She kicked rubble as she walked alone through the glassed land, searching. For what exactly, she didn't know. All she knew was the instinct deep inside her told her to keep looking for it. She pushed over a small pile of ash with her already black boots wondering if she'd finally find something useful.

Just a rock. She picked it up and tossed it with a short scream. It flew through the air in a massive arc as she continued to slowly crunch over the black crust that covered the countless miles of sand and dirt. She looked back to where she knew her partner was helping her look. She was probably at least a mile away.

A loud metallic bang echoed across the plain and Yang spun in the direction of the noise. She smiled and started laughing as she started the long trek to wherever her rock had landed. Wherever it landed, it definitely hit something that wasn't the black crust that carpeted this disaster zone.

She walked tirelessly for five minutes before finding a disturbed area of the ground. She reached down into the rock sized hole and pulled the rock she'd thrown out. She couldn't see what was below the crust so she started digging at it, tossing pieces of dirt and blackened clumps of sand out of the way. She tossed the last plate of glass out of the way and went to dig deeper in the dirt when her fist hit something hard that made a quiet echo. She quickly cleaned up the remaining dirt to find a blackened piece of metal that was heavily dented under her feet. It had the remaining ghost of burned off paint and in places was still stained gray or brown as it must have been before the explosion that had destroyed everything.

Yang jumped out of the shallow hole and hit the dial button on her scroll. After a few rings, her teammate answered.

"Call everyone. I found it." She clicked the device closed, not bothering with the smudge of ash making the call had left on her face.

She started widening the hole as she waited for the others to get to her. Whatever it was that was telling her to search, this was definitely what she'd been meant to find.

C'mon, Ruby. Please be there… She thought desperately as she pushed herself along at the tireless pace she'd set to clear the whole of whatever she'd found. Maybe, just maybe, she'd be able to find out something about what had happened to her sister.

After countless handfuls of junk were tossed anywhere but back in the hole, the remaining half of her team arrived with team JNPR in tow. Everyone was carrying a shovel and started to dig as Blake gave Yang the extra she'd brought.

"Do you think this is it?" She asked. Yang was already digging away and didn't answer.

Blake shook her head slowly as she jumped down beside Yang and started to dig. This was the eighteenth 'discovery' they were digging up, and Blake honestly wished she knew what she could do for Yang to help her deal with her bottled up emotions. It was just a matter of time until something broke. The only question was exactly what would break.


After a solid hour, the six friends had finally cleared the destroyed aircraft of enough dirt to realize how much damage it'd suffered. Both wings hadn't been so much ripped, as shredded with the internal components littering the pile that they'd shoveled up beside the main piece of hull.

The craft was also upside down, meaning they'd have to keep digging if they wanted to get to the cockpit. As it was, the evening light was already fading fast and they'd already been warned several times that they wouldn't be allowed to reenter Atlas after dark. It wouldn't be too difficult to stay here if they'd come prepared, but most of them had given up on the search for the specific needle in the needle stack Yang was obsessively searching for.

"We have to go. We'll come back tomorrow. Okay?" Jaune asked, trying to take Yang's shovel from her.

"No! We're almost done. Just a bit more." Yang kept at the hole she'd started beside where the cockpit would've been.

"Go. We'll be fine. Just let Qrow know that we're not coming back today." Blake said in apology.

"It's been a week." Pyrrha said quietly as she passed Blake. "At this point, I think it would do more harm than good for her to find them."

Blake couldn't help but agree with the logic. The dessert sun was harsh during the day, but they'd spent the past week searching the glassed area of Remnant at every waking hour.

Blake started back to shoveling the pile Yang was making so it wouldn't start falling back in the hole as the sun disappeared, leaving nothing but the stars for light as the moon was currently elsewhere in the sky.

Hours passed with little change except the size of the hole and the slowing pace at which Yang feverishly worked to dig all the way to the cockpit. Somewhere early in the morning hours as the sun started to bend it's first rays over the horizon, she climbed out of the hole, too exhausted to continue.

"I give up. Let's just go." She slowly started to cry as Blake knelt beside her, rubbing her back. The always tough blond was finally starting to accept the reality that the rest of them had resigned themselves to.

"Let me give it a turn, okay?" Blake said, bending and brushing her lips against the dirty cheek of her grieving girlfriend.

She jumped down into the hole Yang had dug, surprised at how far she'd gotten, and set to work, slowly but surely working her way around the massive damaged belly of the aircraft. She'd only worked twenty minutes when she finally found the craft drop away from her. She started digging under the craft, to hopefully find a way into the hollow husk.

Her hope was rewarded with a small access hatch not a meter in that seemed to lead to the main cockpit. For a moment, she hesitated. She wanted to tell Yang that she'd found it, but knew that there might be something on the other side that would make everything worse.

She braced herself as she forced the bent hatch inwards. Pitch black met her eyes as if there was something supernatural about the darkness. Blake pulled out her scroll and used the screen as a light to shine into the seemingly empty chamber, her faunus eyes doing the rest of the work to bring everything into sharp focus.

Almost immediately, she spotted a massive blue rock spanning from the ground to the ceiling. After a moment, she noticed that the whole container was freezing cold. Ice… she realized with a stroke of shock running through her. There's no way…

She climbed into the small space and inspected the block of ice closer. On the side, she noticed the small etchings of Weiss's symbol, and reflecting back out of the ice was one massive shape, completely dark and blurry beneath the solid foot and a half of ice.

"Yang?" Blake yelled, still not believing what she was seeing. "Yang! Get down here!"

Blake heard the thump as Yang landed in the hole and crawled through the hatch.

She came up beside Blake, shivering slightly as she noticed the same things Blake had noticed moments ago.

Yang collapsed onto her knees, her tears returning as she cried audibly.

"This is it! We found it!" She managed to squeeze out through her sobs, wiping her hands across her face repeatedly, trying to keep her vision clear to look at the magnificent formation of ice before her.

Blake dialed the number to Yang's Uncle who picked up on the first ring.

"Yer late! Where are you?" He asked bluntly, worry evident in his voice as he shouted through the phone.

"We found them." Blake answered shortly and waited.

Moments passed and the man on the other end whispered a swear as he carefully asked the next question. "How…?"

"Ice. We won't know more until we get them out." Blake answered him with a joy she hadn't felt since before the fall of Vale. "But it's about fifteen feet underground. We'll need a lot of help."

"Not necessarily." Qrow answered tears making his voice thick. "Leave it to me!"

He hung up as Yang finally forced herself back under control. She looked at Blake in a way she hadn't since finding out about the disaster and launched herself at her partner.

"Thank you so much!" She whispered, pressing her lips to Blake's cheek. "I owe everyone so much, but you the most because you had to put up with me."

Blake moved so she caught Yang's next kiss on her lips, smiling at her teammate's surprise. "As long as you're back to normal, I'll let it slide."

Yang laughed and gave Blake one of her bone crushing hugs. "I owe you one fancy dinner, don't I?"

"I wouldn't refuse the offer." Blake answered honestly as she pulled Yang out of the hatch. "But first we have to get out of here."

At 5:25 that morning, Atlas military showed up with twenty Atlesian Knights, three excavation crews, and a battery of scientists to assess the health of the girls inside the ice.


"There have been reports of an increase in AIM supporters." The voice said from the scroll sitting on General Ironwood's desk.

"Well, what would you have me do about it? There's no way to tell who's with them and who's just a civilian." He said calmly as he signed paper after paper in his inbox without looking at most of them. He'd given the job of making sure the forms were the right onces to his secretary who'd been doing a stellar job as of late in keeping literally every aspect of his work life on paper as if it was a scientific algorithm slowly mutating every cycle along with the world.

"After an event like that of Vale, I'd assume closing the borders would be a viable option." The voice suggested.

"As I've said, we rely too much on Vacuo for certain supplies. Closing borders to them would result in our trade agreement dissolving. If we close borders to Mystral, then those who want to, just need to go first to Vacuo before coming straight here." Ironwood sighed. He'd been over this opinion repeatedly for the past few days in parliament, and he was now wasting his few minutes of down time to listen to one of the politicians voice his views on the insurgent situation. "Regardless, I've voiced my opinions and the tactical value of leaving things as they are in this mornings presentation. My position will not change until the facts do. Until then, you'll have to excuse me."

He pressed the hangup button on the scroll, ignoring the politician's argument that was just starting to come out of the speakers. He leaned back in his chair and sighed as he pulled up his calendar. In exactly two days, he'd be free to go on his vacation and leave all the work to the highest ranked commander. His only hope had been to get the vote finished before he left, but as it was right now, there wouldn't be a resolution in at least a month.


"You're abroad? Since when?" Glynda Goodwitch asked in confusion.

"Since yesterday. I'll need you to keep an eye on things while I'm gone, but I daresay that you've been doing all the work from the start regardless." Ozpin answered with smile as he walked across the deserted beach.

"You're not at liberty to say exactly where you are…" She assumed from his lack of information in his first statement.

"You would be correct." He answered. "Take care of yourself, Glynda. Remnant seems to be in a fragile state right now with the fall of Vale. We need to keep it whole for just a small while longer."

"I know, sir… but how exactly do we stop the inevitable?" She asked the question that had been on her mind for the countless years past.

"We don't. We can only delay it, and alter what we can so the outcome is more… favourable…" He stopped as he pondered the same question that he'd asked himself countless times before. "But even now, I cannot say for certain that my opinion of the perfect outcome will be the best for anyone. I only hope that my choices will end the war we've been fighting since the end of the Great War."

After a moment, Glynda responded. "Sometimes I wonder if you've spent so much time looking at things objectively that you've forgotten that the objects are all independent. No matter what, in the end it will be their choices that will remain. If you really are that unsure, believe me when I say that you've done better than anyone else on Remnant could have."

"Thank you Glynda." Ozpin said, touched by his friend's reassurances.

"And I was wondering if you've given any thought to my proposition from the last time we spoke in person." Glynda asked almost shyly. Ozpin stopped his walk and looked out to the sea.

"We'll see if the time is right when I get back." Ozpin responded his voice betraying his opinion on that matter too clearly.

"I see… well, I suppose that can't be helped." Glynda said sharply.

"I'm sorry. You know my reasons for keeping things this way." Ozpin sighed as he pushed his stressful thoughts down. "Until this comes to a close, I can't give my time to anything else. Especially since we are so close to finally ending this."

"You don't have to worry about me. I won't be going anywhere." Glynda responded, her voice growing soft again. "Just promise me that you'll at least inform me before you go on these excursions. It can be somewhat stressful when you do not respond for hours at a time."

"As you wish." Ozpin agreed before he heard the line get cut. He placed his scroll back in his pocket and continued walking down the rocky coast his breath clouding in front of him as he slowly reanalyzed everything he knew about the whole situation sitting before him.

"If only we'd made the right choice back then…" Ozpin sighed to himself as he looked up at his destination. The cliff seemed even more foreboding than it normally was. But he'd come as close as he felt comfortable today. After all, it was going to be a long walk back to town.


Hello everyone! Welcome to the finale of my Bloody Snow trilogy! I've done some minor re-writes for later chapters, but overall everything was written a fair time before Season 2 entered full swing, using what was canon at the end of Season 1. Then I added to it myself.

For those of you who are new to the series, I highly suggest reading Volumes 1 and 2 to clear up any confusion, which are linked on my profile and at:
s/10558972/1/RWBY-Bloody-Snow-Volume-1
and
s/11334975/1/RWBY-Bloody-Snow-Volume-2

If you're looking for something a little more fluffy, check out my most popular fic: Iridescent Ice at
s/11040169/1/Iridescent-Ice
or if you're more into "a little dark but not terribly so", Because Why Not? will be getting more updates very very soon at
s/11352417/1/Because-Why-Not

I hope you enjoyed this chapter and as always, drop me a message to tell me what you loved (or hated). Updates will happen at least weekly, but if I'm not too busy, more often. So follow to get the updates as soon as they go live!

A big thanks to LovelyLittleRose - my artist who's worked on more than a few commissions for me, including this cover and the cover of Bloody Snow Volume 1.

And finally, I thank the late Monty Oum for creating this beautiful world, and admit that I regretfully do not own RWBY, RoosterTeeth, or any other trademarks or copyrights associated with this show (insert legal mumbo jumbo here).

Once again, Welcome, and I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of RWBY: Bloody Snow: Volume 3!