No Sanctuary
Splinters and ash whipped across Adam's face and cut thin furrows into his cheeks and arms as he rolled onto the ground of their dorm. His aura rushed to life, briefly casting the room in crimson light as it healed even those minor scratches. Flames still burned silently on his bed, quickly turning the wood black and spreading upwards towards the pale figure blearily shifting on her own. Adam had barely even gotten to his feet before he leaped up and kicked off of the burning bunk bed, yanking Weiss towards him just before another burst of explosive fire tore through the air and shredded it. The wall behind the beds crumbled: faint silhouettes of students still sleeping safe and sound in the dorm over were visible on the other side.
Weiss snapped awake as the two tumbled onto the ground, eyes rapidly searching the room until they fell on Adam holding her down. His eyes focused on the window, Adam did not even notice her silent shouts of confusion and anger until he'd turned to Yang and Ruby's beds. By then, the scent of burnt Dust and heated glow had become obvious to the heiress. The shots striking the wall at such an angle meant that the shooter was to their left: right now they were out of sight. He had seconds to think. Seconds being the keyword.
Barely noticing Weiss worriedly bringing a hand to her ear, Adam jumped to his feet and hurriedly jabbed Yang in the side with his sheathed weapon. She hadn't even opened her eyes before he drew his blade and slashed the lower ropes holding Ruby's bed up. Getting whacked and seeing the end of a bed rushing towards her was enough to get Yang to throw herself onto the ground, but Ruby was left painfully tumbling end-over-end until she hit the floor. She tore her blindfold off to find Adam pressed up against the wall, glaring outside the window, and half of their entire dorm in burnt rubble.
A faint glint of light a building away. A sniper. Adam tried to focus, but, while in daytime his faunus eyes may have been able to identify him, he was not so lucky at night. He looked down upon the three girls to find their lips moving and their hands patting around their ears and throats, but no words came out. Slowly, in this brief calm, all four of them realized just how silent it was. No words. No gunfire. No burning of flames or whistling of wind. There was no ringing or buzzing that would have come from being so close to an explosion, in fact, there was no sound at all. Even the beating of their hearts was just a faint, unheard pulse in their chest.
Yang took a deep breath and tried to shout as loud as she could. Nothing.
Absolute silence.
Adam's grip on Wilt tightened, and his eyes flared crimson. He knew this Semblance well. It was one of their branch's assassins. Here, in Beacon. If he was waiting to fire, it also meant that this attack was no mere coincidence—no part of a greater assault on the dorms or Academy. They knew who he was and were hunting him down just like they did Tukson... and just like they could Blake.
Weiss looked up to Adam, still keeping low, and carefully mouthed: "What is happening?"
"White Fang." He drew his blade and pointed it towards the door. "Go." Ruby had begun to call something in response, only to bite her lip and shake her head. Just in front of her, Yang nodded in agreement with Ruby's defiance, and Weiss' glare unfortunately meant she, too, had no intention of leaving. Scowling, Adam angrily swiped his blade at the ground and jabbed his rifle towards the door again: both an insistence that they leave, and a clear sign that he was the only one here who had his weapon. Against firepower like that, trying to fight with their bare hands and Semblances alone would have them killed. More importantly...
Adam tapped his chest with the hilt: this was his fight. If the White Fang had come to attack him, then it was his responsibility to kill this assassin. No other would be hurt because of his failures to better take this into account. The sisters' expressions softened into resignation, yet, though Weiss nodded in apparent understanding, her eyes gleamed with the same defiance they had before. He whipped his blade at the air, a red wave slashing through the door and leaving the escape open for them.
Another explosion enveloped the wall closest to Ruby. The assailant was getting impatient. So, he really was here for him. Without a word, Adam leaped from the window and landed on the brick path stretching from the dorm. Trees lined the sides, leading up to the main road. With no sound to guide him, he could only slowly scan across rooftops and trees, hand tight around the hilt of his weapon. Adam scowled as the wind blew against him: a thin, red T-shirt and black sweatpants were not exactly what he considered 'combat gear', especially during a cold night like this. He had one clip's worth of ammunition, no more.
One of the trees' branches twitched the wrong way. Adam sent a wave of crimson aura through it in the blink of an eye, but, nothing happened. His instincts flared up, warning him of someone behind him. He spun around and found his target waiting for him on the road.
Enforcer. Bouncer. Brawler. All were terms that would describe what most believed Tacet Avalanche to be on first appearance. 'Assassin' was likely the last. A mass of muscle standing at 6"10, even when clad in an all-black variant of the White Fang's usual attire and a blackened visor with green lenses that could amplify his sight to their limit, Tacet was not stealthy. His weapon was even less so: a blocky, heavy assault rifle with a black blade curving along its top with a space only for its scope. Every shot was a .50 caliber, concentrated red Dust cartridge. Normally, even one shot should've alerted half of Beacon Academy.
That was where his Semblance came in. An aura of total silence.
"It's been a long time, hasn't it, Tacet?" Adam spoke, even though he could not hear his own words. Two bat ears poking out from Tacet's hood twitched, and he rumbled with quiet laughter.
The two slowly began to circle one another, searching for any weakness that would prove fatal. Adam's blade clicked open just as the assassin suddenly brought his rifle up and fired. A wall of ice suddenly sprung up between them, half of it shattered just as quickly as it was created, melting away into mist.
Still clad in her nightgown, Weiss twirled from the window of the dorm to a stop beside Adam, each of her hands glowing faintly with a crystal of Dust within them: one a faint blue, the other gleaming white. The two looked between one another, Weiss' eyes challenging Adam to refuse her help. Adam's eyes narrowed and a scowl marred his face, but, his attention was forced back up as the rest of the wall was blown away. The assassin looked upon his two marks in mere nightclothes believing that they stood a chance against him.
Tacet grinned viciously. The heiress to the SDC and the greatest traitor of the White Fang both in one place. This was a gift from the gods themselves!
Cinder peeked out from the curtains of her dormitory, eyes trained on the brief flashes occurring from afar. Wonderful, the operation was going smoothly. With a nod back at Emerald and Mercury wide awake and sitting on their beds, Cinder drew out her Scroll and sent a simple text. Mercury and Emerald followed suit.
All across Beacon, Scrolls flashed and rumbled, and their owners placed on the masks of the Grimm. Some did so with tribulation, others with excitement, but, all did so the same.
The second phase of their operation commenced.
A bright-blue shield shuddered yet blocked the explosive gunfire from Tacet, giving Adam the time he needed to dart away from the protection and straight towards the assassin. Wilt's crimson blade drew sparks against the cutting edge of the Fang member's weapon, but Adam was still forced back by his sheer strength. Another burst of gunfire kept him from advancing: he may have been able to cut each bullet from the skies, but the explosions rippling out still chipped away at his aura.
Dodging a rain of icy spikes from above, the assassin aimed down at his own feet and fired, sending him flying towards Adam. He dropped his grip to the stock and swung hard for Adam. Tunnel visioning on the traitorous ex-major was his mistake, however: he did not notice the line of glyphs stretching towards him until he was already launched off onto the main road by a vicious stab. Standing beside Adam once more, Weiss waved an icy rapier down in challenge, white Dust rising constantly off of its surface.
Tacet, however, had the advantage of range: he was perfectly fine with remaining back and forcing the two to come with him. The two partners weaved in and out of explosive fire, cold air constantly replaced with flashes of heat until they were upon him at once. With Weiss peppering away with stabs at his right and Adam's sword lashing out with enough speed to only be blurs in the air to his left, the assassin was pressed back further and further, fending off Weiss with his bare hand and keeping his gun steady to deflect Adam's strikes. One final shot forced Weiss to leap closer to Adam.
It was just what Tacet was waiting for: he spun his assault rifle around him, let it expand out into a long glaive and struck Weiss with a mighty swing, shattering her rapier and leaving the blade grinding against her aura. The barrel tilted back in the same instance, and a gunshot gave his cleave the strength to send her barreling into Adam hard enough to leave them tumbling across the ground. Weiss clutched her side with a hiss as the two of them forced themselves back up, only to find that Tacet... wasn't there. In his place was only an empty magazine and a darkened crater. Only by chance did Adam notice the shadow moving across the brick and grass. His eyes turned to sky just as the assassin reached the peak of his insane leap, glaive raised high.
Tacet's ears twitched.
He suddenly turned and fired seemingly blindly back at the dorm as he fell. Weiss and Adam followed the path of the gunfire. It was a barrage of six rocket lockers raining down from the sky. Explosions filled the air like flak, destroying one in its entirety, but it wasn't enough to keep another from smashing him into the dirt. He remained still beneath it.
Beaten and burnt lockers slammed and embedded themselves in grass and road alike. Two metal doors burst out, and both Ruby and Yang shakily stumbled out of them, covered in both kinds of dust, with weapons in—on, in Yang's case—hand and with giant grins. Yang took one look at the collapsed assassin and crossed her arms, aiming a smug smirk right at Adam. With Tacet indisposed, he stormed forward, waving his hand back to the dorm and demanding to know why they were here in the first place. Why they would do something so insane?
Silence still reigned.
One of the trees' branches twitched the wrong way yet again. Adam barely had time to turn before a flurry of tiny rockets rained down from it. Light and smoke filled their vision while the world shook and shrapnel slashed across their aura. By the time it'd faded, the tree was aflame. He turned to Weiss and found her surrounded by small craters and a fading shield, gasping for breath and leaning up against her locker for support. Her strained aura briefly faded in and out of sight. There must've been two assailants.
Just as that thought occurred to Adam, the ground erupted in front of Weiss and Ruby both. Without thinking, Yang and Adam rushed towards their respective partners. Weiss' eyes widened as not a weapon or rocket, but a faunus sprung from the ground, metal claws over his hands reaching for her. She refused to be taken down in yet another battle, let alone by a mere grunt like this. Summoning all the strength she could, a split-second before the White Fang member reached her, Weiss summoned a massive plume of frost and ice, in front of her. Two of the 'fingers' of the Fang member's claws fired out as rockets past Weiss and exploded harmlessly as his momentum—and the entire lower half of his body—froze solid.
So close, the Fang member could still launch the rest of his gleaming claws, but, it would no doubt catch him in the explosion as well. Weiss could see his claws lowering, whether in preparation to fire anyway or to surrender. She'd never know his intentions.
Weeping crimson, Wilt suddenly shot into view, spearing clean through his neck. Chestnut-brown aura shone and flickered from the wound, the Fang member left grasping desperately at it the moment Adam's blade left him. Trembling briefly from the sudden brutality, Weiss turned to Adam, and found not red eyes but a cold, dispassionate emerald. Adam whipped the grunt's blood away with a flick of his blade and, its red glow fading, sheathed Wilt. Pale, the Fang member slipped into unconsciousness, all of his remaining aura and energy—however thin—being spent on keeping him alive.
Adam did not even spare him a glance. Not even to see if he still lived. He took a step towards Weiss, offered his hand and, for the first time in many weeks, all she could see was the pale mask of the White Fang instead of his eyes. She remembered just who Adam was, for better or for worse: a former terrorist. A cold-blooded killer. She took a step back and was shocked back to reality by her back hitting the cold metal of the locker. Adam looked at her strangely with an unreadable expression before he looked off to his side.
Her eyes followed him to the second Fang member, a teen perhaps her age with identical weapons and the tail of a chipmunk, fighting a losing battle against both Ruby and Yang. His only means of survival was suddenly dropping through the ground as if it were water and springing up from another angle. With more blows being taken by the second, he suddenly backflipped and plunged into the dirt again. This time, he remained there. While Weiss slowly regained her aura, she wondered why he did not just escape: surely the White Fang was not that suicidal.
The answer came to her as a flash of light from above drew her gaze to the locker which pinned their assassin to the ground. He wasn't there.
Aura is considered by experts across Remnant to be the most powerful source of energy in the world, passing even Dust by miles. In the hands of experts, it can turn dulled sticks as sharp as scalpels, and skin as strong as steel. This defensive field, however, does not make one invincible: though it can protect against lethal blows, aura is only truly strong when pared with the dodging and deflecting of skill and armor, extending even meager amounts long enough to survive. Enough force to an unprotected vital region can obliterate even the strongest of auras. After all, the weaker the region beneath the soul's manifestation, the more power it would expend to protect it. Luckily, it was rare indeed for any huntsman or huntress to be caught gravely off-guard.
When Tacet silently dropped from the skies with a gun-propelled swing, Yang was gravely off-guard. His glaive crashed into her neck and collarbone hard enough to cause an eruption of flame and golden light. When it had ended, Yang lay unconscious, even her massive stores of aura unable to withstand such a blow. The massive assassin twirled his glaive and stalked closer along the grass, grinning massively.
The three remaining teammates were still, disbelieving that Yang of all people had been crushed. Tacet, however, had no qualms with killing even during their shock: he shifted his glaive back to its assault rifle form and aimed it squarely at Yang's head.
Tacet's ears twitched.
He spun on a dime, opening fire and ripping open the earth where Ruby was not just a moment prior, rose petals chasing behind her as she screamed and zig-zagged her way up to the assassin. She twirled her scythe around herself, threw all of her weight behind it and was suddenly tackled by the lesser Fang soldier to the ground. Ruby hissed silently: it was easy for her to wriggle out of his grip, and even easier to bat him off towards the main road. As Ruby descended on him, again, she noticed him beginning to panic and sweat. That just meant she made the right call: they'd only been burrowing through soft dirt, so far!
Behind them, Weiss finally put everything together: this assassin could hear them even though they couldn't! He must've been immune to his own effect... and wouldn't expect anyone else to know that. With Tacet's back turned to them, she raced towards the assassin with Adam to her right and called out as if just on instinct, "Adam, take his left, I'll take the right!"
Tacet's ears twitched.
The assassin took the bait, transforming his gun back into its glaive form and swinging for where he thought the weakened heiress to be, but only having Adam draw Wilt and block it for all his troubles. Weiss vaulted herself over Adam, twirling above them both before gracefully dropping down on one knee with her rapier jammed into Tacet's weapon, encasing it in a block of ice. A frightened scowl shot across the assassin's face and only deepened when Adam aimed Blush right beside his ear. Behind his mask, his eyes widened.
Adam grinned madly and pulled the trigger. For just the briefest moment, they could hear the cold wind buffeting them, the echo of the gunshot in the plaza, the faintest, rumbling scream building up in the assassin's throat. Just as quickly as it had come, it was gone, leaving Tacet's roars and furious shouts of pain without sound as he thrashed and flailed hard enough to shatter the ice trapping his weapon. Weiss and Adam briefly leaped back as he stumbled about and swung his glaive behind him, ready to fire and leap into the skies again.
A bright flash erupted from just behind his leg, forcing him onto his knees instead. His glaive clattered to the ground, and his aura began to flicker: an inky black only visible across his pale mask and face.
"Payback's a bitch..." Lying behind the falling assassin, gauntlet still smoking, Yang let out a hoarse chuckle heard only by the very one she attacked and slipped back into unconsciousness.
Tacet looked for his remaining ally, only to find him getting struck down for the last time by Ruby; stranded on brick and stone, he hadn't stood a chance. The assassin glared through his mask over at the only two assailants. With the blonde one down and the heiress collapsed and barely holding herself up with her rapier, it could not be said he did not put up a good fight. But that did not excuse his failure to kill the heiress. Nor did it excuse his failure to kill him.
He focused on Adam in the silence: Captain Almond demanded his return alive, but, surely, he would not have minded a simple mistake. Someone like him did not deserve to be captured. He was nothing but a—
"TRAITOR!" The assassin barked viciously. Adam stared dispassionately at him, giving no answer even when he knew that Tacet could hear everything he said. He lifted his rifle. Blush spoke three times, for him.
Even the slightest breeze was a howl in Adam's ear as Tacet's Semblance faded. Flames roared and crackled across branches and grass both. The desperate attempts of all four of them still conscious to catch their breath filled the air. His heartbeat thumped against his chest like the drums of war, pulsing against his ears and driving his thoughts deeper into wrath. Tacet's aura flickered and slithered across him before vanishing entirely.
"I always knew you were too attached to that Belladonna girl for your own good, but, this? Not just protecting her, but humans? Schnees?! How can anyone fall this low! You've forgotten everything!" Tacet cried out at Adam as he stalked closer, slowly spinning Wilt in his hand. Red bled into his emerald irises: the anger at his team having come to help him instead found itself focused entirely on the one who dared attack them. Right now, the threat against his own life was the last thing on his mind.
"Do you really think you can scare me? Leading around your troop of little girls in pajamas? Do they even know what command you respected before? What you did to earn your place?" Adam's aura began to rise, glimmering across his blade like freshly-drawn blood. His grip tightened on Wilt enough to pain him even through his strengthened field.
Tacet only ranted on, not realizing that his words were falling upon deaf ears. He may as well have been returned to the world of his Semblance. "The only reason they've forgiven you is because they don't know. Even your precious Belladonna doesn't. And when your pathetic attempts to keep me trapped fail, and when I escape, I'll make sure they do, Major Taurus. Bet on—"
"Silence." Tacet's words turned to ash on his tongue. Adam brought Wilt's tip to the center of his throat, silently daring him to speak again. He wanted nothing more right now than to finish the job and drive his sword through him. Tacet deserved to suffer for hurting those he held dear, and the thought of what would have happened if his sneak attack from the skies had struck anyone but Yang turned a mere desire into cries and demands in his mind to do just that.
But one thing—just one—kept him from taking Tacet's life in cold blood. He stared beyond the assassin, where Ruby stood just a few feet away. No words were shared. Staring fearfully at him, Ruby just slowly shook her head. There was no doubt in his mind that Blake would have done the same. Adam knew this because she was there, in this exact situation, once before, with his blade at a surrendering assailant's throat. Back then, he had done so anyway. It was the beginning of the dark spiral that led him to this very moment. To tear Ruby's innocence apart by murdering him here while he could not respond would be unforgivable.
As his crimson gaze back onto Tacet, a slim smirk spread across Adam's face.
Which was why he would kill him in 'self-defense'.
"Listen very closely, Tacet. You will not mistake this as mercy. Nor will you mistake this as weakness. The simple fact of the matter is that a cretin like you is not even worth staining my blade." Did he really think he was clever enough to hide his preparations for betrayal? The ears of a human could not tell, but his enhanced senses made the muted nature of the world all too evident. Perhaps it was how the air would only whistle past his ears when the wind blew harder than usual, or the hissing of flame sounding muffled and suffocated. Perhaps it was simply how it felt like they were stifled and trapped in just a small bubble of space, but it all meant the same: Tacet's Semblance of absolute silence never fell, only weakened.
"Whether or not you escape alive is of no consequence, to me." Adam brought the tip of his weapon up to Tacet's chin, forcing him to look at him. The faint, black warping around the tip of his glowing blade proved the same: his aura had not shattered, either. It could still try to resist the piercing of his willpower. A cold, hateful light rose around him.
"But hear this: if I ever see you again, if I ever hear from you again, if you ever so much as think of harming my teammates or any of my friends again, I will find you." That pit of hate in his heart must have never gone away, Adam thought. Such would be the only reason why he was smiling when flicking Wilt away from Tacet's neck caused him to flinch. To remember the monster he once was. This realization had far less of an effect on him than he thought it would: it was justice, after all. Justice for daring to harm those close to him.
"And I will make it my mission to destroy everything you love." He sheathed his blade and left his negativity to bare down upon Tacet like the weight of the world. Adam knew: he had failed. His choices were to return to Almond and report his grave loss, or remain outside the Fang, wait to fight him again, and invoke his wrath... and there was no guarantee he would not be sent back. Tacet was a trapped rat, now.
And as Adam turned and walked away, he found himself smiling.
He had only one choice left.
Yet again, Weiss found herself on the brink of total exhaustion. She cursed herself: twice in only a few days, and three, overall! The opposition had fallen, but, how long would it be before she would be fatigued and them still strong? There was still so much work to be done...
She shakily tried to drag herself up onto her feet with Myrtenaster as leverage, but failed yet again and collapsed onto her knees. Weiss tried to focus on the assassin and Adam ahead, ready to force out every last drop of her strength if anyone else was in danger. It was only as she tried to focus on what the two were saying that Weiss had even realized sound had returned to her. A flare of red sent a chill down her spine.
"And I will make it my mission to destroy everything you love." Yet another reminder of Adam once was, just like his cold-blooded strike on the other Fang member. She frowned and focused her sight on him: was this simply what he was always like? Hiding it for their sake? If his hatred had never faded... it was not a path she wanted to mentally travel down.
When he turned around, Weiss was forced onto it. The fury in his still-crimson eyes, the manic smile wide enough to show the smallest glint of teeth, the burning glow still surrounding him. He looked like a different person altogether.
He looked like someone deserving of being called a terrorist.
But, when the silence suddenly wrapped around them again, bright-red rose petals rushed up around them both and Tacet leaped forward with mouth open in a soundless howl, that title burned away from Weiss' mind. No, with bestial eyes wide with terrific excitement and the most wicked, vicious grin Weiss had ever seen in her life, the Adam that drew his blade and whirled around to strike at Tacet was not a terrorist at all.
The world was drenched in red, all cast in shadows. A wave of wilting rose petals and aura twisted into killing instinct slammed into Weiss, and she finally passed out with that wretched grin burned into her mind. A grin whose pleasure was borne from suffering.
The grin of a monster.
A/N: Surprise, Adam's still not entirely a good person. Perhaps, had he lost everything in this timeline, he would have begun the slow descent into the more monstrous, canon Adam.
... Alright, maybe not that far, but certainly to a more sadistic, evil place. Changes from someone who was only a couple steps away from becoming that to a legitimately good person takes time.
Fun facts: Tacet Avalanche is a bat faunus who has trained his aura to hear sounds so quiet that he can barely stand the noise of the real world. His Semblance of absolute silence is not entirely absolute, simply so close that only he can hear sounds that muffled. His weapon is an ASh-12.7 battle rifle that can shift into a glaive.
His two partners were chipmunk twins. Their Semblances were the ability to burrow through soft earth with extreme ease and speed.
Comment and criticism always welcome.