Since RT's site was having some issue this morning, I decided to write the next chapter of the story while waiting to watch the first episode of Season 4 today. Yay for being a FIRST member!

Now, for anyone now, but also just to reiterate a point I made previously- this story will not be canon to Volume 4. I may take certain things into account at least in terms of people's current attitude given things that have happened, but stuff that happens in Volume 4 will not likely happen in here, and vice-versa (unless weird coincidences occur, but that would be just weird).

Either way, enjoy the final installment to the first act of the story. Drop any criticism following your read or if you just have thoughts about the story. Peace!

Frost, Neo, and Emerald all panted for breath as they arrived at the wreckage of the lead ship of the Atlesian fleet. They had avoided most of the Grimm due to using side streets and short bursts of Neo's teleporting; however they were still forced to fight smaller forces here and there that they were unable to avoid. It had gotten to the point where as they got closer they discarded the element of stealth to avoid Neo collapsing from exhaustion from teleporting more than one person numerous times. Thus, Emerald and Frost had taken point in eliminating the smaller packs as quickly as they could while Neo picked off the occasional straggler with her blade.

"You know," Frost panted as he held a hand against a larger piece of rubble to keep himself upright. "We should really look into getting a gun built into that umbrella of yours, Neo. There'll likely be some fights down the road where even your acrobatics and blade won't do much good."

Neo sent a pointed glare in Frost's direction as she wiped away a few beads of sweat from her forehead. "Well I'm sorry I don't have a Semblance that lets me create my own projectiles, mister battery man."

Frost's brow furrowed as he glared back in response. "Okay, for one I know one of the best ways I've come to describing my Semblance was like a battery in terms of how much I can put out at any given time, but-"

"Would the two of you just shut up?!" Emerald snapped in a whisper-yell, immediately silencing the two of them with looks of surprise. "The Grimm are attracted to negativity, remember? So how about we stop getting on each other's cases and find that damn Scroll…if it's still even in this pile of scrap, at least."

The other two declared a truce as they all began sifting through the debris. Thanks to Neo actually having gotten a rough idea of the ship's layout due to her being tasked with breaking out Torchwick and commandeering the ship, the three of them were able to find the remains of the command deck considerably faster than if they had been searching blind. That wasn't to say that it hadn't been severely damaged in the crash. What remained of the command deck at first glance were piles of loose wiring, consoles, and various devices littering the ground as they dug around in search of the main console, which seemed to be much harder to find then even Neo had anticipated.

As their search continued without any signs of success, the three of them were rapidly approaching giving up their search and instead resorting to searching out potential leads elsewhere or otherwise leave for one of the other kingdoms. That was, until Frost shouted out to catch the attention of the other two amidst the wreckage.

"What is it? What did you find?" Neo inquired as she vaulted over a larger piece of rubble and approached Frost's back, as he was currently turned away from her. Emerald was close behind, a look of curiosity etched on her face as she also wondered what the apparent fuss was about.

"Take a look for yourself." Frost stated as he lifted a piece of debris with one hand and fished out a long, soot covered object from the debris. At first, the object seemed like nothing special, if anything it appeared to be a long rod-likely from a connecting joint or some sort of monitoring device if anyone could hazard a random guess. It was once it was fully removed from the rubble that the others finally saw what Frost had also seen before stepping back in surprise.

Roman Torchwick's weapon- Melodic Cudgel.

The three of them looked at the uncovered object in Frost's hands with shock. Roman Torchwick-dead? As far as any of them were concerned the man usually had a way out of most scenarios, so to discover that he had been bested by something caught all of them off-guard.

"You don't think…?" Neo asked as she turned to face Frost with a look of confusion and concern on her face.

"No. Ruby couldn't have done this." Frost stated, more to assuage his own worries than anything else. "Things may have been dire, but Ruby would be the last person I think would kill someone, even to defend herself. It's just not her M.O."

Emerald scoffed as she shook her head next to the others with her arms crossed over her chest. "Are you two really that naive? Vale was dying around all of us. Ruby was stuck up here, alone, facing off against the," Emerald shuddered and gagged as she uttered the next few words, "most notorious criminal in all of Vale. He would have been out to kill her, and she would have been left with zero options given how isolated they were up here."

"You don't know Ruby like I do, Emerald." Frost snapped as he turned to glare at the crimson-eyed girl. "She is literally the last person that would result to killing if she could help it. I may not have known her or the rest of her team for a long time, but I knew them for long enough to get a feel for what kind of people they were. So don't get on my case for not anticipating someone's actions."

"Even when one of her best friends had been killed only hours earlier?" Emerald retorted as her fists clenched at her sides. "What about what happened to that robot-girl, Penny? I heard from Mercury how heartbroken she was at seeing her on the battlefield, broken."

Frost's mouth twisted into a snarl even as a headache once again began to flare up unbeknownst to the others. "Watch it, Emerald. I said that we'd be willing to give you a chance, but you are treading on seriously thin ice here. Choose your next words VERY carefully, because they'll decide whether or not we let you keep tagging along with us." Emerald's hand moved faster than the other two could anticipate, her fist swinging to pelt across Frost's face before either could react, her weapon forgotten at her side. Before things could escalate further, Neo stepped between the two with her arms outstretched.

"Enough! Both of you stop it!" Neo turned to face Frost first. "I trust that you know Ruby and her team better than either of us, but you need to watch it when you let your emotions act up like that! You know how that usually ends!" It was then that she turned to face Emerald, her expression remaining angry as she berated the green-haired girl. "And you! You may be trying to atone for what you've been a part of like the two of us, but Frost is still right in saying that there are lines that shouldn't be crossed! Plus you were the one saying to not get angry for risk of attracting the Grimm." She then turned to glance back and forth between the two of them as she continued. "For now I think the two of you need to go in separate direction to cool off before we decide on where we go next, alright?"

The other two begrudging agreed, but not without sending the other dirty looks before going in separate directions, with Frost walking over to an open area amidst some debris while Emerald climbed over a large pile in the opposite direction to continue her search. Neo turned to follow Frost first, as she knew that she would have an easier time talking to him than she would Emerald. As she came up beside him, she gently rested a hand against his arm, even as he turned and spat with disgust at the ground beside them.

"You have to give her a chance, Frost." Neo calmly stated at his side as she felt the muscles of his arm beneath the jacket ripple as he clenched and unclenched his fists in frustration. "She's trying to make up for her mistakes, and if we don't give her a chance, how can we expect others to give us one?"

"She talked about them as if they barely mattered, Neo." Frost stated as he looked up towards the smoky sky. "She didn't know Ruby like I did. That girl is nothing but joy and optimism and hope wrapped up in a speed-demon of a body. It's incredible."

Neo punched him lightly on the arm. "Watch it there, Casanova. Keep talking like that and you might get me thinking you have a crush on the girl."

Frost let out an honest laugh at that statement. "Yeah, no. Ruby's personality makes her feel more like a sister than anything else, plus I wouldn't want to deal with an overly protective Yang even if I was interested. Besides," Frost stated with a smirk as he turned to look down at the girl beside him, "you would just get jealous if I did suddenly start dating someone else." He laughed again as Neo's face lit up slightly as she spluttered for words. "This is exactly what I'm talking about! You can make all those jokes as much as you want, but you can never take it when it's thrown back in your face!"

Neo's face contorted into a frown as his laugh covered his hearing of the words Neo mumbled under her breath. "It's because it's you saying it, you meathead."

"Anyways," Neo turned over to look at Frost once more as his laughing subsided. "Considering who we were just taking about, I never actually thought of it before with everything going on. I've got Ruby's number on my Scroll. I figure that I should probably contact her, if possible, to let the others know where we're at in terms of things."

"Almost a week after everything had happened, and NOW you remember that you have their numbers?" Neo asked with a raised eyebrow. "What about the others?"

"Too risky. Yang said that Blake ran off, so she wouldn't answer her Scroll most likely. Weiss got taken back to Atlas by her father, and considering that Atlas developed the CCT, he probably personally had a monitoring system put in place to track unknown calls to her Scroll. Ruby's the only other one we could risk reaching and hope to get through to at this point."

"Go ahead then, I guess." Neo said with a shrug as she took Torchwick's weapon from his hand to free it up at his silent request as he fiddled with his Scroll. Moments later, a dial-tone could be heard before an upbeat voice came over the device's speakers.

"You've reached Ruby! Who is i- FROST?! You're okay!" The young girls voice immediately shifted to an evidently shocked tone, her surprise clear as day even without seeing her face.

"Yes, Ruby. I'm fine." The smile could be heard in his voice as he spoke to another person responsible for him making peace with himself. "How are the others?"

"They're…alright, I guess. Considering what happened." The girl's tone shifted to a more somber note as the mood of the conversation rapidly shifted.

"It's okay Ruby, I heard from Yang." Frost replied back.

"You did?! How is she? Is she still…upset?"

"A little bit, but I think getting in there and giving her a dose of my patented morale-boosting speeches, she'll be just fine with your dad there."

Neo scoffed with a smile as she walked over in view of the Scroll's camera. "You mean the same speeches that generally ended in "Oops." or "My bad."?"

"Oh shush, you." Frost retorted with a brief sideways glance in Neo's direction.

Ruby's expression, on the other hand was a little more extreme. Not only was she surprised to see the same girl that she had seen fall from the airship, but to suddenly hear an actual voice coming from someone she had never heard speak previously was a shock in and of itself. As quickly as it happened however, a light-bulb went off in her head as conversations past came back to her.

"You found her!" Ruby exclaimed with glee as she smiled widely. Frost and Neo both jerked slightly at the sudden outburst before composing themselves quickly.

Frost cleared his throat before responding, "Yes Ruby, and I really have to thank you for the quick thinking with the airship fight you had against her and Torchwick. I wasn't sure how I was supposed to help you fight Torchwick without having to fight Neo as well, so that took a lot of the wondering out of the equation. Speaking of which, though, how exactly did you beat him? We found his cane in the wreckage of the airship, where we are now, but we had a…disagreement over what exactly must have gone down."

"I didn't…beat him, exactly." Ruby said as she scratched the back of her head sheepishly. "He kind of…got eaten by one of the Griffons as he was giving a monologue about survival and siding with whoever was likely to win. Then I kicked the Grimm into the control center of the ship and jumped off as it fell. Sorry, I know you kind of wanted a chance to get back for everything."

Frost scratched the back of his head a bit as he sheepishly replied. "It's…probably for the best that I didn't. I get less than pleasant thoughts about what I would have done to that man, so…probably good that I never got a chance to act on them."

"Good." Ruby replied simply from the other side of the device. "Oh, and…Neo?" At a nod from Neo, Ruby continued. "Keep an eye on this goof for the rest of us, would you? Considering how much he talked about you, you're the best person to keep him from getting in too deep even if any of us were there. You wouldn't believe how much he talked about you once we got him to open up!"

"Oh, really?" Neo replied with a smirk as she turned to look at Frost who was conveniently whistling and was avoiding looking at herself or the Scroll. "I'll keep that in mind. And Ruby?" Neo's face took on a gentler expression as she directed her focus back on the girl on the screen. "Thank you. For looking out for him while I was…indisposed. It means a lot."

"Don't mention it! Just make sure to brace yourself whenever we meet in person, cause I imagine a lot of hugs are gonna come your way to celebrate!"

Neo laughed lightly as Ruby bounced lightly from her side. "I'll keep that in mind Ruby."

"Oh! Ruby, hang on!" Frost quickly interjected even as the younger girl's hand neared the screen to deactivate the call. "I just gotta know, where are you guys at right now?"

"Oh, us?" Ruby stated with surprise. "We're heading the Haven over in Mistral to search for Cinder and the others. What about you guys? Should we wait for you to catch up?"

"Nah, it would take too long for that. You go on ahead. I've got a better idea for where we can go, anyways. Also, what do you know about modifying or combining weapons?" Frost finished with sincere curiosity, not aware of what he was about to unleash.

"Stuff about weapons?!" Ruby's eyes lit up at the question. "I hope you guys have something to write on, cause I know a bunch of stuff!"

Neo and Frost gave each other worried looks, which went unnoticed by the girl on the other side of the screen as she began going into detail.

EXTREME detail.

Emerald slowly returned to where the three of them had been as she took a few deep breaths, not anticipating the conversation they would likely have first thing. As she moved around a large pile of debris back into the clearing she heard the sound of a Scroll being disconnected from a call, her eyebrow raising in in confusion as she turned the corner.

"Sweet Oum, I thought she would never stop." Frost stated as he sat with his head between his hands, a far off look in his eyes.

"At least she gave us some ideas for what we can do with them. That's something at least." Neo replied as she held Melodic Cudgel and her parasol side-by-side.

"Did I…miss something?" Emerald stated with unease as she looked at the two sitting next to each other amidst the debris.

"Nothing that wouldn't have bored you to unconsciousness, so you're good." Neo stated with a small smile.

Frost and Emerald both gave each other silent and uneasy glances as they both were torn as to whether or not they'd speak first. It was Frost that ended up breaking the silence prematurely.

"Look, Emerald…I'm sorry. The way I got worked up like that wasn't completely fair. Tensions have been high lately, and I guess I let it get to me…again." He stated as he sheepishly rubbed the back of his head with one hand.

"You're not the only one that needed to apologize. I'm still getting used to actually talking to people with sincerity, so I'm still learning when too far is…too far."

Neo clapped her hands with a smile on her face as the two shook hands in agreement. "Great! Now that everything's good, we can head out!"

Emerald turned a confused look to the two of them as she pulled a piece of scrap from her back pocket. "How exactly are we supposed to do that without any more leads? I found the Scroll back in the wreckage while I was gone but it and the console are toast."

"We were just finishing talking to Ruby as you showed up, and she said that they're already heading to Haven in Mistral so that leaves us with only one option to take care of. Atlas." Frost stated with a matter of fact look on his face.

"Okay. Why?" Emerald asked with a continued look of confusion.

"Because we know Blake is in hiding, likely in Mistral or Menagerie, so Ruby and the other are sooner likely to run into her than us. Since we've already looked into Yang over in Patch, which only leaves Weiss in Atlas to check in on."

"And you didn't call her, because…?" Emerald asked.

"Atlas designed the CCT remember? So what are the odds that the head of the Schnee Dust Company put something in place to monitor the heiress' calls that aren't preprogrammed as okay?"

"Fair point. Guess it's off to Atlas then."

The three of them all turned as they all started walking off in the direction of Atlas, their destination now clearly set in their minds. Each of them had different concerns about the coming days as they all would struggle against new foes, new challenges, and new encounters. But that would simply be a part of the journey that they were now a part of. This was their life now.

The life…of a Hunstman.