PLEASE READ THIS if you want to read a bit about my personal goals in writing and why I've written the story the way that I have. Don't bother if you don't care and just wanna get on with the chapter. You can scroll to the first horizontal line roughly 2 page-lengths down.

So first things first, to address a review that was left by a guest on the last chapter, I want to clarify a few things before we move on with the story. I think I brought this up in quite a few title cards in my earlier chapters (not sure, can't be bothered to go back and read them), but I get people usually skip those so no biggie.

In short, I have no intention of changing the story that is being told here. If you're reading this for a plethora of new and original content to add to your growing love for this series… sorry but you're kinda out of luck.

My full intention from the start was to follow along a story and write new characters into it to fill certain areas that I either thought could be fleshed out more, or simply wanted to write. I did this with a few other series previously as well, but this is the one that really stuck and kept my interest. That was my intent with writing this fic; it was a space for me to practice the areas that I struggled with the most in my writing; characterisation, dialogue, natural humour, descriptive storytelling etc, without having to worry about creating a coherent storyline and narrative for readers to follow along with, while simultaneously fulfilling my intrinsic desire of creating a Mary Sue character (yes I'm lame I know) for a series that I enjoyed so much that I bought the only piece of merchandise I've ever bought in my life for it. (I bought a Beacon Academy jacket! It's still loose on me though I got the smallest available size at the time and I'm hella jacked. Yes I'm bragging, shame shame.) In fact this might come as a shock to some of you, but Yang isn't even my favourite female character in the series. I specifically chose her because I realised that while I'm good at writing dry, cynical, calmer sort of characters like Jaye and Indigo, I struggled with consistent characterisation of people with brighter, more excited personalities such as Yang and Kamina. I wanted to try my hand at writing a romance between someone stoic like Jaye and someone bright like Yang, therefore the pairing in this story.(for the record, my fav is kind of a tie between Blake and Weiss, but I'm leaning towards Weiss because dam if she isn't literally a mood)

This fic, though I'm glad people are enjoying it, is really just a practice ground for me to develop as a writer, in hopes that I'll be able to make something of myself in the future, and I'm not trying to present something pleasantly unique to the RWBY community. I only posted this online to have some sort of indirect feedback about how well I was doing in terms of followers, thoughts, reviews, etc, because it is really hard to get proper feedback on how to improve as a writer especially in my country.

The roughly ten or so chapters where I wrote completely original content (the Mire arc where they finally kill Damian) was when I had reached a point in the story where I could naturally make my characters diverge from the original plotline and place them into an area for me to practice creating completely original events, without worrying about world-building or lore like I would with a brand-new tale and having a direct end goal in mind to write towards (the reunion in Mistral). I had fully intended to kill Indigo from the moment I introduced her (I hope I ripped your communal hearts out in the process, that means I succeeded XD) so that the second half of my storyline could be focused around dealing with the concept of living and dealing with grief. So by forcing myself to work with that in the background, I tried to find ways to effectively write changes in my own characters as a form of development. Again, all for my own practice and learning, so really, it's for my own development. This is all working towards getting me ready to create my own original works in the future, where I'm going to have to do every single one of these things I'm currently practicing to a very capable degree before I can even be considered almost a wannabe writer.

So I am super appreciative of your reviews and thoughts about my writing, and I'm shamelessly taking quite a bit of validation from this personally speaking (hehe), and I am trying my best to fit more Faction related stuff and original content into the Atlas arc as much as I can, but the original storyline is kind of getting intense and it's a bit hard for me to slot new events in currently. There's a lot going on all the time in the more recent volumes, and you know it's an excuse but, I'm also juggling university life and regular life as best as I can; I'm trying to get this out before break ends and I can't focus my energy into this anymore. But rest assured as we progress, I will continue to work on more original bits in the story, particularly as we move over into Vacuo, which seems to me like the perfect breeding ground for more unsavoury reunions of the assassin kind. We shall see where the writers take us.

Coming back to the story, I thought long and hard about which storyline I wanted to follow Jaye along with and as you can tell from the last 2 chapters I decided to go with the Amity side. So I will be covering what they accomplish in that route and will not really touch on the Yang Ren and Jaune route unless relevant. We are starting off chapter 91 at the Schnee manor.

Weiss pounded her fist against the door for the seventh time, before it was finally answered by the obnoxious brat whose attention they were trying to get. Whitley flung the doors open, catching sight of his sister who'd caused the more recent downfall of their family, and leaned towards her.

'Oh, you've picked a fine time to-!' Weiss cut him off with a rapier in his face.

'Not another word.' The ex-heiress said, clearly enjoying her newfound freedom in threatening her family members, and Jaye smirked at the girl from behind her. She waved Myrtenaster at the boy, shooing him to the side. 'We're coming in.'

'Things are already bad enough after what you did to father.' Whitely complained, crossing his arms, eyes darting between the unconscious girl and the boy with his arm tied to his jacket. 'Now you want us to harbour fugitives too. Our family has a reputation.'

Blake raised a disappointed eyebrow at the boy. 'That's what you're worried about? Your reputation?'

'I'm just saying that we've already lost all the house staff; and mother locked herself in her room.' He continued, and Jaye snorted at the boy.

'If anything, your family's reputation would be improved by harbouring fugitives. It'd be the least scummy thing you've done.'

'Maybe you haven't figured out what's going on, Whitley, but we're busy trying to save Atlas.' Weiss retorted, and Jaye calmy unholstered his pistol.

'I can kill him. No one would ever know…' He said, flicking off the safety, and Blake slapped his hand away. Ruby stepped between the two, saving the white-haired boy from a bullet between the eyes.

'Look, our friend is hurt. We just need a place to lay low while she rests, and then we'll be out of your way.' She said, and Whitely relented.

'Fine. What do you expect me to do then?' He retorted, and Weiss pointed up the stairs.

'Go to your room.' She declared, and the boy paced begrudgingly up the steps. Weiss gestured to another door on the side, and they bundled the unconscious girl through it. Blake glanced at their leader, standing by the open double doors.

'I hope everyone's doing alright.' The smol girl said, eyes still fixated on the horizon.

'If you're worried about Yang, you could always try calling her?' The faunus girl suggested, and Ruby turned to her slowly.

'But that's the thing.' She held up the scroll in her hand, Yang's face plastered across it, where there was no sign of anyone picking up the call. 'I did.'

Somewhere, hidden away in the depths of the horrifying grimm creature

'Oscar?' The boy's vision slowly cleared, Ozpin's voice ringing in his head, shifting slowly into consciousness. Oscar's eyes fluttered open, exhausted, staring down at his own feet hanging high off the ground. 'Don't panic. We're going to be okay.'

'What?' He murmured, his voice catching in his bone-dry throat, as he raised his head to spot a lone figure, hanging in the shadows. Salem stood, quietly observing a cloud of dark energy floating above her hand.

'My long lost Ozma.' She trilled, the cloud disintegrating into nothing. 'Found at last.'

Oscar gasped, struggling against his coat as he realised he was being hung from it, returning his gaze to the pale white woman as she approached him.

'So small this new host of yours. It's a wonder my hound didn't break you.' She paced to a stop in front of the boy. 'It's been… how many years since we saw each other like this; face to face?' She smiled at the boy sultrily, making him extremely uncomfortable from the weird sexual tension she was throwing at him, mixed with unmistakeable amounts of layered malice. 'And nothing to say?'

'I'm sorry the reunion isn't living up to your expectations.' The boy said, doing his best impression of Ozpin, and largely achieving it. Salem, however, didn't seem to buy it, and the smile slowly dropped off her face. She seized the boy without warning, her eyes twisting into a look of sheer anger as she studied him.

'You can pretend boy, but you're not fully him. Not yet at least.' She released him, returning her hands to her lap and composing herself. 'Perhaps you and I can have a better working relationship. Oscar, was it?' She turned to predate around him. 'The Beacon Relic; my forces have been unable to locate the relic beneath the school. If I know my Ozma, he has used some means of deception to hide its location differently than the others. I need to know where it is.'

'That's not something I know about.' Oscar replied, his voice level, as Salem somehow managed to pet her giant hound in a menacing way. She turned abruptly away from him.

'Of course; you would keep that one guarded as long as possible.' She turned back to the boy, settling herself in the middle of the room. 'How about something easier then; the password for the lamp.'

'The lamp is all out of questions.' Oscar replied bravely, and Salem turned to him with a small smile. Without warning, a burst of brightly coloured energy erupted from her hands, searing into the boy's chest and turning the front of his coat blackened with ash. Unlike anything seen before in their world, it was unmistakeably magic, and more powerful and dangerous than anything else that existed. She finally relented, stalking up to the boy quietly.

'The lies come out of you so easily.' She cooed, reaching out for the boy. Oscar balled in on himself, flinching away from her touch as she slid her fingers almost lovingly along his jaw, until she could nestle her palm into his cheek. The boy glanced between her hand and face, trying his best to ignore the weird and confusing flirting she was currently throwing at him in the form of partially sexually motivated torture, impressively managing to retain some form of indignance despite his tender age. She was clearly an S, and that did not bode well for his bodily well-being. 'Like-minded souls indeed.'

She turned away from the boy, who pressed his hands into his still burning chest in a vain attempt to relieve the pain. Oscar groaned to himself under his breath, fighting to keep his head up and the deathly white woman in sight.

'One of you is going to tell me what you know. I don't much care if it is you… or Ozma.' Salem spread her hands jubilantly, stalking languidly to what he assumed was the door. 'Either way; I'll finally have the relic.'

'I won't tell you anything.' The boy answered defiantly, finding a spark inside himself as he stared at the perpetrator of all the world's chaos and destruction. Salem simply gave him another wry smile, the door behind her slithering open with disgusting sounds, admitting a green-clad, very angry man. Hazel approached the boy, his hands balled into fists, slapping away his outstretched arm and smashing a fist into the boy's gut. Oscar dropped to the ground, the hound finally releasing him, retching as he tried to get air back into his lungs. Hazel towered over the boy.

'That was for Haven academy.' He declared, rolling out his shoulder. He slammed his foot into Oscar once more, sending him skidding across the fleshy, grotesque ground. 'Everything that follows will be for my sister.'

Several hours of torture later

'I'd like to express again that this is my burden to bear; not yours. His grudge is with me.' Ozpin's voice rang through his head in the deathly silence of the creature's belly. Oscar lay against a nearby tooth, granted a brief reprieve from the beatings as he did his best to recover.

'No, it'll be even worse. He's holding back with me; I can tell.' Oscar coughed, his voice catching in his throat yelled hoarse from the preceding events.

'I understand, I do. But you've done so much already; the least I can do is give you a break and try to get us out of here.'

'We can't leave yet; this is our chance.'

'Hmm, maybe you've taken one too many hits.'

'Salem, she knows she can't take on the whole world at once, so she doesn't. She has her followers work their way in; sabotaging us from the inside out.' Oscar coughed again, and it was as if a spark was lit in their communal head. 'Maybe we should do the same.'

'We certainly are similar, you and I.' Ozpin said, causing a bit of conflict in the small boy. 'Maybe we have been presented with an opportunity.'

The door slithered open, revealing a familiar large frame standing in the doorway. Oscar made a face as the man approached.

'Great.' He muttered, preparing himself for more beatings as the man dragged him off the ground and into the wall.

'You don't have to fight this war kid; tell me what I need, and we can be done.' Hazel said, barely missing the sound of souls switching bodies.

'Hello Hazel.' Ozpin said, raising his eyes to the now fuming man.

'Coward!' He growled. 'All this time it could have been you, but you let him suffer.' He turned abruptly on the spot, hurling the boy across the room and onto the floor. 'Now, tell us how this damned lamp works. The boy has suffered enough.'

Ozpin got to his feet.

'Why do you follow her?' He yelled, and Hazel kicked him across the room again, cutting his sentence short. Ozpin gathered up his shared body, propping himself up on his elbows. 'I know.' His words were interrupted by a bout of coughing. 'I know how you see me. But her? Look at what she does; how is she the answer? Why not stop her!'

The man erased the conflicted look from his face as quickly as it came, stalking across the room to a bloodied fang in the corner.

'Salem can't be stopped.' He said. 'She's a force of nature; I've seen it first-hand. But you.' He cracked the fang, ripping the tip off and turning back to the boy. 'You send children to their deaths for a cause that you know has no victory; no end!'

'Someone has to try!' Oscar burst out. 'Salem isn't a force of nature because Salem can be fought! Unless she brings the relics together; if that happens-.'

'Ozma.' A familiar, chilling voice resounded from the doorway. The two inside turned to see the face of death herself standing in the shadow of the entrance. Salem smiled ominously at the boy. 'You have wonderful timing. The show is about to begin.'

Back in the Schnee Manor

Jaye stared at his scroll in horror, as Atlas's programmed security broadcast cameras showed the horrendous creatures drilling their way through the floating rock of a city. It tore through the ground; diving deep into its foundations, and with a horrifying rumble, tore out the base of the hard light shields. Two emitters dropped down, falling almost in slow motion to the earth below, and the shield that covered the whole of Atlas and its people fizzed out and died. The people in the crater below screamed, clutching each other as the earth shook once more, and they could feel the tremors from where they stood. Though he'd managed to considerably heal up his shoulder since leaving the compound by focusing his aura, he was a long way from fighting shape. He cursed again as the ground continued to tremble, and even without the additional audio from his scroll, he could hear the great cry that spread out in every direction.

From her throne, Salem spread her arms languidly across her armrests, slowly taking in the sight of her destruction. Her eyes, normally a dull, blood-red, seemed to glimmer with excitement, before Oscar realised her eyes were actually glowing. The horrifying creature cried out in response, moving as she smiled.

'It's time.' She breathed, closing her eyes as the creature finally began its forward assault. It crested over the edge of the great floating city, despite the massive volume of the city the whale-like grimm was at least a quarter of its size, before finally coming to a shrieking, crashing landing on the fields on the outskirts of the city. It opened its gargantuan mouth, black ooze pouring out by the gallon, rolling over the city plains and sprouting all manner of monstrous creatures from its inky depths. They shrieked their vengeance at the sky, screaming endlessly, and though their cries were feral it was clear what they were doing. What they were saying.

Salem has come. It is time.