Pain wracked Frost's body as the Nevermore's talons burned into his arms. It was all he could do to stay conscious so that he could see where the beast was taking him rather than black out from the agony he felt. It didn't help that he could still feel the burning rage of the Grimm inside of him, angry that it's kill had been interrupted and forced to idle while he attempted to reel his emotions back in. This wouldn't have been possible were it not for Neo's timely interruption stopping him from finishing off Adam Taurus and cementing his fall into darkness. But he could still feel himself teetering on the edge of the cliff as the abyss below beckoned louder and louder for him to jump.

The question was; how was she alive? He had felt her pulse fade in his arms, seen her body go limp from the injuries she had sustained. How had she been able to slowly limp up to him before kissing him of all things?!

That final memory caused sorrowful tears to build in his eyes as he felt the burning sting of them fall down his face. How many times had he wanted to confess how he felt for her, only to not bother due to not feeling it was the right time or because they were caught up in the middle of some sort of commotion? Fate was cruel for giving him a taste of what he could have had…only to rip it away in one literal swoop as the beast now holding him and flown into their midst. He had been lucky that he'd been able to react quick enough to shove Neo out of its path before its outstretched limbs had grasped his body before lifting off once more.

His eyes widened suddenly as he remembered something he'd done privately some time back in case of emergency as his head and eyes swiveled to face the pocket he knew his scroll to be in. The muscles in his arm burned as he tried to reach into the confines of the fabric of his jacket, only to come up short as the bird's grip kept his arm from properly bending in the direction he wanted it to go. As panic began to set in, his eyes noticed the rough shape of an airship hidden within a cluster of trees, however this one was noticeably not the one they had arrived on Menagerie in. Without anything else to do within the Nevermore's grip, his panic only increased as he realized that the beast was beginning to descend in the direction of the exact same thing he had just noticed.

Whatever it was, he was going to find out very soon. It was as they approached that the burning sensation in his head that he knew to be the Grimm inside him began to swell once more.

Neo sat frozen on the ground with an outstretched hand towards the very spot that Frost had been mere moments ago, a look of shock and pain etched across her face even as everyone else batted the horde of Grimm surrounding them. The sounds of gunshots and the crunching of Grimm limbs echoed through the air, but this meant little to the small girl as nothing else seemed to matter at that point in time. She barely felt it when a strong hand grabbed her by the shoulder to give her a shake before it moved to her waist and hoisted her up to be carried over someone's shoulder. She never noticed how close a Beowolf's maw came to biting off her head before it was shattered in a blast of Dust even as the panicked face of Ruby filled her vision, her mouth moving but no sound coming out as she tried to get Neo's attention.

All that mattered was the fact that Frost was gone…literally.

She had always had nightmares that he would eventually disappear from her life much like everyone else she had known growing up, but she had never thought it would ever actually happen. She had always believed that his dumb smirk and bad humor would be at her side for the rest of their lives and beyond if she had had her wish. It had almost seemed like that dream would have come true as she had placed that kiss on his lips in a moment that felt like it had been ages ago. But then the Nevermore had swooped in and plucked him off the ground like a bird of prey grabbing a small critter in its hunt for food. She had seen the worry in his face as he had put his hands against her shoulders before shoving her away with as much force as he could muster. And then her vision had been filled with black feathers as the beast narrowly missed her and instead left with the peron that she had finally thought she would be able to be honest with her feelings about.

Her head slowly turned as she glanced around at the group of fighters around her cleared a path through the Grimm as they seemed to be travelling down a random street in the city. These beasts had taken the last thing she had left from her childhood away from her. She had no one left aside from people that she still barely knew compared to anyone else she had ever known before.

That was the final straw as her influx of emotions finally caused her to snap.

A shrill scream echoed from Neo's throat as she teleported off of Yang's shoulder with a flash, her hand grasping the weapon on her belt as she flipped a switch on the side of its shaft. A moment later a small short sword fitted with the blade that the weapon normally contained ejected from the barrel, her other hand flying out to grasp it in a tight grip even as she switched the parasol to its gun mode, the barrel and sight from Roman Torchwick's old cane popping into view as the Dust barrels within clicked into place. Her body became a blur of light and limbs as she teleported back and forth amongst the crowd of monsters that surrounded them, her blade lashing out at individual opponents even as the other hand fired the blasting mechanism for the gun into clusters of the beasts that were away from her. Her face was alight with fury as she felt the blade cleanly slice and weave through her foes even as the smell of smoke and fire filled the air from her continuous firing of her gun.

Pain filled her mind as the occasional monster would swipe out with claws or teeth and brush against her Aura; something that had thankfully been renewed when Ozpin had revived her, even if she had felt dizzy at first due to the disorienting feeling of being revived in the first place. Her only focus was on destroying every last one of the monstrosities that had finally managed to take away everything she had ever cared about in the world. That or die trying since at least it would let her see her family once more after not seeing them for so long…or at least, that's what she would have done had the sudden occurrence of a blunt object slamming into the side of her head not knocked her out.

The last thing she remembered seeing was that of a worried Emerald reaching out for her as her vision faded to black while the Grimm closed in once more.

"There's too many of them! We need to get to safer territory!" Qrow's voice called out over the sounds of battle while everyone tried to keep the Grimm off of each other.

"There's another building where the survivors would have gone along with my parents!" Blake called out over the chaos. "We'll have to fight right through the horde to get to them, though!"

"It will suffice for now!" Ozpin shouted back even as he lashed out with his cane and crushed the skull of an incoming Ursa with a single blow without breaking a sweat. "Everyone follow Miss Belladonna through the Grimm! Watch each other's backs so that no one gets hurt!"

"What about Neo?!" Emerald called out as her eyes briefly flashed to the girl sitting limply on the ground as she slashed her blades through anything that came to close to either of them.

"Grab her and go! We don't have time to try and calm her down right now!" Qrow snapped back as he switched his sword to its scythe variant and decapitated three Beowolves in one swing. "Yang!"

"On it!" The blonde replied as she unleashed a salvo of Dust into a pack of Grimm headed in her direction so that it would also launch her towards the girl in question. She quickly placed a hand on the girl's shoulder to give it a shake, and when she was met with no response, switched to her other arm as it grasped her around the waist before hoisting her up onto her shoulder in a half-assed grip due to the hurry they were in. "I've got her!"

"Good! Now let's get moving!"

With that, the group of them slowly made their way through the mass of Grimm that seemed to keep coming as Blake called out directions from within their group. Everything was going relatively smoothly as Emerald saw Ruby briefly move over to stand behind Yang as she tried to get Neo's attention.

"Neo! You need to snap out of it! We need your help!"

"Ruby! She won't listen!" Emerald called out to catch the young reaper's attention. "Frost just got taken by a giant Nevermore and for all we know he could be dead as we speak! I'm torn up about it, too, but he was the only person she had left from when they were kids! She won't be in her right mind right now!"

As though to emphasize her point, Neo's eyes suddenly filled with fury as she looked past Ruby and towards the Grimm following them as her mouth opened in a bloodthirsty screech. Before anyone could comprehend what was happening, she had teleported off of Yang's shoulder in a flash of light before reappearing directly in front of a large Beowolf as her hand reached for her weapon at her waist. Within seconds, the parasol had been converted to a small short sword and the familiar cane gun as she unleashed a frenzy into the monster's that were tailing them through the alley they currently presided. The Grimm in front of her lurched as its chest was carved open from a ferocious slash of her blade even as an oncoming pack of Boarbatusks was engulfed in a blast of fire that had launched from the other half of her weapon. Everyone paused for a moment as they watched the raging girl dance from Grimm to Grimm in a flurry of attacks while tears streamed from her eyes and onto the ground below.

"Oh god." Yang stated plainly as her eyes widened at the sight. "It's like fighting against her on the train all over again." Her head whirled to face Emerald with confused eyes. "I thought Frost said she was clean of whatever was inside her after what happened during the attack on Beacon! What's going on?!"

"Something not of the Grimm, I'm afraid." Ozpin calmly replied from towards the front of the group as multiple eyes turned to face him. "She has been consumed by the pain and torment in her heart and has resorted to taking it out on the Grimm given what they have done to those around her."

"Professor…how do you know that?" Jaune asked with a perplexed tone. "She never even went to our school, so how could you know anything about her."

"Because the only other person she truly cared about was arrested on the grounds of having information about Roman Torchwick following the Breach. It was my business to investigate someone that would be staying at my school as well as any connections they may have to the events of the outside world. It was through that I was able to discover roughly what had transpired in the village they had used to live before being received at one of the orphanages within Vale."

"Are we really doing this now, Oz?" Qrow stated with a grim look on his face. "We don't exactly have a low of time before more Grimm get drawn by her emotions. It'll be like a goddamned buffet for them."

Ozpin sighed reluctantly as he closed his eyes. "I suppose you're right. Time, while it is something I can alter to a small measure, is not something we have a lot of at the moment. We must reach the safe house Miss Belladonna speaks of first before we can talk more."

"But how are we supposed to stop her in the state she's in?" Yang asked with an exasperated look on her face as she gestured towards Neo.

"Easy." Qrow retorted as he switched his scythe back to its sword form while slowly marching in Neo's direction. It was almost inaudible amidst Neo's rampage, but everyone swore they could hear the words "Sorry, kid" pass from his lips even as he brought up his weapon and crashed the blunt end of his weapon's pommel into the back of the girls head, cleanly knocking her out as her body crumpled to the ground as her eyes fluttered for a few seconds. The moment she started to fall, Emerald started moving forward quickly to grab Neo as her body hit the ground, her arms carefully reaching under the girl to carry her in a bridal fashion even as someone else quickly grabbed her weapons off the ground while they all made their way back down the streets of Menagerie.

Frost landed with a grunt as the Nevermore roughly dropped him onto the ground just a bit in front of the black airship that he had seen earlier. Now free of the monster's confines, his hand quickly lashed out to his pocket to retrieve his scroll even as he started riffling through its contents in the hope that he would find what he was looking for. His eyes briefly flashed upwards towards the ship as he heard the sound of its hatch opening before returning to his scroll until he found the command he was looking for. His free hand started reaching out to activate his scroll only to stop as a barbed whip lashed out and wrapped itself around the unobstructed limb.

"I see that our greatest achievement had finally returned to us." A man's voice sounded from ahead of Frost. He strained his neck as he struggled to look up and see who it was that was talking.

His eyes were met with the visage of a man in a lab coat with black and white hair and piercing yellow eyes that seemed almost snakelike in the way they gazed at him. A forked tongue passed from its lips for a moment, cementing the fact that this man was a Snake Faunus even as a sickening smirk grew on its face.

"Ooooh, yes. I recognize the fire in those eyes. It seems that despite not being under direct supervision you have still grown in power my friend. Our leader will be quite pleased with that information."

"I'm not your friend, whoever you are. Something tells me that if I knew who you were I'd want to force it into the ground until you choked on the dirt itself." Frost spat out, venom is his voice even as he struggled to move his hand from within the confines of the barbed weapon.

"I'm sorry, was I speaking to you?" The man commented with a tilt of his head. "No, I was speaking to my brethren inside of you. You see, you're now a part of something much bigger than anything else you may have known before. But we can't have you sending any sort of distress signal to your allies to come rescue you, so that's why I had to restrain you. It's a shame, really. I would have much preferred a more pleasant introduction."

"…Who said it was a distress signal?" Frost commented as he smirked slightly before a sudden surge of electricity passed from his arm into the whip before it shocked the man holding it, forcing him to let it go as it immediately loosened on Frost's limb. His hand quickly lashed out as it pressed a button on his scroll before a dinging sound echoed through the clearing.

"Well…that was slightly unpleasant." The man said as he straightened his coat slightly before marching towards Frost and delivering a clean uppercut to the boy's jaw. "It seems that there is still enough humanity in you to be a tad bit flippant. No matter. We'll work that out of your system soon enough." His eye turned to look at the scroll in Frost's other hand before tutting slightly. "We can't have that device still working however, regardless of what it was you managed to finish when you so rudely interrupted me." His whip lashed out once more before wrapping around the metallic device and swinging it back in his direction. The man then dropped the scroll on the ground before sharply delivering his foot to it, shattering the device in the process. "There, now you won't have any rescue coming for you."

"You make it sound like I want to be rescued. Bit of an assumption don't you think?" Frost retorted from his kneeling position on the ground as he swayed in the place. The events of the day were just now beginning to catch up with him as well as the pain and blood loss from being carried by the Nevermore. It was only a matter of time before he collapsed from exhaustion.

"Oh, you'll want to be rescued by the time we get started. Trust me."

"Give it your best shot, then. We'll see if it registers."

"With pleasure…especially after what your parents did."

Frost's head whipped up in sudden surprise and focus, his voice filled with confusion. "Wait…what?!"

He never received his answer as the whip collided heavily with his skull, the immense pain blacking him out within moments as he collapsed heavily to the ground.

A bit late in the day for it to be finally posted, but hey, it's not technically late for Thursday where I'm currently at...I totally didn't cut it close at all.

Needless to say, things won't really be slowing down much for the remainder of the story, but that doesn't mean that its going to be ending abruptly. People to visit, places to be, it's all going to be quite an exhilarating time for all parties involved. Until the next updater on Jan. 18, however, I bid you all goodnight.