Mad Max: Road to Salvation: Volume 3
Episode 4: The Shadow of Vulk PT.1
A/N: Sorry for the 2 week delay folks.
[Dracus6: Maybe.]
[Dungeon Wyrm: I like that. And I hope did a good job on this chapter.]
[Guest: THat's not a bad idea. Not what I had in mind, but I kind of like it.]
[Lordofuselssness: Thanks dude, it's good to be back. Sorry I kept you waiting.]
[Wombag1786: The triplets are currently staying at Beacon. I guess I should do a scene of him spending time with them. So I'll do that after this short arc.]
-UNKNOWN LOCATION: SEVERAL YEARS AGO-
It was a dark place with only minor slivers of light from amber colored lamps. The dripping of water and screams of slaves echoed throughout the eerie hallways. Rust crept down the old metal walls of the terrible prison and hope was barely an after-thought for the people trapped inside. Within these decrepit walls sat a battered and badly beaten duo of kidnapped dingo faunus boys. The younger of the two brothers cried with sadness and fear while the elder brother attempted to comfort him. It was a bleak existence for them in this place, a nightmarish hell where the light of hope struggles to exist. All the brothers had was their strength, their will to resist the ones who'd taken them from their beds.
A door suddenly slammed open and a large man with a terrifying visage stepped through it. "Alright runts, it's time for the next fight. Now which of you filthy animals is next for the ring eh?!" The man shouted to the faunus children. His eyes wandered around the room and landed on the two brothers. "Stop your whining or I'll shut your mouths myself!" He roared at the two brothers, though it only served to make the younger brother cry harder. He unlocked the cage and reached into it so he could drag out the crying boy to beat him, but the older brother lashed out and bit his arm. "Graaagh!" He reeled in pain. The large man yanked the older boy out by his throat.
"Let me go!" The older boy choked out as he gasped for breath.
"Brother!" His smaller sibling shouted in concern.
"Looks like I got a fighter for tonight…." The cage master snarled greedily as he held the boy's neck.
"No, don't take my brother, please! I'm begging you, let my older brother go!" The little boy screamed from his cage and ran to help. But the large man simply knocked him flat with his free and held him down with his boot.
A razor sharp knife left its sheath and its blade ended up pressed into the boy's mouth. "Why don't you be happy, your brother gets a chance at freedom. How about we make you smile instead." The monster of a man chuckled at the now cowering boy with the blade in his mouth.
With a quick slash and spatter of blood, the blade had carved a new feature for for a unwanting face. "AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIE! RAAAAAGHHH!" The boy screamed in agonizing pain while his slashed cheeks bled profusely. The big man then batted him aside like a fly, sending him flying back into his cage with a bleeding lip and bruised eye to add to his misery.
"Leave my little brother alone you monster." The older sibling hissed with his eyes hidden the room's shadows.
"Save your strength for the arena you dirty faunus wretchling, otherwise I'll have to lose a bet." The man cackled to his captive and began to haul the older boy away. "With you spunk you might stand a chance of winning, so you'll be a fine little paycheck for me, provided you survive."
"Brother! BROTHER!" The little boy struggled to cry out with his disfigured mouth while streams of tears dripped from his red eyes.
"Sorry little brother, I-" The older boy started to say something but was swiftly silenced with a hard slap from the cage master.
"Not another word out of you!" He scolded the boy and dragged him out of the room. The cage master then stepped the door again, and the younger boy caught glimpse of the man's bald head and the psychotic grin on his face. "I'll be back for you later, little bruiza. You'll make a great fighter like this runt here, you'll just need the proper motivation. Maybe it'll come if this one dies in the ring, of course I could just sell him to Schnee… might be even money for this little slave." The man cackled in a cruel tone. "Sew your mouth up with this, I still need you alive." He threw a tin at the cage, inside it was a sharp sewing needle and a large role of thread.
"NO BIG BROTHER!" The little boy cried out one last time as the steel bulkhead door slammed shut, separating him from his older brother.
-BATS DORM: PRESENT-
Bruz's eyes and mouth sprung wide open as he proceeded to take a deep breath. "RAAAAGHHH!" The faunus teen screamed at the top of his lungs as he woke up from his nightmare. His scream was loud enough to wake the dead as the rest of team BATS shot up right from their own peaceful sleep.
"AH WHAT THE HELL?!" Sally screeched at her partner as she hopped out of her bed. The bat faunus then dragged her partner from his bed and her eyes glowed a violent vampire red as she stared into his. "You had better have a good excuse for this!" She hissed at Bruz.
"Lay off him Sally. He probably had a nightmare." Aurora groaned to the batty brat.
"This asshole disturbed my beauty rest!" Sally snarled to team's cowgirl sniper.
"Not enough hours in the day." Bruz retorted weakly to the very angry bat faunus girl.
"WHAT DID YOU SAY?!" Sally violently hissed to her depressed dingo partner.
"You heard me." Bruz grinned a shit eating smile at the batty huntress in training.
The dingo's retort sent the bat faunus' temper skyrocketing through the roof, with visible steam puffing from her ears in extreme rage. "I'M GOING TO POUND YOU FOR THAT DOG BREATH!" She threatened him.
Her brother though had finally lost his patience with her antics and spoke up. "Sally! Put him down, now." Titus sternly commanded to his younger sister.
"But broooother! He woke us all up in the middle of the night!" Sally whined to her older brother/team leader.
"No buts. Put. Him. Down. Or I will have to discipline you." Titus growled, clearly in no mood to deal with her attitude at the current moment.
Sally looked Bruz in dead in the eye to see his twisted joker grin in full force. "I'll get you for this later." She hissed in a low tone.
"Bring it, on. I'll see you in the classroom." Bruz egged her on.
"ENOUGH, BOTH OF YOU TWITS!" Titus barked. "As leader, I order everyone to just shut their mouths and go back to sleep. That goes double for you sister." The team leader ordered to the two feuding faunus members.
"Fine." Sally hissed as she dropped Bruz on the ground and then crawled back into her bed. Bruz climbed back into his own and sighed ambiguously.
'The way they argue it seems like they're an old married couple.' Aurora thought to herself as she fell back asleep.
From there on, the other team members knocked out and the bulletproof apprentice was still awake in his bed. It hurt him to remember that time so long ago, long before he'd ever met his adoptive father and sister. But he could never forget, it was his past, and it was a part of him he could never erase. In some ways, it even resembled his step father's tragic past, though he could never truly compare it as Max had suffered far more in his years traveling the wasteland. By far, Bruz's experience had been a simple bad dream compared to Max's nightmarish hell that he'd managed to escape from.
As Bruz sat in his bed, he sighed once more in depression. It wasn't the same without Yang to keep him company, in fact he could say that without he felt hurt. But in a way that spoke volumes of their relationship, if he felt pain to be away from her hopefully she didn't feel the same without him. That was the best he could hope for at any rate since she was on patch with Ruby and he was stuck at the academy. That left him Blake and Weiss to talk to, and neither of them were really the talkative sort when it came to him. As far as he was concerned, it was going to be a long night.
-THE NEXT DAY-
Bruz groggily hauled himself out of the bed for the day as his alarm sounded for the fifth time. The dingo faunus then hopped out of bed and began to dress himself in his gear. After he had gotten dress he went to the bathroom to brush his rows of shark like jagged teeth. AS he walked into the bathroom, he noticed a note on the mirror from Titus.
'We're heading to Vale, meet us at the central park. Blake and Weiss are going with us.' -Titus.
"Why didn't those slag heads just wake me up in the first place?" He said aloud to himself and then began brushing his teeth. Bruz eventually finished his chore and stepped outside of his dorm to make his way to the Bullhead pads outside. As he did so, the warhound he had come to love bounded over to him. "Hey there boy. Why aren't you with Anya?" The sharp toothed teen asked his step family's canine companion.
"Bark!" Dinki di replied, his tongue lolling expectantly.
"Really?" Bruz tilted his head at the animal, speaking as if he actually understood the wild wastehound.
"Woof." The war dog responded in confirmation of his pack member's inquiry.
"Fine, come on boy. It's time to go anyway." Bruz chuckled as he began walking again to the bullhead pads. The dog eagerly caught up to with a swift bound of his four legs and the duo walked side by side to their destination.
-MEANWHILE: THE BEACON GARAGE-
"This is Lisa Lavender reporting to you live from VNN. Our top story for today, Large numbers of Faunus missing." The reporter said as she faced the camera. "That's right folks, in recent days local faunus in the vicinity of Vale City have been going missing recently. VPD detectives have begun looking into the situation, but many faunus citizens still remain missing. Our station has reached out to the local police department for comment but so far we have received no response. In other news, SDC mining facilities have been reporting higher earning as mines continue to despite protest of poor treatment for faunus workers including a lack of child worker regulations. On a lighter note, the Vytal festival tournament is only a few short days away and festivities are in full swing as Vale citizens set up for the tournament. That it for this, morning's news, now we go on to weather. Tune in later for our mid-day report." The screen then cut to black as the TV was turned off.
"I was kind of watching that." Wash groaned sourly from his seat on a cushioned folding chair.
"That son of a bitch." Mari growled through clenched teeth, the remote in her shaking hand.
"Who are you talking about?" The agent tilted his head.
"After all these years….." The foxy faunus narrowed her eyes.
"Ok…. So who is this guy… I'm guessing there some bad blood between you and him, isn't there?" Washington surmised.
"A lot more than that, I've tried tracking the bastard down for years, up until I settled down with Amy. You had better believe me when I say he's way more than just elusive." Mari took on a serious expression as she told the armored soldier of her old foe.
"Do tell." Washington asked, intrigued by his fellow faculty member's history.
"It was like he always seemed to know when to get out of town. Always one step ahead of me, every single time that ever I came close to catching him. The only people who seemed to actually put the effort in trying to apprehend him are us Faunus, and people who wanted the money." Mari replied.
"You think he has something to do with the disappearances in Vale?" Wash leaned towards the foxy faunus. "If that's true then we have to find out where all those faunus are going."
"I bet my Bike on it. The sick bastard enjoys making us Faunus fight in his "Clubs" wherever he sets up shop." Mari said as she leaned against a secured stack of tires.
"Too many have disappeared for this to be only about illegal fights, it's too small." Wash crossed his arms.
Mari nodded her head. "I believe he might be selling them off, illegal slave trafficking. We have to find him before this gets even worse. But we have to go in knowing what he might be planning or if has an exit plan in place, otherwise he'll slip through our fingers."
"Do you have a potential lead, or any clue at all why he might have come out of hiding, and to vale specifically?" Washington inquired.
Mari shrugged her shoulders as she wiped grease from her hands with a nearby rag. "No Idea. He tries to be as unpredictable as possible. As for why he's here...I have no Idea. Maybe it's the unrest that Faunus here are causing, what with the White Fang and all."
"That would make sense, but he obviously isn't targeting them directly. Experience tells me there's more going on here than we know. Anyone who lives like that is bound to make a mistake somewhere, usually it's something on a personal level." Washington replied, having seen individuals similar to Mari's target during his previous escapades.
"I would say it could be me, but I gave up on hunting him down when he disappeared years ago. To tell the truth, I really decided to let it go when I fell in love with Amy. From that point on, I knew last thing I needed was to put her Daniel in danger. But if it's not me, then we have got to find who he's after if he's really back." Mari scratched her head in confusion and then put a hand to her chin.
"Hopefully we can rule out him being involved with Salem. With Vale on alert she wouldn't risk trying something until the tournament, unless she just wants more chaos." Washington looked at the facts for a pattern. "Then again, being unpredictable is something she has a bad habit of doing. If this guy you want to hunt down is involved with her..."
"We need to find him now." Mari started to freak out.
"Hold on, you said it yourself, we have to be the ones two steps ahead, or he's gone." Wash calmed her down a bit.
Mari groaned as she paced back and forth. "Yes...but if he's with her..."
"Then we bring this up with Max and get something done while we still can." Wash said firmly.
"Lets go then." Mari agreed.
"Right, after all it's not like he's hiding in plain sight…" Wash said confidently, not knowing how wrong he was.
-VALE: A FEW MINUTES LATER-
The teen faunus and his dog were walking through the bustling metropolis at a relaxed pace and happened to briefly pass by an electronics shop. The teen faunus briefly stopped to watch the news since he wanted to relax a bit, and he had plenty of time to reach his destination. The usual anchorwoman appeared on screen and began her typical report for the morning. At least that what Bruz thought until he read the headline for her report, causing his eye to widen in surprise.
A haunted chill ran down his spine as the unsettled pieces in his mind had started putting themselves together. The picture they formed spoke volumes of horrific sustained cruelty. He shook his head in denial, it had to be a bad dream, an old memory to be forgotten and nothing more. That part of his life had been left in the rearview mirror several long years ago, there was no way his old enemy would have bothered to follow him all this way not with his new family. He briefly stuck his up to his face and touched the scar from where the blade had slit his mouth.
He had no idea that standing on the roof top's above, was a lone figure waiting in the shadows watching the city he had only begun to terrorize. "So this is Vale… Huh? What a lovely town to terrorize. Say hello to Morta Vulk." The shadowy figure grinned.
-END CHAPTER-