Frost's body was stiff as a board as he continued to remain in his current predicament. Even when his eyelids had fallen heavy from exhaustion and he'd been able to catch a short amount of rest, he would always wake to being strapped to the same surface as he had been when he first awoke in this place. As time continued to drag on, his body also began to feel more and more lethargic as the constant exposure to different drugs and gases took its toll on his body. He could tell at least that a small portion of his Aura and Semblance remained, though not enough to stage some sort of escape as the man holding him prisoner pointed out.

He had said something about needing at least a portion of his abilities still active to all Grimm to finish its transition into its position of control, but not enough that they would have to worry about a potential breach in the containment. Beyond that, Frost couldn't remember much as his mind became fuzzier and fuzzier in terms of coherent thought.

At least when he wasn't unconscious.

As such, that was where he currently presided as his body had needed a short time to rest at that moment. So here he sat, silently awaiting the next appearance of his doppelganger to taunt him and try to break his spirit like it had tried to do numerous times before.

"You will break eventually. You do realize that, right?" His sinister co-inhabitant remarked as it knelt in front of him while he simply sat there, his head resting on his knees as he remained silent. "And even if you don't, it's not like that will stop what's coming. You can feel it just as much as I can. Your final vestiges of strength are all that's stopping me from taking full control and doing whatever I wish with this form. Why continue to struggle if the end is inevitable?"

"…" Frost continued to remain silent after they creature finished speaking, his focus remaining on the dark abyss of his mind instead of the being trying to beat him down even further than he already was.

"Or are you already broken? Is that what this is? If so, then I guess it won't be much longer now until the process is finished and I have what I need at last."

Despite his silence, however, Frost was hardly done fighting. He just knew that words weren't going to make a difference anymore. His eyes trailed over to one of his hands as it sat wrapped around his legs in his curled up position. A very faint glimmer of light flashed near the tips of one of his fingers, unbeknownst to the creature already claiming victory in front of him.

All he needed was the strength to do it.

"Look out!"

Neo and Emerald barely dodged the swipe of a sharp, jagged claw as a pair of Grimm leapt from within Amala's colossal form and into their midst. The sudden noise of a gunshot echoing from the chamber of Neo's weapon silenced one of the beasts in a burst of flame even as Emerald decapitated the other with a quick slash from her own weapons.

The fight had been going on like this for a little while now. As all of them had taken up stances to engage the massive Frostwolf (as they'd now taken to calling them) it's body had rippled suddenly, releasing a large cluster of Grimm much like what Neo and Emerald had fought when they had first visited the village back when they'd first arrived on the continent. And much like that time, they're movements were far more coordinated than the average Grimm. Unfortunately, they were also just as difficult to properly kill as each form they destroyed simply returned to Amala's body only to be replaced by more of them.

"How are we even supposed to beat these things if they just keep coming back?!" Yang called out over the din of battle.

"We need to be able to get at the leader!" Neo called back even as she deflected another monster with a quick movement of her parasol. "If we can expose her weak points then we can bring her down!"

"And how are we supposed to do that when she just keeps spawning more of them?!"

"I don't know! They didn't do this the last time we fought them!"

"Well that's just great!" Weiss remarked as she suspended a few of the beasts in the air with her Glyphs as Blake and Ruby both took shots at their vulnerable bodies, their forms disintegrating within seconds before floating back to their leader.

"I never said it was an easy plan! We're all a little distracted here!"

As Neo said that, a larger Alpha wolf went sailing by due to a different series of Glyphs created by Winter. Its body went careening into a large grouping of its brethren before another Glyph, this time red in colour, formed due to Weiss' quick thinking and exploded the monsters in a flash of fiery light. Meanwhile Ozpin and Ironwood, despite their more simple looking weapons, were easily dispatching other monsters with well-placed strikes and shots as more of the creatures set themselves upon the two men. Qrow, however, had chosen a farther away position to engage the beasts, to which every time someone neared his position he would call out to them to get back to the others as he casually dispatched more of the monsters. But despite their best efforts, nothing seemed to be slowing down the oncoming tide of monsters that stemmed from Amala's mutated form.

"GetTinG tIreD yEt, hEroES?" Her warbled voice echoed over them as she stood menacingly in the distance, though she had yet to actually make a move as her spawn continued to do the work for her. "SoOn alL oF yoU wILl bE tOo wEAk to fIGhT baCk And tHeN yoU wiLL fAIl!"

"God, would she just shut up!" Emerald shouted out of exasperation as she took out another Grimm with a quick round of bullets from her guns. "It's bad enough that she's just standing there, but is the taunting really necessary?"

"Says the girl that uses illusions to throw off what people actually see going on." Yang commented from nearby as she blasted one of the beasts into oblivion.

"Yeah, yeah. Pot calling the kettle black and all that. But you have to admit it's getting ridiculous."

"Oh, absolutely. On your 8." Emerald barely looked as her weapons changed into their bladed form and slammed into the beast's torso without a moment's hesitation.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

"Why couldn't you two be like this before?!" Weiss gave the two of them an exasperated look as they casually called out to each other like they had been fighting alongside the other for years.

"Weiss, we're in the middle of a fight for our lives." Yang stated with a matter-of-fact tone. "Some things HAVE to take a back seat when that happens."

"What she said."

"Then why don't you two try using some of that supposed teamwork to do something then!"

"Against this many things? Yeah, right." Emerald scoffed as she motioned all around them. "Plus, I don't even know if my Semblance even works on Grimm. If it does, it's never obvious."

"I meant on the one leading them!" Weiss practically screeched whilst simultaneously stabbing a wolf in the chest as it came sailing towards her due to being knocked over from Nora's hammer.

"Oh." Both girls responded before turning to look at one another.

"Think it'll work?" Yang asked with a thoughtful look.

"Maybe?" Emerald stated with a shrug of her shoulders. "She's still part human after all, so I might be able to do something. But we'd likely need to get closer for it to stand a chance. There's too much distance that she's keeping for it to likely have any effect."

Yang smirked as her eyes flashed red in an instant. "I think I can handle that."

"Sir! We've just received a message from one of our outposts!" Frost overheard one of the scientists shout as the man leading the facility turned to face the man that had just spoken. Silence filled the air as the two seemed to just look at each other for a moment.

"And?"

"Sorry, sir. I just wasn't sure if you were going to say anything."

"If I've told you fools once, I've told you a thousand times. Unless I feel like butting in, you tell me exactly what is going on if something comes in from one of our bases! Which one was it?"

"It was the snow base, sir. The one Dr. Amala is stationed at."

The man's eyes narrowed as the words sunk in. "And what did it say."

"It didn't mention much. It seems like it was typed out in a hurry and almost seems to have been interrupted at the end due to some errors in the text. I can't tell what-"

"What. Did. It. Say." The man's tone turned dark as he practically hissed out the words.

The scientist gulped for a moment before turning back to his screen. "They've come. Our motions are potentially at risk. I have taken the sample and will attempt to hold them off. Set safety measures to threat level Goliath. I'm…and then it just turns into a mess of numbers and letters. Sir, what does it mean?"

The man began to pace roughly back and forth within Frost's field of view. A smirk came upon the young man's face as he realized what it likely meant given the name of the person at said base.

"It means that the cavalry is on its way. And your entire plan is about to go up in smoke. That's what it means."

The man whirled to face Frost with a wild look in his eyes. "I would hardly start celebrating, boy. If anything this means that you are about to endure much more suffering so that our plans will not be delayed by the meddling of Ozpin and his cohorts. I will NOT see this plan fall apart again! Not after how many years I've put into making sure everything is complete!"

"It's a bit late for that, don't you think?" Frost attempted to bluff the man to see how much he would crack. He knew that while Ozpin and the others arriving in Atlas was potentially a good thing, there was no telling how much time there was left before things took a turn for the worse. Especially since he still had no idea where he was actually being kept prisoner on Remnant.

"It's never too late for one last stand, child. Even your parents understood that, despite their foolishness in revealing my original intentions so many years ago." The man turned towards a different scientist as he barked out orders. "Set the dosage to three times the normal amount. Our timetable just got accelerated."

"But sir, if we do that there's no telling what it might do to the host body! It's too risky and-" The man's words were rapidly cut off as the doctors arm suddenly lashed out and pinned the scientist by the neck to the wall. Frost's eyes widened in shock as what should have been a normal arm was instead black and spindly, with odd holes littering its length. His eyes then turned to the man's face, whose eyes were now the telltale black and red that symbolized a Grimm residing within him.

"Did I say I wanted your negativity? I said to increase his dosage, and that means you increase his FUCKING DOSAGE! Do I make myself clear?!" The man's gaze scanned over the scientists in the room before another person in a lab coat quickly moved to a panel off to the side of Frost's containment, out of his line of sight. "That's better. Now," his gaze returned to the man that had tried warning him earlier. "I believe the next thing on the agenda is your lack of faith in what we are trying to achieve here."

The scientist could only struggle as he was lifted away from the wall and pulled over to be hoisted just in front of the man that held Frost prisoner. His face was beginning to change colour due to a lack of oxygen and his limbs flailed back in forth as he struggled within the iron grip of the Grimm appendage.

"You do recall why we agreed to this venture in the first place, do you not?" The man weakly nodded as their leader continued. "Our people are dying and we need some way to fight back the beasts that threaten our existence every day. When we were handed an olive branch by the Queen of the Grimm herself, we finally saw a chance for humans and Faunus alike to not only survive, but become more like the other in some capacity. And then those in positions in power above us believed that what we were doing was treasonous, even if it meant sacrificing a few measly lives in the efforts to save countless others. They labeled us villains and criminals for doing what needed to be done! And yet you stand here and lecture me about the risks?" His eyes turned to gaze at his own limb that held the man suspended in the air as he released his hold and the man collapsed at his breath as he gasped for breath.

"Whether it was luck or providence, I have been the only person to survive the process for an extended period of time. Every other person that has tried has died at some point after being administered with the serum that begins the process. But now, with the advancements in science that also allow for the transference of Aura from one person to another and by extension their talents, we finally have a way to transfer the abilities of someone able to survive the process to another. We simply need to finish the process with this boy, and we will have our perfect specimen to achieve our goal."

Suddenly, the arm lashed out and grasped the man's neck once more. Instead of hoisting him up though, his grip simply began to tighten more and more around the struggling scientist's neck until a cracking sound echoed throughout the room as his body went limp.

"However, there is no place for hesitation or doubt in this project."

His eyes turned to point a sinister grin at Frost's prone form. Frost suddenly began to feel faint once more as his chamber began to be filled with more gas than usual compared to previous times that he had been knocked unconscious. He was barely able to make out the man's words as darkness overtook him once more.

"Not when we're this close. The world WILL remember the name of Dr. Talon Asrani, the man who saved mankind."

First off, I know this is another cliffhanger and I do apologize for that. I originally had intended to add on a little more to either the stuff in the lab or to the fight before posting this today, but I've either had to deal with being half-deaf in one ear or having a headache that feels like my skull wants to crack open like the apocalypse. Needless to say, I'm sorry this chapter doesn't have more in it, but I just can't pull more out of me at this point in time and I hate posting these late now that I'm on a rather consistent routine with them. I will promise that the next one won't leave quite as much to be desired, though. Until next time, I think I need to go get a little extra rest to try and get rid of...whatever the heck I picked up.