When the first rays of sunshine started pouring from above the group wasted no time getting onto the fixed airship. "Strap your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen, this is going to be a rocky lift off." The pilot advised from his cabin, and the airship slowly started to rumble."

"I'm...a bit worried." Ruby admitted, putting her seatbelt on, "I mean...I don't know, I just have a bad feeling."

"Probably because this is your first time going to another continent via airship, it's going to be fine!" Yang said, in an attempt to ease her nervousness.

Polnareff stretched his arms upwards, "Man, what a pain in the ass though, having to spend an entire night in the middle of nowhere."

Kakyoin smirked a bit, putting on his sunglasses. "We've been travelling so much we're turning nomad, by the time we come back home I will have a hard time sleeping in the same place for more than a few weeks."

"Yeah...home." Jotaro muttered, looking down at the floor. The thought never really crossed his mind till that moment, how was his grandpa and mom doing in his world? How much time had passed? For all he knew years could have passed, or seconds.

Suddenly the airship was filled with a soft rumble that slowly intensified. The grass and trees were moved by the wind as the hulking flying piece of metal slowly detached from the ground, and started to move vertically.

After a few minutes, they were off the ground.

The travel was spiced up by the group making small talk about irrelevant stuff, though one question did stand out:

"So, why didn't we bring Team JNPR with us?" Yang asked, "I thought they'd be going with us."

Ruby leaned closer to answer. "Don't you think it'd be dangerous to pull them in this? I mean, we're the ones with the most experience here, and we still manage to get our butt kicked some times."

"I guess that makes se-"

But that was the last piece of small talk they would have had in that airship.

As soon as the ice sheets of ice of the continent of Solitas became visible through the windows, the interior started to turn red.

And an alarm started to boom.

"W-Whoa! What is going on?!" Weiss looked around confused.

"Hey! Pilot! W-What's happening?!" Yang shouted, but nobody.

"W-We're having an unexpected malfunction! Please remain in your seats and do not panic!" Said the very much panicking pilot through the intercom of the airship.

But it only took a peek from outside to understand what was happening. They were losing altitude, and fast.

Ruby looked horrified "N-no...If this keeps up, we'll slam against the ice!"

Yang instinctively tried standing up, and was snapped back by the belt, which she quickly tried to undo, "What're we waiting for? Let's jump!"

Weiss snapped back at her, nervous and angry. "Jump from where?! We will just splat like bugs at this speed, no Aura can withstand that!"

She stumbled on her feet as she freed herself from the seatbelt.

"Crap crap crap crap!" Polnareff shouted, "This time there's no Mister Joestar to help us with the crash landing!"

"W-What do we-"


Josuke already couldn't stand it any more, he should have been in yet another class at that moment, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Eluding the guards and the security cameras he sneaked out of Atlas Academy.

However, he came to regret that almost immediately, after his great escape he found himself surrounded by absolutely nothing, just ice and snow.

He walked around for a lot of time tucked in that heavy brown coat. "Oh great, I'm lost...Achoo!" He sneezed, a simple coat unable to protect him from the piercing intense cold.

He looked behind his back, he couldn't even see the Academy any more, just where did he end up?

He sneezed again and looked up at the sky, and suddenly he heard a loud crash coming from north. He jumped back in surprise as he saw smoke rise in the distance and pieces of metal fly out. He was far away enough that he couldn't quite understand what it was, but he could imagine.

With a worried look he started running towards the wreckage with as much speed as he could muster, at the very least that run would have left his legs warm!


"O-Ow...I-is everyone all right?" Ruby pushed away a piece of the wreckage pressing against her back

Jotaro blinked as he slowly stood up, he was completely covered in pieces of metal and snow when he regained consciousness. He massaged his jaw slightly, hurting like hell. He turned around to look, Kakyoin, Polnareff, Blake, Yang and Weiss were up too, "Should be everyone."

"No, not everyone." Blake said with a bit of sadness as she looked inside the destroyed cockpit of the airship. The pilot laid dead inside, his neck bending unnaturally and his head bleedy profusely, he probably died on impact.

Yang punched the ground, "Can somebody tell me what the hell just happened!?" Her hair almost turned fire as she asked that, her emotions taking the better of her.

Jotaro coughed "Calm the hell down, don't expend energy like that."

At his words the blonde slowly took a deep breath and calmed down, at least all of them had some sort of heavy coat on, or else they'd all have frozen already.

"It was sabotage, most likely." Blake spoke up, "In my experience in the….White Fang..." she started a bit hesitantly, but by the looks of the others was encouraged to continue: "Sabotaging a small airship like that does not take a lot of time, especially with a group doing it at the same time. It's probably that they first sabotaged it while we were in Vale, and after the malfunction was fixed they did the same thing while we were asleep or doing guard duty at the camp site. I don't know if t was a single agents or multiple, but it definitely required a heavy amount of coordination to pull off."

"Hngh...talk about fuckin dedication. Those cultists really don't want us getting to their hideout..." Polnareff coughed out a bit of blood, a few pieces of debris slashed his chest and were drawing a sizeable amount of blood.

"That just means we're getting closer." Kakyoin noted, "They hoped this would kill us all off, but they failed."

"Oh, no! The diary! Did anyone get the diary?" Ruby looked around. Blake quickly raised the book in her hand, showing it to everyone.

"Even if we have the diary there is still a problem...We don't know where we are. And there are no landmarks or any sort of villages around here, how are we going to find it even if we know where it is if we don't know where we are?"

Jotaro slowly detached himself from the group and stared blankly at the horizon, hands in his pockets. He squinted his eyes and blinked multiple times before speaking up, "Oy, either I'm starting to hallucinate, or that's Josuke right there."

As soon as he said that all eyes were on him, "Wha..Josuke? You're kidding me, right?" Ruby ran up to Jotaro and looked where he was looking. It did look like someone was running towards them, but there was no way to understand that it was really Jo-

She saw the pompadour, never mind, it really was Josuke.

He looked tired and out of breath, and every time he exhaled the air froze and became visible for a few seconds. He also seemed to have a runny nose.

"What's he doing out here? I thought he was supposed to stay in the Academy."

Josuke's figure became closer and closer, "H-Huh?! M-Mister Jotaro, Ruby! What the hell are you all doing in the middle of nowhere?!"

"We should be asking the same thing to you!"

"W-Well..." Josuke looked rather embarrassed, scratching the back of his head, "I kinda decided to skip class and...got lost."

"I...see…?" Ruby quirked an eyebrow, but decided that it was probably better if she didn't ask any further.

"Agh...Josuke! You have a healing Stand, right? How about you go help us!" The wounded Polnareff shouted, clutching at his wounds.

Josuke quickly nodded and rushed over to his help, and the others quickly surrounded him, asking him questions of all kind.

Everyone except Jotaro and Ruby.

He turned around and walked to the other side of the wreckage, towards north, and stared at the snow. Ruby quickly followed him, curious.

"Did you see some-"

On the ground laid tracks, fresh tracks. Small footprints like that of a child, going more and more north.

"This...can't be a coincidence..."

Both of them were thinking the same thing. Somehow there was another uninvited guest hidden inside the airship.

"I remember fighting against another one of those 'Guardian' controllers quite a while ago. I remember her being the same size of a child too." Jotaro admitted.

Ruby stepped forward, and took out Crescent Rose, keeping it rested on her shoulder, she had a sudden and confident air about her. "I think we know where to go now."

[To Be Continued]-


Author Notes:

1. "Makir! This chapter feels kinda rushed!" I know, I know, I just didn't have a lot of time this week, I promise next chapter will have a lot more detail in it.