Wayne had been pretty much dragged bodily from the CCT by Atlesian soldiers all the way to some sort of vertibird, then brought to an airship that, frankly, made the Prydwen look like stone age tech. It wasn't a comfortable ride, especially with that shit-heel Sergeant Arian from Clair's apartment giving Wayne the business end every opportunity he got. Hell, it seemed like he was just taking shots at Wayne's leg just to watch him limp a bit further. He'd gotten some cursory medical treatment, a quick patch job to his shoulder and leg, and then, he'd been thrown in the pen.

The brig on the ship was cold, sterile, and surprisingly bright thanks to the glaring security risk—or rather, the window—that gave a nice view of the fucked up moon from Wayne's new seating arrangement, and the painfully bright UV lights sitting above it that didn't seem to turn off. Whatever. He'd gone through Hell Week and the Glowing Sea before. If this was as close as the Atlesian military could get to 'torture', then they weren't going to be getting much out of Wayne. The good Sergeant tried to play the bad cop, but he was terrible at it. He let his emotions get a hold of him, drive him to yell and curse and do anything but ask the real questions. It was a lesson Wayne had to learn once, and perhaps, if he ever got out of this ship, he'd teach it to Arian.

For now, though, thanks to good old Cinder, Wayne was stuck here, and it was likely 'for now' meant 'for the foreseeable future'. Despite all the warnings, all the red flags, Wayne had trusted the woman, and of course, it had come to bite him in the ass. It was Bobbi No-Nose all over again, but something told Wayne that Hancock was a lot easier to deal with than General Ironwood would be. The only comfort was that if—when—he got out of this cell, he was going to set the score right with the bitch who put him here.

He probably wouldn't have to wait long. Supposedly, the General was coming to pay him a visit soon, the good guy to cleanse the palate after the ass-whupping and tongue-lashing Arian had delivered. Just as well. Wayne wasn't looking forward to getting grilled, but at the very least, he could get it over with quickly.

Surprisingly, it wasn't Ironwood that came to the cell first. As a matter of fact, it was Ozpin, with Liam standing behind him, a baseball bat resting on his shoulder as he stared at Wayne from behind the Headmaster's back.

"You've gotta be kidding me," Wayne muttered, trying and failing to stretch out his bum leg. No dice. Standing on it was out of the question, so on the 'bench' that passed for a cot in this cell he sat, staring at Ozpin and Liam and waiting for the shoe to drop.

"So, you must be the other new arrival from this 'Wasteland', then," Ozpin stated. "I suspected as much when we met, but I'd assumed that perhaps James had managed to hide something from me. It's apparent that you're not working for the General, now, is it?"

"Astute observation, Sherlock," Wayne drawled sarcastically. Liam scowled, and slapped his bat against his palm threateningly, drawing a concerned look from Ozpin. The Headmaster didn't want to hurt him. Wayne could use that to his advantage. "It only took me coming in with my Pip-Boy on my wrist, threatening your pet cat, and killing a bunch of soldiers to get it through your head that I'm not on your side. Honestly, I thought I might have to fuck your mother to get the point across-"

"Lotta mouth on you for someone with a bullet in his knee on a ship full of people who want him dead," Liam interrupted, once again palming his bat. "Only reason they haven't put one in your noggin is because Oz and the General want to know who the hell that was with you in that tower, and why you thought making an enemy out of the biggest military in the world was a smart idea."

Ozpin nodded. "You've made quite an impression since you arrived here, Mister…"

Wayne smirked. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

"Gettin' real sick and tired of this smartarse gig, fella," Liam stated, opening the cell door and stepping inside. "I'm not much for unnecessary roughness but I'm more than willing to fuck you up if you don't start talkin'."

Wayne's expression didn't falter as it shifted from Ozpin to the boy with the bat. He was trying awfully hard to come off as the 'bad cop', and doing a terrible job at it. He was overacting by an absurd degree.

"You know as well as I do that a couple of whacks with a bat isn't going to change a damn thing, son," Wayne said, the picture of confidence. "You're a vaultie, too, huh? Which one?"

"I'm the one askin' the questions here."

"You don't seem very comfortable with it, Shamus."

Liam's scowl only deepened, but, much to Wayne's surprise, he answered the question truthfully. "Vault 101, in Washington. You?"

Wayne saw no harm in being truthful about his origin, at least for now. If the kid wasn't comfortable going to bad cop lengths, he could soften him up, humanize himself to make it that much harder to get the real details out of Wayne. It was harder to put the screws on someone if you saw them as being just like you. "111, just outside of Concord. I met some guys from out in the Capitol once."

"That right?" Liam asked, obviously rhetorical. His frown softened, a barely perceptible shift, but Wayne was paying very close attention. "What's your name, fella?"

"Wayne Stafford."

"You prolly caught this already, but I'm Liam. Liam O'Ryan. I'd say it's a pleasure, but then I'd be lyin', wouldn't I?"

"I don't particularly care either way," Wayne replied. He meant that. He didn't have any particular hatred for his fellow Wastelander, even if he was currently doing a terrible job menacing him with a baseball bat. He probably just wanted to get home, like Wayne did. He just picked a different team to bat for.

'Heh. Baseball.'

"How'd you get here, Wayne?" Liam asked. "Can't imagine it's a coincidence that two Wasters end up in the same place at the same time."

"Teleporter malfunction," Wayne replied, matter-of-fact. "You?"

"You wouldn't believe it if I told you."

"Try me."

"I hit the wrong button on an alien space-ship and somehow zapped myself out here."

Liam was right, Wayne hardly believed that, but he also had trouble believing that his son was a 60-odd year old man by the time he got out of cryostasis, but that had been the truth, too. Maybe there were fucking aliens, on top of everything else wrong with post-apocalyptic America.

"Well, shit," Wayne replied. "That's something."

"Yeah, it is." Liam placed his bat on his shoulder, a surprisingly non-threatening gesture considering the situation. "What in God's name possessed you to do what you're doin', man? I get that we're both in an odd spot, but killin' people isn't gonna get you back home."

"On the contrary, I was told that it would," Wayne deadpanned.

"By who?"

"Nobody you'd know."

"Well, then, maybe the Headmaster would know."

"He would probably like to, but unfortunately, my memory's a bit fuzzy from the metric fuck-ton of chems I did last night. Can't help you there."

The scowl had returned, but it was less anger and more a seemingly genuine frustration. "Come on, man, don't be daft."

"The student who injured you claimed that there was another individual with you in the Beacon Tower," Ozpin stated, leaning on his cane and examining both men from outside the cell. "Is that true?"

"Wasn't just me, yeah," he replied. 'I could sell this dumb bitch up the river and nobody would know. I'd get right back at her, maybe even get a ticket home out of it. I gotta wonder…'

"Wayne," Ozpin stated, his tone cold and deadly serious, "I understand that you wish to return home. I am doing everything in my power to bring Liam back safely, and I will extend that same power to you, if only you would tell me what exactly is going on here."

"You've got competition, Oz," Wayne stated. "You're the second person to make me that offer, and unless you show me that you can, I don't exactly have any incentive to trust you, do I?"

Ozpin didn't reply, but he noticeably stiffened. Had Wayne struck a nerve? He certainly hoped so. Maybe if he pushed a little harder…

"How long are you gonna keep stringing this kid along, huh?" Wayne asked, looking at Liam now. "How old are you? Can't be older than 20. You got family back in the Wasteland, Liam? Your Vault still around? Surely you don't have time to sit around playing 'good cop, bad cop' with an old man who probably has no intention of getting you home, yeah?"

"He's makin' every effort he can-" Liam started.

"Has he shown you any progress? Told you anything? Or have you just been running around his school, making friends with a stray cat and a bunch of kids that he's preparing for war?"

Liam paused, digesting what Wayne said before replying. "What he's doin' is necessary. Those Grimm out there aren't gonna fight themselves."

"Then form an army. Ironwood did it. Why does Oz need to send a bunch of kids to fight man-eating monsters, huh? Did he explain that to you?"

"I don't know what you've been told, Wayne, but you have a deep misunderstanding of my aims as Headmaster," Ozpin attempted to interrupt, only for Wayne to point with his shackled hands at the Headmaster, a grin crossing his lips.

"I know a lot more about you than you think." Wayne replied smugly. "What you're doing in that school. What your men did to that girl."

"What in the fuck are you talkin' about?" Liam asked, turning to Ozpin for an answer. "Oz, what's he on about?"

Ozpin didn't immediately respond. Big mistake. Liam seemed a bit shaken, turning back to Wayne and starting some sort of protest before Ozpin, surprisingly agitated, cut him off.

"We can talk about it later, preferably in my office," Ozpin replied. "It's time I made you aware of some things." He then turned his attention to Wayne. "I don't know what you've been told, Wayne, but I can assure you, my intentions are good. It is unfortunate that we have to resort to the measures that we do, but I am not responsible. If you wish, my offer stands. It's not too late to make the right decision."

"Please," Wayne drawled with a sneer, "Ironwood wouldn't let you off this boat with me after catching me killing a bunch of his men. You're just trying to get something out of me, and you're shit at it."

"I'm not goin' anywhere, bruv, not until I find out what the shit you're talking about, yeah, Oz?" Liam stated, his tone like iron. Frankly, even Wayne was intimidated by it. The frustration, the anger, the pleading, none of it even had an effect on him, but the way Liam simply stated his intentions almost made him cave on the spot. And Wayne thought Piper was a hardass.

"Liam," Ozpin protested, "not right here."

"Right here," Liam replied, lowering his bat from his shoulder and rapping it against the wall of the cell. "Right. Now. Fella's got a point, you haven't told me shit, and frankly, I doubt you'd tell him shit either, considering the circumstances we're in right now. You are training children to fight, sending them to fight before their training's even done in life or death situations. I've got a lot of questions for you, and you're gonna start answering them. And once I get my answers..."

The young vault dweller turned the bat on Wayne. "Then, you're gonna tell me what you were doing at Beacon, where you got that uniform, why you were looking for Blake, and who the fuck was in that tower. You're trying to get under my skin. Better men have tried. Man killed my father right in front of my eyes and rubbed it in my fucking face and I didn't crack. You're gonna have to try a lot fucking harder to bust my nuts, Wayne. You're gonna give me what I want, whether you like it or not, even if I have to sit in this fucking room and keep you awake day and night, force-feed you Cram and beat the absolute shit out of you with this here bat, you understand?"

Before Wayne could even attempt to formulate a retort, someone interrupted the proceedings.

"Headmaster, the General wants to interrogate the prisoner personally," Clair stated. "You need to leave."

Wait.

Wayne attempted to contain his shock, doing an admirable job in his own humble opinion as Liam and Ozpin turned their attention to Clair, who had managed to somehow get a hold of an Atlesian soldier's uniform that fit her, and a fancy rifle to match. She wore it well. If Wayne hadn't known her, he'd probably not have suspected a thing.

"Tell 'im we're not done," Liam stated, motioning to Clair. "Leave."

"Sir, I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist."

"There's no need for trouble. Liam," Ozpin stated plaintively, "I promise, I will explain everything to you when we are alone. Not here, not now."

Liam let out a frustrated huff, taking a few breaths to collect himself as his eyes slowly drifted back towards Wayne. He recognized the determination in those eyes well. He'd seen them in the mirror, once, but blue instead of brown. The same eyes, otherwise- cold, piercing, and filled with a deep, all-encompassing determination to get it. For him, 'it' was vengeance, Kellog's grey matter splattered across the walls of that little fucking room he'd found him in. For Liam, it was the truth. The solution that would bring him one step closer to home.

This kid was gonna be trouble.

Ozpin gingerly stepped past Clair, while Liam made no effort to be polite, bull-rushing through and knocking shoulders with her as he stormed after Ozpin. On the bright side… that left the two of them alone.

"I can't help but think we've met," Wayne noted sarcastically. "Were you the one who called me a psychopath, or the one that kicked me in the legs over and over again?"

"I am the one your lady friend sent to bust you out of containment," Clair replied. "Shocking, I know."

"Shocking is right, considering she left me to get caught," Wayne agreed. "Where the fuck is she?"

"Getting the plan ready. We're way ahead of schedule. You guys getting compromised puts us in a bad spot," Clair explained. "You're going to help with Part Two."

"What's Part One?" Wayne asked as Clair entered the still-open cell—holy shit, that kid had slipped up after all— and removed her helmet, revealing frazzled white locks and perky mouse ears that now stood proud and unblemished for the first time since the beatdown that brought them together.

"Part One is loading a train full of Dust and blowing a hole in Vale's wall," Clair explained. "That was gonna be the door-kicker of the original plan, but it's our way of smoke-screening your escape as well as throwing Ozpin and his kids off the scent. We're selling Torchwick up the river for a bit to sell the deception. As far as anyone knows, Torchy will be the big brains behind the infiltration and this attack, and most importantly… Part Two."

Clair grinned. "He's going to be responsible for your escape, and the rampage that follows."

"Rampage?" Wayne repeated. Clair didn't answer immediately, instead placing her hand on Wayne's injured leg with a smile.

"Wayne. I'm going to give you something very important. You risked your life to save me when there was no reason to do so," she explained with a smile and the slightest tinge of pink to her cheeks. "So, I'm returning the favor. I can't give you the way home, or proof that you're the good man I believe you to be—no, I know you to be. But I can give you a part of me, something that will make you stronger, and perhaps help you a little bit in making that long journey back to your friends."

Clair placed her other hand over the one already on his knee, her 'Aura' pulsing as she did so.

"You ready to be a hero, Wayne?" she asked, and then, a surge of green energy shot up from Wayne's feet all the way up to his head, Clair's 'Aura' flaring up even brighter in response and remaining visible. The green glow around Wayne began to intensify, and… his leg.

His leg was healing.

"Because," she continued, "we need one if we're gonna knock this airship out of the sky. We need the world to fear that other guy, right? If General Ironwood sees you tear his own ship out of the air, there's not a doubt in my mind he'll be trying to keep a much tighter leash on your new friend."

"Sounds like you're counting on Ironwood not trusting Ozpin. Do you really think that's gonna work?"

"As long as one of them has even the slightest hint of doubt of the other, we win," Clair replied. "At least, that's how your new gal pal explained it. You see what I'm getting at?"

"Yeah, I got it," Wayne replied, giving his leg a few experimental swings. It was still a bit stiff, but he could move on it without too much pain now. Quite the improvement. "What did you just do?"

"I gave you an Aura," Clair replied. "You're not invincible, but it's gonna take a lot more than a bullet to the knee to take you down, now. Just focus on whatever's attacking you, and your Aura will absorb the damage. It still won't feel great, but you'll be able to take a lot more damage." Clair then grabbed the rifle she'd acquired as part of her disguise, and handed it to Wayne. "I wasn't able to get your weapons out of the ship's lockup. Then, I'll send a map of the ship to your Scroll, and you can get to the cockpit. You're gonna drop this thing out of the sky while I secure a transport for you in the hangar. Then, you run back, and we make our escape. Clear?"

"Crystal," Wayne replied, grabbing a firm hold of the rifle. Despite its bulk, it was astonishingly light, and a quick rack of the action revealed strange, clear polymer rounds with red tips and a visible red powder within. "What's up with this thing?"

"Fire Dust rounds," Clair explained. "Burn on contact. Better at chewing through Aura. I've got a few more clips on my belt, but you'll have to grab more ammo and weaponry as you go. Like I said, the stuff you brought to the dance will be in the armory. Here."

Clair unclipped the belt from her uniform and handed it to Wayne, who quickly secured it around his own waist, noting the four extra magazines attached to it. It wasn't much, but it'd do. He just hoped that he had enough to get to his target. "Where's lockup again?"

"Take a left out of the cell, then a right at the next turn," Clair explained. "Then, go straight down the main hallway until you get to the square-shaped junction with four branches. Take the one to the left. The lockup will be the third door on your you leave there, get on the elevator at the center of the junction and go up a floor, then straight down the hall, that'll take you to the cockpit. Go back the way you came and get back on the elevator, and the floor below the one you came from will be the hangar. Makes sense?"

"Anything else I need to know?" Wayne asked.

"The General's really on the ship. He's probably onto us by now, but don't kill him. We need him alive for the plan to work."

"Don't kill him, got it," Wayne replied, standing up and giving his injured leg a quick test. He could stand fine. "You go ahead and get us out, then."

Clair grinned, her ears twitching as she did so. "Don't worry, brother. I've got you."

Meanwhile

Far Harbor

"So, that's it then," Piper muttered, leaning up against The Wall that had been Far Harbor's sanctuary for God-knows-how-long, staring into the thin cloud of fog that shaded the island. "He just up and disappeared without telling anyone why. No signs, no talk, nothing."

"That's what it sounds like," MacCready replied gruffly from behind his cigarette. "And we don't have the first clue where to start."

"Certainly a hell of a pickle our friend's found himself in," Deacon said, pacing back and forth in front of the entrance to the town proper. "Hancock got in touch, says he's on his way back. Got something interesting for us."

Piper almost couldn't believe her ears. Hancock, drug-addled, flighty, devil-may-care Hancock had somehow managed to get answers out of the Children of Atom!?

"You're kidding," Piper stated, believing against all odds that this wasn't happening. "There's no way."

"Oh, you better believe there is. It's good, too. That teleporter had something to do with it after all. Atom's boys said that 'Atom's holy fire' fell from the sky and took out the house. Wasn't anything left of it afterward, not even ash. He teleported out, alright."

"Well, I guess we got our lead," Cait said, pulling her jacket tighter against her wiry frame and looking out over the foggy treeline. "Did Tom figure anything out on that front?"

"He says he has grid coordinates, but that they don't make any sense. If he'd teleported, he would have landed square in the middle of Diamond City, but none of our people there saw him or any signs of a teleportation event. Either he got his molecules shot out across the Wasteland, and he's basically dead, or he ended up somewhere else. I'm led to believe the latter, myself, considering that the teleporter would have registered a malfunction in its logs at the destination end. It never did. Even when it blew up, all the systems were reading nominal."

"That doesn't rule out the molecular explosion thing, does it?" Preston asked. "From what it sounds like, that's still entirely possible."

"It is, but like I said, we prepared for that kind of malfunction when we made the damn thing. We ran tests. Wayne's used the thing multiple times, and the Institute's been using the tech for decades. What little data we have shows that molecular destabilization is a one in a million occurrence, but a coordinate mismatch is much more common. It's possible he ended up somewhere else on the Institute's grid and can't get back with the teleporter network down."

"So how are we gonna find him?" Piper wasn't exactly sure where Deacon was going with this. She'd never known the Railroad agent to be much of a scientific type, but he was just full of surprises lately. She made a note to ask Wayne what else the agent had been holding out on them. If anyone knew, it would probably be the other half of the… Commonwealth Deathbunnies. God, that was a stupid name. No way that was Wayne's idea.

"Tom's trying to isolate the coordinates and get the blueprints together for another teleporter. It's gonna take a while to find the necessary parts, especially considering how some of that shit was pretty one-of-a-kind, but it's still possible. We just need something that can hold together for a two-way trip. One to get to him, and one to bring him back." Deacon shrugged. "We can't use the old frame, in case there's a structural weakness. We're thinking of putting it in Sanctuary or Jamaica Plain, since those are two of our more heavily-defended settlements. The Airport's also an option, now that what's left of Liberty Prime got scrapped for parts and moved into storage."

"We'll have to figure that out as we go," Preston stated. "For now, we need to get the group back together and finish our sweep. Nick, did you find anything in Acadia?"

"Nothing," Nick replied forlornly. "DiMA said Wayne hadn't swung by in a week when he supposedly disappeared, but he'd been keeping an eye on him. He said all that he could report was that he was at his home one night, and by morning, he was gone, and the house with him. Down to the foundation."

"Where's the rest of our guys?" MacCready asked.

"Strong's with Hancock on his way back from meeting up with the Children of Atom," Cait answered. "Curie and Codsworth are probably still waiting for us in town with Longfellow. Rest of us are right here, save for Dogmeat. What'd we do with the mutt, anyhow?"

"Left him back at Hangman's Alley with Conroe. He's been pushing into Boston to try and take down the Raiders dug in there." MacCready replied, drawing a shocked look from Cait and an involuntary flinch from Piper.

"Conroe? Former Gunner Conroe?" Piper asked, incredulous. Wayne had run into plenty of sketchy figures in his travels with Piper, but the former 'Lieutenant Conroe' was a particularly sketchy one. Wayne had run into him and his crew in Boston proper, and by then, the sole survivor of Vault 111's reputation was such that Conroe and his men basically threw their guns down the moment Wayne drew his. Conroe actually shot his own CO to surrender, promising he and his boys would stay on the straight and narrow if Wayne didn't shoot them. Wayne, surprisingly, believed the guy, and gave him the rather unenviable job of protecting the Hangman's Alley settlement. Apparently, now, he was in charge of it, and with it, the constant back-and-forth turf war with the nearby Raider camps.

Wayne may have thought he was a bad person, but did he really have to go rounding up actual shitty people to make friends with?

"Same one," Preston replied. "He's been on the level thus far. So long as he's got Raiders to shoot at, I think he'll stay that way."

"I sure hope so, for our sake. Last thing we need is a settlement full of Gunners fucking up our supply chain," Cait agreed. "Why the fuck did Wayne trust the guy?"

"Because every time he's walked into Hangman's Alley, he's walked out alive. Conroe could have killed him time and time again, but whatever Wayne did for him, it changed the guy. I ran with the gunners for a while, and I knew Conroe. He was never like this before," MacCready stated. Piper wanted to believe him, she really did, but she still couldn't shake the bad feeling about this. Among Wayne's many bad, ill-advised, or just plain vile decisions, only this one curdled her blood.

She hoped that he was still alive, so that maybe she could ask him. Not only about Conroe, but about a lot of things. If he was doing okay. If he needed something. God knows he'd never tell any of them unless they asked, and even then...

"We should probably head inside and get ready to head home," Deacon offered, breaking a long silence that Piper had hardly even registered. "We got a long road ahead of us, yeah?"

"Yeah," Piper agreed. She really hoped that Deacon had the right idea with the whole mis-teleportation thing. Wayne no doubt wanted to die, or at least, he wouldn't have been opposed to the idea of dying, but the Commonwealth still needed its savior for a little while longer.

She needed him, All of this little gaggle of misfits did, whether they wanted to admit it or not. He'd saved them, after all.

'Saved most of us, anyway.'

Atlesian Airship AC-179 'Sanctum's Shield'

Vale

If Wayne was supposed to feel something at the moment, well, he was out of the loop.

The rifle barely kicked. It was well-braced in spite of its light weight, and while it wasn't exactly tearing through Aura like it wasn't there, the first few soldiers he ran into hadn't been expecting him, so it only took a couple of rounds anyhow.

By the time he got to the lockup and found his gear, he'd left a trail of ten bodies to it, and the alarm had only just sounded when number five dropped. These guys were sloppy.

As he fumbled with the magazine of his new weapon, the munitions slipping from his twitching, trembling fingers, he couldn't help but feel a bit hypocritical, calling them sloppy. A little less than 12 hours without chems and he was barely functioning.

He could hear chatter over the PA. Pretty soon he'd be hearing people coming to break down the lockup doors. Wayne didn't care. All he cared about right now was that he didn't have enough chems in his system to deal with what he was dealing with right now, and a combat situation wasn't the place to deal with said things.

He's everywhere at once. Usually, it's only a few places at a time. A few things at once. Right now, it's everything, everywhere, everyone. In this locked-down room full of guns, ammo, outlandish technology and a bag of chems somewhere in the mess, the outside world is gone, and Wayne's world is now four walls and the man standing in the center of them, watching everything pass him by again. He's at home, his mother bandaging bruised knuckles and telling him that his brother's going to have to stand up for himself and that the Good Book says that violence begets violence. He's in Anchorage, being told by a fresh-faced recruit that the things in front of him, the things that torture POWs and butchered his men are human beings too, and that they deserve anything but a bullet to the head, when that recruit isn't even going to live long enough to see himself proven wrong, that they're all fucking animals now. He's in Sanctuary, watching his world burn just as he was finally seeing the bright side of it, a world that he could try his damnedest to bring a son into, to raise him right, to be a better man than he was now, and then he's being a father, fighting tooth and nail to try and protect his family even if the ice is still in his veins and the door's locked tight and that son of a bitch Kellogg looked him in the fucking eyes and there was no way he didn't know then.

He wondered if Kellogg had moments like these, staring into nothing in an empty room, asking himself why he was here. They had a lot in common. Too fucking much, save for one key difference.

Whereas Kellogg had given into the despair, let it consume him and leave him a hollowed out husk, Wayne had consumed it instead. Let it fester, fetid and rotting in the pit of his stomach, until despair became burning, consuming rage, and then he held the fire in a bottle until he'd tamed it, and called it hate. And then, he released that hate on anything and anyone that ever tried to take what he had. They'd learn the same lesson Kellogg had, that taking from Wayne Stafford was a mistake you'd never live to regret.

He could hear people trying to open the armory door now. Wayne slung the rifle over his back, taking his auto pistol in one hand and his knife in the other, giving himself an experimental slash across his forearm to see if the whole 'Aura' thing was working. It was, as evidenced by a flash of green and a distinct lack of blood.

With one last issue left to see to, Wayne opened the satchel that held his chems to find…

Nothing.

"Oh, no," Wayne muttered, a dawning horror slowly burning into his brain. "No, no, no, no, no! Fuck! FUCKING FUCK!"

Just as it really, truly hit him just how fucked he was, the doors opened, drawing his attention as two soldiers, a man and a woman, trained their guns on him.

"Freeze!" the woman ordered. "Drop your weapons!" It was obvious that she was scared half to death, no doubt having followed the trail of bodies to get to this point. Her aim was visibly unsteady, and her eyes were looking more to the hallway around her than the armed hostile in front of her.

Wayne did not have enough chems in his system for this.

"Here's what's going to happen," Wayne stated, his voice low and thick with rage, turning his eye to the woman. "You're going to put down your gun. You're going to go to the hangar and evacuate. Because if you're still here when I count to five, I'm not just going to kill you. I'm going to make you suffer. I'm going to carve into you like a Thanksgiving turkey. I'm going to rip your eyes out of their sockets and feed them to you, and when you're done eating, I'm going to rip out your tongue so that your own blood and tears are the last thing you taste. Then, I'm going to carry you, kicking and screaming, all the way through this hallway while I kill every single one of your friends and colleagues, before I jam this knife in your ears so that the last sound you hear is the dying screams of your comrades in arms. Then, when I've sent this airship on a collision course with the ground? Then, I'll let you die, and I promise you that with no ears to hear and no eyes to see, that's going to be the longest five minutes of your life."

Wayne tilted his head. "Are we clear?"

The man seemed a bit shaken by his threats, grandiose and over-the-top threats, but the woman looked practically ready to piss herself. Still, that gun was trained on him, however unsteady it might be.

"One."

No response from either of them yet.

"Two."

The woman flinched, looking now to her comrade for direction. He offered none.

"Three."

He didn't even need to get to five. The woman broke and ran, running back down the hall and drawing her comrade's attention to her flight. She'd killed him, and there was no doubt in Wayne's mind that she'd know that. They always looked back, just to see.

While the soldier was distracted, Wayne charged, throwing himself into a headlong tackle as he took him to the ground, grabbing him by the neck and repeatedly slamming his head into the metal floor, blue Aura flickering wildly with each successive smash, until it eventually gave one final, weak fizzle, and the man's desperate struggle to get Wayne off of him slowly waned. Only then did Wayne finish the job, twirling his knife to an icepick grip and jamming it forcefully into the soldier's temple, burying it halfway down the blade until he felt it scraping bone, before twisting it in just a little bit deeper, just to be sure.

With the dirty deed done, he stood, just in time to hear another demand, and then, gunfire. His Aura burned at the side of his head and his right shoulder, and he turned to face the source. An Atlesian robot fired his rifle at Wayne, shots going wide of his completely stationary target.

Wayne flipped the knife over again in his hand once more, turning his head to look at it. He'd seen the strange droids in the post-Psycho haze coming aboard the ship, but he hadn't really gotten a good look at them then, like he had now. It was sleek, stark, almost beautiful in a way. A part of Wayne felt bad scrapping it, but he didn't have time to sit there and reprogram it.

"Should have ran," he said, raising his pistol and opening fire, rounds striking against the machine's chest armor. A final, desperate burst of fire hit Wayne, staggering him, but little else. "Should have ran," he repeated, lowering his pistol and firing a short burst into the machine's head, finally ending its life.

Wayne's shaking hands went to the magazine release on his pistol, and he reloaded. He only had one clip left for it on his good belt, so he had to make every one of those eighteen shots count before switching to the rifle again, or just saying 'fuck it' and putting that knife to work.

Without the chems to ground him, to keep his head on straight, the rest is foggy. There's blood, gunfire, and the sound and smell of death. He comes to on the bridge of the airship, jamming his knife into a console and pulling a lever down until it can't go anymore, and then pulling some more until it breaks. Then, he's in the fog again, tearing through man and machine alike as he fights his way to the hangar. They've noticed the ship is listing, and are starting to evacuate. Not many of them are fast enough to get out of Wayne's way.

Once again, he comes out from the fog, head pounding, arms burning, and deeply disappointed that he's still alive, in the cockpit of some sort of Atlesian vertibird, Clair in the pilot's seat.

"Don't worry, brother, so long as the Grimm leave us the fuck alone, I think I can handle this thing!" she assures him, and Wayne wonders exactly why the Grimm would be there. Sure, he just caused a lot of negative emotion by slaughtering his way through an Atlesian airship, but surely that wasn't enough to wake the figurative dead.

Wayne didn't want to think about that. He ached, in every sense of the word, and he wasn't even getting into the real withdrawals yet. This was just a half a day or so without the sauce. Come a week? He'd either be dead, or wishing to die.

No matter, that was for later. For now, Wayne simply inhaled, slow, rattling, and deep, leaning his head back against the seat, closing his eyes and thinking of home. Of what his people'd think if they could see him now, bloody up to his forearms, sweat pouring off his brow, tears stinging his eyes, and everything hurting on such a deep level that he'd need to take a minute to redefine pain, because nothing, not even withdrawals, hit quite as hard as the realization of just what was happening.

"Why are there Grimm?" he asked.

"The Breach, brother. We were going to break open the walls of Vale City using the Dust train remember? We were going to wait, but the bitch said that we'd need the distraction to rescue you."

"But why the Grimm?"

"They'll cause enough chaos for us to escape unscathed, as long as they don't come after us. Think happy thoughts, yeah?" Clair's tone was far too chipper for what she was suggesting. Wayne wasn't sure if it was a coping mechanism, or what, because if he was understanding her right…

"I hope this is worth it," was all Wayne could muster, a breathy, defeated statement that barely registered above the whirring of the vertibird's blades. Clair visibly recoiled—she'd heard him.

After a long, pregnant pause, she sighed. "I hope so too."