Looking Through Jaune Arc's Multiverse

A Generic Beginning Pt. 1

"He's not."

"How do you know?!" Nora had lost Pyrrha at the Fall of Beacon. Atlas had quickly grown to be a worse and worse tragedy than that.

"Ms. Valker-... Nora... I saw him fall..."

That got Nora to quiet down.

"... He was running toward the portal... The path beneath him disappeared..."

Nora shook her head, "No," her voice was soft, and beginning to break.

"...I'm sorry..."

Nora fell to her knees, Ren falling next to her trying to comfort her, but also losing himself to his quickly growing grief.

The Ace Ops hung their heads. They lost their leader and their teammate in the span of a couple of days. The kids with them lost someone who was both. They depended on him the most in a fight.

Team RWBY couldn't speak. They each thought they would lose each other at some point or another. More than once in Atlas. But by some miracle, they were reunited. They got a happy reunion. Their sister team didn't. They've only been losing.

Ruby had lost her first friend. Jaune had gotten rid of her doubts about leading RNJR on their mission through Anima. If she made the right choice getting them involved after they had lost their teammate. She lost Penny, then Pyrrha. She had gotten one friend back for only the briefest of moments before losing her again. Now she lost another friend.

"Ruby..." Yang was worried about the state of her sister. She had no idea how to comfort her. She didn't know how Ruby dealt with her grief after Beacon, but she could only imagine how much worse this would be.

Seeing everyone quickly spiraling, and realizing they wouldn't be good in a fight like this. Robyn contributed her thoughts, "Look, we all ended up here right? From the sounds of it, these kids fell into someplace that they thought would kill them, right?"

Team RWBY looked to the leader of the Happy Huntresses and took in her words.

"If all of us ended up here, even the ones that sound like they should have died, or whatever, then maybe their friend is out there."

Everyone needed to be prepared to fight for their lives to escape Vale. They couldn't let their negativity alert the Grimm.

Harriet quickly realized this too.

"Hey, wait a second. It's really quiet out there."

All present listened carefully. Harriet was right. Not even the wind was rustling the leaves of nearby trees.

"The amount of negativity here should have let the Grimm know about us as soon as we got here. We were panicked and confused."

"She's right," Elm caught on. "Even if they haven't noticed us somehow, we should have heard them stomping around."

Everyone let that thought sink in. What exactly was going on?

Qrow was the one to walk up to the doors to the outside. Before turning the handle, he looked back to the group. Those who were breaking down tried gathering their thoughts while those who were able got their weapons ready for a potential fight. Even Willow prepared her Semblance, and Maria her cane. Qrow nodded to them and pushed the doors open.

Only to be greeted with a pale-painted hallway with a set of wooden double doors about 20 feet at the end.

"Uhh... This definitely was not here."

Cautiously, Qrow was the first one out. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the hallway now where the Ballroom's exit should have been. That's what was so off-putting.