"Life seemed to him to be a narrow cage, and her iron bars were many and dense, and there was only one way out."


Chapter 3: An Honest Living


It was a beautiful night.

The moon, a glowing silver claw above him, loomed large, surrounded by an ethereal glow. A black to navy gradient was the backdrop for the pinnacle of natural majesty; the skies so clear this far up the mountain, that he could see almost every crater.

Two hours had passed since the sun had set, but the warmth lingered in the air, and on the wooden floor of the porch, something the boy relished as he sat still, his back to one of the railings, listening to the rustling of the long brush of grass in the wind.

Adam looked up at the sky as he sat on the back porch by himself, hands placed behind him to act as support as he leaned back. His feet were planted on the soft dirt below the house, the small lip that acted as the step up to the veranda wasn't very high, maybe a foot or so, possibly less.

The Taurus home was a modest one, a small Mistrali-style bungalow on the outskirts of Kuo Kuana, and about a third of the way up the side of Mount Fang, a natural barrier a mere four hundred metres distant from the city proper. The front of the building was at a natural incline, preceded, as one came upon it, by what was an impressively maintained formal garden, which needless to say, surrounded as it was by wild weeds and invasive wildlife, required tireless attention, and as much love as a small child to keep in order.

They couldn't live nearer the city; despite Menagerie's advertisements to the contrary, there was very much a caste system, and their surroundings meant they had few neighbors, which was probably just as well. However, in order to keep their finances afloat, both of them worked. Adam finding work in the fish markets, his mother, when she wasn't serving as Mrs Belladonna's personal bodyguard; a position that he still didn't know what to make of, she had made lien as a hunter: tracking wild animals and Grimm through the steep jungle that covered the mountain, the former for their meat and pelts, and the latter by various request.

It wasn't difficult work for her, but Adam got the impression she didn't much care for it; she didn't like leaving him alone. Not since what had happened. She'd taken him with him on hunts in the early days, but as he got older, and money got tighter, things had changed. Even so, she was always back by sundown, and usually made a habit of beating him back from work no matter the circumstance.

But she wasn't here.

Which was why he'd been sitting out here, watching the moon. He knew he was wrong to worry— she was strong, stronger than him, than anyone he'd ever seen, but that didn't mean he'd be able to sleep knowing she was still out there— even as he was consumed with the need to close his eye- he fought to put it to the back of his mind.

This was no time for rest.

Without warning, something whistled through the air with a low whine, hitting the wooden training post in his peripheral with a heavy thunk.

He smiled, despite the booming headache that seemed to be ever expanding in his skull. So it was one of those days then.

He didn't need to turn to see what it was, because he already knew. As if in answer, a second thud rang out, this one closer now, and Adam opened his eyes to see a six pointed star, the size of his palm, sticking out of the floor in front of him mere inches from his feet. A shuriken, she had called it; and it's presence only served to confirm his growing theory. His smile grew wider.

It was his warning.

He didn't move at all. Not a muscle. No, he wasn't going to make any sudden moves here, his arduous training was too well ingrained to take strategy for granted. He'd walked that far on the proverbial road before and he didn't like the destination that would await him one bit. She expected to lure him into the long grass for an ambush; counting on him to proactively hunt her in response to her challenge. It was a tactic he had fallen for many times before, and he'd paid for it each and every time. She would only end up putting him down hard, and fast. Oh so fast.

Preparing to defend himself was the appropriate course of action in this kind of a situation. That was one of the first things he'd ever learned, outside of raw physical conditioning; learning how to respond to a mystery threat. 'Use your senses and conserve energy. Do not panic. Do not move in random directions, otherwise you might fall prey to your opponent by allowing them to herd you where they wished for you to be steered.'

Nor did it matter that he could not see her, lurking from her position in the undergrowth, or the trees. His training had seen him prepared for that too. For a time, he had been forced to live without one of his senses for several months, the bandage that served to cover one eye that had been damaged beyond repair, instead now rendering him completely blind, tied horizontally over both. Eating, training, sparring, all done without the sense he found most central. It had been arduous, without a doubt, and many injuries had emerged from the experience, but he had been far stronger for doing so. His hearing for one thing , even by faunus standards, was sharper now, having been forced to rely on it to avoid blows as well as determine the position and attacks of his sparring partner, and even for simpler things, like navigating in his path without stumbling over his own feet.

It was those skills he used now, closing his good eye, and casting his senses out into the dark. The shifting of the crickets in the undergrowth, the rustle of the leaves in the winds, the countless scents that carried on the air, searching for something out of place, familiar. He wasn't going to fumble around mindlessly, even if he could see in pitch darkness, trying to track the enemy he was pitted against. He knew almost nothing about tracking for one, and she excelled at it, not to mention that she had already seen him and was likely watching him like a hawk this very moment. His best option was to lure her to him. It took everything he had, but he remained still, straining his ears and his senses as far as he could. He could hear the grass moving with the wind, and knew without a doubt almost as if by instinct that she was moving closer.

And then he sensed a presence ghost behind his back. Nothing concrete, but he could feel it. And that was his signal to spring an attack. He hadn't realized yet that it was already too late. Something whistled by his left ear, and he had barely enough time to roll away from it before he felt and heard her breath across his skin. It was as much instinct as skill that had him catching her hand as it approached his neck, dragging her body over the railing and onto the ground before he could even think.

He didn't have time for shock, or the strength to hold her there, he knew that, so he banked on using the element of surprise, wrapping his arms around her neck and snaking his legs around her body to wrestle her down into a chokehold. It wasn't his strong suit, far from it, but it was his only real choice to capitalize on his advantage. If it was right it would only take a few seconds for the body to go totally… limp.

No sooner had he finished the thought, his assailant's hands went to his neck and she bucked forwards, throwing him over her back.

Adam rolled with the throw, turning his body in the direction to protect himself from a low kick meant to punt him painfully in the shins. He was skilled enough that he knew how to read her moves, and this one he was well familiar with, tired and soreness-wracked body or not.

Taking the brunt of the initial kick, Adam leaped clear of the follow-up and rolled backwards onto his feet to land in a crouch. Without wasting a second, he sprang upward, striking first with a high kick, still hoping to catch her off guard. She effortlessly caught his ankle in her one handed grasp as if she were catching a fastball, dangling him upside down in midair. She opened her mouth to say something to Adam when the boy smiled, throwing her for a curve.

Twisting his body at the ankle on the foot that she had caught, the younger faunus threw a swift spinning roundhouse, fast as a whip, and aimed directly for her head, "The first move is always a feint." He thought to himself. 'Always be prepared to land your blow with the second move.' He knew better than to put all his power into his first blow; he'd never win that way. It forced her to drop him in order to dodge it, ducking under his leg. The kick went wide, hitting nothing but air, but as it happened, he'd planned for that too. He had one move left to play.

Catching himself, he used his fall to gather momentum and pushed into a two-footed handspring kick, skimming over his opponent's head in the midst of rising to her feet. As his body passed over hers, he threw his arms out to her neck, grabbing, and holding against his own shoulder. The boy smiled, and using both his trajectory and gravity , he let them do the rest. What followed mere moments after Adam had touched his feet to the ground, was a centrifugal flip; he tightened his biceps and whipped his arms forwards, throwing his opponent over his shoulder though the air, across the length of the veranda. Unfortunately, the added spring to his momentum caused him to overshoot his landing, sending him stumbling to regain his footing on the incline for a moment before he could course correct his own landing.

His assailant twisted herself in mid air, and Adam heard the dull thwack of her feet collide horizontally with solid wood, before she rocketed towards him again, having used the narrow beam of the railing as a springboard. He had just enough time for the neurons to fire in his brain— telling him what had happened before she was on him, and he was embroiled in a whirlwind.

There was no set order or pattern to the moves but they too, were distinctly familiar. A sliding spin with a lightning-quick reverse elbow behind it, rapid open hand knife strikes, a flying knee that flowed into an axe kick. It was all he could do to stay ahead of her; each move seemed faster than the last, and he was sure, if he squinted, he could see the beginnings of a grin on her face, obsidian skin framing scarlet enamel, glinting under the silver moonlight. They went back and forth relentlessly, Adam gradually being forced onto the back foot before a reverse hook kick that seemed to leave after-images of his assailant's limb struck him square in the sternum.

She smirked as he staggered, and beckoned to him with her index finger. Adam grinned back, feeling the rush of determination, and adrenaline invigorating him like crimson lightning. He refused to allow himself to be winded, seizing a brief opening between strikes to throw a knee upward into her abdomen, taking her center; before rolling into a palm heel strike to the head— swiftly blocked and countered— and back into a rising whirling kick to the underside of her chin; arcing down into another blow onto the bridge of her nose. There were no wind ups, no wasted motion; each movement was designed to roll naturally into the next, exactly how he'd been taught.

'Keep the momentum flowing. No static movements.'

Her body jerked from one direction to the other, in rhythm to the opposing lines of his rapid attacks; the idea of which was to keep her too disoriented and distracted to retaliate, essentially by being "everywhere" at once. To an outside observer, it would appear, when performed by a skilled fighter, to look to be a single simultaneous tornado of flowing movement, of blinding speed, a blur too fast for the eye to follow.

To someone who was still a novice however, it still had its weaknesses.

Adam had a tendency to favour kicks over punches when he had to fight unarmed, primarily because for all his training alone, he didn't know how to train his arms to maintain the speed necessary to perform the technique without thinking. That was to say, he knew the theory behind the form, understood what he wanted, and what he was supposed to do, but the execution itself eluded him. His legs were a different story. He had once timed himself at seven strikes per second, and if anything, in the rush of that moment, at that moment, it felt even faster.

But it wasn't fast enough, and that made his technique exploitable.

His kick combination had only landed five times before a double palm heel blow to both ears shook him, ripping downward along the cheek and collapsing onto his throat. Pain glanced everywhere, and he could smell his own blood. And he could feel something trickling against the bridge of his nose.

'Damn it, not again!'

That singular moment of distraction was partly why he didn't see the punch coming either, and it felt like being hit with a ton of bricks. Adam had been struck viscously in the first four seconds of the attack. He managed to block three successfully, but that was what allowed the fourth attack to smash just above his right kidney. He gasped, he choked, no air made it into his lungs. But as he fell, whether it was by accident or providence, his leg kicked out, tripping her and sending her tumbling down with him. And to Adam's amazement, one of his hands went of their own accord to the spot she'd taught him to aim for; on the artery in her neck where pressure would bring unconsciousness. He had her there for only a moment, before she gently tapped at his forearm. Still shocked, Adam let go, falling over onto his back, and they stared at each other.

Finally, she laughed. It was the most beautiful sound in the world.

"You're getting more perceptive." She said , with a smile, rising to her knees. "Good. It was smart of you to wait instead of trying to jump in blind or force a fight on my terms. I especially liked that you remembered and applied what I taught you about joint manipulations, pressure points and using your enemy's strengths against them, even if you did waste a little time trading blows before you tried to adapt. But you still have a lot to learn." Adam's subtle preen vanished into a grimace.

Here it came.

"For starters, work on your approach. Don't telegraph a move coming in. There were plenty of times in that fight where you should have had me, but wasted your openings. That'll get you hurt one day, You had excellent intensity, your technique was good, but without developing the raw speed to use your kicks properly, better opponents won't fall for them. That, or try to get more comfortable with your hand speed to make up for it." She smiled as a single sapphire shone in surprised acknowledgement of the compliment. "But not bad, little one." She leaned forward, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and planted a kiss to the area between his horns, laughing quietly to herself as Adam grumbled and tried to turn away.

Evelyn Taurus, or Eve to her friends, was a lovely woman with long curving horns and longer crimson hair that was the exact same shade as his own. It was in a long ponytail down her back, with a single hair clip on her left side and a bang that nearly covered her right eye. She wore a black short sleeved shōzoku with a scarlet rose and leaf patterning, with a matching red undershirt. Her outer thighs were partially exposed, revealing patches of pale skin, and a pair of long gloves, stopping just beyond her forearms which were now crossed around her pouting son's chest. She watched him sulk for a few more moments, before slightly tightening her grip.

He fought well, as she'd come to expect. Driven to prove his worth, Adam absorbed her every teaching like a sponge; how to fight, how to breathe in a way that prevented fatigue, and even subtler, less common things; how to tell if you were being stalked, how to vanish from sight before an enemy could track you, how to read the intentions of others or even the various acrobatics she employed both for fighting, and making quick exits.

She hadn't taught him everything, and wasn't proud of all of those skills she'd learned, but she had felt he had needed to learn them in order to heal after what happened, and he had always been particularly attentive, especially after the incident.

But it was in learning the sword that Adam truly shone, and showed signs of being a master in the making. His combat intuition at times exceeded even her own, and she had had the pleasure of watching him take to it as no other had before, and perhaps even since. Even in this spar, Evelyn pushed her son hard, and he performed spectacularly in turn, with prodigious skill for his age, especially against an opponent with significantly more battle experience. That did not , however, mean that he did not have room to improve, and she would be remiss as a teacher to say otherwise.

On the other hand… she had to be careful with her words.

Adam had thrived in those areas, but he was never satisfied with small victories. The cocktail of insatiable lust for challenge in combat, pride and immolatory temper burned in his veins, as it once did hers in her youth. Any kind of self-perceived failure was unacceptable to him, and he had a tendency to obsess over things—honing every move, every exercise until they were perfect, which was an excellent work ethic.., but in his case, it came at the cost of everything else. Social interaction, eating, sleeping… all of it came second until he'd satisfied himself. She tried not to laugh as she recalled the time she'd once had to lock him in his bedroom to force him to sleep instead of train. He was more like her than she'd admit aloud , and while as his mother, she rarely condoned it, as his teacher, she rarely admonished him for it either, and she always had a smirk on her face whenever those traits came to the fore. She looked at the way his brow had furrowed, and decided to let him have his moment.

But Adam's thoughts were elsewhere.

She'd done it again. Hand to hand had always been one of his weak spots— and he knew exactly why, though he'd never admit it aloud. He would have done better, he knew, if he'd had even a training sword, but that was precisely why she hadn't allowed him to use one.

It was her sworn belief that just about everyone on Remnant grabbed hold of one gimmick, be it a weapon, chain, a gun, their fists, or anything else they could think of, and spent their lives dedicated to perfecting that one niche. To his mother, that was the pinnacle of weakness. Everything could be countered. Everything was a weapon. Devoting too much time to study a single facet of the combat arts left one vulnerable to anyone with the diligence to study ways to defeat them. There were techniques out there no sword can block, semblances no bullets could stop, and he needed to be prepared for them all, so help her gods.

She refused to allow him the complacency of being too loyal to a single idea, feeling he owed it to himself to learn everything. And once again, she had proven her point. And as ever, it was a sore one.

He had been studying for years now, and still felt as if he knew nothing. He was strong, his reflexes uncanny, and he went through all manner of training and drills with or without her supervision with a whole hearted and single minded passion that would shame even the most devoted of monks. He loved what he did, and made every effort to practice and improve. And yet, it still wasn't enough. He couldn't help but be frustrated by that. He had been fully prepared for the hard work, the difficulty of his exacting internal standards, for that was a large part of what it was that interested him and absorbed him the most.

Even when his mother had simply had him repeat the same movements until she felt that they were engraved into his nerves and muscles, despite it being boring work, he had applied himself diligently, as he always had. But it never seemed to matter how far he rose; he was still nothing to her.

He had to admire, grudgingly and with wounded pride, the kind of precision it took to hit someone hard enough to wind them, yet not do any actual damage. He hadn't thought to use his aura, and a blow like that could have ruptured his spleen, snapped each and every one of his ribs or done some serious internal damage, but all he'd likely get from it was a bruise. All of her movements in the disciplines she knew were designed to not only utilize the 'minimum effort for maximum outcome' style of combat, but also combined her raw speed, strength and agility to create a style that was both incredibly stylish, but deadly without doubt. It combined all the grace and skills of a dancer with the relentless crushing pressure of a storm.

And as always, he hadn't even heard her coming.

Something he had always noticed about her even in his earliest years, was how silent she was when she walked. It didn't matter whether it was over deep snow or dry and dead foliage, whenever she walked anywhere, it was as though she was never touching the ground at all— as silent as a moonbeam. In her defence, she did try sometimes to make noise when she walked into a room, or when she was approaching someone, but that was just it; it was always a conscious thing. Something she had to deliberately pay attention to. He'd tried to copy the way she moved more times than he cared to count, but it never worked; somehow she always heard him coming.

This kind of silent ambush had always been a common way for Evelyn to make her presence known to him - to test both their island home's defences for weak spots, or so she claimed, and his own awareness of his surroundings to ensure he wasn't getting rusty and neglecting his training when she wasn't looking.

When he'd questioned her about the seemingly random nature of her attempts to test his abilities, she'd told him in no uncertain terms that he wasn't going to have the option of picking and choosing all of his fights so why would he get to with his training?

She was right of course—Not that he ever had missed an opportunity to train. Or ever would— he truly did love training, no matter what price his body may pay. He lived for it; it gave him direction; it was the one thing that ever made him feel powerful, purposeful, like he was finally in control of something.

Sometimes she was a little strange though. It had started out as fun little games when he'd still been very young, like hide and seek, where the most he'd ever had to fear as a consequence would be a merciless tickling, or being smothered in maternal affection. This had changed once he began to grow, both in age, and in skill, and by fourteen, he'd upgraded to more painful forfeits. Nothing that would do him permanent damage of course, but painful enough to have him questioning his life choices and regret any shadow of complacency that he might still have. But such was the path to power, he supposed. Personally, Adam thought she just enjoyed watching him jump out of his skin.

He felt a slender, smooth finger poke him in the side of the head several times as if trying to get him to react somehow, but he didn't budge. "Mother," he greeted, rubbing the back of his head at another chastisement. "Are you alright?" he asked, in the vain hope that he might deflect a lecture.

"I'm fine," she replied, taking a seat next to him on the veranda, cross legged with that perfect posture and complete stillness that had always awed and intimidated him in his youth. She was wearing Wilt in a harness on her back, having not drawn it once during their spar, and she shrugged it off, unclasping the harness and propping the katana up against the railings.

"And you?" she arched an eyebrow elegantly, noticing him try to avoid clutching at his left side. "Do anything interesting this afternoon?"

Adam immediately thought of what had transpired a matter of hours earlier and blushed. Caught, he scowled and shook his head. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Of course not."

He winced. The sarcasm was thick enough that even if he'd lost both eyes, he could still have seen it. He barely resisted the urge to cringe into himself. Nobody could make Adam squirm quite like his mother. She let the silence stretch for a few moments before speaking again.

"I know about your fight with Yuma and that Amitola girl." She quickly confirmed what Adam dreaded. Despite realizing he was rumbled, the young teen desperately clung to ignorance, in the desperate belief that it might save him from what was to come. In his defense it wasn't as if they hadn't more than earned what they got. Yuma was a self-obsessed braggart, someone who liked to throw his weight around. He was a year older than Adam, with bat wings, and a cruel and calculating disposition. He'd been provoking the younger boy from pretty much the day he'd set foot on Menagerie, and the only reason he had ignored him thus far was because he hadn't seen him as anything more than the flying rodent he was.

Amitola on the other hand was a little more than a pack rat, a girl with no opinions or identity of her own, and so she made up for it by latching onto other people and being the world's biggest sycophant. She lived with the Belladonnas on account of her parents having died in the mines, and Adam would have felt genuine empathy for her; if she didn't make a nine to five occupation out of her victim complex. Her parents may have died in a Schnee mine, that was true, and he could hardly judge when he had lost his own father to one of the worst mines in all of Solitas.

But she herself had never had to endure that fate. She'd been able to pass for human, lived a sheltered luxurious life in a private Atlesian boarding school most of her life, had barely even remembered her parents with how little she saw them, and had only been brought kicking and screaming into the real world when her fees ran out, and the humans had promptly turned on her like the vultures they always were once her disguise inevitably failed her. Acting like their situations were in any way equivalent, comparing herself to, particularly he and his mother, neither of whom had been so fortunate, was an insult, and he had no qualms in telling her so, in the clearest, most concise way he could think of when she'd tried to elicit his sympathy.

She'd hated him ever since.

When she wasn't brown-nosing the Belladonnas, she'd taken her place under Yuma's wing as one of his stooges, and together, they'd been doing their level best to make hell for him at every turn. No matter where he went on the island, there they were, throwing snide remarks his way under their breath, showing up whenever he was training, to harass him and make a nuisance of themselves. They even harassed him at work, tipping over his catches, stealing equipment, and, while he couldn't prove anything yet, he suspected Yuma had been involved in sabotaging the netting on several of the boats some months ago, resulting in some several thousand strong shoals of fish escaping. All of this, to no one's surprise, he had been punished for, partly because his employer didn't much like him, but because it had been "Adam's friends" that had been responsible. Every dock of his already meager earnings led to him having to waste more and more time to help make ends meet, which meant even less time to pursue the things that mattered. But most annoyingly, neither of them had the balls to make something of it, which made him loathe them all the more. Between the two of them, they might be afraid to get their hands dirty, but what they both lacked in balls they made up for in snobbery and obnoxiousness that had grown harder and harder to tolerate as time drew on. The bottom line was that Yuma hated Adam almost on sight. At least, it seemed that way to him. He didn't know exactly what it was that made Yuma attempt to single him out, and he didn't care much. Until today that was.

Today had been the straw that had broken the bull's back. He had been on his way home, as he had been given the day off work; it was a particularly slow day on the waters, and as he did whenever he had free time, he thought to use it to train, rather than waste the day at home.

But while his mind was elsewhere, he had not noticed he was being followed from above, that was, until he caught the winged shadow above him.

With the sun positioned the way it had been, he could not track the trajectory of the object hurtling towards him, and suddenly pain exploded across his damaged eye. The rock collided with his face. He saw his blood splatter onto the sand, and the hand that had instinctively gone to hold his brow came back dark with more of the red fluid.

It was an oozing wound, and with the naturally absorbent material of the bandage it quickly began to seep through. Unfortunately, it forced him to remove the bandage, and as a result, he'd revealed his brand. By the time he'd been able to focus , wipe away enough of his own blood to see clearly, all he could hear was Yuma's laughter.

Combined with every other transgression Adam had ever let pass him by, It was all the prompting he'd ever needed, and the pain and rage drove forward, faster than he had ever moved. He supposed he could say he saw red. In more ways than one.

The winged rat never stood a chance.

For weeks prior, Adam had begun and ended his daily training regimen with the same ritual act: one thousand leaps high into the air, followed by one thousand slices with a sword. The idea, as he conceived it, had been that, one day, he would be able to combine the two in combat: diving down onto an opponent and slashing at lightning speed. It was a technique he had seen his mother perform on numerous occasions, the movement almost mimicking a swooping hawk in a blur of after images, and, regretfully yet another he had yet to master himself.

Though that particular point was somewhat moot.

Even if he had attempted it, Yuma had caught him at an opportune time; he didn't have a sword or any other weapon to defend himself or with which to perform the technique in full. Even if he had, he could not be sure that the boy wouldn't use his one iota of sense to simply fly out of reach, in that delicate point where Adam couldn't control his momentum, But in the scarlet haze of his rage, in the depths of hatred, Adam had barely considered any of that. All he knew in that instant, was that revenge had taken him as a pupil, and that Yuma would suffer.

If the bat faunus hadn't known that when he realized he had severely underestimated just how high Adam could jump, he definitely had when the bull faunus had subsequently tackled him out of midair, latching on to him with both arms, before spinning rapidly in his descent and slamming his enemy head first into the ground. The little wretch had just enough time to scream before Adam had broken both of his precious wings as he straddled him, and proceeded to beat him bloody in the middle of the street.

"Bastard," the other boy had spat, croaking seconds before Adam had broken his nose.

Everything was a blur after that.

The last he saw of him, he was missing several teeth, his wings were splinted and bandaged and it would be at least three months before they healed enough for him to fly again. Adam vaguely remembered he'd broken Amitola's collarbone at some point during his fight with the wingless wonder too — she'd tried to sneak up on him with another rock— and frankly, he couldn't bring himself to feel remorse for that. Despite her age, she'd been as complicit as the flying rat, and it was only right she shared at least some of his reward.

They were both damned lucky he'd stopped there. Granted, it wasn't really entirely his choice;by then the "adult" faunus around them finally decided to step in and stop him from giving them their just desserts, forming a wall between him and the two stooges.

It was almost funny really. In a way, Adam really hadn't been lying earlier when he'd told his mother he didn't know what she was talking about. It hadn't been much of a fight on either count.

He'd left them there in the dirt to lick their wounds and drag themselves off to whatever hole in the ground they called home, but spineless vermin they both were, they'd apparently gone running off to Ghira, claiming he was a bully. Naturally his side of the story wasn't even considered, and after a session of kangaroo court, he was painted the villain.

He sat there that afternoon, listening with his back as stiff as a rod as the five of them; Ghira, Yuma's parents, Amitola and the wingless wonder himself sat across from him and complained about Adam's "relentless bullying." He folded his arms over his chest and stared venom at the boy, who was smirking at him coyly, knowing he had won, despite the fact that his nose had bled all over his shirt, his jaw was broken, one of his eyes was puffed up and purple, and his wings were mummified. All of those "people" who'd watched Yuma antagonise him for almost two years prior, who had watched him belittle Adam at every turn, who had watched rocks thrown at him, had watched him bleed as he laughed… not one of them said a word.

An overreaction to a harmless joke. That's what Ghira had called it. A. Harmless. Fucking. Joke. Harmless, he said. Adam had entertained in that moment, the idea that he might find a pile of bricks and use the man's overgrown head for target practice; they'd see how harmless he found it then. He thought back to how Yuma's little pet had tried to intervene. The idea that his well-being meant so little that someone like Amitola could try to kill him for no other reason than to impress her leash-holder, and it be called "harmless..."

And then, to add insult to injury, they wanted him to apologize.

He'd told Ghira which part of his pale behind he could kiss, which started another series of shouting matches, and while they were all in the middle of fellating their self righteousness, he'd made his exit and gone home. He'd passed Sienna, who had been making a rather obvious attempt to pretend she hadn't been listening at the door, and Blake wordlessly on the way out, the latter ducked her head down as he went, but the former gave him something of a curious glance that bordered on sympathetic,, which he'd promptly ignored.

No one had listened to him. No one was in his corner. Those two were allowed impunity to do with him as they pleased but the second he defended himself, they were the helpless victims, As per fucking usual. There was no point in talking about it. He'd solved his problems on his own, and he didn't need anyone else telling how he should have been.

The memory threatened to overwhelm him, before he mastered his anger, taking on a more emotionless tone.

"What fight?" He repeated impassively.

Evelyn sighed. She cast a disappointed eye to him, making Adam wince again. She had a way of making him feel three feet tall with that look, and it wasn't a feeling he relished. He had no intention of telling her of the deep seated animosity that lay between him and Yuma. That would not do at all. It would only lower himself in her eyes, and he wanted so much for her to be proud...

"Please. Let's not play this game," his mother replied more firmly. "I wasn't born yesterday, you know." She stopped, sighed, and put a comforting hand on his shoulder before going stock still. Sniffing the air and reaching down, she cupped his face with her other hand and softly ran a hand over the scarred side of his face hidden behind his bandage.

She was looking with focus at the dark brown and flecks of crimson sections of his bandage, a hand gently brushing it. "Your eye..."

He swore mentally. He'd been hoping she wouldn't have noticed, but then again, she was a faunus. He'd cleaned it at least four times, since he left Court Kangaroo at the Belladonna mansion, and had even tried dousing it in various things to mask the scent, but he did live on an island with people that, as a vast majority, had vastly superior senses. His mother ranked among them. There was really no way she wouldn't be able to smell his blood. The young faunus put a hand to his head, still sore and throbbing, and she pulled away to see the bleeding had started up again. Every stretch of his head still hurt, but pride quickly took over. "I'll be fine," he said, waving it off.

Ignoring him completely, she fished around her person as if looking for something before producing a clean cloth, pressing it into his hand. She told him to wipe away the blood as best he could, before standing, opening the sliding wood and paper wall that marked the back of their home, storming inside and returning with several low-grade ice Dust crystals.

Adam tried to push away- he refused to use Dust for any reason, was violently opposed to the very concept, but a single glare from his mother, and he fell right back into line, albeit reluctantly.

Evelyn's mouth thinned as she continued mapping his face for any other hidden wounds, and her eyes changed, pupils tinged with scarlet. "You should have told me..."

"How did you know about what happened?" He asked in a small low voice, taking the crystals from her hand and wrapping it into the cloth before pressing them against his eye.

"Sienna told me."

"Of course she did." Adam muttered, the resentment barely disguised. That was undoubtedly why she'd been so late tonight. Couldn't Sienna just keep her ears out of his business just the once? His problems were his problems, and he wasn't about to waste his mother's time with them, when she had enough problems of her own.

"Adam…"

Evelyn's eyes had returned to sapphire , but inwardly, she was still seething at the idea that someone had hurt her son.

"They started it." He gave her a self-deprecating shrug, allowing a moment of letting her see a fleeting glimpse of the vulnerability he had inside, under his exterior. "And I don't care what Blake's dad says, I'm not apologizing to a flying rat and a future handbag."

"Adam!"

"Sorry; I meant flight-less rat. Or would that just be a regular rat?"

"Adam."

Shewas using the "Voice" now, and he rarely heard her speak with such severity. Only when he was really in trouble, or when she needed him to listen above all else. It was the kind of voice that made Adam stop cold in his tracks. She never liked him using slurs for fellow faunus, even if, in Adam's opinion, most of them earned it. He raised his hands placatingly, remembering himself.

Evelyn sighed, fussing over him again. "Not all faunus are like them, you know."

She wasn't referring to Yuma and Amitola.

Adam didn't answer at first, keeping his gaze on the moon. However, it did not escape his mother's notice that he still traced the heel of one palm against the scarred side of his face. "Funny way of showing it." he muttered, but almost as soon as he said it, he wished he hadn't. It sounded so childish, petulant, made all the worse by the fact that his juvenile voice cracked, something that he knew would only make him seem that much more immature than he wanted.

Evelyn felt a wave of guilt. Then more than ever, she felt it harder and harder to feel regret for the way things had ended that day. It was true that what had followed from her mistake had brought them both years of untold suffering, but even now she couldn't imagine what was going through Adam's head now. Even if she knew, it wouldn't change her greatest regret; failing him, in more ways than one.

"Your father told me once," she started, carefully, keeping her voice even, "that if all you ever look for in the world is evil, it'll be all you ever see."

A part of Adam was ready to respond by pointing out exactly what that mentality had wrought him, but respect for his mother kept his mouth clamped shut. The anger still brimmed in his eye for the briefest of moments as she paused for a moment, considering, before popping him a genuine smile for his sake, albeit a slight one.

"I know living here has been hard for you. I know you don't get along with most of the people here. And I know I can't.., I won't force you into anything. But I worry. You're always disappearing off on your own and… I don't want… I don't want you to be alone," She stumbled over her words, and Adam relented, making the effort to inch closer and allowing her to hug him, resting her chin against his shoulder. "Our family, " She continued " has always found strength in solitary trials, individuals pushing ourselves to the limits of their capabilities. But it's no way to live. It's no way to be happy, or whole, or…Sorry." Evelyn muttered, cutting herself off. "I'm getting off topic. Getting older does that to you, I guess."

Adam's jaw tensed and jutted forward slightly.

"You're not old. And I'm not alone." He said quietly and confidently. " I have you."

Evelyn sighed. "That's not what I mean, sweetheart. But it's very kind of you to say."

"But you're not!" Adam defended fiercely, and Evelyn could see the flare of anger in his voice, snuffed out as quickly as it had been set alight. "I…" He stopped, pausing.

"When I'm older," he started again with rehearsed confidence. "I want to be like you."

She cocked her head sideways. "What do you mean?"

It took a moment before her boy raised his head, and his courage almost ebbed into his typical reservedness. She didn't allow it. "Never be afraid of sharing your voice, little one. Especially when what you have to say is worth speaking."

"I want to be strong." The definitive timbre behind his words was unexpected, leaving Evelyn to merely stare. "Like you. So that means I have to train. And I can't stop until I'm strong enough to protect you. Like you did for me when...when… you know...you were there." Adam mumbled under his breath, his confidence finally shot.

She leaned forward, lowering her height to Adam's. It was now she idly noticed how much taller he was getting; She didn't have to go far; he was tall for his age, and if he kept growing the way he was, he'd soon be taller than her. Adam watched her with curiosity, his jaw clenched, his fist curled in his lap as if he was still expecting judgement.

And so she lifted one of her hands, cording her hands through his crimson hair to sweep back the bangs that brushed his eyelashes. A few unruly strands got caught on his horns, curling down over his forehead, and she paid them no mind. Strong hands were holding his shoulders, and he leaned into the embrace.

"I'd like to ask you something of my own, if that's alright. Would you do that for me?"

"Anything." A single azure eye shone in the dark, filled with passion, and conviction far beyond his years as he nodded, far too resolutely, she thought, for someone of the age of a mere fifteen years. "Name it."

that

Evelyn regarded her son.

She had learned over time that Adam never said things lightly and that now, if he said "anything" he was quite prepared to take on any task she asked, no matter how superfluous or impossible.

For the young boy, things were simple as could be. She was the only person in all of Remnant who had ever lifted a hand to protect him from anything. She was the sum of his entire world. He trusted her implicitly. She could have asked him for the beating heart in his chest, and he'd have ripped it from his ribs where he sat and given it, gladly. Evelyn knew that for certain. Adam offered his love, loyalty, and his trust miserly, but when he gave them, he did so without reservation, to a frankly unhealthy degree. People looked at him, and thought him cold, and hostile, which simply wasn't true. He absolutely felt things, so deeply, so powerfully, that he more often than not had trouble controlling them. It only made Evelyn's guilt run that much deeper, the chasm scarring her heart growing wider as she contemplated his words.

When she finally spoke, he listened with rapt attention. "I want you to be strong… like you."

Adam cocked his head, confusion sinking over his features. "I don't understand." Her words stuck themselves inside of him, pushing his heart up into his throat as he tried to formulate a reaction. He realized that his mouth was now hanging slightly open, but his brain was unable to command it to close. He tried to turn her sentiment over in his head, trying to decipher her meaning and unable to allow himself to believe what he thought she meant.

"You will, sweetheart. You will."

She exhaled, sending a trail of mist into the night.

"Life is cruel, especially to people like us. It doesn't care where you come from, or what gods you pray to. So we have to face it head on. Willpower and inner strength is what makes your destiny your own. Learn to be strong, here" she gently ran her fingertips across his knuckles, before pressing her palm over his heart. "And here. Promise me you'll remember that."

While Adam was contemplating what she said, Evelyn leaned back to have a better look at her son, and go over the latest development of the day. If she hadn't been so angry, she could have laughed. Ghira had been out of line, that much was clear. A "violent troublemaker?" To be one, one would have to interact with people, and Evelyn could count the number of conversations Adam had had with people that weren't her on a single hand, and have fingers to spare. He actively sought out his own company wherever he could,went out of his way to keep to himself, and the idea that he would just attack "innocent children" unprovoked was laughable. She snorted. She knew it wasn't true, and from the way Sienna had looked from relaying the story, she hadn't bought it either. Evelyn wasn't exactly sure why that girl had made it her mission to take such a keen interest in her son—she'd asked and hadn't managed to get a single straight answer that didn't involve stammering—but she was nonetheless grateful. She'd be good for him— once she managed to get him out of his own head, that was.

In any case, if Adam wasn't going to apologize, Evelyn sure as hell wasn't going to make him, He was her son, and Belladonna could just bite the bullet or she'd make him bite something else that was deadly and metal.

"You're one of the brightest lights I've ever known. You shouldn't let people like those halfwits take it away from you by fighting them."

"I didn't start that fight."

"I know you didn't. But don't you think the reason they might be picking on you is because you're always by yourself? They might think of you as an easy target. "

Adam looked insulted. "I don't need their protection!" He hissed angrily. And if that's what they think, I'll just have to teach them again until they leave me alone!"

Evelyn's expression saddened and she crossed her arms. " And that is exactly why I worry about how much time you spend on your own. You should find a better outlet."

Adam kept looking away. "I have enough outlets," he groused slightly, curling into himself like a porcupine.

"I meant besides training." she replied archly. "I am expecting some grandchildren one day, you know."

"Mother!" Adam gasped, mortified.

Evelyn smiled coyly. "I'm just saying…"

She giggled then, the sombre tone of the moment broken , as she switched into full blown laughter at the incredulously embarrassed look on his face. Her amusement must have been contagious, because her son joined her in short order, and soon the only thing that could be heard was the two's chuckling. The younger was the first to stop.

"I...don't think I can." He said finally, slowly meeting his mother's eyes. "I don't like them, and none of them like me. I don't trust them. And I don't know... if I can pretend... Maybe that's just the way it is."

It wouldn't have surprised the boy if that was the truth. Because to be perfectly honest, Adam had almost always hated people.

Actually, he supposed that wasn't quite right. He didn't hate people, at least, not everyone. Rather, he hated having to feel like he needed to compromise and throw down his expectations, because again, if he was honest with himself: few people ever measured up. And between Yuma, Ghira, and the bastards who'd put out his eye, he could confidently say that most people in this cesspit of a world didn't even care to try. He hated most of all, that by having standards at all, the sheer outrageous act of expecting bare minimums, that somehow made him the asshole.

So what was even the point?

It was a question that Adam had asked himself with alarming regularity, and he came up with fewer and fewer answers each time he did.

Almost as if in answer to his internal turmoil, his mother smiled in that gentle yet teasing way, poking him in the arm to get his attention. The storm in his head became a still sea.

"You like Sienna, don't you? She's nice." She said with a glint of mischief, putting a hand to his shoulder.

Adam put his head in his hands and groaned. "We just train together sometimes! It's nothing like that!"

It really wasn't. He'd known the older girl since he was twelve, when he and his mother first stepped off the boat to Menagerie, that was true , but it was a strictly mutually beneficial arrangement.

He liked training, she liked training, and helping find each other's weaknesses meant that they both got stronger. They weren't friends, even if she smiled at him, or she was the next tolerable person on the entire island that wasn't his mother.

His criteria for that, as established, was rather low, in all honesty.

"Hmm. But you do like her. She comes up here often enough, and you don't glare at her like you do everyone else. She obviously likes you. Who else climbs halfway up a mountain to see one boy? Actually, now that I think about it..." She tapped her chin in thought, before her cheshire grin widened. "She's pretty much the only person who comes up here looking for you."

"Please stop."

"You're fifteen, Adam. Nearly sixteen. You'll be a man soon," she replied. "As much as you make me so, so proud with how dedicated you are to our craft, you can't just train every second of every day. Even if you don't care for anything other than being a big strong warrior, you have to find a way to use your talents and occupy your time. Besides...she's only a year or so older than you..."

Silently the young boy sent up a desperate plea to the gods for strength; he knew there was no stopping her once she got those kinds of ideas in her head. Truly, no one could make him squirm like this but a lecture from his mother on a roll.

"I swear today couldn't get worse for me." He mumbled under his breath, but his mother's sharp hearing caught every word, and her lips split into an amused smile.

"You're probably right. But I wouldn't be so sure." she said, still smiling gently.

At that, Adam snorted in grim amusement as he fiddled with his collar. "Really? How do you figure that?"

Evelyn's response was to laugh as she gave her son a light pat, running her fingers through his hair again. He turned towards her limb and felt his eyes widened as he saw it was only a skeletal hand reaching up to his head. Adam swallowed nervously as he slowly looked up.

Her skin was arctic-white, rotting and dropping off the bone, glistening in the moonlight. Her long crimson hair had turned lank, waxy and straggly. She smiled, showing teeth were like a line of broken tombstones. His heart tightened, his body tensed, and his breath quickened.

This wasn't right.

This wasn't right...

Where was he...?

He tried to back away, afraid, uncertain, and a stomach full of boulders for all that he could move. He reached to push her away, only for his fingers to sink into pulpy, decayed flesh. It split on contact to reveal rotted sinew and tissue softer than mud. The decaying flesh slipped and hung ungainly from the still-solid skeleton underneath until he could see down to the very bone. Adam looked on in horror, beyond even the ability to scream, to see her body was now almost completely skeletal, her empty sunken eye sockets staring into his very being.

"You could look like me."


"GAAAH!" A voice rang out as his eye suddenly shot open, breathing heavily.

Again. That godsdamned dream again.

The same terrible dream he'd been having for weeks on end. A cold sweat ran down his face and he looked around his dark room, running a hand through his hair.

Something was stuck to the side of his face, and Adam moved to slowly pry it off. A sheet of paper, now ruined, the ink from his writings running wet with his drool, and he could barely read his notes through the now translucent page, noting too, that one side of his face was covered in tear tracks.

"Damn it all..."

At least he'd woken up before it had gotten to the good parts. He wasn't always so lucky. Sometimes, the thing that resembled her would attack him, wrapping skeletal fingers around his throat and he'd wake fighting for his breath. Or it would claw open his ribcage with wicked alabaster talons in an attempt to disembowel, or hold him down and try to pluck out his eye, and then he'd wake, fighting screams of agony and searching for wounds that weren't there. But the worst ones would always be when she spoke, when there was no pain at all. The endless darkness as far as the eye could see. The way her warm voice gave way to hollow laughter. The way her emaciated body quickly jerked about with the snap of dry twigs and brush, rotting eyeballs locked right on him. "Your fault…your fault!" she would sing wildly, full of manic cheer while he could do nothing but curl into himself and try to block out the sound of her broken bones dragging and shifting over each other as she danced around him, taunting him.

He blinked away the last vestiges of his nightmares, squeezing his fingertips to remind himself that he was firmly in reality's grasp, for all the good it did. He'd been having the dream not only at night, but during the daylight hours when he ended up dozing off in the rare free moments he had as well. It seemed his terrible memories weren't strictly nocturnal.

But he supposed it was no less than he deserved.

The festival had come and gone. Time passed as it did, and life went on, hours running like river water into days, into weeks, until nearly a month since the day Adam had first set foot in Kuchinashi had blown past him in a blur with startling swiftness. It was a strange few days , filled with a myriad of moments that varied from the usual, to the shocking, to the sweet, to the downright dull.

In that time, he'd made what he thought to be an significant effort to become far more intimate in his knowledge of the city, spending what free daylight time he had wandering its limits and districts, getting to know every avenue and back alley alike. Loathe as he was to admit it, he was beginning to feel a degree of fondness for the place, against all odds. He wondered if he was mad.

This particular afternoon had found Adam passed out on the floor in his room above the bar, surrounded by papers, photographs and hurriedly scrawled handwritten notes and maps. As was usual, he'd been up most of the night around the city, attempting to eavesdrop on gang members and gather what information he could and hoping for a glimpse of his elusive bounty, and he'd grown accustomed to operating on very little sleep. But with the lack of sleep came immense fatigue and he had quickly descended into a daily pattern of on again off again hypnagogia; he was never fully asleep but rarely quite awake either. In fact, the only time he could successfully get a decent rest was after he would deliberately run himself into exhaustion, so he could do nothing else but sleep and wake with naught in between, or when that didn't work, he'd started to take to drink.

It was there, to his surprise, that Adam found peace. Or at least something so close so as to make the difference immaterial. When he drank before bed, his sleep would be so deep that he didn't have to worry about dreaming, he only had to worry about the next morning, and that wasn't a bother.

And when it was, coffee usually helped.

If he had not been already, Adam was evermore grateful to live above a bar. He wasn't sure if Charlotte had noticed his newfound habits, but he wouldn't have her call him a thief; he'd always left a fair amount of lien for any bottle that disappeared from the shelves, when he didn't go somewhere to buy his own, and more besides.

Accidentally kicking over an empty bottle, Adam twisted around from his spot on the floor so that he was now laying on his side. He stared blankly at the room ahead of him, his mind finding it difficult to focus on much other than the small amount of furniture. The worst thing about it all though, was that despite everything, he still had too much empty time on his hands.

He needed something to fill it with, because most of the time, all he had were thoughts. Thoughts and memories. Few of them pleasant.

He couldn't let himself brood, certainly didn't want to, but what else could he do when there was nothing else to occupy his brain? He was so desperate for distraction, and he knew it.

He usually didn't crawl into bed till somewhere around three in the morning, if the clock was accurate. He slept for maybe four hours or less before getting up again at the crack of dawn to try and 'd gotten used to the persistent weak headaches and vague sense of vertigo he'd been carrying for the past few days, but tolerance wasn't freedom, and it was more than a little concerning that he felt wrong at all, but he'd accepted it all the same.

And this had been his routine, for at least the first few days.

It hadn't taken him much longer than that to realise that he wasn't much of an investigator as he liked to think.

The file had been of some inordinate help, and he could not honestly say that he wouldn't be floundering completely aimlessly in his objective without it; not least because it contained three known addresses of which he was known to frequent in the city along with a whole host of what he had thought at the time was invaluable information.

What was more, it was from that information, that Adam had formed his latest theory, though, it was still just that; a theory. While it could have been explained away by the idea that the killings were purposeful, which they were; the level of violence done to each corpse was likely intended to serve as a warning of some kind, and though Adam couldn't guess at who it was for, the idea made him think. Considering how the victims had been so thoroughly brutalized, moving the bodies, placing them where they'd be found, it made a lot of sense that any decent killer wouldn't be able to stray too far from a safehouse, unless they wanted to be seen dragging a corpse, or more worryingly, a screaming victim around in public. And so, Adam looked at the map of the city, had taken a marker and made a crude circle around a cluster of X's. Sure enough, all of the killings that Myst was allegedly responsible for, all of the bodies had been found within a block of a district. A little more research after that, using the ever convenient file that listed his targets known associates, had revealed that one of them lived square in the middle of . A broker and suspected fixer with ties to the syndicate, by the name of Slate.

From what he had gathered, Slate wasn't an exclusive partner of the Spiders; he'd done, or had been suspected of doing, business with some of the other city crime families on a much more regular basis, more often than not, working as a neutral middle man between parties. That made it unlikely that he'd have the information Adam wanted; the faunus couldn't rationalize a reason anyone would trust that information to someone only loyal to their bottom line. The fact that he lived so close to where the bodies had been found could just as well turn out to be a dead end, or a simple coincidence. No one would be that stupid. Even so, it was a theory that had some merit.

Despite that breakthrough, Adam had still been forced to apply the elbow grease himself, with little success, to narrow down a more precise area. Even for someone like him, it had still taken days just to search all the buildings in the zone, until as of last night, he had only two places left to search. Truth be told, Adam didn't hold out much hope of his quarry being there, but that didn't mean he wouldn't find anything valuable. He had a location now, if nothing else, unlike the other addresses he had searched and found little. Of course, there was only so much he could do in that regard without asking pointed questions, and there was only so much he was willing to trust the she-devil that currently served as his landlord? Accomplice? Nuisance?

He shook his head, snorting with frustration.

Kuchinashi being the veritable cradle of vice and corruption that it was reputed to be, and from his own limited experience traveling through the smaller villages in Southern Anima, Adam had even considered the possibility of bribery to speed things up. After all, lien-greased palms did seem to have a remarkable way of breaking barriers of prejudice, and he was as certain as he could be that it might provide some valuable insights from those who might otherwise hold their silence. He shot down that idea almost as quickly. The main quandary with that little stroke of genius, he mused, shuffling a map neatly into a stack of papers, was that aside from having to deal with humans, it required him to actually have lien to bribe with. It was rather difficult to bribe someone else when you had almost nothing to your own name.

Not to mention, that while he was more familiar with his locale than he had been, he couldn't say he knew the people all that well. The right ones to bribe, at any rate. A task that should have theoretically been easier, given his success in becoming better acquainted with the city itself, but was impeded by the unassailable reality that he simply wasn't a people person.

He was naturally cantankerous on the best of days, outright hostile on others, and even when he really tried his level best for an extended period of time, the most that he could usually muster inevitably morphed into a stream of thinly veiled, bitter sarcasm, if not outright rancor.

A profound sense of melancholy crested over him before being quickly and viscerally suppressed. What did he care for loneliness? Even before his... revelation about the true nature of the herd of malignant parasites that called themselves Menagerie, before even leaving Mantle, when he had been two-eyed, cherub-faced and naive, he never recalled submitting to any feelings of that caliber. While his detachment from his fellow faunus had always been a cause of concern for others, it had been little more than a fact of life to him. Nothing more.

He preferred his own company; pure and simple, and any attempts to divest himself of this personality flaw in the past had invariably ended in failure; his prevailing sense of underlying animus and mistrust for others consistently rendering his meager attempts moot. It was an exercise in futility to try to falsify feelings that he didn't possess, and in all truth, he'd often found most of them weren't worth wasting a second glance on anyway.

Of course, in that regard, there were exceptions.

Like her.

Where his social inadequacies brought him low, Charlotte excelled. It was something that he was both simultaneously grateful and very much resentful for, even if the fruits of her labor were yet to make themselves known. He'd always considered talk to be cheap, but part of him had developed something of an admiration for the way she carried herself, able to navigate even the choppiest of social waters with the finesse of a trained dancer and the viciousness of an enraged Goliath, without once bringing out a weapon, or even threatening to. It was almost fascinating, in a way.

Brothers knew how often he thought about introducing people who didn't recognize personal boundaries, or wasted his time, —he'd never been one to suffer fools gladly either— to the bite of his sword, but she took it all in stride, was able to appropriately make them aware of their transgressions and more often than not, get what she wanted. Mother had always said that there was more to strength than mere steel, but rarely had he seen the concept in such living colour as with watching his landlord at work. Unfortunately, it served in no small part, to make him even more wary.

In his heart of hearts, Adam wished he could do the whole research and investigation thing by himself, if only for the sake of his pride and rapidly unravelling sanity, but his repeated failures to turn up anything worthwhile lead him to a singular conclusion; that the immutable fact of the matter was that he really did need her help. And that stung him, deeply. His personal hang ups aside, there was one very practical reason that guided his hesitance.

She was still almost a stranger, as much as he thought he knew her, and he would logically be absolutely insane to trust her more than he had to when he couldn't fully trust her motivations.

And it was precisely for that reason he felt like an utter fool.

Because in spite of all rationality, he was starting to trust her, and the woman was starting to grow on him. Like a fungus.

In contrast to the sound warning he'd received from the clerk at the government outpost, his life experience with faunus and people in general as well as his own common sense, he found himself far more at ease with the woman's presence than he had ever been with almost anyone he'd ever met, despite knowing next to nothing about her.

They'd even developed a type of banter, irregular as it was; not only were crude insults and the like taken as heartwarming compliments with her , it often felt to him like a sort of verbal dance, one beautifully chaotic, one that he was loathe to admit had on his more occasions than he would like, had made him repress the urge to laugh out loud. Despite how irritating he found her constant needling, he continually found himself drawn into sparring matches with her sharp tongue, almost effortlessly on her part.

She was something else. She was easy to talk to, even for someone as repulsed by social interaction as him, but she had an aura that made him feel comfortable enough that he never felt awkward when he didn't talk. She just rolled with whatever he was willing to offer, teasing him mercilessly along the way - not that he ever really minded, truth be told. And frankly, that alone terrified him.

It was only in retrospect during one evening while watching Charlotte work the bar that clarity finally seized him; He hadn't done that much talking with another person who wasn't his mother since Sienna or… Blake. The thought of her was immediately enough to cool his feelings to a frozen halt at least momentarily. Despite the memories of their departure, far too often of late, he found himself replaying the memory in his mind, over and over again, questioning both of their choices. Was there anything else he could have said? Something he could have done, to make her understand, without destroying their relationship?

Somewhere in his head, he could hear a voice that sounded remarkably like his own with a lascivious cackle and a sneer. 'Why are we even wasting our time thinking about her?'

At this point, it didn't matter one way or the other, there was no going back now. This was the decision he had made. Life had headed him in another direction entirely, and as painful as the memories were, perhaps they were for the better. Maybe it was better off that she thought him dead to her. She would move on, if she hadn't already. He should too. Wasn't that the whole point of him leaving?

Adam rubbed his eye, allowing himself to be distracted once more.

He'd noticed he'd been appraising his new companion far more of late, and he didn't know why he was assessing her so intimately. Okay, scratch that, he understood full well on at least some level what it was that kept her in the forefront of his mind, even if he'd sooner open his own throat with Wilt before he said it aloud. Charlotte practically radiated an intelligent beauty, walking with the confidence of someone a decade older than she was.

There was this...almost pleasant energy about her, that had a life and will of its own, and that energy, he thought, was what he found himself affected by most.

Sometimes, she'd look his way casually and he found himself falling over backwards to generally pretend not to notice, lest he give away his embarrassment or initiate another round of warfare, which he more often than not, lost miserably. She had an acerbic wit, and a rather twisted sense of humor, quite like his own, and gave as good as it got whenever it came down to it.

Another thing he had come to realise in his comparison of the two, was that Blake was, by and large, far less complex. That wasn't to say she was stupid by any measure of the word, though there were certainly occasions where she wasn't the brightest bulb in the box, but rather, she was… predictable. Easier to read. He knew the rules of his relationship with her, and their simplicity and familiarity allowed him to navigate their social interactions with the ease of a boat on still water. It had been after the Yuma incident that Mrs Belladonna had approached his mother and had conspired behind his back and essentially assigned him as Blake's minder and "personal guard" to use their terminology, in an attempt to encourage him to socialize, robbing him of much of his free time. Truthfully, Adam had only initially gone along with it to piss off her swine of a husband, but Blake herself wasn't completely intolerable company. At least, that had been true at the time. Contrary to the image she tended to portray to those who didn't know her, she was actually rather loquacious and more than a little opinionated: facts that a younger Adam had appreciated in his own way, though not in a way that most would consider conducive to a healthy friendship.

As long as he followed Blake's conversational leads, they were friends. She was condescending, moody, and spectacularly self-obsessed. She co-opted him into her entourage, followed at his heels like a garrulous lost puppy, barking in her animated way about her life and grievances, petty or otherwise and Adam mostly tolerated her, providing his own thoughts where required, which, now that he thought about it, wasn't very often.

He had never had to talk about himself, his interests, his fears or his problems, likely because Blake never cared enough to bring them up, she likely wouldn't listen if he had, and what few questions she did ask were usually headed off with relative ease by some sarcastic remark to change the subject, or a stern glare. While that might have been part of it, he'd be lying if he said she wouldn't strike at every weak point he had with viscous vitriol. Even without access to his secrets, she still held the smallest transgressions against him for weeks, and would bring them up in fights even months later. She never took the time to understand what it was he could do, say or share and where the limitations were. Always, her refrain was the same; there was always something wrong with him. It was then that he realized something else; he'd never truly trusted her at heart, something he had come to lament as yet another example of his own self deception.

True, he was closer to her than nearly everyone else on the island save Sienna, thanks to her mother's machinations, and very little agency of his own-something else he'd realized upon reflection and they occasionally settled into banter, but it felt … almost artificial in hindsight, and despite the good memories he had shared with her, in isolation, every conversation he'd ever had with her had often felt more like him enduring her, or the reverse, rather than either of them really enjoying their interactions. He wondered if it was the same for her too. Had she ever cared for his well being? Or was she just playing the long game, like her father had?

He cursed the very thought of the question. Whatever the answer, it wasn't worth thinking about. And Adam wasn't yet so much of a bastard that he didn't think she deserved better than sufferance, no matter how contemptible her sire happened to be.

It was simply another line in a series of uncomfortable truths that he had been forced to confront in his exodus.

Charlotte on the other hand, was a cyclone by comparison. The only thing that was predictable about her, was her unpredictability. There was never a warning, or a roadmap to their interactions, and as each one passed, he'd often left said encounters feeling as though he were little more than a leaf in a turbulent wind. She'd annoyed him at first, as most people did, but it was almost as though he liked that. She was never afraid to —if you'd pardon the pun— take the bull by the horns, as it were, and she was always honest about what she thought, sometimes even cuttingly so.

Of course, his dilemma went far deeper than that.

It was, frankly, rather humiliating how quickly all control he thought he'd had over his baser desires unraveled where she was involved. And even more exhausting to constantly keep himself in check.

While he'd seen enough of her interactions with others to know she generally put on amorous airs with people as a way of getting what she wanted, a fact that bitterly wounded some small fraction of his ego, he'd been equal parts pleased and panicked to realize she seemed to have some kind of special focus on him. He'd never actually had anyone flirt with him so flagrantly the way she did. Or at all, actually, now that he thought about it. At least, that he'd noticed. He certainly hadn't expected it. Then again, he'd never really had anyone he'd considered in that way either. Attraction was not something Adam had ever been well versed in.

He knew the most basic mechanics of it —he wasn't stupid—, and "The Talk" had very much been on his mother's curriculum of things she wished to impart to him. Adam admitted he hadn't seen the appeal at the time. His mother had been uncharacteristically vague in her explanations, and he hadn't the heart or the interest to ask further questions than he needed. As he reached his mid teens however, he had started to keep what little remained of his libido on a tight, uncompromising leash, checked firmly by his passive detachment from the affairs of others and his fixation on his training.

How proud he'd been. How superior he'd felt.

Now, at nineteen years of age and woefully unprepared, even though he knew unequivocally that being around the untrustworthy woman that was rapidly becoming something akin to an actual friend made his impulses all the more unmanageable; a growing part of him craved being in her presence and even found himself on some occasions, having sought it out, under conditions other than than their mutual business.

And perhaps what he hated most about the affair, was that he couldn't scrape together enough willpower to do something to prevent it.

What absolutely didn't help, and what really drove him to the edge of his tether on sanity, was the fact that the woman had no sense of shame. He'd learned that the hard way, after she'd decided to walk around the apartment in nothing but a towel for virtually an entire day. Which of course did just wonderful things to his teenage brain.

He certainly hadn't had a devil of a time fighting away his body's response to hers or her seeming need to brush by him so very closely at what felt like every given opportunity, or his mind's oh—so-helpful deliverances of the object of his troubles in various states of undress even well after the fact. He didn't find himself having intrusive daydreams at the very idea of her in nightclothes, or her bare supple flesh. He definitely hadn't looked forward to the evening, where the freezing cold air of the night would drive all such tempting desires away from him and allow him to focus on more important matters than his increasingly erratic libido.

It would be so wonderful if his emotions could simply commit to an extreme and stay there, but clearly, some ancestor of his must have pissed in the gods' cereal bowl, because that mercy had been denied to him for quite some time.

Once more, Adam reproached himself. Charlotte was… something to him. A kindred spirit maybe. His eyebrow raised. Perhaps that was a stretch. But certainly not anything of that nature, no matter what his fickle body tried to tell him. Even if he would admit, albeit under heavy duress, that she had the capacity to be something more than the most annoying person he'd ever had more than a single conversation with, he wasn't like that. His biology was conspiring against his mind, trying to trick him into a physical closeness that he didn't actually desire. It wasn't something he sought—he knew that. He felt at those times, like an ineffectual moon, tossed and whirled by the proximity of a nova. Turbulent currents disturbed his attempts at tranquillity, and the inability he had to return to a semblance of normality, or inner balance until he was away from her was terrifying.

He was being an idiot.

And now he was talking to himself.

That must be it. Of course, it was such a simple explanation for all of it.

He'd finally lost his mind.

What else could have compelled him to act as he had for so long?

He closed his eyes and bit back a heavy sigh. If women were all this frustrating, he was probably better off being a reclusive hermit. Sadly for him, that wasn't a profession his current situation would allow. Thus meaning that Adam would be forced to endure the continued betrayals of his body a while longer at the very least, and the irritating feelings he had once dispelled that seemingly returned with a unyielding vengeance at the whims of the wind, compounded over several years of active repression. Joy.

His imagination almost immediately provided a mental image of him in dark robes with a waist length beard, sitting in the lotus position in some desolate corner of Remnant surfaced in the depths of his mind, causing a wrinkle of mirth to cross his face, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter. A peaceful life it might be, but it would be a mind-numbingly boring one. He thought it safe to say that he utterly lacked the temperament for the monastic life, even if it did have the benefit of not having to associate with halfwitted imbeciles or the rage-inducing lack of impulse control he had been struggling with of late.

Soon enough though, his thoughts returned to his findings, and his scowl returned in quick succession.

In spite of his small victories, true happiness still eluded him. The reasons for this fact, now that he reflected on them, were multifarious. But if he had to name a primary issue, it was that in all of his reconnaissance, there had been little sign of his quarry, and the faunus was beginning to wonder if he hadn't simply skipped town for good. And with no indication of if, or when, he'd return, if indeed, he had left, there was little to do but watch and wait. That...had caused him to get impatient, to say the least. It was a terrible plan. Adam would never dispute that. But it was also the only plan he could form that was within his current means, and the knowledge had left him a touch surly, maybe even more than his default.

Ultimately, he'd found himself with two prominent theories.

Assuming the Tarantula was still beyond the city, — it was unlikely that he would return in broad daylight, not with a sizable bounty on his head, and certainly not as a marked man. Logic dictated that he would attempt to do so under the cover of darkness, ideally around the time that the gates to the city were closing, when there would be less eyes to report him to the authorities or stage an ambush, and as such, Adam spent a large amount of his evenings milling around the gates to the city in vain hope. Equally, if Myst had gone to ground somewhere in the city, —and all evidence suggested that he at least had a semi—regular presence here— the city was only so large. Assuming that, he would still be forced to employ the same wait and see approach to see if and when his target resurfaced, and who knew how long that would take, if indeed he returned at all? He gathered his notes, shuffling them neatly and returned them to the file. Perhaps he'd make more progress with fresh eyes, but for now, there was work to be done.

Finally leaving his room, he caught a glimpse of his sword, propped up against an armchair in the living room, waiting for its master's attention. It seemed as though he still had a few hours to spare before he had to start preparing for opening hours. Adam padded in near silence past Charlotte's room, hands clenched at his sides; the lack of sleep making him even less hospitable than usual and walked across the room to his weapon, before drawing it free. The criss-crossing of the bands around the handle nestled into the skin of his palm like a glove. His other hand held his sheath tightly for a moment, it's lacquered surface shining as glossily as it ever had.

He rested the cool flat of the blade against his palm, inspecting it, and somewhere inside of him something slid into place like a great block of stone. It had been too long. A sword like this needed to be used. Raising the blade above his head, he began to take slow practice swings with the effortless grace borne of nearly a decade's daily training, all the while, admiring the blade's craftsmanship with almost religious reverence.

He had spent hours the previous evening before bed, oiling his sword with equally diligent care, and it suddenly occurred to him that the reason it was here, instead of in his bed, was that he must have forgotten it out here in his sleepless mind. Even though he was alone, his cheeks colored in shame. That was unacceptable. Charlotte probably wouldn't understand his attachment to his weapon, or why he felt the need to take it absolutely everywhere, from his nightly excursions to "cuddling it like a baby", or why he was so eager to find reasons to use it when he should be resting or doing something else with his time. But Adam knew different.

No, to be a proficient or even halfway decent swordsman —as he liked to believe that he was— it required one's body itself to have conditioned reflexes and intuition to such a degree, that the mind had no need to think about every step and motion along the way. In such a way, mind and weapon were to be one. That was the philosophy he'd been taught, and the same was true for all weapons, for all aspects of combat. Yet those talents were by nature, a fickle mistress, and the longer he went without training and testing his own strength, the more likely that his hard-earned skills would start to slip away from him. Like his semblance had.

Forcing his jaw to relax and biting back the swear words that were sure to ruin what was already likely to be a sour morning, he grasped the hilt in both hands, bending his knees. The act took effect almost instantly. For a brief moment, he felt a calmness, stepping into the eye of the storm each time the storm threatened to overwhelm him.

Shifting into his first form, that zen became intermingled with an feeble undercurrent of cold fury as he practiced the thousand cuts, over and over, feeling as if his arms and legs were wearing grooves into the air itself. The movements themselves, though sluggish at first, were still easy for him. His body was able to tell when he was doing something wrong simply by how his stances and movements felt, allowing him to make the appropriate corrections. Adam let himself fall into the flow of the style, increasing and decreasing both the pace and power as needed.

Soon enough his reward was made manifest; when his sword became no sword, when his intention became no intention, and his every motion as fluid and formless as the wind, until finally, he used his whole body to maximize the power of a downward strike. Air whooshed around the weapon as it fell, like a thunderbolt.

A gentle crackle suddenly broke the air of silence in the room, startling Adam from his trance and nearly causing him to release his weapon mid swing. It was by sheer providence that he managed to tighten his grip in time, which proved to be an additional stroke of fortune in itself; as he quickly realized, with some acute embarrassment, that his blade would have gone flying into the direction of the TV. He didn't even want to think of how Charlotte would have reacted to that if it had actually broken it. He looked around, searching for the noise, before returning his attention to the sword. The vestiges of glowing, vivid red lightning clung to the tip of his blade. But before Adam could even process what was going on, it blinked out of existence, leaving him hollow.

A snarl began to curl his lips.

To add insult to injury, in the month he had been in Kuchinashi, he still hadn't made any progress with regaining his semblance. Again, and again, and again, no matter how much he trained, he would always hit a wall. He remembered too well how happy he'd been when he'd first discovered it, how the smile lit up her face at his childish exuberance and how she'd helped him determine what it was and how it worked. But now, all it left him with was pain.

Pain and memories of better times.

It was harder than ever not to think of his mother, especially at times like this. Whenever he raised his sword, the days of her strict instruction and diligent teachings came rushing back to him like an incoming tide. She always seemed to know the exact way of bringing out his best in spars, and he held no doubt in his mind, she'd say or do exactly the right thing to enable him to properly grasp control of his hidden power, as she had so many years ago. He had come to learn in time that this was no accident; it was a power they had shared. A semblance passed through his blood, along with his blade, a great connection to all those who had walked the path of the warrior before him, each link in the chain stronger than the last.

Such a thing was uncommon on Remnant—few could claim to have a "family" semblance. The trend was that each soul had its own individual strength, unique entirely to them, and while that didn't hold true for him, and despite knowing nothing of them, he couldn't help but feel warm inside with the knowledge that there had been others like him, that he wasn't alone. That he had a place with them, even if he didn't anywhere else. Every swing of his blade had history; it made his blood surge with the echoes of ten thousand battles, as if it resonated with his soul, so intrinsic was it to his very sense of being.

And that chain, that last link that had tied him to his mother, and their forebears was now broken. Because of his weakness.

Leaving him truly alone.

He remembered the feeling of utter wonderment, watching her alabaster skin bleed into shadow, her teeth and hair glowing a deep scarlet, her eyes pupiless and glowing blood-red, with matching sparks of black and vermillion lightning broiling across her flesh. He remembered how unafraid he'd been, when she'd explained to him in a distorted voice, that such a bestial looking transformation was normal for them—how the charcoal skin, and scarlet highlights were nothing to be afraid of, and that, if he trained hard enough, he'd be able to perform a full transformation too. He'd only ever been able to do so with his forearms and hands, and his eyes had only glimmered, tiny sparks of lighting flickering across his skin, and along his sword, but he remembered how patient she'd been with him, and how she knew that he'd come into his own eventually.

When she'd taken the very sword he now held in his hands and used it to split a tall, barren pine tree vertically with a single skyward stroke of his-their semblance, and he watched the very ground split open in the wake of the crimson blade, a slash of scarlet energy that rose in a wave to the heavens.

His grip tightened on the leather wrapped hilt.

She'd always been there.

And now she wasn't.

No amount of his wishing would change that.

Though his thoughts strayed to her on many an occasion, he continued to do his best to push past the things he knew he couldn't control. It was all he could do. Keep himself busy. Stay focused on a goal. Be stronger than his sorrow. He shifted into another stance of his kata, before executing a quick slash. Nothing. Not so much as a crackle of the crimson energy, of the power that he knew was his. He knew it was there. He knew it was! The flames of frustration brought on by his impotence rose in its place, before being extinguished by the more logical remnants of his mind.

He wasn't going to get anything done here.

The apartment above the bar wasn't massive, but it was comfortable enough and moderately spacious; with his door opening into a living room/dining area with a small kitchen off to the side. On the far end of the living room portion were two doors, one leading to Charlotte's bedroom and the other to the bath. The furniture was bare minimum; a small glass kitchen table, a dark leather couch, TV, and two armchairs, one of which he had very nearly parted from its armrests with his second careless swing.

The living room was silent save for the occasional sound of screeching cats somewhere outside; the sound of solitude was making him feel even more tired than he already was. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, he re-sheathed his weapon before he did any actual damage to her property. The risk to her furniture now alleviated, he stowed his sword back in his room, and after a quick shower, made his way downstairs to the bar.

Charlotte was nowhere to be seen, though, that didn't surprise him much. The bar didn't open until noon unless it was a weekend, and even then, her locals didn't start to pour in until two or three in the afternoon, most of whom were already at least slightly intoxicated. He sighed.

And so began another day of his tenure moonlighting as a "bar back". Most of the work was surprisingly familiar to him; dishwashing, bussing tables, and even just cleaning up after closing. Mopping up vomit aside, he didn't mind the work all that much. It kept him busy, made him feel a little less like a bottom feeder, and it gave him something to do that didn't involve him talking to people.

Adam looked down at the floorboards, adorned with dirty smudges from last night's constant traffic of feet. He supposed he should clean it before Charlotte came down. Gods knew she wouldn't, and if he was honest, he knew having to stare at it until she finally woke up would irritate him more. Figuring he should stretch the stiffness from his legs, he trudged across the room to a closet in search of a mop and bucket.

It was a while before he finished his task to his satisfaction, and even longer for the floor to dry, but by the time he had finally stopped scrubbing, the floor looked at least something close to new. Then came the bar stools. That took minutes at best, as did the liberal use of the rag behind the bar counter to buff the stains and smell of stale alcohol from the counter, leaving the room with a cloying faux pine scent.

When all was done, Adam leaned back on the bar, staring at the various bottles and spirits on the shelf behind the counter. Underneath the bar's counter, there was an ever-growing excess of supplies, chief among them, new glasses that needed to be cleaned and sorted by type and size.

"A cocktail is simple, broken down into three basic ingredients: spirit, mixer and ice."

She'd started to teach him how to mix drinks not too long ago in the hopes of having an extra pair of hands to tend the bar during high traffic. He hadn't expected to find it even vaguely pleasant, but he had to concede that there were a great many things in his life recently that he hadn't expected. Like nearly everything else he seemed to do recently, it was easy to lose himself in the physicality; since it required more of the attention of hands and eyes rather than less of the attention of mind and thought, allowing him to largely run through Charlotte's instructions through a strange sense of robotic auto pilot.

His painstaking footwork, that his mother had relentlessly beaten into him since childhood, now necessary to avoid spills and rough spots in the floorboards rather than avoid an enemy's sword-strike, his reflexes pressed into the service of avoiding fumbling and dropping a full pint glass or an empty shot glass rather than to guide his blade or dodge an angry fist. Not for the first time, it had begun to make him question his sense of purpose.

What was he even doing anymore?

The glass next to him was crystal clear but for a tiny chip on the rim, the fog created by his breath and the smudged finger marks that never seemed to come out no matter how much he washed the damned thing. Reaching for it, he turned his attention back to the bottles of alcohol, he began to read the labels, trying to reach through the fog of his mind to recall the specifics of what he planned to mix.

"The Dead Man's Party." A house special of the Web, and a rapid growing favorite drink of his. Imaginative name too, but then, he supposed it was Charlotte's way of doing things. She'd laughed at the face he'd pulled when she'd first told him about it, and even harder when he'd first tasted the concoction in question. She told him in no uncertain terms that the sour apple cocktail was something of a rarity, given how infrequently it was ordered, but Adam hadn't cared then, and he didn't care now.

Removing the liquor required from the shelves, he poured the liquids into a cocktail strainer, before attempting to mix them. Finally, when his arm grew tired, he filled his glass with the fruits of his labour, gulping down the clear emerald liquid with a sigh.

Figuring he could use some background noise, he flicked on a portable radio that was perched on the edge of the bar. He couldn't remember whether he or Charlotte had left it there the previous night, though he supposed it didn't matter; he was grateful it was there nonetheless. The jukeboxes were all out, and he wasn't about to go upstairs to sift through Charlotte's TV channels while she was still asleep. There was such a thing as taking too many liberties after all.

The radio crackled into life, followed by a catchy yet irritating jingle.

"Hi all! I'm Olivia Ochre. It's quarter to twelve, and here's the latest insight into local and international news. Recently..."

Adam promptly tuned out the rest. He'd been hoping for some music, what with the jukeboxes all broken, but white noise was white noise so he could hardly complain.

"One might conclude that Remnant has a hearty appetite for the carnival barker, the jester, the rabble-rouser, the race baiter and, lest we leave anyone out, the performance-activist who pretends to be a newsman while fomenting unrest that only he can quell.

"I haven't yet said Ghira Belladonna, but if his name came to mind, there must be a reason."

At the name 'Belladonna', the faunus reacted sharply, nearly knocking the damned thing off the edge and onto the floor, leaving him scrambling to catch it and very nearly tipping out of his stool in the process. He breathed a sigh of relief.

The little machine was old and battered and had more than a few loose pieces; he wasn't sure it would have survived that fall onto solid ground. Setting it in front of him, more of the report began to catch his hearing, and much to his eternal surprise, his hand began to move away from the power switch. Could he really be hearing what he was hearing?

"In nearly every high-profile case in recent years that involved a faunus alleged victim and a human alleged perpetrator, Belladonna has decided to inject himself as arbiter. Where once he was a mere street activist, he is today a disruptive celebrity. He has stepped off the soapbox and into the political arena, where he is free to pontificate and to chastise those who don't fit his template of truth and justice."

"I guess it really is true what they say about stopped clocks."

Adam thought to himself with a twitch of his lips. Never in his life did he believe he'd find common ground with a human, but here he was. He wasn't dreaming. He wasn't sleeping. Someone else was actually saying what he had always known to be true. It was like seeing a blue moon.

"In the interest rate of the remaining objective, this isn't to say that the Belladonna administration doesn't have fans or that they haven't helped many people. They have, and I would be remiss to say otherwise, though whether that credit can be attributed to the man himself or the many diligent public officials who serve under him is as yet unclear."

Adam snorted. 'Helped them' into the ground was more like it, though again, he couldn't say he felt much in the way of pity for them. They were the ones who elected a clown, they could hardly cry that their home had become a circus. As for the radio host, given their distance from the Belladonna fiefdom, he could hardly hold human ignorance against them. At least this time, anyway.

But in too many cases that he designates as racist, he has inarguably contributed to more harm than good. He has evolved into a classic variation on the Huntsmen Syndrome by Proxy: He creates a problem, then zooms in to save the day. I'm sure you all agree that you do not get to stir the pot until it boils over and then say, "Hey, whoa, I didn't say to turn up the heat that much. Simmer down."

One need only look at the "Jungle Fever" scandal from several years ago for an example. Several years ago, then-12-year-old Violet Gray, at the behest of her parents senior Belladonna officials, all of whom being faunus, claimed she had been gang-raped by several human men who then scrawled racial slurs across her chest and her stomach. Belladonna was Gray's personal spokesman and has yet to express contrition for helping perpetuate what turned out to be a hoax, though he was forced to pay 65,000 lien in damages to the men he falsely accused of such terrible crimes.

At that, Adam quirked an eyebrow. He hadn't even known about that story, and he'd been unfortunate enough to know the man for the better part of at least half of his childhood. Maybe Menagerie had always been an outlying cult. Curious indeed.

" No one doubts that race sometimes plays a role. Faunus are surely justified in their rage about the Atlesian policies of being stopped and frisked for being faunus, a law enforcement technique that has since ended under heavy pressure from branches of the Atlesian Military and then Colonel James Ironwood. But as we try to ease racial tensions, we might begin by examining our own unconscious biases, which are too easily coaxed to the surface, and apply a more-critical eye to narratives before accepting them as true. We might also send racist agitators back to their false soapbox, where the peddlers of outrage have always belonged. And now for—"

Adam had heard enough. He flicked the switch again,and in another burst of static and a final squawk, the radio went silent.

Belladonna. Just hearing about that family of two faced rodents was enough to spoil his mood.

Blended by the alcohol he was pouring into his system, Adam felt himself set burning with vexation again, gripping his tumbler in his palm so tight it was a wonder he didn't shatter the glass. Something in him was boiling, his ears were pounding with his blood, and his breathing was becoming deeper, quicker.

Sure, there was something to be said for the humans that Belladonna was constantly pandering to whenever he wasn't giving another self-fellatory speech to the lemmings of Menagerie, being among the first to finally see him as the grifting hack he'd always been.

What made it cold comfort however, was that it simply reminded Adam of his own mistakes.

He should have killed him.

At the time he thought it wouldn't have meant anything, but these days… these days, he wasn't so sure.

He tried to remember why he was here: he wanted to honor at least some part of his mother's wishes and not seek out revenge. If he couldn't live with fighting for faunus, or forgiving humanity, he could at least do them no harm; they'd destroy themselves anyway, so what difference would it make whether he helped them do it or not? But his family was forefront in his mind, and he realized that even months distant, it was all still personal. He shook his head, trying to live for the right reasons. It had been months; surely, he was beyond this. He must be. It had to be. Revenge shouldn't hold such sway over him.

It shouldn't.

It shouldn't.

Adam felt the old hatred welling up inside him. It was stronger now than anything he had ever experienced in his life— . He wondered if it would be possible to live a life one day. Or if he should simply… stop. What was the point exactly? There seemed to be nowhere for him to go. Maybe it would be better for everyone if he just took one more step. He was already standing on the very edge. Why couldn't he just let the darkness take him?

It might not count for much but it would at least be a temporary reprieve from his nightly traumatic visions, for which he would be more than grateful.

The alcohol , strong as it was, left a burning sensation in his throat as it passed, stripping away his despair and regret like acid. 'I won't give that pinhead or his dancing chimps the satisfaction.' He took another mouthful, feeling the familiar warmth as it settled in his belly. He stayed there, content to hide in the bottom of his glass for a time and dwell on how justice and inner peace seemed so far out of his grasp.

And when she eventually ventured downstairs to open up, that was how Charlotte found him, sitting at the bar, oblivious to all the world, a quarter of a glass of emerald liquor in his palm.

She smiled and made sure to put a little extra sway to her hips as she walked over to the bar and sat down at one of the empty stools next to him. heels loud on the floorboards. Charlotte leaned in close, so close that he could all but taste her perfume —jasmine— he idly noticed, and her silky raven tresses fell over his shoulder. After a few moments of his lack of acknowledgement, she leaned closer still, fully resting her weight against him and he was hard pressed to ignore the far-from-unpleasant sensation of her breasts pressing against his upper back.

Adam groaned internally, despising his youth for what must have been the thousandth time since he had entered into her acquaintance.

She wasn't going to let him just ignore her. She never did. He mumbled under his breath and sat up, deciding to bite the proverbial bullet.

Smiling at her minor victory, she picked up his glass and took a sniff. "What are you drinking?"

"Hey!" he protested. "That's mine." He moved to snatch his drink back from her hand, but Charlotte was just a little bit faster, clamping her free hand over his.

"My, aren't we stubborn today," she teased. She set the glass aside and eyed him curiously. "What the matter, got up on the wrong side of the bed again?"

She knew he was the brooding type. It was part of what made him so much fun to tease. But she was keen to the fact that something about him was especially off today . He didn't respond with the same vigour he usually did, and he seemed a little out of it.

A strange expression briefly flashed over his face. Charlotte took the opportunity to study his profile. His good eye had a dark ring around it, and his pupil appeared on the verge of being bloodshot. He seemed paler than normal, his skin taking on a sickly pallor, almost like that of a a ghost. Moreover, she had noticed him growing more and more irritable of late, especially over the past few days, and even now, she could see his eyelid twitching.

He didn't answer.

She briefly put her face in her palms, raking her fingers through her hair before facing him again with exasperated incredulity on her face. He rubbed his forehead with his free hand, his eye closed and brows furrowed. She placed a hand on his back, gaining his attention almost immediately.

Something wrong?" she said, sounding genuinely concerned about him.

"I'm fine."

Adam replied, almost robotically, without so much as a thought to his answer.

Now it was her turn to frown.

"So cheer the fuck up, Hornhead. You're really bringing down the mood."

She leaned on the bar, her dark hair lying over one shoulder of her shirt. She lolled her head to one side, pushing out her lips just a little before running the tip of her tongue over her lower lip. The black dress she was wearing was more conservative than her usual attire but in no way detracted from her allure; it fit her snugly, showing off her waist, the swell of her hips, and more than a little cleavage.

A singular thought entered his mind, as those familiar feelings began to swell once more.

'This was going to be a long day, wasn't it?'

Time would prove him right, when half an hour later, the first patrons started to shuffle and trickle inside. It proved to be unusually quiet for the first few hours, watching as lifeless looking drones that served as the regular clientele placed orders,and watching Charlotte work. She flirted, giggled, and laughed away as she served, and he busied himself as best he could by occasionally running drinks to various customers, or heading into the storage room in back to change the kegs. On the off chance anyone tried to speak with him, any friendly gestures were simply met with an impenetrable silence. He had learned an invaluable lesson, being that this was the best way to avoid unnecessary socializing.

All the while, he failed to notice her watching him surreptitiously. His body language was surly and standoffish, his natural fierce glare unsettling some of the more sober men. His shoulders, tense and stiff, as though they were chiseled from stone, and her worry began to peak. Deep, piercing cold soaked through her. Whether it was of him, or for him, she didn't know, and the fact that she couldn't tell worried her almost as much as the idea that he'd start attacking one of her customers if they brushed too close.

Eventually, during one of the lulls in traffic, she pulled him aside, unable to ignore her concerns any longer. Waiting until he came back behind the bar again, she slung an arm around Adam's waist and pulled him into her, wasting no time in showing her hand now that he couldn't escape without being unconscionably rude and causing a scene, drawing attention to himself. Though she suspected he cared far more about the latter than the former.

Adam froze under her touch, body locking up and his spine becoming turgid, expression drawn, his eye more than a little distant as he stared into space, doing his level best to avoid looking at her. She wasn't wearing any makeup, but her lips were still stained a deep purple, and she was exuding a natural beauty that he knew was rare and hard to come by. His body torn between exhaustion and arousal, he grew suddenly horribly lightheaded, with panic and irritation at his lapsing control over himself began to rise.

Her smile grew and took the slightest seductive hint.

"I might just know how to get that grumpy kink out of your mood," she said teasingly, suddenly standing dangerously close to him, resting a palm on his chest before tapping his nose lightly with her forefinger, before her face briefly flickered with what he thought might have been concern. 'Or pity' some treacherous corner of his brain remarked.

'What in the name of the Dark Brother do you want from me, woman?!'

He tore his gaze away from her, overwhelmed by his own stupidity, caught in a familiar torrent of self-loathing, and wishing it would sweep him off into oblivion.

Despite himself, he still had enough dignity to stand firm, even if he had to force himself to look her in the eye, even as the undercurrent of anger that he usually kept penned up deeply behind his hard-won chains of control began to slip free of its leash for half an instant. "My mood is what I choose to make it, and it doesn't need any adjustments from anyone else." A growl made it out past the thin line of his lips as he cast his eye away from her to the rows of bottles on the wooden shelf besides them.

"It might if you want to get paid, Hornhead"

There was a slightly dangerous edge to her tone, that denoted the fact that his snappiness wasn't appreciated, but her eyes spoke of something else. He didn't know what it was but he suspected it was something far different from what she was trying to convey. She was dangling her leash on him again. Like a damned dog. He needed the money, and now that she knew it, he was caught like a rat in a trap. They both knew that his chances of finding a deal even half as good as the one he had was nil, and he had no choice but to fall in line.

It was spite alone that kept him from displaying the irrational anger borne of the realization and betraying his weakness. Instead, he laughed, and his lips twitched into what could have been a smile, which surprised her, were it not for the fact it was in a manner that came off as cold and sardonic.

"Hornhead?" She said again. "Are you sure you're ok?"

His mother had once told him that when you succumbed to anger, you were no longer able to think rationally, and an irrational life was always doomed to failure. She had shown him how to let that anger fade. How to take back control. How to resist the primitive impulses.

His breathing slowly returned to normal. He felt his pulse slowing. But as the night drew on, he also knew that maintaining control was going to be hellishly impossible.

Adam shook himself.

"Char-? Right. I'm sorry." Contrition fought with anger just below the surface of his skin, but he kept it controlled. "I'm fine. I'm okay."

She looked at him with an expression that somehow conveyed suspicion and disbelief, before shrugging. "I'll take your word for it. Just don't go having a cow on me."

"You know.." He started. "I really don't understand the point in insisting on knowing my name when you never actually use it."

"Can't a girl change her mind? Variety is the spice of life, you know."

He snorted.

"I'll believe that when you stop using the same nickname all the damn time." His lips began to twitch into what might have been the beginnings of genuine amusement.

"Get a room, you two!" somebody yelled.

Hoots of laughter rose from the assembled bar patrons fortunate to witness their exchange.

Adam stumbled backward out of her grasp as if scalded, eyebrows drawing into a dangerously viscous scowl, cheeks coloring crimson and voice gaining in depth. He tuned out her laughter, focusing on the empty glass on the counter.

Someone —Adam wouldn't look up to say who— smacked his lips juicily and called out some ribald suggestion. Without even taking her eyes off Adam, Charlotte casually raised a middle finger in their general direction. "And that'll be the closest that you'll ever get even in your dreams, Axel."

Her reply was met with roars of laughter, as Axel's drinking party all turned on him in question, jeering and mocking the unfortunate man. Allowing herself a self satisfied smile, the woman turned back to her horned companion, who had since retreated to the opposite end of the bar.

"Huh. That's a strange expression." She smirked. "You suddenly scared of me?"

He turned his head slowly to his right to watch her, scrubbing the glass of the chiller cabinet. He wasn't going to dignify that with an answer, it seemed. He pushed away from the bar as she rolled her eyes. He couldn't avoid her forever.

As he worked, it wasn't uncommon to catch a few words of idle gossip from the patrons. One of them was tired of his wife's cooking; the other had an inclination that his significant other may be cheating on him. A couple flirted shamelessly at the other end with amber nectar in hand. Jokes and small talk were made and there was crackling laughter that permeated through the windows and caught his ear. The mundanity of it sickened him. How did people live like this?

He hadn't given much thought to how difficult keeping up appearances would be.

He muttered under his breath, attempting to force a smile. It felt more like a grimace.

How was it right that time moved on, when he couldn't?


The rest of his shift passed without much incident until the late hours of the evening, with Adam managing to keep his temper largely in check- though there were several close calls. Throughout it all, he and Charlotte bounced remarks between themselves like tennis balls. He didn't think either of them were ever sure if they really got wittier as the evening wore on or if it was just their own imaginations, but Adam found that it was a lot easier to make an attempt to at least appear half-way cordial, especially with the distraction she provided.

By midnight, the bar was down to nothing but the regulars, from the ones who tried to drink themselves into a better place every night to the ones who stayed only because it was paradise by comparison to being in whatever hovel passed for home; Eventually — Adam had long lost the ability to tell time— Charlotte put both her hands on the bar and leaned forward, summoning up her best school teacher impression to carry her voice across the bar.

"Last call! Any of you looking to settle tabs, now's the time!"

Finally, he'd gotten the chance to break away to check his Scroll, and balked at the time. The gates of the city closed in an hour and thirty minutes, and Adam felt an intense need to depart. This could very well be the night his work finally paid dividends. Retrieving his sword, he tied it to his belt, and made his way back downstairs, coming face to face with Charlotte.

"So you're leaving again?" She inquired with a tilted head and inquisitive expression.

Adam regarded her with an unreadable expression, and simply nodded in way of reply. "Well, I figure you can finish up here. I'll be back later."

She looked him up and down.

"It's ok if you take a night off, you know. You're practically dead on your feet."

"Can't. Not if I want to get paid."

It could easily be his imagination, but she had sounded so genuinely worried for him, and he briefly felt a twinge of guilt for being so short with her, before stifling it.

Charlotte saw the expression on her fellow faunus' face and decided to back off. She liked to think in the time that she'd known him, she'd made even a little headway with him, although she was beginning to get the impression that a good chunk of Adam's taciturn personality shifts were nature, rather than nurture. More to the point, if he was leaving for the reason she thought he was, —and the sword on his waist very much implied it— then she was at least partly at fault herself. None of her contacts had been able to provide anything useful, and that left the two of them high and dry until something happened. She imperceptibly wilted, but her tone was vinegar sour as she replied with a clipped; "Later."

He didn't want her to be angry at him. That desire startled him, bursting forth from the prison he had tried to contain it in, and flooded over him as the need for sleep had for the past few days. Sighing to himself, he opened the back door and stepped out, jamming his fists into his jacket's pockets to keep them from the biting cold air.

Behind the clouds, the sun's final vestigial rays had long been swallowed by darkness, the city almost black with shadows - to Adam's advantage as he merged into the thinning crowds, making his way south through the narrow streets of the red-light district. Even in the poor light from the flickering street lamps, he could hear the hammers of the construction crew in the distance still fighting to get just a little more work done before clocking out, the outskirts of the district apparently going through a burst of expansion. He could make out the black silhouettes of scaffolding, of wooden beams hanging out over the dark sky, certain structures still just beams - skeletons of themselves.

He made his way northwest, though at a slower pace than previous wanderings as he kept checking his surroundings. Bright lights bombarded his senses in the glow of the moonlight, and those of anyone else who was walking down the winding streets. As always, there were seemingly endless numbers of people that were standing around, trying to hand you a flier or to sell you something, even at this ungodly hour, and he made a pointed effort to steer clear. Paranoia was a trait he was well acquainted with. He'd heard enough tales at the bar about enterprising thieves and the last thing he needed was to draw attention to himself via a knife to the ribs.

He had never gotten to eat anything earlier with everything that had happened, but if he was lucky there was a chance he might be able to catch a meal before everything was packed up for the night.

The off license was tiny, and was wedged between two taller buildings. It looked squeezed, as if the neighbours were closing in. The sign was older still, some letters had become illegible in the peeling paint. The rows of shelves were compact, taking up most of the floor space, and yet, were lined up in such a way that it was difficult for the owner to see them from the cash desk. But nevertheless, as the bell rang to signal Adam's entrance, he shuffled out from a back room through a curtain of cheap looking beads to the counter. Adam watched with some twisted amusement as his facial expression transformed from cordiality to outright disgust in a matter of moments; his line of sight falling upon the ebony horns atop his head.

Suddenly the faunus lost his appetite.

'Probably only came out to keep his eyes on the "dirty animal"...'

He could feel his glare at his back as he disappeared between a row of shelves and out of his sight, catching the creaking of the counter as the storekeeper craned his neck to catch a glimpse of his back. He smirked to himself, temporarily invisible to his prying eyes. One good thing that had come from working at the Web, was that he had enough money for actual meals now, which was a plus, but it wasn't an indulgence he accepted very often. While Charlotte at least paid him a fair wage, which was a lot more than he could expect from anywhere else, as a general rule of thumb, he had learned to always make sure he used his lien miserly. The more lien he had, the easier it would be to become more self-reliant in the future, and so any lien he spent, he made sure to do so sparingly. Hence his current state of affairs.

For an instant, he felt impelled to deliberately take his time searching, if only to further aggravate the human shopkeep's precious sensibilities. Unfortunately, there was all but one thing that kept him from indulging such malicious spite, and that was his current time constraints.

Sighing, he ignored the part of his brain hardwired to pettiness, and after a quick cursory browse of his immediate surroundings, he made his selection; a bagel, and a packet of pork rinds. It wasn't much, but it would do for now, at least until he could get something more substantial. In hindsight, he pondered as he paid at the counter, it was probably for the best that he made such a hasty exit. The salty odour of sweat mingled with the stuffy and stagnant air were more than enough reason to keep his visit brief.

He ignored the casual sneer of the shop keep, and the nagging demands of his pride to at least throw one good punch, and left the store as quickly as he arrived, almost glad to be back out outdoors into fresh air, no matter how inhospitable the cold might have been.

Above his head, the black sky was peppered with stars, shimmering dots of light that danced from horizon to horizon. Whatever beauty the sight held was long lost on him, his eyes cast downward in deep thought as the stone passed under his feet. He could hear music from the bars and nightclubs and laughter in the distance.

His breath rose before him in a steady stream of smoke, quickly evaporating into the chilling air. When he had first begun the series of stakeouts so long ago, he had begun them in earnest, the vestiges of his childlike sense of adventure thrilled to be on the hunt, of the anticipation of success and tasting blood. In the face of his confusingly conflicted emotions about Charlotte, and the ungenerous thoughts about his own life, he'd believed that at least he could look forward to solitude if nothing else. The reality however, had proven to be little more than hours of endless tedium, bored and alone in the cold with nothing but his most intrusive thoughts.

Tonight was no different, a fact he was soon to discover as he settled in his usual spot; a bench in the shadows of the courtyard. The two guardsmen who usually finished their shifts around now were leaning on the outside of their booth, watching the open gate, smoking and chatting. Even now, the eternal restlessness gnawed at him, as he passed under the shadows of the cherry trees , impelling him to move, to do something, anything at all. He felt… mired almost. Boxed in. Caged. Like he had before. The bare cherry blossom trees and their branches in the darkness of the night looked to him like the claws of some evil entity, tendrils to drag him down into the dark abyss of madness.

Or perhaps he was already there, and this was simply some darker part of his mind accepting it.

In this place, where he couldn't escape into his body to purge his thoughts, there was nothing left to do but face everything he had been working so hard to avoid.

So he left.

Sensing there was nothing there to occupy his time—He'd been watching the gates several nights now, and he'd been beginning to think he was wasting time there even then, Adam decided to follow his other lead. To the entertainment district it was. Finishing his food, he turned on his heel, and made to go back the way he'd come, eventually coming to a crossroads. Left would take him back to the bar and the outskirts of the red light district, but right...Shoving his hands in his pockets, he took a shortcut through a set of stairs, and onto 'Strip Row'. The actual name was something else, but that's what happened everyone had called it, and since Adam didn't know it's true name, he saw no reason not to follow suit.

He found standing down the street from the entry to what looked to be a club. Skillful, he thought it was called. He remembered thinking that it was odd; the clubs and bars in the file all seemed to have similar names - Sensations, Angels, Darlings...

He was brought out of his thoughts by a familiar face further down the street, hanging around under one of the lights. He might have been on duty, but somehow Adam didn't think so. He was chatting with another man like they were best pals. He had a drink in one hand, and a girl in the other. Since they seemed to know him, Adam got the impression that he was a regular.

Then again, Harris was by all accounts a slimy creep, so maybe, Adam shouldn't be surprised.

Adam had learned a little more about him from Charlotte on a less personal scale, and when he added that to the information he already had, it painted quite the picture indeed. Every month, Harris received a regular individual stipend from a majority of Kuchinashi's criminal cartels, large and small, as well as the occasional private contractor, to stay away from their illegal activities. For the most part, the corrupt officer upheld his end of the deal as long as his benefactors didn't cause any public incidents. Adam supposed that at least made sense. No sense in strangling a golden goose after all. Still though, he was a police officer - what business did a cop have being seen hanging out in places like that?

He shrugged. Not his monkeys, not his circus. It was best he stayed clear. Harris wasn't what he was here for anyway.

What he was here for, was the building on the other side of the street. Crossing quickly, with his head down, he quickly moved through the nighttime crowds into the shadow of the unlit doorway. This is the place.' He looked up at the thick wooden door, the surface bare save a gaudily engraved '401' scratched onto the upper center of a brass plaque.

He couldn't just kick in the doors, of course, not with a cop who already didn't like him a stone's throw away. There was an intercom, now that he looked, an incongruous looking thing on the more traditional structures of the district, but Adam quickly dismissed it. He wasn't a good liar, and if someone was home he'd have to be a damned good one to get someone to let him in this way.

Maybe there was a back door?

With a sigh, Adam followed the perimeter of the building into a narrow alleyway that seemed to curve into itself the more he followed it. By the time he reached the back of the building, he was relieved to see what looked to be a door, only for, at closer inspection, to find it was only another archway and more annoyingly one that was filled in with bricks. That led him to look up, and to his delight, he spotted it: a half open window… on the third floor.

It looked like he was going to need to get a little more creative.

He backtracked into a brisk walk in anticipation, nearly reaching the mouth of the alley before turning heel and breaking into a dead run. If he was going to try this… he needed to move fast. Taking a series of rapid steps up the nearest wall in a diagonal sprint, letting his feet gain traction and springing from there, his frenzied momentum translated into a spectacular jump. Adam had maybe half a second of air time, gaining height before he shifted, and his feet collided with the opposite wall. He continued his acrobatic run for another few steps; as he felt his leading foot slip at the edge of the bend, he gathered enough momentum to push off, once again propelling himself into the opposing wall.

He was starting to lose a little of it now, and he could feel himself start to slip as he gained more altitude, but adrenaline kept him going. The window was in sight now, only a few strides away. If he kept his current speed, Adam was sure he could make the final hurdle.

Catching the edge of the sill, Adam slipped inside lightly, taking a moment to gather himself, and quietly slid the window shut behind him.

One by one, he went through each empty room. A paneled wooden foyer led to the living room, which was surprisingly spacious, dividing sections by folding paper screens, and beautifully appointed with what looked to be antiques— intricately carved wooden tables depicting some kind of feathered animal. Adam couldn't speak for the authenticity of them, but he assumed they cost a pretty penny or two.

The tables flanked a large plush couch, with curved armrests and clawed lion's feet, along with four more identical twins, each set up with facing up chairs creating a series of small sitting areas ideal for simultaneous conversations. A series of glass lamps sat on each table.

A cursory look told him the room was empty, although he daren't risk turning on some of the lights. But then, that was one of the benefits of being able to see in the dark. He looked around the room and traced his fingertips over the back of the nearest couch. A thin film of dust came away with his fingers, but there were other trail lines. Judging by the rounder gaps, it could have been someone's else's hands, or elbows resting on top of it. Couldn't have been long, either, if the spaces were still there.

Moving through the room, keeping his hand near his blade, he began to see signs of recent occupation. A crumpled magazine, several empty cans of beer, a Scroll and a semi automatic pistol, strewn haphazardly over the floor and furniture respectively. He considered the idea he might take the gun with him, reaching for it before seeing a familiar snowflake logo embossed into the side and reeling in disgust. No amount of utility was worth his principles. He tossed it aside as if it had burned him and moved on.

On the other side, he found himself in a corridor with rooms branching off it on both sides.

The first he entered was a large bedroom, though it's size wasn't what had made him intake sharply. Someone had clearly taken a blade to the sheets and pillows. The duvet was strewn across the floor, along with a carpet of white feathers and fluff. The dresser had had its drawers removed, and, if the wood splinters interspersed with the debris from the pillows were any indication, had been thrown against one of the walls and shattered. The only piece of furniture that had fared at least a little better had been the wardrobe: Adam assumed that had been standing upright, but it now stood at an angle, pivoting on one corner against the wall. Carefully choosing his steps so as to not disturb the feathers, or crunch the splinters, Adam made his way over to it, carefully standing it back up, before opening the doors, though he was unable to keep some of the clothes it housed from falling out onto the floor.

"Mmm." Adam thought to himself, as he tossed them haphazardly back inside. All of the occupant's clothes were still there and the suitcase; the one he had accidentally kicked it as he'd moved around the bed, nearby was empty. That, to him, made the chances of the occupant's permanent vacation a little more likely. He would have left the room entirely to search elsewhere, if he hadn't noticed as he got to his feet, that the side of the wardrobe that had been pivoting on the floor was now slanting into an odd groove in the ground. Damage from the weight distribution? Possible, the wardrobe was surprisingly heavy, definitely enough to cause that kind of damage, but, now that it had drawn his attention, he thought the groove looked far too uniform for that. He smiled wryly, tugging at the irregularity in the floorboards until it gave way to reveal a small, hidden compartment. "Hello..."

Inside he found two things; a key, and a USB stick. The stick went immediately to his pocket; sure, he didn't actually own a computer, but Charlotte was bound to know someone who did, and no one would go to the effort to hide it if it was of no value.

The key was trickier.

Did it fit something in the room, something in the building even?

Or did it have some completely separate use?

It took him searching nearly every other room in the house, but the key finally fit into a hidden keyhole on the wall of the bathroom of all places that upon removing what looked to be a loose tile behind the water tank of the toilet, opened up into another small compartment - apparently criminals were a real paranoid sort. As soon as he pulled the door of the compartment back, he was met with a small brown book, stuffed with various papers and receipts that seemed to overflow, sticking out from between the pages. Adam wasted no time rifling through it, making his best attempt to understand their contents.

More scraps of paper, less and less useful. He moved to set those aside , stuffing the between the pages of the book as he went. Finally, around the middle of the book, he found his jackpot. Handwritten invoices, delivery dates, all of which could be useful to help find people.

Then he whistled. Money to informants, bribes, more names and that was a lot of orders for weapons. The dates of each transaction, went back months, long before Adam had set foot in the city, and he couldn't help but wonder what it was all for. "Whatever he's planning, it's big," he murmured quietly before he shook his head. It wasn't his concern, he wasn't an accountant, and he still didn't have enough context to make sense of any of this. But morbid curiosity had begun to blossom in his chest. It was very likely that there was something else at play here. Adam tucked the ledger in between his belt and his trousers and made to leave the room, intending to check the bedroom again for anything he may have missed.

No sooner had he made it to the doorway of the bedroom, than he heard the unmistakable sound of a key sliding home into a lock somewhere down the hallway.

"What are we still doing here?" a man's voice asked, the sound muffled through the wooden door, before rising in volume, no doubt to be heard over the loud screams of un-oiled hinges.

"You heard what the bossman said," another said, "He thinks this guy's got some dirt on the Clan and whoever finds it, is getting a cool thousand suds. You know what I could do with that much dough? Could start my own gang with that much cash." Adam's eye narrowed. Two people, men were talking, but he counted three pairs of heavy footsteps. The third could be a man, or a particularly heavy set woman, but without a line of sight or hearing a voice, Adam couldn't know for certain.

"Careful, man!' One of the men hissed. "Don't talk like that around here! You got a death wish or something?!"

"Quit being such a bitch." The other replied disdainfully. "He's not here, and ain't no one around to hear us."

"Oh, sure." Adam could all but hear the eye roll in the first's tone. "It's not like the boss has a habit of sending her after people that piss him off by saying shit they shouldn't or anything. Fuck me for valuing my life, right?"

"Pfft. You actually believe that?"

"Yeah, I believe it! It's called having a goddamn brain."

The first man's guffaws echoed in the corridor, allowing Adam to position himself without sound. His friend was less amused.

"Shut up!" He growled, but to his dismay, the laughter seemed to grow only louder.

"I bet you believe that stupid rumor about saying her name in the mirror three times too! Oh gods, that's priceless!"

What I believe, asshole, is that she didn't get her name for nothing, and that the boss has a way of finding out shit that you don't want him to know. Remember what happened to Shen? Glass shards through his eyes, tongue cut out, laying in his own piss? Yeah, that was her. Because he didn't know when to shut up. And it's gonna be us, if you keep talking about bailing on the syndicate!"

"No way." The second replied, his earlier brashness now intermingled with uncertainty. "She wouldn't come after small-timers like us. Would she?"

The third spoke then, in a heated voice laced with irritation, no doubt having finally had enough of his co-worker's scare mongering.

"See, this is why we're just goons. Because we have stupid discussions like this. Both of you shut the hell up and start searching! Or else you can be the one to tell the boss we didn't find anything."

The faunus pressed the ledger in his pocket and scowled. Boss. That meant Myst's men. He'd dealt with some of them before, but mostly in passing. For some curious reason, they avoided the area around Charlotte's religiously, but that wasn't to say he hadn't seen them around. Besides, who else would be so interested in this place?

He heard a single pair of footsteps approaching the bedroom and pressed himself against the wall behind the door. As soon as the first walked in, Adam grabbed him by the neck and slammed his head against the wall twice, letting his nose explode in a fountain of blood before tossing him to the ground and slamming his foot down on his skull one last time for good measure.

The next one was close enough to have heard the sound and ran to check. Adam dodged his surprised punch, grabbed the outstretched limb and snapped his elbow in half. The thug went to scream and Adam punched him in the throat to shut him up before smashing his heel into one of his legs, splintering the knee bone. He fell with a yelp. The third had entered the room, already prepared to fire. Unfortunately, he wasn't a faunus either, and his vision needed a second to adjust to the darkness. Adam's didn't.

"What the fu-" He charged and smacked the gun out of the last man's hand, grabbing him by the neck so he couldn't yell. Still it wasn't enough. He had just enough presence of mind left to make an attempt to aim his gun and pull the trigger. As he did so, however, Adam grabbed his wrist with his free hand and forced the gun up. Its bullet blasted into the ceiling. The thug tried to pull away, but Adam refused to let go for even an instant. He wasn't sure if the sound of blood rushing in his ears . He forced the man's hand back, until the gun was aimed at his own face. That was the final straw.

His victim flailed blindly in desperate panic, dropping the gun and trying to gain enough breath to yell for a rescue. Adam internally swore, resisting the darker impulse to twist his neck and get it over with. Instead, he tightened his grip, his palm sinking deeper into his larynx.

"Who… are… What?" the thug panted desperately.

"Where's your boss hiding? What's he planning?"

"I...don't…"

'Stop wasting my time.' the faunus thought, his anger spiking.

Adam squeezed harder. He could feel the sinews pulsing under his palm; the air trying to force its way through an increasingly narrow passage. There was a part of his conscience that implored him to let him go, but it was drowned out by the overpowering scent of iron and ozone under his nose.

"Where. Is. The Tarantula?" The faunus forced out in a low, cold growl.

The man's eyes widened in fear. "I don't know! All I know is that one of the Taijitu are looking for him! He said, still choking on his words, his voice almost incoherent. "I don't know why, all I know is the bosses wants him brought in, I swear…"

"Taijitu?" Adam cocked his head. What do Grimm have to do with this?"

Despite his dwindling oxygen, his victim managed to give him a disbelieving stare, as if he couldn't believe his attacker had said something so stupid. In a gesture of annoyance, Adam tightened his grip again. That would prove to be a mistake. The lack of oxygen finally proved too much for his victim's lungs to bear; his eyes rolled into the back of his head, his body seized up and he went limp.

"Damn."

He hadn't meant to do that.

Adam dropped him, barely giving him a second glance as he hit the floor like a sack of potatoes. It would be hours before any of them were conscious again, and at least, when this one awoke, he would remember in vivid clarity why he was in such pain. If they woke up.

Adam took a cursory glance at the bodies he'd left behind.

Probably still breathing, but he wasn't going to stick around to check. The violence in him still roared, the demon within rattling it's cage. If he left it untempered… Almost at once, he was struck with incoherence, an inconsistency to his thoughts, as he leaned a shoulder against the wall. Exerting himself the way he had had taken a toll on him, one much worse than usual. This did nothing to curb his rage, if anything, it was exacerbated. But fury did nothing for him now; it could not undo his failings.

Eventually, he sighed, shaking away the red haze before leaving the room, and exiting the way he'd come.

But as his boots hit the ground in the alley, he couldn't help but feel a rising sense of frustration. It didn't seem to matter how hard he tried to move this job of his forward, it always seemed to slip back.

A flash of movement ahead of him startled Adam back into alertness, as he whipped his head upwards to the end of the alleyway. A furtive figure ducked into a doorway when the faunus had glanced it's way. A thief most likely, lying in wait, eager to steal someone's wallet, but with what had happened minutes earlier, Adam could imagine other scenarios as well, including the possibility that it was a friend of the thugs he'd put down upstairs, and they were aware of what he had done. Either way, the tail was a problem, and he wasn't about to bring it to where he hung his head.

With that in mind, Adam slowed his pace, doing his best to give no indication that he'd seen anything. Despite the cool of the night, the flagstones underneath his feet were wet, and the passage smelled of urine, even though it was largely empty, aside from some overflowing trash bins. His tail had chosen their ambush spot well. Adam had no other way out of the alleyway other than past them, and while he didn't doubt he could handle them, they were close enough to the street that him doing so would likely cause a scene.

Looking left and right, he saw something he hadn't noticed before; a door, covered in peeling paint, inset to the wall to his left, opposite the building he had just left. An idea came to him. The lock looked about as venerable as the door itself. He stopped in front of it, pretending to fiddle with it, patting himself over for an imaginary key. If the thief was waiting to ambush him, he'd have no better opportunity than now. Adam's back was turned, he was far enough away from the main street to avoid attention, and he seemingly wasn't paying attention. The window was perfect. But would they take the bait?

He waited a few seconds, and smiled as he heard the pattern of footsteps coming closer.

Reaching out, Adam grabbed the man by the collar of his shirt and yanked, cutting off his air and throwing him off balance in a single motion. The man was down and Adam was there, holding his foot to the man's throat , while his hand held a wrist, tugging it upward, ignoring the pained whimpers that came from his victim.

"I give up!" The figure choked out.

Adam relieved the pressure on the man's neck, allowing his assailant to roll over and reach his knees.

The man was panting hard and clutching at what appeared to be at something in a white knuckled death grip. Adam closed the distance with a single pace, letting his hand fall gently on the man's shoulder. He tried tugging at his arm, hoping to coax him up onto his feet. But the man pressed himself further against the wall, flinching away with a strange, keening whine that prickled at the hairs on the back of his neck. He responded almost immediately with the contact, spinning around to face Adam. A dark eye widened in surprise.

The undeniably faunus woman at the end of his palm looked at him, evidently confused, and somewhat disturbed before her eyes softened into something that looked an awful lot like relief.

Those were all the words he could get out before the old woman launched herself at him, wrapping him up in a bear hug. The act shocked him for an instant, before his senses returned, and he angrily seized the front of her garments before throwing her bodily aside, sending her sprawling among a pile of black garbage bags. She was extremely, extremely feverish; so much that the heat burned straight through however many layers of clothing he wore. Wasn't leather supposed to be cool to the touch? Her coat alone felt like it had been sitting in the sun for a couple of hours, which hardly made sense, since it had been dark for several hours now. A few of the bags burst, expelling some rank and rotting mass that smelled distinctly of rotting fish.

"Get off me! You reek of booze!"

"Ha! This town was made for drinking! I prefer to think of the world all as one big bar. Easier that way." She bounced back onto her feet with nary a comment on his display of violence, speaking to him as though he were an estranged family member, as though he hadn't just violently tossed her to the ground. She did, however, stay out of arm's reach, and for now, that was enough for him.

Adam snorted. "Well, at least one of us is having a good evening. Now if you don't mind, I'll be on my way."

He made to move past her, but with a speed unworthy of her advanced age, she all but leapt back into his path, walking backwards in step with him, all while keeping her eyes firmly fixed on his. Adam hissed with annoyance. He'd wasted enough of his time as it was, and the last thing he needed was any more distractions. His irritability rapidly began to replace his mortification. The woman grinned, oblivious to Adam's lack of amusement. She was overly exuberant, for a woman supposedly in distress, and he suspected that it would get even more annoying soon enough.

The bull faunus chanced a glance skyward towards the building he had just left.

"Look, I don't have time for this right now, so find someone else to bother."

"But I really need your help! They'll kill me!"

The voice was far more petulant that anyone of that age had any right to be, and Adam was already grating his teeth.

"I'll send flowers to the funeral. Now shove off."

He made to move past her again, but just as the last time, she quickly found herself in his path. "Whatever it is, it's not my problem. Why should I take care of it for you?"

For some unfathomable reason, she seemed to take his rhetorical question as assent, for her smile seemed to light up ,revealing nicotine stained teeth.

"Great question, kid! You should probably ask them! They look real eager to talk to you."

'Them?' Adam looked around, seeing no one, and hissed under his breath. So she wasn't just drunk, but senile too? That was just perfect.

'See what sentiment gets you?' That laughing little voice that sounded like his cackled. The sound of a drum started to pound in his ears, and he rubbed his temples with his free hand in some vain attempt to clear his head. Wait. He listened. That wasn't a drum.

Pounding feet.

"There she is!" A thin man in an lime-green shirt ran into the alley, coming to a halt in front of them. Adam quickly realized that the only exit was through the new arrival, and he was well aware that this was not the kind of city where humanitarians flourished.

Calmly, a woman followed behind, stopping at the mouth of the entrance. This one carried herself differently to the other, a casual confidence rather than the aggravated bluster of her partner.

She stood less than two yards away. The newcomer cut a striking creature, with short black hair, sporting an angled choppy bob cut with a wild, messy fringe that framed a face with a fair complexion, red lips and a mole on her left cheek. Her athletic frame wrapped in a olive, strapless minidress with a winding black snake printed on the skirt. Her ensemble was made complete with matching pull-on sleeves with ebony highlights, stockings, heeled boots, and perhaps the single most bored looking expression he'd ever seen on anyone's face, including his own.

She said nothing, but eyed them up and down appraisingly, before unfolding her arms from her bust and examining her nails with the same keen disinterest. A Huntress? It was possible. She carried herself like a fighter, that much he could tell from the way she stood; feet apart, ready to react at any moment. But how good was she? Would he have to go through her, or would she not bother him? What did she want!His train of thought was broken by the angry man, who seemed to have composed himself enough to focus his misplaced ire on Adam, his gaze full of contempt.

"The two thousand lien loan I gave this deadbeat is way the fuck past due. I need it back, and I don't plan on waiting any longer."

"And why the hell would you tell m-" Adam stopped as comprehension finally started to dawn on his face. No. Not even if the Dark Brother himself was at his heels. He barely had money to feed himself! He looked the old woman, who had since been silent, dead in the eye. "You don't seriously expect me to pay, do you?"

The vagrant boozehound of a woman chuckled nervously by way of reply.

"Like hell!"

Green Shirt's sneer deepened.

"I really don't give a Nevermore's ass feathers who you are. All I know is that one of you is handing over my money, before the lady behind me starts to get impatient."

"She's got a real short fuse. Especially for stubborn types. If I were you, I'd pay up, before I got hurt."

"Hey kid?" The old woman at his side whispered.

Adam snarled. "What?"

"You think you could take her in a fight?"

Adam looked her up and down, mind leaping into analyzing his would-be opponent.

"The only thing scary about her is that hair cut." He finally decided, speaking loud enough so that the others might hear him. "Not that it matters, because I am not about to let you drag me into your problems. I have my own problems to deal with."

"Are you serious?!" She asked incredulously.

"I believe I made myself clear about my number of fucks and willingness to give them."

The faunus could have sworn he heard a feminine giggle at that, butt as he looked up, the face

"Ooooh. I getcha. You just don't wanna get your ass handed to you by a cute girl. It's cool."

He bristled, about to protest the point with all the decency and delicacy his current circumstances merited, that was to say, none at all, before something sparked in Adam's consciousness. He hadn't been in so much as a bar scrap in nearly a month. One of Charlotte's unshakable rules had been that if he wanted to stay under her roof and get paid; he was expressly forbidden from starting fights with her patrons. At least inside the premises. The three stooges he'd defeated minutes ago; they'd been nothing to him. That had been the source of his anger, even more than the fact that he'd cheated himself out of valuable information by attacking the way he had.

It had been yet another insult to his warrior's pride.

This could be just what he needed. A chance to lose himself, even for an instant. Cast aside his feelings of futility and give himself to the fight, to the thrill of combat, and the lust for victory. Something to forget it all. Something that made him feel like he was still alive...

He quickly divested himself of that idea. As miserable as it might make him to do so, he had bigger fish to fry. He didn't have time for this. Especially not on the behalf of this wizened old crone. "No." He snarled. "That isn't even close to what I just said! How stupid do you think I am? You're the one who owes them money, you pay it back."

Her answering smile served only to raise Adam's hackles all the more.

"You really are spooked, aren't ya? She's bargain basement muscle! Cannon fodder! A stiff breeze would snap her in two!"

"I can hear you, you know."

The aforementioned woman spoke for the first time, sounding as patently bored as she looked and Adam was rapidly reaching his breaking point. This entire situation was beyond stupid and it was —as he had asserted numerous times— none of his business. But the two were standing in the only exit to the alleyway, and the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach only grew with every second.

"Hey! What's with the whispering? Are you paying your dues, or does this get messy?" Evidently, the debt collector was losing patience, a sentiment, Adam wholeheartedly shared. His fists were tensed, and Adam could see a vein throbbing on his forehead to an almost comical degree.

"I already told you circus clowns, this has nothing to do with me." He growled back, folding his arms and desperately trying to keep his calm.

The air was so brittle it could snap, and if it didn't, Adam might. Finally, the old woman broke the silence.

"Alright alright! I'll pay!"

Green Shirt smiled. "Heh. Seems like wisdom comes with age after all."

Adam on the other hand, was less convinced. He could smell the snake oil in her inflection, and already he was ready to reach for his blade with every word she spoke. His suspicions were confirmed when she grabbed his arm in a surprisingly tight grip.

"I feel just awful about all of this. Tell you what, why don't we make it four thousand?"

"Who is this 'we' exactly?" He was promptly ignored by the others.

Once again, it seemed he and Green Shirt agreed on her proposal, because the look on his face told him he didn't buy the bridge the old woman was trying to sell him either. "You think I was born yesterday? You're drunk off your tits, old lady!"

"Oh, I've got your money, Deary. I'll even give it to you. On one condition. You let your spry young lady over there fight us for it. You win, the money's all yours. We win, and we don't owe you anything."

Adam violently jerked his arm free from her bosom, rounding on his unwanted companion. "For the last damned time, I already don't owe you anything! And I'm not bailing you out! If you don't want to get hurt, you'd better start settling your damned debt yourself!"

He looked up at Green Shirt again, hoping that he would insist on his payment upfront, like any reasonable man would. Unfortunately expecting reason from a human was as futile as trying to teach a tree to fly, and one glance at his eyes told the bull faunus that greed had taken what little sense he had. "Shit, I take it back. You're not just drunk, you're a moron! You know who this is? She'd snap your runt here in half like dry grass."

Adam's eye narrowed and twitched. He wasn't her anything, and he didn't care if she was the emissary of the Gods themselves, if Green Shirt called him a runt again, Adam would personally ensure that he never performed motor functions again. It was fortunate for him indeed, then, that he was smart enough to keep out of Adam's reach.

"Nah! That can't be right. Fight's gotta be one on one. Two on one is for little bitches."

If Adam's glare could grow any sharper, it was at this moment where it did. 'You say that, and yet you're the one who forced me into fighting your battles for you…'

Green Shirt laughed. "Ha! You wanna take her on all by your lonesome? Well, shit. If you don't care about me taking my money off your corpses, then who am I to bitch out? You got yourself a deal, granny!"

The old woman looked up at Adam, squeezing his arm again. "You know what to do, don't you, kid?"

Adam wanted to hit her.

"Cut your head off and use it as a doorstop if you don't take your hands off me?" He motioned to his weapon with a deadpan, taking a small satisfaction in the way she backed away, eyes widening slightly with fear. It was a bluff of course; it would do more harm than good, but she didn't know that. Adam exhaled through gritted teeth. This was beneath him, damn it… "I meant it when I said I wasn't bailing you out, old woman. But fine." He drew his blade, the gleaming edge catching on the moonlight. The whisper of the naked blade as he unsheathed it was the loudest noise he had ever heard. "I guess I still have some time to kill."


AN: Sorry I've been away so long! Hopefully this chapter makes up for it. Speaking of chapters, I have drafts for the next few chapters, and I'm trying to keep a monthly update schedule now so the next chapter should be due at some point in August. Hope you enjoy!