Frost winced as he heard the girls' yells as the door slammed shut behind him. His fists clenched tightly as he heard banging on the metal frame. His chest ached as he heard one set of yelling turn into whimpers. But he didn't turn around, because he knew that if he did…he wouldn't be able to finish what he needed to do.

"Cobalt…why?" Neo's voice came from the opposite side of the door.

"…Because I lied to the two of you." His throat felt thick for a moment before he powered on, unwilling to falter now to close to the end. "The Grimm inside me is still there. Clawing away as it tries to get control back from me before I do something that puts it at risk. It's like needles poking into my brain every few seconds as it pushes, harder and more desperate each time. And it's going to win, soon. There's nothing short of a miracle that will stop that, and we're not in a position for that to be a thing right now. Besides…I'm too far gone already."

"You can't know that!" Emerald shouted back. "Ironwood and Weiss' sister took all of the transformed people from the village to Atlas to try and cure them! They could do the same for you!"

"And what am I supposed to do over the time it takes to fly there from the middle of Vale? Fasten myself into a harness while someone somehow drugs me enough to prevent my Semblance from being used to crash the airship? It's not worth the risk and the two of you know it. When I saw Asrani lying on the ground, the only thing that stopped me from reaching down and snapping his neck was that I knew he was going to die anyways. And none of that was the Grimm's doing."

"Stop making it sound like you're doing us a favour, you asshole!" Emerald snapped back as the sound of a fist slamming into the door once again echoed from behind him. "…I used to hate the two of you. I only saw you as pawns of Torchwick that would eventually get in the way. Then I saw you refuse Cinder's demands and manage to escape. For a brief moment, I was tempted to follow after you." Everything was quiet for a few moments before Frost heard Emerald continue.

"When Cinder first picked me up off the streets, I was nothing but a thief. I thought that I would finally be able to live a better life if I worked with her like she offered. It wasn't until later on that I realized I was just a tool to her. Someone she saw as the means to an ends to help steal power that wasn't hers. But by the time I realized I had made a mistake, she was already leading an assault on one of the world's largest cities, killing countless people like it meant nothing at all. And then I saw the two of you on that rooftop. I saw how happy the two of you were for a moment, and I wished that I could have that kind of freedom. It was when Mercury came after the two of you under Cinder's orders to get rid of any loose ends that I knew if I really wanted a chance at redemption, I had to step in. So I got in his way and threw him into a dumpster while the two of you got away. I thought that was it - I had helped the two of you escape, and I had officially shown myself as a traitor to Cinder. I honestly thought that at any moment I would get shot in the back by one of her arrows for what I had done. But nothing happened. I just stood there for a bit, realizing that I was free. Until Mercury got back to her, Cinder would never now I had turned on her."

"So I hid. I found one of the most stable buildings and hid until the fighting stopped and things started to calm down. It wasn't until a few days later after scavenging from abandoned grocery stores and fighting off the occasional Grimm while avoiding the larger packs that I noticed the two of you passing through the ruins. I thought it was some kind of fluke. But no, the two of you were trying to find leads as to where Cinder was going so that you could try to stop her. I should have taken that as a sign to turn and go the other way considering who you were trying to find, but I never could. I came up to the two of you and offered to help, and instead of rejecting me outright like others would have for what I had taken part in, you accepted it. You brought me with you to Atlas where we saved a village full of people from the Grimm, we broke the Schnee princess out of her own home, we fought hordes of Grimm in Menagerie, and all of that brought us here. To stopping some lunatic that thought that putting a Grimm inside someone would help us survive. I never would have been able to do most of those things if I hadn't had the courage to fight back because of the two of you."

"…Most of those things, huh?" Frost could swear he could hear Emerald's smirk from the other side of the door. "That confident that you could break into one of the most important places in Vale on your own?"

"It'd take some work, but I could see it. They sure wouldn't."

"Semblance joke, funny." Frost snarked back as he closed his eyes to take a deep, calming breath. "Take after each other, you got it? I know what this seems like, but it's not completely because of that that I'm about to do this. This place can't be allowed to remain. No one can find this research and recreate it. And right now, blowing the core is the fastest way to bring the whole place down in one go. It makes the most sense that someone that has the least likely chance of coming out of this alright is the one to do it. Out of our whole group it would've likely been Nora, Yang, or I that could take this place out with our Semblances. But the two of them don't have a Grimm parasite living in their head waiting to lash out and hurt someone."

"Now go find the others and get them out of here."

Frost's only way of knowing that they had left was the telltale sound of Neo's teleportation going off a few moments later before he calmly started walking towards the main reactor within the chamber.

Far across the facility, Neo and Emerald flashed into the presence of the others. Readied weapons turned to face the two for a moment before everyone calmed down and relaxed. Ruby stepped forward with a worried look when she saw the conflicted expressions on the two girls' faces.

"What's Frost doing back there? What did he mean by this place going up?"

Neo and Emerald gave each a look before they turned back for Emerald to address the group.

"He's going to overload the power for this place and bring it all down in the resulting explosion. But to do it he locked himself in the room that houses the reactor so that we couldn't stop him. So we're here to get all of you out before it's too late."

"How, though? There's over ten of us here and I highly doubt that Neo's Semblance could move that many people at once."

"We're going to have to do it in shifts. Neo will take a few at a time out to the entrance where everyone will then back up into the forest to avoid anything that might come flying out when the place collapses. We don't know how much time we have exactly, so brace yourselves for a bit of a rush."

Frost stared at the behemoth that was the main reactor for a few moments as he figured out where it would be best for him to grab on and start flooding it with his Semblance. He knew that regardless of where it was, he was going to be experiencing pain like he had never felt before as he would acting as a conductor to an already powerful electrical system. A few times in the past he had used his Semblance to power something small like a radio or a remote, and those had given him a strange tingly feeling as he had acted as a bridge to power said devices. This wasn't even something that could be measured on a scale. He knew that flooding it with his Semblance WOULD overload the system to the point of malfunction, but he wasn't sure how long he would be able to remain conscious for it.

As he laid eyes on what looked like a large set of wires feeding into the machine, he started walking towards them only to feel a sharp stabbing pain much worse than what he had described to the others echo through his skull.

"Did you really think that I would let you do this?! Did you honestly believe that I would let you come this far and finish what has been started?!" The voice of the Grimm seemed almost taunting as Frost felt his limbs tense up as he collapsed to his knees even as he struggled to pull himself towards the wiring amidst the pain. "What better way would there be to finish you than to let you be so close to your goal only to despair as I erase what remains of your existence and feed on the buffet of negativity such a thing would cause?"

"You…won't…win…" Frost grunted out as he used the console for a set of controls to pull himself a little closer to the wiring. "I'm…ending…this…"

"Believe what you want. But in the end, you will fail and I will walk out of this place to kill all of your friends and allies. From there I will find the scientists that escaped and act as their guard while they finish the good doctor's work. They're mistake in the past was trusting mercenaries and ordinary people to defend something so important. With me there, nothing will come to slow their progress."

"Well…" Frost started as smirked a bit to himself despite the pain. "Guess…I'm going to…have to disappoint…" His hand reached out as it neared the wiring he had been struggling to reach. "The problem with…living in my head…is that I read…a LOT of comics…and stories with heroes…and the one thing…that each of those villains…has in common…"

"Is their tendency to monologue…when they think they've won." As he finished, his hand grasped tightly onto the wiring before he let his Semblance out in full-force. As his body surged with pain and electricity, he was unsure how much of the screaming he could hear was his own or the beast inside of him.

Neo glanced up towards the rook of the passage as the lights began to flicker and pop at random. Due to how everyone how organized themselves, all that remained were Emerald, Ruby, and Weiss. The four of them each gathered together quickly before Neo spared Emerald a glance before activating her Semblance once again.

As they reunited with the rest of the group, Neo stepped away briefly as she and Emerald made eye contact once more. All that was shared between the two after that was a brief nod before Neo disappeared once more to the surprised shouts of everyone else. All eyes turned to Emerald as Ruby shouted towards the green-haired girl.

"What is she doing?!"

Emerald smirked as she spared a look back towards the entrance of the building as they all moved quickly away.

"Not giving up."

Frost could feel his senses fading as the pain began to dull. He could see with his rapidly darkening vision that his grip was still tight on the wiring as his Semblance continued to run through it. He had stopped hearing the protests of the Grimm moments ago, much to his peace of mind even thought everything still hurt like hell. But it was over. He would finally be free of the Grimm, and no one else would hopefully have to worry about something like this ever happening again.

His peaceful thoughts came to a crashing halt as he thought he heard a familiar sound echo from a far corner of the room. If that was what he thought it was…

No…no it couldn't be.

Frost felt panic enter his entire being as he was able to just barely glimpse one of Neo's boots come sprinting around the corner of the one of the countess electrical systems. He knew that there were likely stray bolts of electricity careening off of the main system from glimpses he had gotten when the power had first started surging, so why was she here when she would just likely wind up getting killed as well.

"Neo…no…"

Her stern lecturing tone entered his ears as he felt her place one hand gently on his back, though he could feel her shake rather roughly when she refused to let go despite the painful shock she had likely just transferred to herself off of him.

"I'm not letting it end this way. Not in a million years."

"But…core…explode…" Words were difficult to say as his body slowly shut down, his consciousness finally fading entirely as all sounds began to sound echoed and distant. "Won't...make it...with me..."

"I don't care. It's about time I saved you for once."

And then everything turned white.

Yup, I know. Cliffhangers suck and all that. What I will say is that what's left is our epilogue and final thoughts. Which is likely to be out sometime in the next few days as I'd rather get that out of the way shortly after posting this rather than waiting another two weeks. So I'll save any more words for then.