3: Stranger Than Fiction

"So... we're on a planet called Earth, with hundreds of different nations and seven billion people. A city called Washington, the capital of the United States," Jaune Arc said uneasily. "I kind of understand that."

"It's a very strange world," Pyrrha added. "I could not find any references to the Grimm, Hunters, Aura, or Dust. I'm not certain if that means they don't exist here, but that seems to be the case. I... can't imagine life without it, but these people seem to manage."

"Very odd indeed," Ren opined. "A parallel world, very similar to and yet very different from the world we know. And not in the ways I would have expected."

"It's a big confusing planet," Nora summarized.

"This is insane," Jaune concluded.

"Insane doesn't mean impossible or bad," Nora reminded him lightly.

"We have to have missed something," the blonde insisted. "It can't be real."

"An entire library cannot be faked easily," Pyrrha insisted.

He still refused to believe it. "Come on, this is like a comic book, and not even a good one. Seven billion people? No Grimm? No Dust? It can't be happening!"

"Jaune," Ren interrupted quietly, but firmly. "We did not miss anything. This must be the truth- it is the improbable when the impossible has been dismissed. We just have to accept it."

The sobering statement was followed by a long, ponderous silence.

Jaune didn't know what to think, with different parts of his mind pulling in different directions. One part of him was focused on how cool it was to be in another very different world. Another was the exact opposite, raging against their unfortunate fate. A few others were more pragmatic. They were still together, they didn't know how to get back, they got here somehow, they needed to figure out what to do. The last voice, a tiny one, urged that there was something important he was missing.

Despite her reputation, Nora could think clearly when the situation demanded, and she did consider their situation. They were very very very far away from home, in a really weird place. But they still had each other, and if they made it here somehow there must be a way back. Her brain worked quickly- she spent very little time dwelling before going back to the question of how many sloths could fit in the building around them.

Pyrrha had trained her mind as well as her body, and forced herself to focus on practical concerns. She was with her team in a very strange place, with no idea how they got there or how to get back. They needed to fit in, find a source of income, and find somewhere to stay. Still, tendrils of emotion and irrational thought surged through, reminding her that they were very lost and very alone, with no idea how to actually accomplish any of their goals. The tendrils threatened to overwhelm her, and she knew that the only way to stave them off was to take action.

Ever stoic and ever focused, Ren occupied himself with what they knew and what they could do rather than what they didn't know and what they couldn't. They knew with a fairly high degree of certainty that they were now on a completely different and deceptively alien world. They would need to figure out how to live in this world, at least until they could find a way back. He had many questions of a more philosophical nature, of course, but they could wait and had to wait.

It was Pyrrha who broke the silence, seemingly hours but actually barely a minute later. "So, what do we do now?"

"I don't know." Jaune knew it was the worst thing to say, but he simply didn't have anything better. "I don't know."

It was beautiful day in the American capital, a city already awake and active, but that was the last thing on the minds of the four young strangers in brightly coloured clothes. To them, it was not the familiar city of their everyday lives but a very strange place full of mystery and possibly danger.

The roads they walked down were not the familiar ones they travelled everyday, but strange paths with unknown destinations. The cars on the roads were not the unique yet generic vehicles that dotted every roadway, but strange machines that smelled bad and sounded off. The buildings were off, the people looked wrong, even the traffic lights were familiar yet completely foreign.

"We've been wandering around for over an hour," Nora complained, though her voice was light. "Have you figured out what to do yet, dear leader?"

"No," Jaune sighed. He thought the walk would clear their heads and maybe he'd find what he'd been missing, but he only had more questions. He knew they were lost, very lost, and he had no idea how to get them un-lost.

"What about now?" she asked again after only a few seconds.

"Maybe we should just turn ourselves in," Jaune suggested, dejected. He was growing tired from wandering and knew his team was quickly getting frustrated. "The police can help us, right?"

"Nope!" Nora replied instantly.

"Why not?"

"What if they don't believe us? What if they think we're crazy? What if they're the bad guys here? What if they just don't care?" the hyperactive girl warned in an annoyingly cheerful voice. "We'd be booped."

Her partner calmly offered a counterpoint. "On the other hand, it's possible that the police here are competent. They may even be familiar with this situation."

Jaune Arc looked to his own partner. "Pyrrha?"

She weighed their options in her mind briefly. "I think it's a possibility, but we should get a better understanding of this world and a better idea of we are doing first."

"That's a good idea," Jaune replied with a tired nod. "I just don't have a better idea."

"Then we need to stop and think instead of continuing to wander around hoping for a miracle," his partner replied icily.

"You're right, Pyrrha." Jaune sighed. "I'm sorry. It's just... I don't know what to do. I mean, I just- I have no idea. This is so weird and impossible and not something I'd imagined being a huntsman would be like. I've only read about this happening in a stupid comic book."

Before the redhead could reply, Nora interrupted, "So, let's just do what they did in the comic book."

"The first thing we need to do is blend in," Jaune told his teammates. His knowledge of fiction was, embarrassingly, often better than his understanding of real life. A new confidence shone in his voice as he considered how to apply it. "And to blend in, we need clothes. Merla Skye just took some from a clothesline hanging in someone's yard, so that's what I'm going to do."

"Isn't that stealing?" Nora asked.

He nervously scratched the back of his head. "We're just, uh, borrowing. We'll give the clothes back once we get some of our own or something."

"I don't like this," Pyrrha opined.

"Hey, better ideas?" He paused to emphasize the lack of response. With false confidence, he joked, "This will only be a minute."

Jaune crossed the street toward a backyard with a conspicuous clothesline, covered in a variety of clothing, for both genders and in varying sizes. All were very drab, but everyone seemed to dress that way in this city so it was hardly a surprise. The fence was just a bit higher than his head, and he easily scrambled over, darting toward his goal.

He muttered to himself as he selected some of the clothes. "Okay, it's easy, right? It's not stealing... we just need to borrow them-."

"Hey! What the fuck?" a loud voice boomed from behind him. He turned and saw that a very angry middle-aged man had emerged from the house onto the deck. "Get off my fucking lawn! Hey! Drop it, you piece of shit!"

"Oh, crap!" The blonde boy was split between grabbing what he could and running or just running.

The man continued to shout from the second story deck, seemingly unwilling to get directly involved. Jaune was just glad that he wasn't being shot at. "The fuck's wrong with you, this some kind of fucked up roleplay? Drop the fucking clothes! Get the fuck out of here before I call the fucking cops!"

Under the verbal assault, Jaune broke, dropping the clothes and darted for the fence when he realized what kind of trouble he was in. "That's right, boy, you better fucking run!"

"Jaune, what did you do?" Pyrrha asked as he dashed across the street.

"It was a terrible idea!" He motioned for them to run. "Let's get out of here before he calls the police!"

"Okay, so we're just going to have to find some work, then get some clothes," Jaune Arc assured his team as they stood outside the grocery store. "Not exactly like the comic book, but this is real life. We can't take shortcuts, we have to do it the right way. No problem, right?"

Nora flashed him a thumbs-up. "No problem!"

This time, they all went in together, striding past the sliding glass doors and toward the customer service desk at the right side of the store. Although Jaune was too preoccupied, his teammates took a moment to examine the store. It seemed much like their own supermarkets, even if the brands were totally unfamiliar.

There was only one person behind the counter, a young woman maybe just out of her teens. She looked up at them and suppressed a laugh. "Did you just come from some anime convention? What are you looking for?"

He smiled, waving his arm in an exaggerated gesture. "Help wanted, we can help."

"Looking like that?" She shook her head; it didn't matter. "Sure, whatever. Through the door on the back wall, on the left. Big sign that says the boss."

Jaune bowed slightly. "Thank you."

The group headed down the left side of the store, through the produce section. Some of the vegetables and fruit were unfamiliar to them, and some of their common ones were missing, but overall the selection was surprisingly similar to home. Ren, the most observant of them, realized that many vegetables that were normally only available in wildly different seasons were displayed alongside each other.

Both doors were exactly where the girl said they would be, and the manager's office was open. A redhead in her late twenties or early thirties leaned back in her chair, cigarette in her left hand. She looked up at them as they crowded in. "Can I help you?"

Pyrrha answered, "Yes, we're-

The manager snapped her fingers, cutting her off. "Let me guess, sponsorship? Advertising opportunity? Sorry, guys, but the head office decides that, not me."

Jaune shook his head. "Actually, we were looking for work."

"So you walk into my office instead of just doing the form online like everyone else?" the manager asked rhetorically. She put down the cigarette, tented her fingers and smirked. "Okay, I'll bite. Why should I hire you?"

His answer was shaky and came out almost as a question. "Because we need the work."

In an unexpected gesture, the manager slammed her hand across the desk. "Damn, that's it? Dressed to the nines, kick down the door, then that's all you got? Come on, really. This is your cover letter, sure, where's your resume?"

"We don't have any, we just really need some money," Jaune answered honestly.

The manager shrugged. "You can pull off a stunt, I get that, but what makes you better than everyone else that actually filled out the damn paperwork?"

"Uh..."

She idly pulled the cigarette apart and screwed on what appeared to be a new filter before sticking it back in her mouth, an act which thoroughly confused the teenagers. "Do you even have a resume? References? Job experience? Or did you really think that this alone would work?"

"Um... I guess we did."

"Come on, we'd be awesome employees!" Nora said excitedly, almost knocking over the file cabinet beside her.

"Please, we really need the money," Pyrrha begged.

"Sure you do." The manager sighed. Maybe they really did and she would be denying them the needed cash. Maybe they were just naive and she was destroying their hopes and dreams. But she had a business to run and, more importantly, superiors to answer to. "Your problem, not mine. Sorry. If you're really in a bind, try the Salvation Army."

"I understand," Jaune said quietly, leading his team out of the office. "Sorry for wasting your time."

"Eh, I got a kick out of it," the manager called after them. "Buy something on your way out!"

"The Salvation Army," Jaune Arc read from the sign hung on the side of the modern brick building. "I guess it's some kind of charity organization."

A middle-aged woman sat behind a desk near the front. Men and women, some of them looking quite run down, sat in chairs or wandered about the room. The place looked like it had once been nice, but was now dirty and smelled bad. The bright hues meant to evoke positive emotions were now faded and dull, giving the room a dreary feel.

The woman at the front desk eyed the group as they approached. "Nice costumes. Can I help you?"

The blonde boy answered nervously, "Yeah, we're really lost and we need a place to stay. We're hungry and we don't have any money and we basically have no idea what we're doing."

"That's very unfortunate," the woman said sympathetically. "Do you want to talk about what happened? I'll understand if you don't."

"The Lord Jesus Christ," Nora muttered, turning over a pamphlet in her hands. "Oh, great, I think this is a cult."

The woman heard her. "I would appreciate it if you do not dismiss our denomination as a cult."

"Nora-"

The girl ignored her partner. "Wow, if you donate enough money, you get to meet this big guy when you die!"

That angered the receptionist. "That's not what it says at all! By the-"

Nora cut her off, waving the pamphlet. She sang, "It's a cult! We wandered into a cult! Look at all the crazy symbols! Cult!"

Sighing, the woman said quietly to Jaune, "Is your friend mentally ill? We can help her-"

"No, she's just a bit, uh, weird." Jaune forced a smile at her, pushing his team toward the door. "On second thought, we're fine. Bye now!"

"Wait, Jaune," Ren began, but was cut off by his boistrous partner shoving him out the exit.

They ran a block down the street before ducking into an alleyway. Breathing deeply, Jaune said, "Okay, I think we're safe now. Ren, what were you going to say?"

"Merely that because a religion is unfamiliar to us does not make it inherently evil or dangerous," Ren said icily. "Most likely, we dismissed the beliefs many of this world hold dear and in a very offensive manner at that."

There was an awkward silence, which Nora finally interrupted. "Oops."

"So, we can't get a job, we have nowhere to stay, we've insulted this world's church, and the cops might be after us." The leader of Team JNPR leaned against the concrete wall and sighed, dejected. "Great, just great."

Pyrrha put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "It was worth a try, Jaune."

He pushed the hand away. "I should have known something from a stupid comic wouldn't work."

"Well, it's not like we had any other ideas," Nora reminded him, sitting on the wall beside them. "Hey, we'll figure this out. We managed to stop Cinder, didn't we..." The words died on her tongue. "Did we?"

"God damn it!" Jaune shouted in a rare display of obscenity. Quietly, he added, "I thought they died when I destroyed that machine. But we should have died, and we're here. What if they came through, too?"

"Then this seemingly peaceful place is in grave danger from a threat they have no knowledge or experience of," Ren told them succinctly.

"This is very bad," Pyrrha opined. "What do we do, Jaune?"

"Well, Merla found the bad guys and fought them off herself... but life isn't a comic book. This city's way too big and we have nothing. We can't do it." Jaune shook his head. "I guess we're going to have to talk to the police after all."

"That could still go bad," Nora reminded them. "It might not, but it might."

"Does anyone have any other ideas?" Jaune asked. He knew that, but.. "We can't stand by and do nothing. If they're really here, lots of innocent people could die."

He received only a stoic silence in response. "We don't have a choice. Let's go find a police station."

"This is a pretty nice place to put a police station, huh?" Jaune Arc said offhand, tension evident in his voice.

Pyrrha's trained eyes surveyed the area. The police station was waterfront property, backing onto what looked like an inlet or river. The building itself was long and thin, light brown with a deliberately misaligned roof. A small patch of grass interrupted the pavement in front where a row of police vehicles where parked. Like most of the cars they'd seen, these were low, sleek machines that looked simultaneously futuristic and archaic. "We can do this, Jaune. We have to."

"I know, I just..." Jaune paused. "Merla tried this, and it didn't go well for-"

"Jaune," Ren interrupted. "We know that events may not unfold the way they do in fiction."

"All too well," Pyrrha agreed.

"Jaune's comic has a point, though," Nora dissented. "What if the po-po think we're cuckoo?"

Ren reminded him, "That is a risk you have to take."

"I know." Jaune nodded. "I know."

Taking him by surprise, Nora pushed the boy toward the door, "If we're gonna do it, do it!"

Jaune took a deep breath, then strode toward the door, pushing it violently open. He didn't pause to take in his surroundings or think about his tenuous situation, but simply strode toward an officer manning the front desk.

"What do you want, kid?" The officer sounded tired and distracted.

"Okay, we're students from Beacon... not that that means anything, but we came here when we should have died and now we're here and maybe Cinder Fall is too." Jaune sputtered. Great, now he was blowing it. He had to get it right! "And they're really bad people, so-"

"Is this some kind of joke?" the man snapped. "You know you can go to jail for this kind of prank, right?"

Another uniformed officer came up behind and whispered something in his ear. Jaune caught some mention of mental illness.

He wasn't crazy, this was important! Don't overthink it, keep it simple and honest! "Officer, they're terrorists and they might be planning an attack!"

The police officer stiffened visibly. He stared at Jaune intently. "Okay. I'm listening."

For some reason, I imagine the manager as being a cameo appearance by Jennifer Hale. Usually, I don't associate characters to actors, but this is a rare exception.

I think some of the plot points here worked better than others. I have mixed feelings about following a comic book- this is meant to be a sort of callback to all the SI fics where the self insert uses fiction as a sort of guide. It's also meant to demonstrate why those common tropes don't actually work. The ending I had some indecision on, but I think it works. You drop the T-word in the middle of Washington and the police will notice, funny outfits or not. I'm not happy with the flow, but I couldn't figure out a way to improve it. Thoughts?

Originally, there was a bit of RWBY in this chapter, but I decided to extend JNPR's parts and move the rest into the next. I think the timing will work out better this way, actually. Believe it or not, we're already at the halfway point of Act One. It's still planned for six chapters.

One consequence of the longer wait between chapters is that there are a lot more reviews to read each time. I might not reply to them all, but I'll try to respond to all the major points that people have brought up.

Ghost-407: Yes and no. Remember, they're not the first ones here.

linkthetoaoftime: It helps a lot that they came through together- they're in team mode now. They may not know where they are or what to do, but they at least have each other.

Tatopatato: I know that nobody likes the wait, but I just can't take the stress of trying to put out a chapter every week and I don't like the results I get when I try it. I think the slower pace is better for everyone, but it will take some getting used to.

dark habit: Though they were the inspirations, the similarities aren't that strong or obvious in many cases. It's another strange coincidence in a world that will soon be full of them, although there may be more to it than that at least in Jaune's case.

rileasw: I have plans for Summer Rose, but not until later on. It didn't occur to me that the continuous JNPR would be fatiguing- I expected a lot of people to jump from Emergence to this without reading Those You Leave Behind.

As for chapter length, I know. Other writers are a lot more prolific and can put out longer chapters faster, and I used to be able to do it too. With the limited time and effort I can dedicate to writing, this is probably the best you're going to get. However, I should point out that although they don't feel longer, the chapters are 2-3 times the length of Emergence or Aliens Among Us. Finally, I'm glad you think I have a handle on the characters- I try hard to get them right but I often feel like I'm failing.

GreatWyrmGold: I'm kind of obsessive about keeping consistency. Yeah, I know it's odd, but where I'm going (IT), it's an asset rather than a hinderance.

A difference in tone can attract some readers and turn others off depending on what they like. I think it was more an offhand observation than anything.

I'm really confused by your assertion that only Atlas has a military. World of Remnant: Kingdoms implies that all four have a military arm of some description, and no statement has ever been given to the contrary.

I've run more detailed speculation on the military of Remnant, and I think you underestimate both sides, as much sense as that makes. Remnant's strength is in small unit tactics, up close and personal. Both their skilled fighters and robots reflect that. They also have big, powerful airships which are a potential surprise to us but not one that can't be countered. Earth's strength is in combined arms, highly mobile warfare and a strategic focus on destroying the enemy's ability to prosecute a war. The Remnans can win a lot of battles, especially in urban warfare, but could easily lose the war because we choose the battles and attack them in places they cannot defend.

But I do agree that both sides stand to gain far more from peace than from war.

MalaysianPatriot: Do I want to know?

mastermind: Al-qaeda is unlikely, since they have very differing goals and our terrorists may even see them as abominations hateful to God. North Korea is more interesting. If they can somehow get Cinder on their side, they'll actually have something incredible that's not a blatant lie. Of course, most of the world will still point and laugh at the obvious fake, but the fact that it isn't could become a major issue for Gemstone in particular.

Rubin34: A shooting war was planned for Emergence at one point, but if I do it now it will be a separate fic- a sort of alternate "What if?"

Ghost762: In simple terms, yes.

KamehameGadoken: It's already been covered, first as a separate fic and then as part of Aliens Among Us. Convergence is set several months later, on the fifth of July.

Professor What: I don't intend to add anything else into this fic. A multi-cross is an attractive proposition for many reasons, but they're very hard to write well. I've tried this in the past and it has failed miserably, as have most of the ones I've read.

some guy: The problem is that they'll take one look at our technology and call our bluff. Although it's actually more advanced in some ways than their own, most of our stuff looks quite crude. Add to that a lack of Dust (which hindered us much less than they might believe), and they're going to have an opinion of us much lower than a civilization capable of building that kind of device. This might even be a problem with nuclear weapons, a weapon which we do have and have used.

Unkown: I'm afraid to say that biology does not work like that. Splicing DNA is difficult, and splicing DNA from a totally different species from another planet virtually impossible. Add to that the ethical issues of modifying sapient life, and this is virtually guaranteed not to happen. And that's assuming the Grimm have DNA at all- they may not be biological life as we know it.