A/N: There was an important Author's Note at the end of the last chapter, so if you haven't read it yet, then it would be nice of yo to take a couple seconds out of your time to take a look at it.

Along with that, I'm getting to work on some top-notch fanart to be uploaded onto our Tumblr blog, so check it out. That's MSTT/DAWN on Tumblr. Thanks, and remember, every follow counts. I can't promise constant or consistent updates on the blog, but anything's better than typing out bland A/N's.

Cold Trails

Five Days Ago…

In one of General Ironwood's private strategy rooms, a ring of pictures and videos on replay rotated slowly around the three figures that stood inside it. Each one was studying whichever picture or video passed in front of them, raising their hands for the file to be drawn forward and enlarged if it caught their eye.

One of the three was General Ironwood himself, dressed in his usual uniform suit with his hands behind his back. The other was Specialist Winter Schnee, who took the time to study each video closely before taking down notes on her Scroll regarding each one.

The third person was a brunette man who couldn't have been older than thirty. Compared to Ironwood, he had a much slimmer build to him – much more like Winter. His messy brown hair was kept under a simple black beanie, with several strands sticking out along the sides. His eyes actually glowed a lapis hue, and his face showed clear signs of having experienced much in his life. He was covered from the neck down in a dark-grey tactical mesh body-armour sporting the Atlesian colour scheme of stark-white and sky-blue, while his legs were covered by silver-coloured cargo pants and a pair of grey and red combat boots that matched his fingerless gloves. Covering his upper body, he also wore a brown woollen jumper with a fur collar and had his hands crossed over one another.

For him, he didn't need to pause or enlarge any of the videos, as his perception of time was different to the other two people in the room with him. For him, time slowed down and sped up with a thought, giving him all the time he needed to study the pictures and videos that passed in front of him.

Closing his eyes for a split second, he felt the pull of the world around him for a brief moment in time before he felt himself catch up to the same speed as the others in the room. "Seen anything I haven't yet, Schnee?"

"That depends on what you're seeing, Stop." Winter muttered back. For a brief second, Stop looked over his shoulder at the girl to see that she had her face diligently buried in her Scroll.

Looking back forward, Agent Stop hesitated for a second before calling out into the darkness of the room. "Prefect, is that everything that we could gather on this…hacker."

Suddenly, a figure made of light appeared next to him, appearing as if he had suddenly walked into view as his front foot and face became visible before the rest of him. "Yes, Agent Stop." Prefect, the CCT Superintendent in Atlas, responded. "There was more, but it seems he corrupted the files before I could save them to an offline source.

Most of the world's advancements in robotics and synthetics came from Atlas, so it was no surprise that Atlas' CCT Superintendent was the first to experience software updates and upgrades in its capabilities. However, in the past two years, Ironwood had carefully steered his men on the job to try and design a Superintendent with a more militaristic personality, something that the Council deemed illegal.

Because of this, Prefect was often called upon to bring up information relevant and necessary for almost every theatre of war. As Prefect spoke, Ironwood turned around to face the two. "The information you have provided us with may not be complete, but it will suffice for Agent Stop's hunt."

Stop heard the open question in the statement itself, and slowly shook his head as he reached out to grab one of the photos and hold it to his face. "Well, it's definitely not going to be an easy one. All I got to work off from is what the guy looks like and that he's somewhere in Mistral." Turning to face Ironwood, Stop reached behind him to grab a projection of a map of Mistral. "And we all know how big Anima is."

"Not necessarily." The greying general said as he held up his Scroll and tapped in several commands. Immediately after he did, several more holographic displays appeared in between himself and the brunette.

Each display focussed on a blurry figure wearing a cowl with a scimitar strapped to his back. Ironwood enlarged one of the images, which showed a video recording of the figure as he was making his escape from the CCT Tower. "The virus this man tried to upload was designed to hijack out systems while remaining undetected."

"And if it weren't for our mysterious third-party, my calculations show that he would have succeeded before I was able to reboot and quarantine the virus." Prefect interjected as he held out his hand, causing a screen to materialise above his open palm. On it were lines of raw data that comprised the virus that the mysterious infiltrator had tried to upload. "This virus isn't like anything I've seen before." Prefect said in his raspy voice with a hint of wonder in his tone. "It's algorithm is advanced enough to simulate intelligence, but it's not intelligent."

Prefect continued to look on at the algorithm he held above his hand for moment before realising that he had gone off topic. Lowering his hand, he apologized briefly and asked Ironwood to continue. "Footage of surveillance cameras near the harbour show the same man boarding a boat to Mistral." Ironwood explained as a holographic screen appeared in front of him to show the mentioned recording. "While I doubt it, two attacks on Scroll-related facilities within the month seem like too much to be a coincidence. I want you to follow the hooded-man's trail; even if he's not related to our cyborg hacker, he still committed crimes worthy of a life-sentence in Atlas, and I want you to bring him in."

Stop was about to reply with an affirmation that he would carry out his mission with discretion, but Winter interrupted him by holding out her Scroll in front of him. "This is all I was able to interpret from what I saw. You'll have to forgive me, Agent, but I am needed elsewhere at the moment."

After Stop took the Scroll rom her hands, she turned to salute the general, who returned it automatically. "Thank you, Schnee. Your input is always valued."

Lowering her hand to her side, Winter turned and locked eyes with the brunette briefly before giving a parting, "Be careful." And walking towards the exit to the room.

In that instance, however, Stop caught one of the rare moments that a Schnee showed any sign of emotion at all, and he held that split-second for a whole five seconds. Schnees' were spoken of as some of the coldest, most calculative people in the world – the kind that treated you like dirt if you were of no value to them.

Which is why Stop ran after her.

"I'll be right back, sir." The brunette said before dismissing himself and running to catch up to Winter. When he did, Stop halted her just as she was about to walk out the door with a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, what's wrong?"

For a second, Winter just stared at him blankly before gently removing his hand from her shoulder. "Nothing's wrong, Stop. Don't let me keep you from your mission."

At that, the brunette rolled his lapis-lazuli eyes and gave a small smirk. "I've got all the time in the world, remember?"

This got a reaction out of Winter. It may have just been the smallest hint of a smile, but it was a reaction nonetheless. "You do realise that General Ironwood doesn't share your perspective, right?" her tone was cold, but it was always cold. This cold, however, had life to it, something absent in her tone more than half the time.

"Winter," Stop warned with a serious expression, though he kept his tone soft. "I know you better than this – so what's wrong?"

The alabaster-haired girl said nothing for a few seconds before eventually folding her arms and looking Stop right in the eye. "I have a bad feeling about this one, Tom." She said, using his real first-name. "I'm not sure what it is. Maybe it's the way he planned out every step, or maybe it's the way he killed without remorse, like-"

"A machine." The brunette finished for her, to which she nodded her agreement.

"Just, keep your guard." She warned, and though there wasn't much expression in her voice, her eyes told a different story. The dim light of the room reflected in her blue irises and showed clear signs of worry and concern, if you looked hard enough.

The sight brought back memories for Stop, and he couldn't help but give a fond smile. "You know, no matter what kind of sword you use and whatever rank you may get," Stop said as he gestured to her clothing and the weapon at her side. "-you'll always be that seven year-old that had no idea what a piggyback was."

Winter forcefully rolled her eyes at that and let out a small groan. "Are you never going to let me live that down?"

"Never."

In response, Winter let out a huff as the ends of her mouth started to curve upwards. "Well, I suppose I'm too old for one now."

Stop nodded in understanding. "I suppose everyone has to grow up eventually." The brunette turned and nodded towards the door to the room. "You have somewhere to be – I won't hold you back any longer."

At the mention of their need to part ways, Winter's face seemed to fall into a frown once more, though it was hard to tell as her expression hardly changed from its neutral state. "I believe I do." She muttered to herself before letting out a small sigh. "Be careful, Tom." Without saying another word, the white-haired woman walked to the door – which opened for her – and stepped out of the room, the closing door obscuring Tom's view of her.

I suppose I should get back to it. The brunette thought in his mind as he looked back to where Ironwood was still standing expectantly. Not wanting to waste any more time, Tom's eyes glowed slightly brighter as he focussed his mind and began looking on as everything around him slowed to half its normal speed. Once that was set, he walked back over to exactly where he had been at a brisk pace before everything began moving at normal speed again.

"My apologies, General." Tom quickly stated as he stood at attention, much to Ironwood's confusion. It only lasted a second though, as his face became stoic once more.

"Did you at least have a chance to look over what Winter recorded on the Scroll?" the general asked with a sigh.

"Umm…" the brunette began stalling as he opened up the Scroll and began accessing the recent notes. "Give me a second."

"Save your energy, Stop." Ironwood said before Stop was able to activate his Semblance once again. "While you took a moment to yourself, I had time to look over Winter's findings and I think we may have a lead for you to follow." The general spoke with no emotion in his voice.

Pausing for just a split-second, Stop quickly folded the Scroll up and put it in the pocket of his jumper. "Alright, sir. Where am I headed?"

With a nod to Prefect, the superintendent waved his holographic arm in the air as several holographic screen appeared in its wake. "Despite not having much about the cyborg," Ironwood explained, as he walked over to a particular screen that showed the hooded swordsman that attacked the tower disembarking from a freight ship before pulling his cowl over his face. "-Prefect was able to get this footage of the man from the superintendent in Mistral." Placing a hand on the screen and pulling it back, the greying general changed the focus of the holo-screen to that of a map of Mistral. "The ship he boarded took him to a harbour here." Ironwood said, marking a point of the western edge of Mistral with his finger. "From there, he could only have taken one of the three roads that lead to Mistral and its outlying villages." As he said this, red lines that squiggled across the continent of Anima appeared, all leading to roughly the same location.

"Unless, of course, he decided to go off-road." Prefect interjected. "In which case, wherever he went is anyone's guess."

Turning around to face Stop, Ironwood gave him an apologetic look for a moment before continuing. "It's not much to work off from, but if you can find where he left off, you may be able to find a trail that leads you straight to him."

The brunette nodded in understanding as he rubbed his chin in thought. "So going after him is the primary objective – got it."

"While you're there, you should also keep your eyes and ears open for the cyborg; who knows, he may be easier to find than the infiltrator." Ironwood added after a second.

"Hard to find someone who can turn invisible." Prefect said as four more monitors appeared around him, each playing the same pre-recorded surveillance footage. Each of them replayed the scene in a different camera setting, and only two out of the four showed the shimmering figure that could only be the swordsman. "He only appeared on our Aura-signature and thermal cameras. Infra-red and normal don't pick him up at all."

"Got it." Stop said as he adjusted his jumper, and a few of the holo-screens around them blinked out of existence. Well, at least this means I can calibrate Infinite Stream to detect him. "I suppose I should head out as soon as possible."

Ironwood responded with a curt nod. "The longer we wait, the colder the lead we have on them will get."

"I've got things to do as well." Prefect croaked out after clearing his throat. "Gotta run a CCT Tower and all that."

Hesitating for just a moment as the silence dragged on, Stop spoke up as he thumbed in the direction of the door. "Does this mean I'm dismissed, sir?"

"Indeed. Dismissed." Ironwood said before giving a crisp salute, which Stop returned out of compulsion before turning to the superintendent and giving a similar salute. Prefect returned the gesture before fading away, which Stop took as his cue to turn around and heading the same way Winter did. "Stop." The general called out of him before he managed to take five steps. Even before the brunette managed to turn around, Ironwood continued speaking. "This mission is a covert operation unsanctioned by the Mistral government. I'd advise you complete your mission as soon as possible and minimise your interaction with anyone; the less people that know, the better."

Stop knew how these ops worked – he knew it would be like this the moment Ironwood referred to him by his codename instead of the usual, "Mr Glass". He may have only been a part of Ironwood's black-ops force for a short amount of time, but the brunette had been performing missions just as deadly long before Ironwood reached the rank of 'general'.

"Of course." However, there was one aspect of these types of missions that varied. "And what should I do if I run into the local authorities?"

This time, Ironwood hesitated before speaking again, his voice never wavering. "I'd prefer to avoid a loss of life, but make no mistake Agent Stop; your rank as a special operative means that you are too valuable to fall to any other Kingdom. By any means necessary, avoid capture."

It wasn't anything new to Stop; for a long time, his existence was kept hidden from the Council and disclosed to only a select few. No doubt, the Council would exploit such a powerful Semblance and attempt to weaponize it. Sure, Atlas may have made him do quite a few bad things, but they were for the good of the world. At least, that's what he's been told for the past sixty years. "Got it." He quickly replied before moving for the exit, already planning his packing list for Mistral. If Stop had picked up anything over the years of service, it was that he should expect a mission like this to go on for much longer than originally planned.

Five Days later…

It had been easy enough for the group of five to sneak through Mistral to the address that T had sent to Cinder, but the hard part was just getting started.

Assuming it was a trap, then T would have the advantage of fighting on his own turf, with close quarters. Fortunately, Neo was skilled at both close-quarter-combat and reading T's attacks. It was one of the main reasons that Cinder had her take point as they exited the elevator as it stopped on the floor T's apartment supposedly was.

Looking down either walkway took them to an identical apartment building across a sheltered bridge, but they were only here for one of them. The lights that lit the way provided sufficient lighting, and with them, Neo couldn't see any signs of traps or sabotage, only a short walk to a carved wooden door locked by a customised magnetic bolt lock. The light of the pre-dawn sun barely provided any lighting at all for them, but it painted the sky a beautiful indigo.

Looking to Cinder for a brief moment, the ash-haired woman nodded her head, a sign of giving her permission, as she slowly slid her right hand onto the handle of the blade on her back.

With her umbrella in hand, the heterochromatic girl walked up to the lock to get a closer look at it. Placing her hand on it, she got a feel of the mechanism before realised that it would only unlock to a specific Scroll code.

She turned around to face Cinder and the others, and gave them a shake of her head to let them know that she would need a little extra help.

"Looks like we'll need to blast the lock open." Mercury stated as he folded his arms. "Knowing T though, we'll need a breach charge or something to break it."

Before Neo could do anything else, she was pushed out of the way by Raiden. "Step aside, snubs. I've got this one." The black-haired teen said with a confident smirk as he reached into Neo's shadow and pulled out what looked like a compact Scroll made out of shadows.

"How about we avoid causing a scene, Raiden?" Cinder warned as the teen stepped up to the door and placed the shadowy form on the lock.

"Don't worry, this'll only take a few seconds." Raiden said over his shoulder as the mass of shadow began drawing in darkness from around it like a singularity, becoming denser and more solid as the seconds ticked by. "You might want to stand back for this one." He warned as the shadowcaster grabbed the shotgun from his back and brought it forward, aimed straight at the door.

Neo took the warning to heart and opened up her parasol, using it to cover her and the others as she braced for the coming explosion. However, after a second of squeezing her eyes shut with nothing to follow, Neo opened one eye to look at Emerald, who had an equally confused look on her face.

"Hey," she spoke up, poking her head over the cover of the open parasol. "What gives? I thought there was supposed to be-"

Before the mint-green haired girl was able to finish, a blast of darkness hit them with the equal force of a Dust-grenade, albeit the blast residue disappeared almost instantly. Emerald was able to duck back behind the cover of the parasol in time, but the force of the blast still caused Neo to stagger for a split second, before she regained her composure just as Raiden kicked down the door of the apartment, shotgun raised and quickly sweeping the first few rooms of the apartment.

Cinder was the next to follow, drawing her blades from their slings as she began sweeping the apartment in the opposite direction that Raiden went. After sharing a quick glance, Mercury, Neo and Emerald quickly followed in Cinder's wake, splitting up to search the apartment faster. Following Neo's direction, Emerald and Mercury began searching left, the same half of the apartment as Raiden while she went right, following Cinder.

However, after they split up, Neo instantly wished that she had decided to go with the black-haired shadowcaster.

The heterochromatic girl's heels clicked on the marble-tile floor as she rounded the corner of the apartment, but as her eyes scanned the room, her breath caught in her throat in a noiseless gasp.

With her back facing Neo, the ash-haired woman rested her weight on a table covered in papers and keyboards, facing a mess of monitors all connected to each other to display the same message.

"TOO_SLOW"

At this point, Neo knew that Cinder was a ticking time-bomb that just needed the right amount of annoyance to set her off, so she knew that it was best to stay back until Cinder wanted her to approach.

A few seconds passed and the others returned to the centre of the room, their expressions and body language told them that they had found nothing of great significance. Raiden even looked like he was about to say something snarky for a moment, but stopped when Neo gave him a hesitant shake of the head while sliding a finger across her throat.

Suddenly, the sound of glass heels clicking against the floor caused Neo to swallow sharply as she felt Cinder's gaze on her. "What are you just standing around for?" slowly turning back to face the woman, Neo felt some manner of relief as she realised that Cinder was referring to all of them, even though she couldn't see the others from around the corner. "Look for anything that might lead us to them."

The others didn't need any further prompt as they carefully – but hastily – made their way to the other side of the apartment, as far away as they could from Cinder. Neo doubted they would find anything; if she knew one thing about T, it was that if the apartment wasn't cluttered with his things, then he wasn't going to come back here.

Then where could he be…?

"Neo, see if you can get anything from his hardware." The girl suddenly snapped back to look at Cinder as she spoke while slowly walking by her without so much as a gesture of acknowledgement that she existed. "This door back here is locked, which means that there's probably something he wants to hide."

Sparing one glance at the woman as she placed a hand on the digital lock that held the door shut, Neo didn't look back as she made her way over to the clutter of T's handywork.

Everything about it looked so typically…T. Even though a lot of the wiring was bare and it was a monster made from different pieces of equipment that were never meant to work together, T somehow made it work, and made the whole thing better than the sum of its parts.

Tapping some command keys she knew on the different keyboards, Neo quickly assessed that the hardware was fried, as all it showed was the same message surrounded by static.

This doesn't make sense. She began thinking in her head while shifting through the paper he left lying on the table. He always does something with a purpose, so what was the purpose of calling us out?

As Neo began sliding the papers that she didn't need onto the floor, she noticed something when she lifted up one of the keyboards to pull out a piece of paper. Stuck on the underside of the keyboard was a laminated photograph stuck to the keyboard by bits of tape. Neo suddenly felt that her chest was a lot heavier than normal as she reached for the photo, recognising immediately what it was. Carefully pulling it off, Neo needed to take a moment as she stared into the photograph. I didn't know he still had this…

In the warm light of the apartment, the heterochromatic girl could clearly see what was on the photo; it was of T and her. She had one arm wrapped around his waist and he had an arm slung over her shoulder. Standing forty centimetres taller than her, the height difference was almost funny with how one could see that T had slouched slightly lower to fit into the picture better – but only if you were actually looking out for it. They both kept their usual look on, but in the photo, they were much younger and T had his face scarf pulled down, which revealed the most surprising part of the photo; he was smiling – they both were. It had been a while since they had both been as equally happy as that day.

It's got to be, what? Four years since then?

Turning the photo over, Neo saw the message she had scrawled on the back of it all those years ago for T, and it made her feel…weird on the inside as she read it out in her head.

"We'll always be on the same team."

As she got to the end of it though, she noticed something new. It looked to be an address somewhere in Mistral, and it was written in T's handwriting. Most importantly, it looked new.

"Congratulations, Neo." Cinder's icy voice suddenly spoke over her shoulder. It was enough to make her seize up, while she focussed every ounce of her concentration on not jumping in surprise. "I think you've just found our lead." She said before taking the photo from Neo's frozen hands.

Cinder looked it over once before speaking loud enough for everyone in the apartment to hear. "T is calling us out. Therefore, I say if it's a fight he wants, it's a fight he'll get."

It was then that Raiden sauntered around the corner with his shotgun-longsword resting on his shoulder. "You know where he is, then?"

Crumpling the photo in her hand, she gave the shadowcaster a devious smirk before replying. "I believe he's arranged a meeting place for us." As she said this, her fist glowed a dim orange for a few seconds before ash started to seep out from between her fingertips.

On the inside, Neo was a mess of feelings, though she did well not to let it show on her face as the ash-haired woman opened her hand, letting the rest of the ashes fall to the floor.

"Well, come on then." Raiden said as he made room for Cinder to walk. "I wouldn't want to miss your ass-kicking."

They both walked away, leaving Neo behind as she became lost in thought for a few seconds. She believed in the popular Mistrali belief that photos and portraits were the tangible form of memories from the past, but now all that was left of that one memory of her and T was a pile of ash.