After Hazel activated the Lamp and Emerald decided to help us, we were finally getting out of this dump.

Emerald had activated illusions to make me invisible and make Oscar look like Hazel so that we could just walk right out of the exit. Hazel would lay low until we left and he could take the Lamp. I could only see how everything could go wrong, but it was the best plan we had.

We kept walking for a few minutes until Emerald held a hand in front of us. Salem was patrolling down the hallway. Emerald pulled Oscar to the side. My breath caught in my throat. If this went wrong, everything would be for naught.

"Ah, Hazel. Have you gotten what we need yet?" I held my breath. We just had to get through this and we could get out.

"I—uh…" What was Oscar doing? Just say no! Salem narrowed her eyes at him as he stammered. We were so screwed.

Before Salem could do anything, a loud screech sounded through the halls.

"The Seers," Salem turned around and stepped in the other direction, "Seems we have guests." Salem's eyes widened, coming to a realization. "The Lamp!" Salem turned around to Emerald, "Find them!" Salem barked. She glided across the hall at an unnaturally fast speed in a desperate search.

I released my breath. "Thank goodness." I whispered under my breath. We continued walking, but more urgently. Had Hazel grabbed the Lamp already? No, he shouldn't have until we gave him the signal. So who could've set off the alarm? Then Yang, Ren, and Jaune rounded a corner and stopped at the sight of us. I raised my hand to my mouth. Jaune was here. Finally.

"You." Yang growled.

Emerald already had her guns out, before Oscar ran forward, his hands outreached. "No, wait, stop!" The illusion dissipated and Oscar and I were visible to everyone.

"Ingrid!" Jaune dropped his weapons and ran to me, pulling me up into a hug. Tears welled in my eyes. I turned his head toward mine and kissed him fervently. I was so happy to see him again. Jaune was here in my arms and alive. That alone was a miracle. We pulled away for air and Jaune put me down. His eyes flew to my bandaged stump. "What happened?"

"A lot." I put my left hand to his cheek. "But we have to get going. Salem knows you're here."

Yang's eyes fixed on Emerald. "What is she doing here?"

"I know the way out of here." Emerald walked through our entourage, heading towards the exit, "Anybody coming?"

Everyone begrudgingly followed in silence. I held tightly onto Jaune's hand, afraid that it would disappear if I even let go for a second. So much had happened since I last saw him, it all felt like a dream.

After what an eternity of awkward silence, the exit appeared into view. Emerald and Oscar started sprinting and we followed. "We're almost out!" Oscar yelled in pure relief.

As if to interrupt our triumph, the ground shook and I had to cling onto Jaune to stay upright. "What was that?"

Emerald slowly stepped back in fear. "It's her." A roar sounded through my ears and I clutched at them to block it out. Salem suddenly appeared and hit us with purple Grimm goo, knocking me onto Jaune.

Salem's eyes flickered to us, but fixated on Emerald. She leaped forward and grasped Emerald. While she was whispering something in the terrified girl's ear, we all armed ourselves with our weapons.

Ren shot at Salem, but Salem dodged it and flung a burst of magic at him. Jaune leaped in front of him with his shield up and the magic blasted them to the wall, breaking Jaune's Aura.

Yang leaped into the air and lunged at Salem. She punched her a few times and fled to the other side of the space and activated explosives planted on her. Salem's back went backwards as if it had been broken. I switched my lance into a gun form, though it was difficult with my left hand, and shot at Salem while she was weak.

Salem reached her arm out to Yang and strings of Grimm matter came out of her palm and attached to Yang's gauntlets and threw Yang. She crashed into me and both of our Aura's shattered.

"Let them go!" Oscar activated Oz's cane and a ray of green magic hit her. Salem growled and a similar burst of magic from her had Oscar crashing to the ground.

Grimm hands similar to Cinder's came out of the ground and bound all of us to the ground. I struggled to get out, but the more I thrashed, the tighter their hold on me became.

Salem bound Emerald to the wall and questioned her about the Lamp, threatening her with a ball of magic in her hand. But she didn't know anything about it. Hazel explicitly stated that he wouldn't take the Lamp and Yang and the others clearly hadn't taken it, so who did?

"Your grace." Hazel's voice rumbled from the other side of the room.

"Ah, Hazel, I found our guests." Salem gestured to our trapped states. "This one was helping them." Emerald sent a pleading look to Hazel, but his unbothered demeanor didn't break. The hands holding Oscar let go of him. "Take the boy back to his chamber," Salem's ball of magic returned, "I have work to do with this one."

"Yes, of course." Hazel headed to Oscar and picked him up by the collar. He whispered something in his ear, dropped him, and strode towards Salem. Oscar grabbed the cane discreetly as Hazel swiftly punched Salem and sent her flying across the room. She cushioned her fall using a miniature cyclone. The Grimm hands let go of all of us. I cried out, stunned by the sudden gesture. Hazel tore his shirt off and grabbed a dust crystal from his pocket, "Go! Now!" He started placing several dust crystals in his arms.

I pushed myself to my feet. The others were still on the ground in shock, watching the battle unfold. I took Jaune's hand and pulled him up. "We have to go." Ren and Yang snapped out of their stupor and stood up. We sprinted to the exit out into the field.

Jaune stood by the entrance to do a headcount. "Come on, everyone, out!"

And I ran. There was nothing we could do to help right now, so I could do was run. One part of me thought it was cowardly, but I knew if I stayed there any longer, I would be dead. I kept running until there was a sudden blast of light. I squeezed my eyes shut, but I could still see the light through my eyelids. When the light dissolved I opened my eyes and all I could see was dust. I squinted to see through it. "Jaune! Oscar! Yang! Ren!"

"Ingrid!" Yang's voiced answered. The silhouettes of Ren and Yang came to my side. "What happened?"

"I don't know. Was it an explosion?"

"I would assume there would've been a sound," Ren pitched in.

"We need to find Jaune and Oscar. They were still at the Grimm." I took Yang's hand. "So I won't lose you." I explained.

We called out for Oscar and Jaune for what felt like hours but Yang's scroll only said was a couple minutes. Finally, the dust settled enough that we were able to see Jaune kneeling by Oscar in the distance. We all immediately ran to them. I kneeled down by Jaune. "Is he okay?"

Oscar's eyes fluttered open. "Could be better." He pushed himself up to a sitting position.

Before Oscar could begin explaining what exactly had happened, Yang's scroll rang. "Blake?"

"Yang!" A relieved voice blurted through the scroll. "Are you okay? Where are you?"

Jaune stood up to stand near Yang. "Yeah, we're fine. Is everyone there alright?"

"We're—alive. This'll help though. Guys! They're okay."

I gave Oscar my hand and we got up together. "What do we do about her?" Oscar gestured to Emerald who was on her knees looking distraught. I sighed and shrugged. While Weiss was giving instructions to Yang and Jaune, I held my hand out to Emerald. "Hey, we can't stay here for long."

Emerald stood up by herself and rubbed her eyes, her voice hardening. "Let's get going."

Yang pocketed her scroll and approached us. "You're not going anywhere."

"Yang!" Oscar interjected. "Emerald is trustworthy." Yang eyed Oscar.

"Forgive me if I find it hard to believe that she's sincere. Who's to say she's not going to shoot us at the last second?"

Emerald placed her guns into Yang's hand. "Look, I don't want any trouble."

Yang squinted her eyes at Emerald. "We need to get going." Jaune interrupted. Yang nodded and cocked her gun and held it at Emerald's neck.

"Woah!" I cried out, the abrupt gesture startling me. Emerald remained convincingly unbothered and put her hands up in the air. "Isn't this going a little-" Yang silenced me with a single glare. It wasn't like I could do anything to change her mind. No one else objected to it, so we marched forward into abandoned subway tunnels.

"Look, I know this all seems very problematic, the only way this is all going to work out is if we work-"

"You can't be serious. You want us to work with her?"

"I'm just saying it makes the most sense. We're all enemies of Salem, including her."

"And she helped us out of the Grimm."

"No, I'm with blondie. You don't like me. I don't like you. So why don't we part ways and we never have to interact again."

"You're not going anywhere." Jaune's eyes flicked to my severed hand. "Not after everything you've done."

"We can't let all of our actions stem from fear. If she could help us, I think we should consider it."

"She is part of the reason I have this." Yang held up her robotic arm. "And why Ingrid's hand is gone. I can't just forgive her. Everything that happened at Beacon—she lied to us, tricked us. She is dangerous."

"You don't have to forgive her. You have every right to to feel that way. Just maybe, give her a second chance. We've already gotten quite a bit of help from someone we don't quite trust right now."

"Do you mean Oz?" Oscar turned about in surprise. Ren shrugged, "I had a feeling."

Yang and Jaune stopped in their tracks and turned around. "Wait, what!"

"Oz is back?"

"I know how you feel, but he saved my life. When we were tortured, he took it. And at the very least, tried to help direct it away from Ingrid." Jaune scowled at the thought and I situated myself to his other side so I could take his hand. "He entrusted me with this, and the massive amount of power he had stored up in it." Oscar held up the cane with a sense of reverence. "Kinetic energy that he spent lifetime after lifetime accumulating in the cane he built."

"So that's how the blast happened. Using the all power from the cane and directing it at Salem."

"Not all, but most." Oscar retracted the cane and put it away. "We have ot be careful with how we use the rest. He trusted my judgment and it saved us. I want to reciprocate that trust. There's a lot to sort out but—Oz really wants to help." Jaune looked to me for affirmation and I nodded. Despite how Oz's attempts to help weren't always fruitful, he was sincere. He was misguided, but earnestly wanted to help.

Eventually, we ran into a large crowd of scared Atlas citizens, hiding from the outside world. There were so many people. "All of Atlas is down here." Jaune's eyes downturned mournfully. I squeezed Jaune's hand for reassurance.

We strode forward through the crowd. "I've seen what you can do Emerald. However this fight ends, we could really use someone like you."

We continued our trek in silence and seeing Schnee Manor again brought a flush to my face, recalling the last time I had been here. Before I reached the entrance, I slunk to the back of the group to Emerald. "The others aren't going to be happy to see you. Maybe you should be invisible until we can properly introduce it?" She nodded and went invisible before I could fully read her expression.

The manor doors flew open and Ruby rushed to Yang as she lifted her up and spun in circles. Tears flooded down Ruby's cheeks. "I missed you too." Yang wiped Ruby's tears away and they both turned away from each other, with Yang hugging Weiss and Ruby talking to Jaune, Ren, and I.

"I was so worried sick about you! I-" Ruby stopped as her eyes fixed upon my stump. "Your hand."

"Yeah, it's definitely a change. But, I think we'll be able to figure it out."

Jaune took hold of my left hand. "How did it happen?"

"Hazel cut it off to get me off of Oscar. Luckily he decided to help us get out before he could do anything more."

Jaune's eyes glinted with anger. "Is he-"

"Dead? Probably. We would've seen him by now if he survived."

Oscar finally caught up to the group. "Hey, sorry, I was just looking for-"

"Oscar!" Ruby grinned and ran to him, nearly squeezing the life out of him. He laughed and hugged Ruby back. "I'm so glad you're back." Ruby put Oscar down, both of their faces red as beets.

"Me too." Ruby reached her hand to Oscar's neck. I had nearly forgotten about the bandages that were now on my stump.

"Did Hazel give you these too?"

"No. That was from a long time ago. Grimm."

They both stared at each other for a few seconds before I took Jaune's hand and led him inside.

"They might need a few minutes alone." I whispered.

Jaune rolled his eyes but played along, gesturing for Ren to come inside with us. "Where's Nora?" Weiss and Blake shared a look. Weiss led Ren upstairs. The fact that she wasn't here caused me to worry, but a hand squeeze from Jaune calmed my nerves.

"Where did Emerald go?" Yang inquired with a scowl.

"Oh! Er—she's here." Emerald's illusion dissipated and she was now visible to everyone. Blake hand rushed to her weapon. "No—it's fine, she's with us!" Before Blake could respond, alarms sounded through the manor."

I scowled. Couldn't we have just one happy reunion without the world ending?

Well that wouldn't be any fun. So the dark chapters are over (probably) and I've got a lot of ideas for what Ingrid will do next, and it really depends on whether or not she'll go into the Ever After. But in order for the Ever After stuff to happen, Ingrid needs to have a character, so I'll be writing some chapters in between preexisting ones to fill in some of the gaps.

Also Vol. 9 Chapter 8? OUCH! My little Rose Garden heart can't take anymore pain after that. Or just my heart in general.