My attempt at writing descriptions of people. I also know very little about fashion, so there's that.

A brief description about the future of Emergence and its sequels is below, with the review replies.

Epilogue

A large crowd of students slowly made its way into the high school. The day was dreary and overcast, but warm. Some of them walked in, some of them stepped off of city buses or SkyTrain, some of them disembarked from school buses.

There was a lot of variety. The youngest was thirteen, the oldest nearing her twentieth birthday. There was a broad spectrum of race, socio-economic status, physical appearance, and personality. With a total student population of thirteen hundred or so, this was to be expected.

For most of them, it was like any other Monday. After a weekend off doing whatever it was they were doing, it was back to learning, or at least pretending to learn well enough to get through the day. A few were looking forward to it, some were dreading it, most were more or less indifferent. Four of them, near the back of the crowd, approached with some trepidation.

The one that immediately stood out was the tall blonde. She had blue eyes and bright blonde hair tied into a loose ponytail. Unlike her eyes, her hair was actually natural- the opposite of what a casual observer might suspect. She wore a chocolate leather jacket, zipped up halfway to reveal a lemon yellow shirt underneath, along with jeans and tall brown boots.

Right beside her was a girl a few inches shorter. Her raven-black hair was obscured by a knit toque a few shades lighter. Her hazel eyes could be described as catlike, although like the blonde, she also wore coloured contacts. She wore black boots with short heels, black jeans and a purple sweater.

The shortest member of the group stood a step in front of them. Her hair and eyes were natural- bright white and icy blue. She let her hair down, draping it around her shoulders. She wore a light grey skirt that stopped just above her knees and a light blue long-sleeve shirt. Her wedge-heeled grey boots brought her slightly above the second-shortest member of the group.

Their nominal leader was actually the youngest, though not the smallest. Her black hair was streaked with deep red. Her eyes were grey, though if one looked closely they would notice an unusual metallic quality to them. She dressed almost boyishly, with a dark red hoodie, jeans between loose and tight, and dark high-top sneakers.

"Are we ready?" Ruby Rose asked her teammates.

"It's just high school, Ruby," Weiss Schnee chided.

"It is on another planet," Blake Belladonna noted.

"We've faced down monsters and criminals," Yang Xiao Long said confidently.

"Yeah! We can do this," Ruby said a bit too loudly. A few people looked, but quickly turned away, finding nothing really interesting about them.

She stepped forward and her team followed. With perhaps more confidence than they actually had, they strode into the strange new school in a strange new world.

I'll get the review replies out of the way first. I know there hasn't been a lot of time to get in a review since the last chapter. I will still reply to reviews via PM for a while, and if there's something significant I feel I should clarify I'll note it in the author's notes in the successor stories.

Jacob Rickshaw: Some of it's actually being split off into its own story. See below.

Fourze: It was implied, thought not explicitly stated before. Through some amazing cosmic coincidence.

Firehawk242: The differences will be a focus of the semi-sequel, but I can do a quick rundown now. Math is basically the same. Physics is the same- they might not go as far as we do but you're not doing quantum field theory in high school. Biology would have some stuff the same but they probably throw in weird stuff on Remnant. Chemistry might deal with Dust, but that could be its own subject. History is obviously different, literature is different but there are parallels for each. English only differs slightly from Valic, though different culture may affect the way formal communications are done. Shop classes are crude, computer stuff could be very different. Also, I finally realized that you're the guy who's writing MRLD. And probably the John C. Stennis, the Makin Island, and- oh wait, wrong kind of ship.

Reine de la Mort: It should be Implementation. My fault for posting late. On a slightly related note to your review, I think the White trailer is the only one whose meaning is still debated and discussed. Ruby's trailer is fairly simple, Blake's ties directly into the last two episodes of Volume 1, and what there is to explain about the Yellow trailer is known by mid-Volume 2.

linkthetoaoftime: Perhaps some Asides, if I have the time to do them. I have a huge list of ideas for Asides, but a lot of them I find quite difficult to write.

zonetrooper141: Though common in fiction, that kind of stuff doesn't really happen in the real world. With that being said, they do have options for employment later, after they're out of school. Also, do you think I should widen or narrow the power gap, and why?

Epic Zealot Productions 2.0: We have no official number. Firehawk242's estimate, based on large population centres without a flow of external resources, is 30 million. There was a Spacebattler who estimated between 40 and 100 million based on large population centres. My early estimate, based on dense countries, puts it at 500 million, but that's based on kingdoms that are larger than we think they are now.

Happy1K1nob1: I think I've said this before, but one of my main focuses in this story is realism. Not realism in the sense of physics or stuff like that, but realism in the way persons and organizations think and act. It's kind of built around the whole question of "what if it really did happen?", which while subtly different from the usual "what if it happened?", I think is an important distinction. Which of my other fics did you look at?

Hillyan: I know those feelings. I only get them with something I really enjoyed, and I'm glad I was able to invoke them in someone else.

ODST110: Someone once said that our harshest critics are ourselves, though I'm not sure if that person was right or now. How will they not recognize Yang? Which is more likely, that it really happened and she's right there, or that it's a coincidence. Someone might ask, probably jokingly, but as long as she responds correctly (which she's been drilled on), it'll be fine.

Guest With Q's: My favourite arc is probably Stolen Flame. I like the concept of Ice Princess better, but I think the execution fell kind of flat. I have a general policy not to go back and rewrite, because perfection is the enemy of close enough and I won't finish anything, but I do make exceptions from time to time.

Guest: Exploring the differences between Remnant and Earth, through interactions and actions and not just discussion, will be the focus going forward. I am a bit worried about creating a vision of Remnant that looks nothing like the official one, but that's just a risk a fanfiction writer has to take.

mastermind: Possibly, but it probably won't go very far. I haven't really thought about this aspect much yet.

So, Emergence is done. I've mentioned a sequel before, and it's basically set in stone that I'm doing one. I'm not going to jump into it right away, though. Coming up right away is a Christmas-themed fic, tentatively titled "A Christmas Emerging" or "Holidays Emerging". I'll also be finishing up some Asides and adding some more to fill in some of the gaps.

After that, I'll hit the ground running with the semi-sequel to Emergence. I don't have a title yet, but I've been referring to it variously as Interregnum or Part 1.5. It will continue directly from the end of this and it will be about RWBY going through high school on Earth.

The real sequel is almost certainly going to be called Convergence. It was planned for January at one point, but I've decided to push it back a couple of months to focus on other things. I'll probably start dropping more hints as it gets closer to release, but for now I'll say this: Some of the things that have been discussed in reviews and replies will be in it, and it will be overall more exciting and less mundane than the semi-sequel.

Asides will continue running alongside. I don't plan to split them up by which story they correspond to.

If you're editing the TVTropes page, it's much appreciated. I can't post links here, but if you search "RWBY Emergence TVTropes" it should be among the first results.

I'm still looking for an artist who would be interested in doing some Emergence-themed RWBY fanart.

In the meantime, you can check out my other fics, though if they're not complete they're probably dead. You can also check out my games at my website, which I think is linked in my profile. This was totally not a shameless plug.

Emergence was one hell of a journey, and possibly the most successful fic I've written so far. Thank you all for making that possible.