A/N: I return after a massive break! I'm trying something new, so bear with me a bit and I'll explain more at the end!

Chapter 3: Story Time

Cain sat on one of the many chairs around the coffee table in the central room of the dorm room of Team NCRS. The bridge of his nose sat cradled in between his fingers as he tried to wrap his head around the stack of papers that sat in front of him. Across from him sat the fox-tailed faunus Rebecca, who was currently trying her best to look cute and innocent, while across the room Nadia sat on a couch facing the television screen, doing her best to cradle her sides as she laid there, rolling and laughing her insides out.

"Explain to me again what this is Rebecca."

"It's the field report you asked me to write over our last mission."

"No, it's not. A field report is, for the most part, a report of the facts. What I'm reading feels like a terribly cliché work of fiction."

"It's not all fiction."

Cain sighed. "The names are about all that's left that's true. And why the fuck am I portrayed as some sort of edgelord? 'It was the dreams that Cain still had trouble with', I mean seriously, who the fuck thinks that is interesting? Yeah, I occasionally still have nightmares, but I'm not some PTSD stricken war vet."

A squeal of laughter erupted from the couch.

"I thought added a bit to your personal struggle," replied Rebecca, trying to sound as harmless as possible. She gave a slight exertion of her aura's semblance of Charm towards Cain. His aura just passively ate away at her ambient energy, completely negating its effect. In reality, this ended up just pissing him off more as there was now the faint sound of cackling electricity and grinding teeth in low decibels of the room's ambient sound.

"Personal struggle? Really? And what exactly do you call this whole shipping thing between me and Nadia? Explain yourself on that one."

Rebecca stuck her tongue out at Cain. "For your information it's called Onyx Rose, and it's a rather popular ship among those of us at the school."

Another loud burst of laughter echoed from the couch, followed at the end by a snort. Cain groaned and rubbed his face. He couldn't tell if he was blushing or not, but regardless he was too worked up at the moment to even care or notice. "I swear Rebecca, you have less than ten seconds to explain yourself, before I blow up."

As Nadia lay laughing and shaking on the couch, and Rebecca sat across from Cain making puppy dog eyes, a voice called out from one of the side rooms over the sound of sparking metal and machinery. "Okay guys, you had your fun, now give Cain the real report."

Rebecca pouted and called back to the other room, "You don't always have to be a buzzkill Sky!" The only response was the return of the sounds of sparking metal. With a groan, Cain rubbed his eyes some more. "What did Sky mean, the real report?"

Rebecca scrounged around for a bit and pulled out another stack of papers in a nice report cover and put them on the coffee table for Cain to read. Nadia, now recovering from her fit of laughter, had sat up and leaned over the back of the couch, wiping the tears from her eyes. Cain sat for a while staring at it, then back at the one he was holding, then back at it. He eventually slapped down the old stack he was holding, then picked up the new one, going over it intently as Rebecca and Nadia could be seen visibly leaning in, waiting for his reaction. As he reached the end, he gazed up from just over the top of the papers at them both.

"You guys are assholes, you know that?"

The story of how these four misfits met changes. Their story changes. Their world changes. But there are always constants. Their paths always intersect. They find themselves drawn to each other. Throughout all possibilities that lie, they always manage to find each other. They have lived a thousand lives, died a thousand unholy deaths. They have lived with each other, loved each other, and killed each other countless times. It should be noted however, that out of these countless timelines, there is one point that appears more than the others, one prime moment. It is not in all universes, for some had been shaped in such a way that it would prevent them from meeting in the prime method. However it should be noted that their tokens almost always find their way into their respective hands. In order to understand them, it would be best to show you the prime perspective. This event was their initiation into Beacon, the moment that out of all possibilities establishes them firmly as Team NCRS.

Cain found himself flying through the air just behind Nadia after they were launched off the cliff for their initiation into Beacon. All the instruction they had was to create a landing strategy. Brilliant, Cain thought to himself. Let me do that with nothing useful. With a quick eye roll he saw Nadia and called out to her. As she turned her head around to see him, he tossed one of the weighted ends of his chains towards her. Catching it, she pulled him in close. "Suppose this makes us partners then, huh grease monkey?" He smiled at her as she took the weighted end in hand, and drew it upon her bow, her electromagnet glove and the bow stabilizing the end, and fired it off towards a tree. She focused her semblance of Control on the weighted end, guiding it perfectly towards the thick end of one of the branches, as he exerted control over his own, The Maw. Sending it through the chain, the end opened up into a sort of toothy head, latching onto the branch. Using their momentum, Cain reeled them in and around the trunk of a tree in order to slow their descent. It was still rough, the pair stumbling a bit as their feet came into contact with the ground, but they would live. After gaining footing, Cain refocused his aura, and the head returned to normal as he rapidly reeled back the chains into the depths of his coat sleeve.

Looking around, the pair tried to make sense of which way they were supposed to go before deciding to head in the way they were initially launched. Walking through the forest, they eventually set upon the idea that talking might make the trip go a little faster, or at least one of them did. Nadia walked, seemingly without much of a care through the forest, the only thing stating otherwise was the bow sitting in her left hand. "So you just couldn't leave me to my own devices could you?" she asked, with a hint of humor and a dash of snark towards Cain. His response as he constantly scanned the surroundings for Grimm was cold, but had his own faint hint of humor in it. "Honestly, I was thinking your dad would kill me if I didn't keep an eye on you."

They each gave a bit of a chuckle before a rustling interrupted their thoughts. They both snapped up their weapons, Brahmanda Celestia shining in Nadia's hands, Ouroboros wound around Cain's limbs. They immediately threw themselves back to back as the rustling surrounded them, out jumping a pack of Beowolves. Their weapons at the ready they eyed the beasts that surrounded them. "Wanna see who gets the most kills?" Cain smiled at Nadia's challenge.

"You're on."

The next few minutes were a flurry of action. Nadia fired her metal needles and arrows into numerous Beowolves around her, Scoring headshot after headshot, the metal darts and poles all sticking out of the heads of the dissolving Grimm. Meanwhile, Cain was bounding between his own Grimm, his metal covered fists and feet chaining combinations between the beasts. His chains sprouted bladed ends as he stabbed them into various beasts, letting out enough slack to entangle multiple beasts at a time before throwing all of his aura into running across the chains, throwing up numerous moving teeth along their length, having them rapidly rip, chew and tear through the bodies of the beasts. The chains whirled and ground, the arrows flew and pierced, and in only the span of a couple minutes, the force of Grimm sat in pieces, dissolving into the petals that drifted on the wind. Nadia walked about retrieving her arrows and darts from the now mostly dissolved bodies. "I got 10 kills, what about you?" Turning around she looked at Cain. The numerous chains slowly clacked themselves back into his sleeves. He turned around, the drops of black ichor sat evaporating into a mist off of his clothes, the haze clearing from his eyes. A large, toothy smile spread across his lips as he stood among the mass of rapidly dissolving limbs. "25."

After a few more bouts with Grimm and much more walking, the duo came to an old stone ruin, upon which held a pedestal upon which sat a deck of cards sprawled out to draw from. The two approached and each drew their own card, and turned to reveal them. Turning them over, they eyed the cards that sat in their hands. Cain turned his around to see the Ace of Clubs, Nadia's revealing the Ace of Spades. With a simultaneous "Huh," the two heard a loud screaming increasing in volume from outside the stone ruins. Sticking out their heads, the screaming increased along with numerous loud bangs and the sounds of heavy impacts. After about 30 seconds, when the screaming was for sure heading straight for them, they saw a faunus emerge from the treeline, her fox tail trailing behind her as she booked it towards them. As the booms got louder, a massive Death Stalker came barreling out of the trees, and a rather small and colorful hunter was attempting to attack the behemoth with two, almost comically oversized, mechanical axes. After the few blows he managed to connect with glanced off leaving gashes in the bone-plates of the Grimm, it seemed to decide the pest had become enough of a problem to bat him away. The small, multicolored hunter went flying towards the other hunters, who were now all hiding within the ruins. With a quick pull, and a forced, and very stressful quiet from the other three holding down the twisting ball of rage that was their new companion, they did their best to hide out from the giant, and extremely deadly Grimm. After a while of hiding deep within the ruins, whether it was luck or some kind of divine providence, the Death Stalker seemed to get bored and wandered back off to whatever hole it had come from. After the thudding of its feet was definitely off and no longer audible, the group emerged from their hiding spot. The first thing that happened after emerging and releasing their now smallest companion was a suitable amount of rage from the rather small and colorful man, the massive temper at odds with his multicolor hair and childlike clothes and size.

"What the hell, I was about to take it!"

"You're welcome for keeping you from killing yourself," Nadia responded, with a bit of an eye roll as the kid walked over to retrieve his axes. With a small bit of effort, he hefted the rainbow and sticker adorned axes over his shoulders, and hit a few buttons on them as they combined and folded up into the much smaller size of a full hiker's backpack. Walking back over, he was still audibly mumbling to himself and complaining about how "people just don't understand art," and "How are his weapons supposed to get field tested if he's not allowed to fight the biggest thing he can find."

While this was going on with the smaller man, the faunus stayed behind and tried flirting with one of her new saviors. "Thank you so much for saving me Mister…?"

"Cain." He didn't know what it was, but something about the girl was making him pissy. He could have sworn he heard a faint crackling in the back of his head, and something about her eyes and aura seemed to be giving off a faint glow. The girl, meanwhile, was confused as to why her semblance wasn't working on him. It worked on everyone she had ever met, and this one anomaly confused her. "Isn't there some way I can thank you?"

Something about her was making Cain start to get a headache. He just ground his teeth and cradled his forehead. "You can get your card and we can get back to everyone else." As he said this, he started walking off, with Nadia telling him to hold up and following behind him. The faunus found herself somewhere between pouty and puzzled as she walked over to draw her card with the small ball of rage. As she pulled her card, she looked over the shoulder of the small boy to see his Ace of Diamonds before flipping hers to see an Ace of Hearts.

At the presentation of the teams, the four stood up at attention. Professor Ozpin stood, announcing the teams in the year's initiation assembly. "Nadeshiko Kacela, Cain Nacht, Rebecca Rosso-Corsa, Sky Vulcan. The four of you retrieved the Aces. From now on you shall be known as Team NCRS, led by Nadeshiko Kacela." As the board changed to show their pictures along with the abbreviation of NCRS for their team, Nadia seemed a bit taken back, her eyes seeming to water up. Cain stood a little taller, and placed a hand on her shoulder as the rest of the ceremony was finished. They had now become an official team.

Such was the prime origin. It is, it was, and it always shall be. And yet, it shall not, it never will, and has not ever occurred. Such is the multiverse. In a realm of infinite possibilities, while this origin holds claim to a majority of timelines, it does not hold all. But it will remain our root. In the grand tree we scour, seeing the many branches and many roots, this is the oldest of them all. It leads to their happiness, it leads to their despair. It is who they are, and how their soul yearns to be, and how our journey through their stories begins.

A/N: Thank you for making it all the way through! As I said, I'm going to explain the little change here. So what I plan to do with this, seeing as how I did take a massive break is plan to sort of explore more with the characters as I now have a bit more time on my hands to work on it, as well as inspiration to do so. Now here's where the interesting part comes in:

As I mentioned in the story, I'm going to explore a bit of a multiverse type thing with this. Since I don't like having my characters interact with the main cast, I figured what I would do instead is open this up to public suggestion! While I will post things as I come up with them, maybe try to establish a core timeline to follow with them, I figured that in order to work on my writing on a more common standpoint, I would open up to you, the reader's, story ideas! If any of you would like to see me throw the characters into a situation for a short story or something interesting just give me a shout out and I'll throw them in!

As always, thanks again for reading!