what he'd said, and had an honest answer. "Tropical climates like these ones play host to some of the more deadly insects in all of Remnant. Many can be incredibly venomous. Even the less venomous ones that give you rashes might still impede your ability to act as you normally should. And if one were to give either of us dietary problems, we would lose far more water than we could reasonably take in without a source. We cannot afford such a thing."

When Winter put it like that, he felt a little stupid for bringing it up in the first place. It…

He was just in a mood, he supposed. He'd been separated from everyone he'd ever cared about, slept for around three hours in the span of forty-eight, and he'd also apparently been transported back an unknown length of time.

He was, rather understandably, a bit irritable, and prone to jabbing comments.

He was glad that Winter hadn't risen to it. They needed to be acting as a cohesive unit. That had been something that Clover had drilled into them over and over again. If they were ever separated from the group on an exercise in the Solitas wilderness, they were to stick close to anyone else they had around them, and work in tandem with one another. They were pointedly not supposed to fracture over petty things.

And he was definitely acting petty…

He needed to not be if they wanted to make it.

"Right, then what's our–"

The sound of snoring interrupted him, and when he looked to its source, he found it was Winter.

She was already fast asleep.

"Hah…" Jaune breathed out a laugh.

"Guess I'll save that question for later, then."

/

By the time Winter awoke, the sun – or, well, Jaune thought it was the sun – was starting to crest over the lip of the horizon.

She'd slept just four hours, about as long as Jaune guessed he had. He'd had nothing better to do than track the time on his scroll. He wanted to see if there was anything odd about when the light rose in the sky in this world.

Unfortunately, he'd learned nothing new. Around when his scroll had said the sun would rise in Atlas, it had here as well. That led him to questioning whether or not this place was linked more closely to Atlas, but then…

Well, he gave up trying to rationalize his environment when a bird shaped like a music note landed on a branch nearby, gave a single squawk – which, sort of expectedly, sounded just like its corresponding note – and then flew off.

Yes, it seemed logic did not apply to this place at all.

"Did I miss anything?" Winter asked him as she sat up, and did a series of stretches.

"Other than a music-note-shaped bird? No."

Winter didn't ask as to the specifics of the bird he'd seen, perhaps assuming that if he'd thought it important, he'd have said something.

"What do we do, then?" Jaune asked.

"Find food and water." Winter spoke. "That takes precedence."

"I think some of the trees we've passed had fruits on them."

"And there are quite a few fruits among Remnant that are poisonous. It's the same thing with the venomous insects; even if they were only lightly so, if something upset out stomachs, we might end up losing more fluids than we take in. We cannot afford such a gamble at the moment."

He couldn't argue against that. "So…?"

"We find something that we know isn't poisonous," Winter spoke, "Such as flowing water, or something that we can confirm the contents of, perhaps a meaty animal."

"And how do we know the water here isn't naturally poisonous?"

"We don't."

"Great." He groaned out.

The majority of that day was spent traveling. They stopped on very brief occasions, and usually only to rest their legs for a few minutes. Winter stressed the importance of not pushing themselves too terribly hard. In a situation like this one, they wanted to use as little energy as possible until they had a method of reliably restoring it.

Jaune was actually learning quite a bit about survival tactics. Clover had taught them from time to time when he had the time, but he often hadn't, being the leader of the Ace-Ops whilst trying to prepare for a potential Grimm invasion and all. Even when he'd been able to squeeze them in, his lessons had usually been very generalist in terms of scope.

Winter's lessons were much more pointed.

"We're looking for areas of low elevation, surrounded by areas of high elevation." She explained to him as they pushed through the dense jungle. "Gravity dictates that water is likely to travel from high to low. If we're lucky, we'll find somewhere like a waterfall that we can perpetually take water from. At worst, we can make an attempt to at the very least locate a stagnant pool, which, utilizing the Winter Maiden's fire, we can boil and filter."

"Why didn't we just do that with seawater?"

"Because boiling water should be our last resort, not our plan A." Winter explained. "It's a rather inefficient process, energy wise. I'm not positive, but I don't believe the Maiden's magic comes from nowhere. I think it pulls from some part of me. We're much better off walking a while, and hoping we come across a natural stream."

It took them till around midday, but just at Winter had said they might, they ended up locating a source of fresh water.

It wasn't a particularly impressive stream; honestly, it was little more than a small crick. But the water looked relatively clean, and more importantly, it was moving.

Interestingly enough, there were also a variety of creatures that looked vaguely like crawfish toiling around in the soil beneath the water. They were slightly hard to describe, in that they were neon pink in color, and didn't at all blend in to their surroundings, but then, Jaune supposed logic didn't really apply in a place like this.

Winter managed to spear a few of them on the end of her saber, and cook them with help from the maiden's fire to make them safe to eat.

It was far from a filling meal, but it was enough for Jaune's stomach to stop complaining in his general direction. It was funny that the largely flavorless meat of the crawfish-like creatures, alongside some lukewarm water, made for one of the best meals he'd ever had in his life.

But then, Jaune didn't think he'd ever been truly hungry before. Now that he was, now that he knew what it was like to go days without eating…

Well, it tracked, he supposed, that he'd eat any food he could get.

It was as they were finishing their impromptu meal that Jaune noticed an irregularity in the sky above them. His eyes widened, and he nearly dropped the last crawfish – okay, it wasn't a crawfish, but Jaune was going to call it a crawfish for his own mental health – as he drew Winter's attention to it as well.

Because…

There were stars falling from the sky.

And that…

It was coming back to him, now. The darkness as they'd fallen; but more than that, the colors flowing all around them as they'd appeared in the sky above the beach. It hadn't been their auras to protect them. It had been… well, whatever phenomenon that was.

And it was a phenomenon that looked rather strikingly similar to this.

He turned to Winter; his eyes wide.

"Do you think it could be–"

"I had the same thought." Winter pushed out through gritted teeth. "I remember something similar now, but… but we've located a source of food and water. We should, by all logic, stay here, light a fire, and make ourselves easy to find."

Jaune heard her. He really did.

Just…

"So, are we–"

He had barely managed to squeeze the words out before Winter vaulted off the log she'd been sat on, and gestured for him to follow.

"Come. We'll make our way there quickly, but without wasting too much energy."

Jaune appreciated the sentiment behind what winter was saying, but it was clear that both of them were far too excited to be worried about proper energy usage. They'd both broken out into a full sprint just a minute or so after Winter had said that.

"The beach is still probably an hour from here!" Jaune called out to Winter, realizing that trying to run the whole way was pointless. "You were right, we should conserve our energy!"

Winter seemed to honestly consider that for a moment, the validity of what he was saying.

Then, she turned around, looked him in the eye, and said, "I can fly us."

And Jaune just sort of sighed and gave up.

/

Being bridal carried over a jungle by his old crush's elder sister was something of an experience. It also wasn't something that Jaune was going to be thinking all that much about once it was over if his dignity had any say in the matter.

Unfortunately, his dignity very rarely did have a say in the matter. He'd grown up around seven sisters. That was just kind of how life had always been for Jaune Arc.

"It should only be around fifteen minutes." Winter spoke as they rocketed over the jungles it had taken them nearly a full day to traverse. But then, they'd been walking, and taking frequent breaks. It wasn't a terribly long journey like this.

"Are you sure you can carry me that long?"

"I can bench press your weight."

"I mean, sure, but can you carry my weight in an awkward position for fifteen minutes while trying to use a magic that's basically brand new to you?"

Winter didn't respond, and Jaune thought that was his first win in one of their brief verbal spats.

His reward was shifting slightly so that he was awkwardly holding on to Winter, taking away the need for her to have to support his weight so much. It wasn't like she didn't still have to haul the both of them along, of course, but it freed up her arms to spew fire from as well, and course correct if things went wrong.

The shooting stars looked like they were due to touch down soon. They'd appeared in the sky and hanged there for quite some time before beginning to sink. Jaune was almost tempted to think that the world was waiting for them, as ridiculous as it sounded.

Then again, would that even be that weird compared to half the stuff they'd seen so far?

Around the same time that Jaune and Winter finally touched down – or, well, hit the sand rather hard, and spun out onto it, being protected solely by their auras – the stars struck the water just beyond the coast.

The ocean sprayed water high into the air, the counterforce of whatever had impacted against it.

Jaune's eyes widened.

"Did that happen to us!?"

"I don't know," Winter clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, as she pushed herself up, wincing somewhat. She seemed to be feeling that rough landing. "But we're not just going to sit here. Let's go, we'll bail them out."

He nodded, unlatched the heaviest pieces of his armor, and then threw himself into the sea.

It was warm, which was good. He hadn't even considered the fact that it could have been completely freezing, given that this world didn't seem to have any sorts of pattern to its weather. Plus, given they'd been thrown back in time, they very well could've been placed back far enough that the seasons had changed, and it was this world's version of winter.

Speaking of Winter, the person, she was somehow a better swimmer than he was despite growing up in a Kingdom where the closest body of water was several hundred kilometers away, and even when one made it to it, it was freezing.

Jaune tried not to worry too much about that, to varying degrees of success.

He actually was a strong swimmer, despite the fact that Winter was showing him up a bit. He managed to make it to where one of the falling stars had crashed down without much difficulty.

And what he found there was…

A young girl, with dark skin and black hair.

Pointedly, she was no one that Jaune had ever seen before in his life.

It was… it was a difficult thing to stomach; that what they'd been hoping to find was most certainly not here. That this wasn't their friends crashing down into their realm.

Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang…

They weren't here.

This was just… someone.

Idly, Jaune thought that he didn't recognize this girl from any of the refugees he'd encountered whilst escorting people off of Atlas, either. Her clothing was a bit old-fashioned, in Jaune's opinion, what with a pure cotton dress shirt and a colorful skirt, adorned with a somewhat outdated pattern stitched into it.

But he could worry about such things later. For now, he threw the girl over his shoulder, and paddled back to shore. It was a surprisingly taxing exercise, and Jaune was suddenly aware of just how accurate some of his parents' warnings had been about trying to rescue those who were flailing about in the water. Even without the girl panicking, or putting up any resistance at all, just having added weight was making treading water difficult.

Still, he wasn't a Huntsman for nothing. He made it back to shore, and to his ego's delight, even faster than Winter made it back with her own person in tow. He, like the girl Jaune had brought back in, wasn't anyone they knew, either.

Or, well…

"You don't know these two, do you?" He asked Winter.

"I…" Winter shook her head, sighing out in disappointment. "No. I don't."

He nodded his head, allowing the adrenaline of the entire affair to begin wearing off as he fell back onto the sand behind him, and then laid himself down in it entirely. The sun was still up, and would likely be so for another few hours.

He could let it dry him.

Winter seemed to have much the same idea, albeit she was not nearly so patient. She'd walked over, taken up Crocea Mors' broken blade, and gone off to chop firewood.

They'd set up a temporary camp within a few minutes time. It helped that Jaune had gone through this process twice now, and so he was actually able to aid Winter in it much more readily.

It wasn't much, but he set up the fire while she worked on gathering more wood for it.

"What do we do?" He asked her, gesturing towards the two kids, who were laid on their sides, entirely unconscious. They were lucky they were alive at all, in all honesty, given they'd crashed straight into the ocean.

Perhaps this world would've kept them alive and allowed them to wash up onto shore, just as Jaune and Winter had.

"For now, we wait for them to awaken." Winter spoke, but the earlier fervor in her voice had gone. "After they have, we'll make our way back towards the water source we found earlier in the day. We'll set up a more permanent camp in and around that area."

He nodded his head.

It was an awkward atmosphere that took over the two of them after that. They'd had their hopes crushed, and it showed on their faces. They stared down into the fire without much energy, feeling naught but an emptiness inside themselves.

And then, of course, the two children snapped awake almost simultaneously.

It was a violent thing; the both of them shouted out as they awoke from, presumably, some kind of nightmare. Winter reacted far more cautiously than he did, drawing her saber and taking a step away from the two of them.

Jaune, on the other hand, knelt down beside the girl he'd rescued; wanting to be there to reassure her that things were alright.

"W-What–" She retched, likely some of the water she'd taken in earlier. "Where am I!? Who… who are you!?"

"One step at a time," he told her, trying to keep his voice even. "You're safe."

"Wait– Lewis! Where's Lewis!?"

"Is this him?" Jaune asked, hoping that the boy who'd just awoken was who she was referring to.

Luckily, she let out an aching sigh of relief, and nodded her head. "Lewis…"

"Alyx." The boy was clearly just as relieved. "I was… I was worried, after…"

"Don't say anything else," Alyx cautioned him, looking back to the two of them. "Just…"

The two of them were hiding something, but then, Jaune had known them for all of thirty seconds, so he supposed them being somewhat cautious of him was fair.

"You are Alyx, and you are Lewis, then?" Winter suddenly cut in, stepping forward as she sheathed her weapon, and nodding to each of the children.

"Uhm, yeah." The girl, Alyx, answered for the both of them. "Who are you?"

"My name is Jaune Arc." Jaune took this one. "This is Winter Schnee." He was surprised by the fact that neither of the two children reacted to Winter's name. "Do you have any idea where we are?"

"You don't know?" Alyx's brow was furrowed.

"I'm afraid we ended up here under circumstances outside of our control." Jaune told them, and he watched as the two – siblings, perhaps? – met one another's gaze. Alyx gave a subtle shake of her head. Jaune decided not to call them on it. That could wait for later.

And yet…

There was something that Jaune couldn't quite shake. A piece of knowledge hanging at the back of his mind, something he'd all but forgotten about.

A story from when he was just a child.

The story of 'The Girl Who Fell Through the World'.

The story of a young girl named Alyx, and her journey throughout a mysterious, odd, and seemingly magical land.

A land called the Ever After.

End Chapter 2

Alright, that was Chapter 2.

Not a ton to say tbh. The meat of this story is only really just beginning. Hope you guys will look forward to more!

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