"You're getting better." That was all Sienna had to say as Adam lay on the floor, thoroughly beaten. He had taken to constantly sparring with Sienna as of late in a scrapyard. The first few spars, Adam had completely lost. But at least this time he was able to hold his own for a small while. She was painful to fight partially because she outclassed him in skill and also because she had a fucking chain that out-range him easily. "Your ferocity in particular helped you, but it's untamed."

"Screw you." Adam weakly flipped her off, to which she simply stomped on his hand without mercy. He could appreciate the force in which she put in her foot, but he could also loudly curse her name as his aura protected him from any damage but still let him feel the immense pain of his hand being stomped on.

"Adam, do you know why I'm this cruel of a teacher?" Sienna sat on a piece of metal (after making sure it wasn't trapped) and crossed her legs, looking down on the prone Adam with a teacher's tone.

"To make me suffer? That seemed to be the reason you talked to me in the first place."

"While your pain is very amusing, no. You may think this the most painful fight of your life, but I am nothing in comparison to those that can and will try to kill us."

"Like the hundreds of failed assassins?" Adam scoffed, what harm could they do?

"They are underhanded, Adam. They will take any and all attempts to kill us. And while you may laugh at the hundreds of their failures, that is only because I am a huntress and a very paranoid one. Killing you would be as easy as bombing your apartment. Or poisoning your entire fridge. Or pumping deadly gas into the vents of the building you are in. All of those things would work on you. And they'd rule your death off as a legally justified murder to preserve the peace." Sienna scowled at the thought. So many of her brothers and sisters, dead.

"That feels like an excuse you're using to use me as your whipping boy." Adam struggled to get up. Wilt and Blush, due to being caught on camera as used by a White Fang member, were being kept in the place he was staying at (he also had to move apartments routinely). He was loath to part with it every morning, but at the very least he could cling to it at night. So for standard use, he carried around a regular, if a bit low quality, katana.

"Perhaps." Sienna shrugged as she got up and offered him a hand. "Now, let's go get some food. And then, we'll see about getting you a ranged option."

The Atlesian Military had a strict chain of command. In terms of the infantry, they were organized into squads that each had their own leader, which were organized to corps, which were then further bunched into divisions, and then into battalions. And in charge of corps were the various commissioned officers. First and second lieutenants, captains, majors, and all of the various ranks one would think about when one said 'army.' And at the very top of the chain was general of the army. Being the general of the army meant a lot of things. First, it meant you had heavy sway over military policy, as well as domestic policy. The military was effectively the police. Second, it meant that you automatically had a council seat.

The seat of general of the Atlesian army was elected by a tribunal of ex-military personnel. They were the people to please, except no one knew who they were. Another military position was that of headmaster of Atlas Academy. Most in the military decried it as being a babysitting career, which was entirely fair. It was loaded with busywork and to take the job was an invitation to getting a coffee addiction and being just as shell shocked at the sight of paperwork as the sound of shelling. It had major political power, the position also giving a seat on the council, but it was also quite boring, and many soldiers didn't even care about the power that came with that seat. The seat was actually an elected position, the voters being the entire military.

To one young James Ironwood, the impoverished son to an Atlesian soldier who died in poverty like so many other soldiers, he dreamed of being in one of those two positions. Dreamed of actually being able to change the Atlesian system. And he joined the army with that same mindset, and he became a commissioned officer with those same dreams.

So when one Colonel James Ironwood was assigned to serve under Brigadier General Edger as one of the many people on the military council dedicated to the eradication of the White Fang, Ironwood felt like ripping his hair out. While he tried to keep his mouth shut like any good soldier, his reformist ideals weren't a secret, as well as how it wasn't a secret that many didn't like him. A second lieutenant rises to colonel in a year and that happens. Plus, there was the fact that he was from Mantle. With all that, he had just an inkling that this position was to drive him crazy.

Because if he even said a single word in the support of the White Fang, he could kiss his dreams and job goodbye. The White Fang were called many things. A terrorist group, the greatest threat to Atlesian unity, and Faunus supremacists. James Ironwood knew none of this to be true. A criminal gang? Maybe, they did engage in quite a bit of illegal activity, but Ironwood really wouldn't call them any one of those three very hyperbolic and fearmongering things. After his father died, he and his mother actually managed to live off of the soup kitchens the Fang provided. But, the White Fang didn't exist in Atlas, it was in Mantle. And in Atlas, the Domestic Defense Agency (as Ironwood called it) constantly put out news vilifying the White Fang. And they ate it up, as one might expect. So speaking up would be an instant demotion. Hell, it'd probably be grounds for a dishonorable discharge.

He was half sure that he was assigned this position to drive him crazy.

"Alright, the plan to get them to commit tax evasion didn't work, again."

Correction, 75% sure. He also couldn't disobey his superior, Brigadier General Edger. Chain of command was a bitch. But Ironwood was, if nothing else, a man of duty. And he couldn't break chain of command unless his superior ordered something blatantly illegal, immoral, or impossible.

"Sir, if I may, how many times have you tried to kill Sienna Khan?" Ironwood brought a pitcher of coffee with him. The good stuff, of course. The group had already brought their own cups, but they took his without complaint. The Committee was a small group, headed by Edger, and filled with a small group of others. A spy from Domestic Affairs to provide intel, a few experts, as well as two other colonels like him to advise and carry out the plans Edger came up with or ordered.

"Did I give you permission to speak!?" Ironwood stayed silent. "To answer your question, around 4391 times. All failed, of course." So this was the fork. Either he spoke up and got fired, or his career slid to a halt due to the lack of progress.

Ironwood wanted to scream. He wanted to shout. He wanted to jump off a building after drinking his weight in grain alcohol. He wanted to do many things, but want had nothing to do with what he actually did. So, like a good soldier, he sat there with a still face and listened as the rest of the team gave their progress reports. Aside from assassination attempts on Sienna Khan that felt more like formality than actual attempts on her life, the council actually did many things. There was a constantly updating map on 'infected' areas. Aka, blocks of Mantle where there is suspected White Fang bases. That is to say, the entire god damned map. As for actually confirmed bases, there were many residences listed, but nothing major. The White Fang leadership had begun avoiding tracking as of late.

But there were a few big locations of notice. First were the kitchens, there were a few in every district of Mantle. Those would serve as the heads of each chapter of the White Fang. And while the military had, in fact, managed to do operations on multiple chapters, they kept on popping right back up. And sometimes, the soup kitchens would just continue running without White Fang assistance at all, which made telling where or where not to look very confusing.

On another note, while the White Fang did have their members patrol in cop-watching, they also had them wear identity concealing uniforms and masks that their facial recognition software couldn't do anything with.

Besides the incredible amount of attempts on Sienna Khan's life, the committee was actually quite fucking horrifying in the extent of their power. Looking through the materials provided for him, he could see thousands upon thousands of bugs planted in houses without warrants. Knights were being used as mobile security cameras and people were being arrested under false charges. Hell, prominent members had been outright killed in a variety of manners. Poison, snipers, arming anti-faunus militants with guns before pointing in a direction and looking away, just having their homes be filled up with lead, drugging, false arrests, bombs, and a variety of other methods that Ironwood himself would consider terrorism if they weren't used by the government. There were many operations carried out to incite in fighting with manufactured scandals, using prominent Mantlese voices as anti-White Fang mouthpieces, and other things. It was, to be quite honest, quite excessive.

And it would've worked, it really would've, if it weren't for the fact that shooting a member of the White Fang didn't do anything except kill a member of the White Fang. Hell, outright murdering an entire chapter wouldn't mean anything because in a week or so, another would pop up. The White Fang was a symptom of the variety of problems Mantle faced that Ironwood knew about and was trying to work towards fixing as an internal reformist. But their job was to deal with the White Fang, and they really couldn't do that unless Edger decided to simply kill every single Faunus in Mantle, which wasn't likely given how the SDC would complain about losing a cheap and exploitable labor force (Another thing to add to the 'please change' pile) as well as the massive global backlash.

Sure, Mistral might have a caste system, but genocide was a bit much. Sure, what could the other kingdoms do? They didn't have the biggest dust mines in Remnant, but it also just wasn't a good look. And if they did that, that might be an invitation for every other kingdom to turn on Atlas. Hell, if the farming communities in Solitas simply decided to stop giving food to Atlas, they could basically topple the flying city within days.

Well, it was either genocide or reform, but Ironwood wouldn't be in a position to install reforms if he wasn't promoted, and he couldn't be promoted if he was stuck on a posting like this, and he couldn't truly be finished with his task if no reforms came. Truly, a circular argument. Well, there was an escape from limbo, simply be promoted somehow. But that would take a lot of politics. And Ironwood was not the best at politics.

Ironwood knew that there were reasons why the Atlesian military wanted the White Fang gone, it was the same reason they wanted Faunus rights activists gone, it was the same reason they wanted economic justice movements gone. The reason being was that those movements created dissent, which would challenge the image of the military and government, which would then create negativity due to the lost faith. It was just that the White Fang did more than advocate for change. They also did some things that Ironwood didn't personally like. Those things included raiding SDC dust silos, damaging government property, and clashing with patrolling officers. But even he felt a bit uncomfortable with the level of warrantless surveillance and war-like tactics that were being used in their own bloody city.

"I say we put spider droids in the street! Modify them to have machine guns to limit building damage and set them out to engage the White Fang!" Colonel Howard was the other actual military officer that took part in these executive meetings. Ironwood and him would be the ones to lead soldiers in operations made by the council. He was also, as of that moment, advocating they practically wage war in the streets. And it seemed like Edger was seriously considering this.

"Sir, permission to speak?"

"Permission granted."

"I say that we don't do that. If we openly engage them with anything but what we use for standard policing, we risk legitimatizing them." It was an argument he had heard used before in history and would gladly use then and there to prevent Mantle from being kept up all night to the sounds of robotic gunfire. And while Ironwood personally held the stance that the White Fang weren't much of a threat to Atlas, he couldn't deny that they used a few tactics befitting a geurilla organization, mostly out of survival. Things like cell based structure, avoiding direct confrontations, and other things. Anyways, his argument seemed to win over the group.

"Hmmm, good idea. While Atlas believes us, we can't risk more of Mantle seeing the White Fang as a valid alternative." Funnily enough, while they had the license to spy, kill, and frame, they didn't really have any ways to try and do humanitarian work to replace the Fang. He'd heard that back some centuries before in some long gone kingdom, a populist politician who advocated for social reform had been bested through his political rivals simply enacting the changes themselves, thus making the populist superfluous, killing them when it was politically viable to do so, and then promptly repealing all of the reforms made.

That kingdom would fall in a few decades.

And so, the meeting continued, with Ironwood acclimating himself to this new environment he had found himself in, with the barest of hopes that maybe, just maybe, he'll be able to crawl out of this death trap of an assignment.

Maybe.

"Hey bro!" Adam's interactions with members of the White Fang was mostly limited to Yuma, Trifa, and Ilia. Sienna made herself scarce often, only in public for the briefest of moments in the empty Millson street food court. As part of the dedicated combat sector, Adam was living low in the 'scrapyard' district, where there were plenty of shipping containers that were fashioned into homes. And in his home, there was actually an entrance to the sewers, which was extremely useful in many ways. First, he never had to be seen entering or exiting his small shipping container (which was somehow actually bigger than his last apartment) and also it made for a good way to travel covertly.

Anyways, using the sewers, he would go to the back room of the Millson street food court to meet with the others.

"Hello." Adam nodded to Yuma, who smiled as he kicked back a beer in his office chair.

"Hey Adam, new sword?" Trifa eyed the obviously mechashift weapon at his side. Adam shook his head.

"No, I simply had blush modified. Sienna knew a blacksmith who got it done." Adam toyed around with the mechashift rifle/scabbard, enjoying how sleek and simple the transformation was. Sure, he accidentally shot his sword once, but he was still learning how to use it.

"Hmmm, she got you a weapon as well?" Adam raised an eyebrow at Ilia's comment. "Well we all also got weapons, courtesy of her. I have Lightning Lash." She pointed at the handle at her side.

"I have this knife." Trifa pulled it out of a hidden compartment on her. "But I mostly use my hands, legs, and webs."

"And I got this bad boy!" Yuma leaned to the corner and picked up his weapon, a bat. A metal bat. That was it, just a metal bat. It had a few stickers on it, but it was, for the most part, just a metal bat. "Of course, I also use guns. A lot of guns. I mostly use Pun-isher-" Adam groaned at the very obvious and very bad joke. Trifa and Ilia seemed immunized, however. Well, Ilia still provided a witty commend.

"I still think that is a stupid name."

"Nobody asked, Amitola, nobody asked." Ilia flipped Yuma off, who gladly returned the favor. "I mostly use Punisher when I'm out of ammo. Or when I'm at close ranges."

"What's your point?" Adam sighed, sitting down. Talking with his coworkers was a pleasantly mundane activity, much better than accounting. He'd heard of combat deployments, but he hadn't been part of one yet(delivering taxes did not count), so his experience with the White Fang for now was simply paperwork. Ilia rolled her eyes at the terse tone.

"My point is, you're now part of the group. We're Sienna's lieutenants in her personal chapter of the Fang." Adam nodded. A part of him appreciated the fact, while another part of him vehemently loathed the idea of actually having friends. To be fair, that part of him was a bit anti-social in general, so there was that.

"Ok."

"Jeez my dude, lighten up!" Yuma chuckled as he handed Adam a beer from a cheap six pack. "Anyways, where were we?" Upon Yuma's change in focus, Adam looked at the table, which had a board game set up. Adam observed the board and once more remembered his past (I am going mad, its all these thoughts of my past, forget or move on?). The camp at the very least provided entertainment. The cost of a board game was much less than the cost of the bullets it would cost fending off the Grimm that would probably come if they didn't have a board game. Though, they took it away when two kids started fighting over alleged cheating. Regardless, this wasn't the same game, but Adam could guess the rules all the same. Instead of trying to reach the end of the path on the board, they were instead trying to conquer each others tiles. Yuma chose the red pieces, Trifa had the blue, while Ilia took grey. It seemed to be pretty late game, with Ilia having set up an empire made up of islands that was slowly building up an army to take on Trifa's continental kingdom. Yuma had been pushed into a few corners of the map, holding some insignificant landmarks and ruins, though he didn't seem to care at all.

It all came to a head when Yuma pulled some trick and sacrificed all of his pieces to change his pieces to gold, where upon he revealed that he had automatically fufilled his win condition and would get more troopers. The game would go on from there with Trifa and Ilia teaming up to beat Yuma into actually losing the game, primarily due to Yuma being outplayed with combos of cards from both sides as well as his force really only being able to change Trifa and Ilia's total domination of him into a pyrrhic victory. That pyrrhic victory being Trifa barely winning due to Ilia's empire falling from the strain that fighting Yuma caused.

"I win." Trifa sat back, a satisfied smile plastered on her face.

"FUCK YOU!" Ilia flipped Yuma off and slammed the table, knocking the pieces off the board. "You knew you couldn't win! You just wanted to spite me you fucking shit!" Yuma, with a very smug grin, against the better judgement of both Adam and Trifa (who were either too tired or too indifferent to care), decided to escalate.

"Awww, you mad you didn't win, kid?" Yuma was poking the hornets nest when it came to her age. At least her age relative to the other members. Well, except Adam, he was like a year older than her.

"GET OVER HER YUM-" She was reaching to strangle the manically laughing bat faunus when the door slammed open. Fearing the worst, they all reached for their weapons and held their breath. Those breaths were then released as Sienna Khan walked in, raised an eyebrow, and shrugged. Whatever happened was probably normal, she supposed.

"I trust you are getting used to having your weapon, Adam?" Adam nodded. "Good, now let's go use it." Adam raised an eyebrow, that could mean many things. It could mean she was going to absolutely destroy him in a spar again. It could mean he was going out to fight some Grimm. It could even mean what he was desperately hoping it was meaning.

"Whoohoo! Finally!" Yuma had his arms stretched out in a celebratory manner. "Alright, now that our week long dry spell-"

"Speak for yourself sandpaper-tongue." Adam almost choked from that line.

"Fuck you too Trifa, anyways, now that our week long dry spell is over, let's hear the news, what are we doing, huh? Is it something awesome?"

"Is it something stupid?" Trifa swore under her breath as she took a sip from her drink.

"No, no, nothing like that. Due to a blizzard momentarily halting bullheads and trucks, dust prices have risen a bit. Now, for most this isn't a problem. But for the people living paycheck to paycheck down here, they'll be unable to afford fire dust to simply keep warm at night. So, we'll be hitting an SDC dust silo to retrieve as much fire dust as we can. Any questions?" Nope, none whatsoever. "And you, Adam? Will you be coming along?"

"Gladly." Safe with the knowledge that he was finally going to be able to do something aside from paperwork, he had a hopeful smile splitting his face in two.

So a thing I like about A Rabbit Among Wolves is how they characterize Adam. As in, they characterize him as violent, obsessive, and comical, but Coeur does the amazing thing of writing it so that Adam actually has a point in society's treatment of Faunus. And how he's truly dedicated to his cause, with his obsession over Blake more a comical gag that's brought up less and less frequently as time goes on.

Also, both Meandering Arc and Charity Work will be left unupdated for a hot moment. Another pilot for an orphan fic will be posted before I get back to these.