Chapter 1: If You Like Adam Put a Ring on Him
Adam watched Blake Belladonna flee from the room, her blonde companion slung under her right arm and her eyes briefly piercing through the man who claimed responsibility for Yang's inability to one day reciprocate the act; Yang's severed arm lay on the floor, testament to the strength of Moonslice, his semblance. A rampaging grimm burst into the room but Adam decapitated it in one smooth motion of his red blade, Wilt. A waste of his talents: his forces had been the ones to transport and deploy the monsters into the school so it was somewhat counterproductive to slay the creatures when there were so many humans left for them to prey upon. He could hear their distant screams echoing across the campus grounds. Adam strode across the room to the hallway. Somewhere in the school was the human who had set the entire calamity in motion: Cinder Fall. He did not know what she wanted from the chaos they had started, but she had certainly strong-armed him into letting her bribe his Vale cell of the White Fang into serving as core mechanism of her plans.
Adam sneered, "human filth", as he considered his tenuous ally.
While he was willing to admit the clear efficiency of humans fighting humans for his people's cause, it still irked him to have to work with the likes of Cinder and Roman Torchwick or any of their human flunkies. If he had had any choice in the matter he would have been perfectly content to let the humans slaughter one another without his direct involvement.
His keen faunus senses heard an explosion in the distance, from the central tower of Beacon Academy. The Academy taught humans (and maybe sometimes the occasional Faunus with the right connections and abundance of talent) to become heroic hunstmen (or huntresses) in the ongoing war between civilization and the grimm, with a minor degree in impeding the terrorist tendencies of his White Fang forces. The explosion was probably deserving of his investigation, considering the alternative was fighting the grimm since the local area was presently clear of humans or race-traitors; most were probably evacuated from the area by now.
He made his way to the tower, avoiding the grimm as much as he could, and walked inside. A gaping hole remained where there once was an elevator rising into the high reaches of the building, burnt and charred from his ally's powerful fire-based semblance. Cinder's plan must be in full motion here as she worked to disable the school and reach her mysterious goal. Adam may have had his doubts about her motives but he had witnessed her semblance's capabilities and had sagely decided that his men's lives were not worth testing her abilities against the remnants of his forces that day, when she had approached his Forever Fall camp a second time to coerce him to ally his forces to her cause. He walked over to the elevator and peered down; his quick inspection revealed a trail of fire rising from the depths of the school to the pinnacle of the tower above him. Whatever Cinder had been after, it had been in the bowels revealed before him-but she wasn't there anymore. Something had drawn her up to the headmaster's office. The enormous grimm wyvern circled the tower menacingly, smaller grimm dripping from its body like viscous tar.
Adam took out his scroll, ~Green Eye. This is Wilt. Status confirm sector glass? Over.~
A moment passed before he received the text response from his lieutenant, ~Wilt, this is Green Eye. Sector Glass stable, targets minimized, grimm rampant. Massive alpha grimm at centre of sector, circling tower. Friendlies beginning partial withdrawal operations, reinvesting in sectors Karma and Justice. Sector Vista overrun by grimm, targets evacuated or destroyed. All forces directed there have been reassigned. Over.~ Adam nodded. Beacon seemed to have been subjugated according to plan and his brothers were pulling out to refocus efforts in the city of Vale proper. The hovering Amity Arena had already been removed from the tactical situation. The attack was essentially already over, their objectives all complete. Vale was defeated, the humans routed, the mistreatment of faunus within the walls of the city fortress avenged.
~Wilt going dark in Sector Glass, looking for Cinder. You have full tactical authority until I reestablish contact. Over.~
~Understood. Over and out.~
Adam turned off his scroll and peered down the hole. The metal was blistered along the edges, as if the entire elevator tube had been turned into a crude rifle barrel. Which made the top floor the muzzle. He saw movement there, flashes of light and hunks of metal flying as if tied to strings, muted reports of firearms being discharged. Cinder could be up there fighting one of the local huntresses. She might need his help.
Adam leapt down into the ruined elevator shaft. He was more interested in finding out what his intimidating business partner had been after in the hidden depths of a huntsman academy than ensuring that she stayed alive long enough to continue treating him like a domesticated animal; besides, the further away from that grimm wyvern he was the more likely it was that he would live long enough to reestablish his command over the brotherhood. He stabbed his arm-length red blade into the elevator wall as he neared the bottom, arresting his momentum enough to let him roll out of the shaft's nadir without shattering his knees. At the end of his roll he came up with Wilt and Blush drawn, ready for combat.
The vaulted hallway was empty and dark, lit by the occasional wall sconce. He pressed forward and came to a concourse, but kept moving forward since it just seemed to be the right way to go. The way forward generally is after a brisk sprint down the hallway, he came to an eerie sight: a dead woman in a metal pod labelled 001 with broken glass scattered around it, with tubes leading to a broken pod labelled 002 on the other side of a computer terminal. One of Cinder's arrows stuck in the corpse's chest. Adam grinned. Humans killing humans, a tale as old as time. Adam was alone in the chamber and he hoped that he could discern some motive or deeper meaning to Cinder's plans. Certainly she had not strong-armed him into accepting employment out of a sense of altruism or love of the faunus; as lovely as that thought may be, it was contradicted by her simultaneous employment of the bigot Torchwick. He investigated the empty pod, and determined that the glass had been destroyed from a pressurized force from within. So Cinder had killed the girl in the first pod, and whoever had been in the second pod had forced their way out. Maybe Cinder had been in the second pod? It seemed plausible, but the lack of her semblance's signature cast doubt on the theory: the glass had been broken from the inside, not melted away. The angle on the arrow in the first tube was pretty straight, too, so Cinder would have had to have gotten out of the second tube and strolled into position to get the shot. So a third person had probably been involved here.
Past the dead tube-girl was a larger foyer which seemed to have been the site of a large dust battle; scorch marks covered the walls and ceiling, rubble cluttered the stone floor, and in the middle of the room lay a man with gray hair wearing the remnants of a green outfit. It looked like he had been stabbed through the torso, although the wound had been cauterized. Cinder's handiwork, since Adam recognized that she would have been one of the few people capable of defeating the headmaster of the academy. Perhaps the headmaster had been the one in the second pod? Adam examined the man's weapon, a clockwork cane.
As he looked over the cane, his fingers accidentally found purchase on a hidden button on the shaft, which depressed inwards slightly. The gears on the handle started to whirl and Adam dropped it, leaping back from the device. After a tense moment punctuated by the hollow echo of the weapon hitting the ground resonating through the chamber, Adam lowered his guard and stepped further away from the dead man. He went back to the tube-girl and tried to figure out what had happened deep under the school while his forces above had gleefully unleashed chaos.
Clearly tube-girl and whatever had been in the other pod were supposed to be related somehow. Perhaps the headmaster and tube-girl had been trying to do something with the device to stop the disaster above, or perhaps they had merely been distracted by this when Cinder made her play. Maybe Cinder had known the headmaster would be here, distracted, making it an opportune time to strike? The devices all seemed very technologically advanced, beyond Adam's ken, and came with no instruction manual. Or if there was a manual, it was not here. Probably in some impossibly immaculate laboratory in Atlas. He shrugged. If it was important at all it was not important to him. Whatever had been going on was more than likely moot now, since Cinder's arrow had cleanly pierced the girl's heart and the other tube was vacant, while the school's headmaster was cold on the floor of the adjacent foyer.
After ten minutes of further searching, Adam reached a conclusion: nothing in the room was worth anything to him, his cause, or his understanding of his human ally. He had searched the room for more meaningful clues, for secret exits, for signs. A big book labelled "Cinder's Plans". Nothing. He checked his scroll for the time. His troops above would likely be wondering whether he was coming back. He scowled and made his way back towards the elevator shaft, but stopped when he came again to the concourse. He saw a light at the end of one hallway. That had not been there before, had it? He chided himself for not paying more attention to the side hallways on his first pass by. He made his way down the passage, wary of a trap. Instead, he came to a dead-end inhabited by a lonesome vending machine. Alone, unguarded, completely unnecessary and hidden in the bowels of an exclusive huntsman academy.
Adam was a man of decisive action, quick thinking and confident passion. Despite that, Adam stood there with his mouth agape at the sheer impossibility of it all. Who had chosen to install the feature? Who kept it stocked? What was the point of having a refrigerated beverage dispenser in the side corridor of the school's super-secret dungeon which had been revealed only after the damage caused by Cinder's infernal wrath? Who could possibly have thought that it was a profitable place for a drink dispenser? It screamed of absolute lunacy. Lunacy!
On the other hand, Adam was thirsty as fuck. All his troops constantly remarked about it when they thought he was out of earshot-but his ears were keener than many of his fellow faunus-and the present did little to contradict their claims. A long day had been spent preparing for the attack, and he had been running himself dry trying to topple humanity's shining edifices glorifying their own vanity. Adam lived so fast he was always running the risk of becoming dehydrated. Who could fault him for getting a quick drink? The idea that someone had trapped a dead-end hallway in one of the most secure places on the planet with a fake vending machine was even more ridiculous than the idea of someone spending time keeping it stocked. He removed a lien from his wallet and examined his refreshment options.
There were four columns of choices labelled 1-4 by five rows labelled A-F, each promoting in-stock beverages with glowing neon buttons. He could not see inside the machine itself, only the button's descriptions of each drink's stylized logo.
The top level, A-1 to A-4, were SDCola brand drinks, with two classics, a diet, and a SDCola Zero. He grimaced. That stuff was made in Atlas, by slave faunus child labour from an energy propellant by-product. He could not stomach the thought of having to drink it again, as it had been forced upon his crew when he was SDC property. His hatred for the company was powerful enough to fight off the lingering pangs of withdrawal from the addictive sugar-dust infused temptress. The Zero variety held a special place of contempt in his heart: he still remembered the day they began pushing the substance on their faunus mining crews as a cheap means of product testing. So many of his friends had lost their sense of taste that week-some of them permanently. Tragedies like those were covered up and not reported by the human media, of course. The humans preferred light-hearted news about celebrity gossip and how great their civilization was, all on the presumption that ignoring a problem will make it better. That sort of attitude might almost be functional against the creatures of grimm, but was so ingrained into the human mindset as to trap them in their own social decay. Human society was paralyzed in its own blindness to its flaws, and SDCola Zero epitomized this fact in Adam's mind.
Adam realized he had been getting sidetracked, and recomposed his thoughts to attend to his recently recognized thirst.
The second row advertised Portsi Brand soda, which was a fair approximation of what a beverage should be but always smelled vaguely of cabbages. Under that row was two sets of Dr. Piper, followed by two sets of People Like Grapes. The former was a insipid root-flavour, while the latter had been proven to contain no grapes or grape-based products long ago. PLG was made by a company called "DeliciOz", though, which had made numerous contributions to education programs and other social improvements for citizens in Menagerie. Even if Adam could never see himself living in the faunus continent, he appreciated anything improving faunus lives. Upon closer inspection of the PLG display, however, Adam noticed that some incompetent had mislabelled the button labels as C-1, C-2, C-4, and C-3 instead of putting them in proper alphanumerical order. Not that it mattered, since the reversed plates stood in front of identical PLG product but the mistake was clearly fixable by anyone with the minimum level of attention to detail.
Under that was two sets of Ol' King Cold and TorchQuick Energy Drinks. The former was unflavoured carbonate, the latter always left Adam feeling empty and wanting something longer lasting. Under that were three sets of Faunta Brand drinks. During the Great War, the Portsi company in Menagerie had been cut off from their supply network and instead of shutting down turned to the use of alternative ingredients-such that they offered Faunta carbonated milk that was sourced from local willing faunus. Faunta Cow, Faunta Goat, and Faunta Bat carbonated milk were all available. That was a straight NOPE. The hallway was just full of dust(the regular kind), so Adam figured that those ones were long-expired. He wasn't in the mood for batman cheese in a can. The fourth item on that line was SDC Lime. Given the choice between the two, he'd gladly become a cheese expert before putting a beverage into his mouth made by tundra people to taste like a fruit they had never seen. Under that was two options of Dead Ginger Ale, a Cranberry Dead Ginger Ale, and a milk branded as "Udder Satisfaction". The trio of death-flag-waving ales made his hair stand on end. Not today, death. Not today. Udder Satisfaction was probably as cheesy as its name.
Adam shook his head. Well, he decided that with all that the best choice was the mystery juice by the faunus-tolerant DeliciOz company. He didn't even care that it did not have any grapes in it; it had the distinction of not being made by enemies of the faunus, being cheese, being awful, or making him consider his own mortality.
He inserted his lien and pressed the button labelled C-4. The machine made a short buzzing sound, but nothing rolled down into the dispenser; the machine's display registered that C4 had been pressed, even though the button should have been C3, and still flashed the number of lien he had inserted. Adam punched the C-3 labelled button. The machine glowed brightly and whirred, gears shifting and clanking inside. Something fell into the dispenser. Adam reached down to retrieve his prize, only to find to his displeasure that instead of his long-anticipated carbonated drink was a small bronze ring, like a miniature crown with three pointed tines arranged clustered together at one side. Seething, he was about to tear the vending machine apart in righteous fury, yet his scroll began to beep. He had been down in the depths of Beacon for an hour, and the alarm had been set to notify him about the scheduled evacuation of his forces from Vale back into the forest of Forever Fall.
Adam stabbed the vending machine for good measure, causing it to make a cacophony of whirring sounds as sparks shot out from the wound.
Take that, stupid vending machine!
Adam climbed up the elevator shaft, using his aura-shielded fists to beat handholds into the metal until he was close enough to the top to ninja-parkour the rest of the way. He turned his scroll back on. While it reconnected, he surveyed the area. The tower above him was now encased in the enormous grimm wyvern that had broken out from a nearby mountain (a scene that had been awesome to watch, Adam savoured every moment of terrified screaming from the humans as they saw the monster descend upon their city). To Adam's consternation, the creature seemed to be dead. It certainly was not moving. He cursed Cinder for sharing so little of the plan with him after forcing him to join forces with her for the raid. At least the massive grimm being taken off the field would make his own escape from the school an easier endeavour.
His scroll reconnected, and he received a text as it did so: "Wilt, this is Green Eye. All sectors reporting grimm-only activity. Forces falling back. Cinder seen being carried from sector glass by her agents after the massive grimm turned to stone". Adam gazed up at the petrified creature. Yeah, it did seem to be a statue now. What an odd thing to happen. He continued reading, "casualties within acceptable parameters, being treated en route to rendezvous camp."
Adam wondered if Blake had made it out alive. He wondered how the High Leader and the rest of the faunus would react to news of his victory, to how once more he had demonstrated himself to be the saviour the faunus needed to bring them out from bondage without compromising with their eternal foes. He wondered if this day would herald a new age, one of faunus and the grimm acting in tandem to finally retake the planet from the human usurpers. Would the grimm intervene to impede his vision of enslaving the feeble humans, would Cinder and her unknown faction call for humanity to be eradicated? Despite Cinder's potency, Adam felt no fear about a showdown between their forces over such an outcome. Adam had not known fear since the day he had first donned his signature Grimm Mask, so many years ago when he led his first raid on an SDC dust warehouse with some other disenfranchised faunus employees. Nor had he known defeat. His tactical brilliance and stellar swordsmanship had been why Cinder had used everything she had to convince him to join her side for the Battle of Beacon.
When she had come to him the second time to secure his assistance, she had overplayed her hand. Literally her hand-humans may not have noticed it, but his keen faunus senses had detected the grimm augmentation to her actual limb. Whatever her unknown faction was, it was somehow involved with experimentation or collaboration with the creatures of grimm.
Furthermore, while she had forced him to accept her demands under duress, she had also revealed that she had some unknown capacity: demonstrating abilities that would normally require a semblance or dust, yet bearing evidence of neither. Some of his soldiers had whispered that she had used real magic, although those were subject to ridicule from their brothers. Adam was not so sure. The world of Remnant was full of mysteries, and he was hesitant to deny the possibilities of Cinder's power's source. A vending machine in a dungeon's side corridor. A dragon turned to stone. Was it so far-fetched to suspect Cinder of being another such anomaly? Perhaps her abilities were the result of her fusion with the soulless creatures of grimm. He remembered a tale told to his crew in the dark mines of Mantle, by what they had all assumed was a senile mole faunus driven to a state of madness over the course of a life of brutal servitude and addiction to SDCola.
A tale of true magic, a gift to the faunus race by a goddess, meant to break them of their shackles and chains, meant to bring forth a new age of peace and prosperity.
The other faunus had laughed at the old long-snouted comrade, called him a fool. Adam may not have believed him at the time, but the story had given him hope that faunus could be better off than they were. It wasn't a moment of epiphany for him; he had gradually learned to throw off his own shackles. It had been part of that process, though. A memory from his past that shaped him into the man he was today-a flesh and bone gift to the faunus, destined to break not only their shackles but their corrupt human masters as well.
It was a shame that he had found nothing in the basement of Beacon to answer that question one way or the other. Adam ran on foot towards the cliffs overlooking the Emerald Forest, the bronze ring finding its way onto his left hand's middle finger, under his fine black glove. He would keep it as a trophy of his victory over humanity that day, a secret prize. A memento of his life's crowning achievement to date.
Far below in the depths of Beacon's ruins, a smoking vending machine marquee display read C4C3-BEST-CHOICE-ENJOY as the lights in the sconces began to dim, turning the monumental halls into a tomb for those who had lost their lives beneath the school.