Author's notes are at the bottom.

2: Afraid and Confused



Nora leaned back in her chair, a satiated grin on her face. Her tongue lashed out, removing the last remnants of syrup from her lips. "Mmm... that was good."

Her partner, the stoic Lie Ren, nodded as he gently placed his fork across the plate in front of him. "Yes."

"So were these," Jaune agreed. He pushed his plate away noisily, dropping his cutlery on top of the dirty dish with a loud clatter.

"It was satisfying," Pyrrha allowed. Unlike the others, she found her omelette overcooked and overflavoured. She stood, starting to pull a Lien chit from her pocket before her partner blocked her.

"A true gentleman always pays," Jaune said lightly as he stood. "Although I guess this is actually Winter's money."

"I hope she's okay," Nora noted. "Hmm... I wonder if anyone is looking for us?"

"I hope so," Jaune replied. "I don't know if they'd know where to look, but that would make it a lot easier if they did, wouldn't it?"

His partner asked, "Who would be looking for us?"

"There's Winter." He snapped his fingers. "She's got lots of resources! She'll find us!"

Ren shook his head. "She is also constrained by her role and may believe we are beyond help."

"Right..." Jaune muttered, deflated. "Hey, what about the Headmaster? And everyone at Beacon?"

"Nope, they probably don't even know where we went," Nora said. She paused briefly and added, "Maybe they'll look anyway?"

"It's possible that others may find us, but until then, we must take action ourselves," Ren said sagely. He knew they had to get moving, especially if this seemingly friendly place turned out to be more than meets the eye.

"We should pay, Jaune," Pyrrha reminded him. She knew they had to have this conversation, but wanted to wait for more information and a more comfortable venue.

"Right." Jaune's team followed as he headed toward the small counter in the cafe, removing a large-valued lien chit from the messy pockets of his hoodie. The waitress was ready for them, and glanced briefly at the odd group before taking the chit and swiping it through the card machine.

She glanced briefly at the odd credit card before handing it back. "I'm sorry, we only accept Visa and MasterCard."

Jaune was very surprised. He absentmindedly took back the chit, asking, "What? You don't take Lien?"

The waitress stared at him, confused. "What's Lien? Sorry, if it's not a credit card I recognize, I can't take it."

"Credit card?" Nora asked nobody in particular, confused.

"Right... can you pay with cash instead?"

"Lien is cash!" the blonde boy stammered.

She rolled her eyes, biting back a sharp retort at the ignorant tourists. "We only accept American dollars and select foreign currencies. They're listed with the exchange rates on your left."

Jaune looked at the sheet of paper, but only saw unfamiliar abbreviations paired with decimal values. AUD, CAD, GBP, EUR, CNY. "What does that even mean?"

The waitress sighed deeply, reciting impatiently, "Australian dollars, Canadian dollars, Pounds, Euros, and Chinese money."

Jaune's confusion was growing. "What?"

"Where are you guys from, anyway?" she asked again. "Look, I don't mean to be rude or anything, but why would you come here without money?"

"This is money!" Jaune yelled. "This is the money we use!"

"I'm sorry, but it's not money we accept. I don't even recognize it!" The waitress took a step back. "Look, I'm going to get my manager, okay?"

She left, going through an open doorway into the kitchen. Jaune and his team heard unintelligible whispers followed by a loud, deep exclamation of They fucking what?

A tall and heavyset man, bald and wearing a dirty apron, stomped out of the kitchen. He surveyed the colourful quartet briefly before deflating. "Well, you don't look like any crooks I've seen. You get lost on the way from the ren fair?"

"Something like that," Ren muttered. He had no idea what the man was talking about, but decided to play along for the moment.

The man chewed his lip, indecisive. "You come a long way to DC? Where you from?"

"Vale," Jaune answered quickly for them.

"Never heard of it. Man, you must be really lost." He held up the Lien chit Jaune had tried paying with. "I don't know what this is. I can't spend this or exchange this or do anything with this. It's a worthless piece of plastic to me. If you don't have any money I can recognize, you don't have any money."

Pyrrha smiled sweetly and apologetically. "I'm sorry, but that's all we have."

He rubbed his temples, anger giving way to irritation. "You came here without any cash or normal credit cards, knew you didn't have any money, and tried to pay anyway?"

"We're very sorry," Pyrrha apologized again. "None of us realized you wouldn't take our money. And that's all we have left."

"Look, I've been there. I've been in some pretty shitty places, and I guess you guys really are lost or you're stupid because you didn't just dine and dash." He sighed. "I'm not gonna call the cops. I don't know, maybe that'll even get you kicked back to whatever shitty country you come from. But either you come back with the cash, or you don't come back at all, understand?"

"I understand," Jaune replied, turning toward the door. "Thank you."

"Thank you!" Pyrrha echoed.

"Bye!" Nora added with a little wave as they left.

Ren bowed toward the manager as he exited. "Your gratitude is appreciated."

After the odd group had left, the waitress asked quitely, "Are we gonna phone it in?"

"A shitty pretend knight, a Spartan girl, an effeminate Asian and a pink girl with ADHD tried to pay with toy money." The manager shook his head ruefully. "Are you kidding? They'd never believe me."

The promised convenience store really was just down the street, but they almost missed it. Unlike most convenience stores, it had only a few small signs outside and its name in white letters on two red awnings. It was a small store tucked into an old, stately building, surprisingly reserved in appearance.

"Seven-eleven," Nora read, staring curiously at the sign. "Never heard of that one before."

"If this is a strange foreign land, a strange foreign convenience store would be expected," Ren replied, peering through the window. "It looks like a normal convenience store, at least."

Jaune strode toward the entrance, but stopped when his partner grasped his shoulder. "Jaune, are you sure going to this particular convenience store is a good idea? What if they did call the police?"

"He said he wouldn't," Jaune replied. "Besides, there are no police in there."

"They might be not wearing uniforms," Nora reminded them. "Then they'd already be chasing us. Or maybe they'll wait for us to go inside, and if we don't, they'll chase us."

"It's too late now," Ren summarized.

"Let's just go in," Jaune urged, leading the way.

The store was empty save for the bored-looking clerk, a young man with messy hair a few years older then them. He sat behind the counter, staring down at an electronic device in his hands.

"Excuse me, do you have any maps?" Pyrrha asked with her usual (and often forced) cheerful voice and smile.

He didn't even look up from the thing in his hands. "Back corner."

"Thank you." The rest of her team had already spotted the display and made their way across the small store. She rushed to catch up.

About a dozen different maps sat in a metal display rack shoved awkwardly into the corner. Most of the maps were folded, but a few were bound books. They were bright red and very distinctive, though the rack itself had seen better days.

Jaune picked out a sideways folded map and unfolded it. "The World- whoa. This is weird."

Instead of the familiar continents of Remnant, he was faced with something else entirely. Four continents and two massive islands stared back at him, crisscrossed with myriad lines that could only be national borders and labelled with meaningless place names.

"This is not our world," Ren concluded for all of them.

"Maybe it's just a joke map," Nora suggested weakly. "Try one of the other ones."

Pyrrha grabbed one of the books, uninspiring labelled The United States. It showed a small portion of the northwest continent, labelled in more detail. She said nothing, simply showing it to her team.

"Maybe they're not accurate?" Nora offered. She shook her head. "No, that's silly."

"Guys, maybe we're not on Remnant anymore." Jaune sighed. His voice was dark and serious. "We don't know what that thing does. Maybe it brought us here, to this place, somehow."

"Oh..." Nora chewed her lip. "This is bad."

"Jaune, if this isn't Remnant, then where are we?" Pyrrha asked.

Jaune shook his arms. "Wait, wait. We shouldn't just jump to conclusions. I mean, how likely is it that we ended up on another world? We're probably just missing something."

He laughed, though it was forced and they all knew it. "We should find out what's really happening first. Learn more before acting! Just like the leadership lessons. Now, any ideas?"

"Perhaps we should-"

"We can try-"

Nora snapped her fingers, cutting her teammates off. "What about the library? They've got to have them here, right? Libraries have books! Books have information!"

"That's what I was thinking," Jaune agreed. "Now we just have to find one. Are there any on the map, Nora?"

She took the map and turned it upside down. "Nope."

"These aren't local maps," Ren told them. "We should ask the clerk instead."

Jaune nodded. He motioned for his team to stay before approaching the checkout counter.

"Can I help you?" the bored-looking clerk asked, looking up from the electronic device in his hands once again.

The blonde smiled nervously. "Yeah, uh, can you help me find the nearest library?"

The library was located in a curved building faced in a mix of glass, muted brown stone, and off white trim. It seemed to have twelve floors, counting the ground floor, although one was extra high and may have been two floors. It was a large building, the property extending down the street and also back to form a sort of triangle. To some, it would seem more akin to a hotel or apartment complex than a library.

Nora spoke for all of them in her usual boisterous manner. "Are you sure this is a library?"

"That's what the man in the store said," her partner replied simply. "I see no reason for him to lie to us."

"This is the place," Pyrrha said confidently, motioning again to the sign that declared the building as the West End Interim Library. "I think only part of the building is being used as a library, and it used to be something else."

"Well, yeah, I mean, it's an interim library," Jaune added. "That means temporary, right?"

Ren nodded, though his leader was moving ahead of him and couldn't see the motion. "Correct."

"Hopefully they'll still have what we're looking for," Jaune continued.

"What are we looking for?" Nora interrupted.

"Anything to tell us where we are... where we really are," the blonde replied, unsure. He pushed the door open and stepped inside, taking a brief moment to observe his surroundings.

Despite very possibly being on an alien planet, the library was instantly familiar to him. A checkout desk staffed by two middle-aged women was next to the exit, flanked by a prominently labelled book return and information terminal. Most of the space was taken up by partially full bookshelves, occasionally interspersed with open spaces with tables and chairs. Crude-looking computer terminals with colourful screens lined some of the walls.

The clientele seemed to be a mix of decently dressed students and dishevelled people who probably couldn't afford to buy books. A few children and unruly teens broke the hallowed silence of a library. It wasn't a very big or impressive library, but it was definitely a library.

Nora was already rushing deep into the building. "Newspapers! I'm going to go get newspapers!"

"I'd better go with her," Ren said quickly, following his unpredictable partner. "Last time she went to a library alone, she was banned for life."

"I think it's best if we look for history books," Pyrrha suggested to Jaune. "Maybe encyclopedias, too."

He nodded in reply. "Okay, that's what I was thinking, too. Now we've just got to find them."

Pyrrha scanned the room, looking for labels on the shelves. She pointed to one. "Nonfiction is over there."

"Okay," Jaune acknowledged, following her toward the nonfiction section. "The library code for history is-" He paused. "But if this is really way far away, it won't be the same."

His partner knelt down, examining the labels on the books. "You're right. Three digits instead of four. These books are about architecture and design."

"Well, the library isn't that big- I don't think it's that big. We just have to search." Jaune started pulling books from the shelf and examining them. "Art, art, computer art- wow, that's pretty cool. Not what we're looking for, too bad. Nope, this is all art and stuff. What about you, Pyrrha?"

"I believe this is the literature section," Pyrrha replied after examining some of the books on the other side of the shelf. "I don't recognize any of the authors, though, and some of these languages are named oddly."

"Huh?"

She held up an almost new book with a stately blue and white cover. "Epic Poems of Ancient Greece: The Odyssey. The introduction is in Valic, but the rest is an old Mistralian script."

Jaune shrugged. "Weird. Might as well grab it, maybe it'll be useful."

Pyrrha tucked the book under her arm. "Have you found anything?"

"Lots of kinda neat stuff, but not history." He was almost at the end of the shelf, and was now looking through books on construction and manufacturing. "Nope. What about-"

"I've found it!" she interrupted excitedly. The clerk at the front glared at them briefly before going back to her work.

Jaune rushed over to her side. "Found what?"

"The books we're looking for," his partner replied, handing him a book with a red, white, and blue cover labelled United States History.

He recognized the image on the cover. "That's the flag we saw when we got here! That must be what this place is called- the United States!"

Pyrrha nodded. "Yes. These books are about the United States, but if you keep going..." She motioned to the row of clearly labelled history books lined up on the shelf.

"Canada- didn't the waitress mention Canada?" Jaune began pulling books off the shelf, excited. "Vietnam, like the old crazy guy! And the history of the world. Man, this is so weird."

"We have found what we're looking for," Pyrrha said firmly, worried about her eager partner getting distracted. "Should we help Nora and Ren?"

He considered it for a moment, then shook his head. "Nah, they'll be fine. Let's grab a few more, then find a place to sit down."

The other half of Team JNPR perused a small section near the front of the library. It was near the checkout desks, though just out of view of the clerks around a sharp corner. A few tables and computers defined the space. A lone wood rack held the newspapers, neatly folded and sorted by date and publication company.

Or, rather, they had been. Before Ren could stop his hyperactive partner, she had rushed in and started pulling out the newspapers in no particular order. Several of them were strewn across the nearby table, with others that didn't interest her were shoved back into the rack wherever they would fit.

While Ren attempted to put the discarded newspapers back into some semblance of order, Nora peered over the other ones. There was some method to her madness. She had sorted the papers on the table by most to least promising, with the ones that she figured would be more informative above and in front of the others.

She grabbed one of the papers and held it up to show Ren, ripping a small hole in the paper in the process. "July 4, 2015. That's the newest one. I wonder how old it is? Ren-Ren?"

Ren moved one of the older papers to the top of the rack before responding. "The waitress mentioned the Fourth in the past tense and implied a recent event. It could be yesterday, but it could have been weeks ago. "

"Well, something important happened," Nora said, skimming the front page. It showed a bold flag with white and red stripes and stars and a blue background, flanked by a stylized eagle. "Independence Day. Independence of what?"

Her partner glanced at the paper. "Perhaps they separated from another Kingdom?"

"Huh, that's a weird thing for a Kingdom to do," Nora replied. She skimmed the text a bit more before finding what she was looking for, snapping her fingers as she did. She quoted the text in an exaggerated voice, "The United States of America celebrates its 229th birthday today. Although the day is just beginning, revellers are already filling the streets of the nation's capital."

"The Washington Post," Ren mentioned. "I guess we are in Washington, the capital of the United States of America."

She chewed her lip before replying, "What does that mean?"

"To us, nothing," he answered after a moment of consideration. "As much as I don't want it to be the case, Jaune may be right. Let's grab those papers and meet up with them."

"Aye-aye, Ren-Ren!" Nora snapped off a salute, gathered up the papers in her arms, and sped off toward Jaune and Pyrrha.

Her ever-patient partner sighed and picked up a fallen page before following at a much more reasonable pace.

It didn't take long for the hyperactive ginger to find her teammates. She noted happily that their chairs were very close together. With no announcement whatsoever, she dumped her stack of papers on the table and plunked herself down in the nearest available seat.

"Hey, what the-" Jaune said angrily before looking up. "Oh, it's you guys. I guess you found newspapers, huh."

"Uh-huh!" Nora replied excitedly. "Did you? History books, I mean, because you wouldn't be looking for newspapers because we were-"

"We found what we were looking for," Pyrrha replied, starting to stack the newspapers and unbury some of the books she had grabbed.

"Welcome to another world?" Nora asked randomly. "Is this another world? It has-"

"Nora," Ren warned.

"Right, sorry," she apologized. "I'm just overreacting- I mean I overreact all the time and maybe it's not an overreaction- but I guess we're all overreacting. We're probably just in another Kingdom or something."

"Which could still be bad," Pyrrha whispered.

"But not as bad."

"We've got our stuff together," Jaune interrupted in a voice he hoped was confident and encouraging. "Now we've just got to figure out... everything."

It's been about three weeks since the last chapter. I know that's a long wait compared to Emergence, but it's about what I'm aiming for. It's not perfect, but I think it turned out alright, and I did meet my goal of at least 3000 words. Which isn't that much, admittedly, but I just can't write like I used to.

I do have a few things to add since the last set of author's notes.

First, the standard disclaimers that I usually forget. This is a fan work based on RWBY, which is owned by Rooster Teeth. No copyright infringement is intended. All trademarks are property of their respective owners. Although some of the people and places depicted in this story are real, any resemblance to actual events is purely coincidental. I think that just about covers it.

I'd like some feedback about the new format. The biggest change is the update cycle, but I've made some changes to the structure of the story itself as well. There are no first person parts planned and I'm trying to pad out my writing with more description. Author's notes are now at the bottom. Titling is slightly different, though you probably won't notice much here. Tell me what you think about that kind of stuff.

I think it's safe to talk a little about where I'm hoping to take Convergence past the vague hinting I've been giving. JNPR is together so that they can have a more active role than RWBY did, trying to figure out things themselves instead of immediately being swept up by others. In a way it's a better example of an inverted self insert than Emergence was. On the other hand, it's going to go a lot bigger than Emergence did and there are going to be some pretty major events. The only thing I'm willing to say is that yes, Cinder and company will factor into the plot at some point. I will not say when or how.

Okay, I think that's about everything I wanted to say. Now for the review replies. As usual, these are sorted by oldest to newest, and I do skip some if I don't have anything to say or if I'd be repeating myself.

knight7572: Similar, but not quite. I'm not going to reveal it yet, but I don't think it'll be earth-shattering when it does come up.

CalligoMiles: This isn't a deliberate oversight or pure author fiat. It will be explained at some point.

Tatopatato: You might want to wait until Chapter 4 in this case, because that's when some of the big stuff will start happening.

GreatWyrmGold: Chapter 1 was a little messier than I would have liked. For this site, I have to jam the prologue and first chapter together if I want to keep numbering consistent, which kind of sucks. And yes, it's a little fast, but the internet is like that sometimes.

TheMAO17: Jaune's situation is something I've thought about more than once. On Remnant, he's a bit above average Joe, but way down on the power level of even Hunters in training. On Earth, he's still above everyone else. I think he will be feeling this once they start learning more about the people around them. As for your later comments, well, Pyrrha isn't technically invincible, just very hard to kill, we'll see about the criminals, and Summer was planned for a long time.

HeavyJ15: I occasionally daydream about what a "real" version of my fanfics would be like. In this case, however, I feel that a fan film version would be very different in tone and feel from RWBY to the point of being divisive.

Guest: Remnant's superhumans can win battles, maybe, but they can't win a war. I think precision strikes on critical infrastructure and/or massive strategic bombing would do in the Remnans before moving up to WMDs would be necessary. Earth versus Remnant seems to be a popular topic in discussions about this fic and I may eventually write a pure war fic, either as a spinoff or totally independently.

themetaduck: Aliens Among Us is a story I have mixed feelings about, and I do feel that yes, it was spinning its wheels in a way. There are some twists, but I'm not sure if they'll actually surprise readers because some of you have been quite good at predicting plot points long before they came up.

markimoo: This is actually something I wish I'd done more in Emergence and in Asides, but I don't think I'll ever include more than passing mentions. Reactions in the vein of Weiss Reacts are actually very time-consuming to write, and that's the main reason why there hasn't been a lot of it overall.

souleater34: I've deliberately left this ambiguous, and I'm not going to answer it.

some guy: Those You Leave Behind and Tabula Rasa are recommended reading, but not necessary. I will try to explain everything well enough in this fic for those who have not read them.

coolshades45: I was very careful with the wording when I said JNPR wouldn't be in Emergence. This has been planned for a long time.

Jlargent: See my reply to markimoo about reactions. It's very time-consuming to write, especially for things I'm not familiar with and have to research.

Lil Can: It's not that easy, but we have other methods.

Guest: Three to four weeks between updates is the new planned pace.

As always, I encourage you to post a review, visit the TVtropes page, and/or read some of my other works.