Due process: a course of formal proceedings often tied to matters of law that is carried out with frequency and following established guidelines.
Brief aside to address the Rooster Teeth situation (tl;dr more stories of horrible workplace practices and culture have come out): nothing here is going to change. I don't make money off these stories, RT doesn't make money off these stories, and at the end of the day I'm doing this for myself. Cheers.
Chapter 22: Due Process
There was a full day of nothing that Adam spent alternately pacing the length of his cell and failing to find enough peace in himself to rest. Yang's conversation, his looming execution, Blake's revelation, the subsequent reveal that they wanted his help—none of it could sit still. He needed to move. He needed to do something.
In the past, releasing this energy had been as easy as finding a Grimm outside of the camp or training on his own. He had neither of those options now, and so it simmered under his skin, slowly driving him mad.
He was in the midst of pacing—having burned through a body-weight workout that was abridged thanks to the cuffs on his wrists—when the door opened. The guards weren't due for a shift change for another hour, so the new arrival caught his notice immediately. And when he processed that this new arrival was none other than Winter Schnee, he gave her his full attention.
"I trust you've had time to reflect on what is being asked of you," she said as she stopped outside his cell with her hands clasped behind her back.
"I've had nothing else to do."
Still in shock from the knowledge that he was not slated to die, he hadn't really processed any of the rest of it in the moment when Blake laid out the bones of their insane plan to stop the immortal evil that had plagued Remnant for millennia. She could have told him that Ghira himself was coming to pardon him in person and Adam would have taken it in stride.
He'd agreed to it, though. Even with his world still settling on new foundations, he had a certain investment in facing the consequences for the wrongs he had perpetrated at Beacon, Haven, and beyond. Without his help, Cinder would not have toppled Vale. The world would not be pushed so close to the edge of oblivion.
"And you have not changed your mind?"
He cocked his head. "You sound like you want me to. Not interested in working with a faunus, Schnee?"
As he'd expected, her gaze shifted to his left eye. He did not expect her to refocus on his right with no sign of shame or a desire to look away. "I threw away that life because I did not agree with it. My only concern is protecting Atlas. Don't think you can shove your blame onto me."
"How great for you that your past was something you could run away from."
Her composure cracked just barely; the slim smile he offered let her know he'd seen it. She scowled but made a gesture at the camera. A second later, the walls of his cell winked out. Stunned, he stood frozen.
"Let me make this perfectly clear: I do not trust you. Give me one reason, any reason, to neutralize the threat that you are and I will take it. Do you understand?"
Her threat, so predictable, restored his sense of normalcy.
"I understand that you don't believe I can change," he replied, examining the inactive pylons that had formed the corners of his confinement. Without the humming Dust there to shock him if he got too close, they really didn't look like much.
"Would I be wrong?"
He refocused on her. "Would you?"
Her scowl remained firmly in place while she directed him towards the door. Three more guards were out there waiting to join his little escort team. Adam spent their stroll through the halls trying to figure out where they were going. His flight through these same corridors hadn't given him a lot of time to grasp the layout, but he was pretty sure they were heading towards the R&D wing. Did they have whatever passed for evaluation rooms there too? In fact, was this even about evaluation? Surely, if the threat had arrived, Winter wouldn't be so stuck on protocol and reminding him of his place.
Staying silent wasn't getting him anything. He glanced over his shoulder. Winter had taken the spot behind him while the other guards took his sides and front.
"Where are we going?"
"Keep walking."
He scoffed and gave up on that dead end. In the tense silence that took conversation's place, Adam found himself unsettled. There was something…something in the soundscape, maybe, that had his teeth on edge. He shifted a bit of his aura to his ears—not enough to trigger the cuffs, but enough to sharpen the sounds around him.
The click of Winter's heels; the matching two-part footfalls of the other three guards; a muted hum from the lights lining the pristine walls. Distant conversations, some down other halls, others behind closed doors. A radio crackling. Someone's scroll ringing. Echoes of everything bouncing between every solid surface.
Normal, all of it. So why was he uneasy?
"Eyes forward," Winter commanded.
Was it the cuffs themselves? He dropped his gaze and examined them as much as he could without giving Winter that excuse that she obviously wanted, but no matter how he aimed his senses at the bands, they didn't offer up an explanation. And why would they? He'd had them on since before he was even thrown in that damned cell. If they were going to bother him, they would've done it days ago.
The cell. Of course.
Gods, wasn't this pathetic? A handful of days stuck between buzzing blue walls and now his body couldn't relax in their absence. It was being blinded by the sun after a couple of days in the mines all over again. He gritted his teeth and resolved to ignore the disquiet.
Two elevator rides, far too many turns, and three security checkpoints later, he found himself entering some kind of lab. The three standard guards remained outside, but Winter kept pace.
To his left stood a medical bay partitioned off by clear glass walls with a surgical cot sitting patiently under a harsh light. Metal instruments lay in wait on rolling tables for their call. Those tools, that light—Adam twitched and looked away, to his right, where some kind of scanning booth extended from the wall. Within the green embrace of its square arms stood a young woman he recognized. Her eyes were closed as the lights moved up and down her body in carefully calibrated patterns.
He couldn't help stopping, seeing her again. Whole.
"Ah, you're here early!"
The voice pulled his gaze away from the robot he'd left to die and to Pietro emerging from the L-shaped desk on the far end of the room. The monitor behind it clicked off, but not before Adam glimpsed a news broadcast. The camera had been focused on a podium. The tagline, of which he'd only caught a piece, had said something about a new breach in Mantle's wall and then, separately, something about Jacques Schnee.
"The elevators were for once not a bottleneck," Winter said. "Where are his things?"
His things? He was permitted things now? His gaze cut to the left of the desk, along the same wall as the surgical suite, where a row of gear lockers sat. Most were closed and the only open one was empty. A closed door to some back room took up the wall between them and the desk. His fingers twitched.
Winter drew even with him. Her eyes were tundras. "Don't even think about it."
He tsked and looked away. "I wasn't."
"We're not blind, you know." The short woman he hadn't even noticed—Maria, his mind supplied—hopped off the desk to join Pietro on the walk up to Adam. "You're looking much better than the last time I saw you. They must be feeding you pretty well. Atlesian hospitality—a true rarity, if you ask me."
"His things," Winter repeated.
"Ah, yes." Pietro gestured behind him. "I left them in the back—meant to get them before you arrived, but, well." He paused to cough. "Er, as I was saying, here you are."
"Here we are indeed."
Pietro turned for the door to the rest of the lab. "Be back in a jiffy. Penny's last scan is about to finish, so don't be alarmed when she wakes up."
"Oh, you know what?" Maria trailed after him. "I actually moved the coat. Had a change of my own to make, you see."
Their voices faded as the door slid shut, leaving Adam with Winter and the robot Penny, whom he now realized had her eyes open. The lights around her faded and the sensor array pulled away from her. She stepped out and smoothed out her skirt. "I am fully repaired!" she declared.
"He fixed the servo that was acting up?" Winter asked.
"Indeed! I will return to Mantle shortly to continue assisting with handling the Grimm threat."
"You've been under repair this entire time?" Adam pried.
Penny looked at him, blinked once, and then cocked her head. "You tried to kill me, but I do not have orders to arrest you anymore."
Adam lifted his bound hands high enough for her to notice the restraints. "Probably because I'm already under arrest."
She blinked again, then smiled. "That would make sense. I have been under repair for the last forty minutes to address damage caused by standard wear and tear. The damage I sustained while fighting you was fixed a long time ago."
Winter shifted on her feet, drawing Penny's attention while Adam grappled with whether he found that turnaround disconcerting or not.
"You are receiving a call," Penny noted.
"It's not important right now."
Now that he was listening for it, Adam could hear the buzz of Winter's scroll. He could also tell when it finally stopped and then, a mere second later, started up again.
Winter's eyebrow twitched.
"You should take that," Adam suggested with as much condescension as he could manage—and he could manage a lot. "It seems urgent."
She scowled at him, glanced at Penny, and then whipped the scroll out of her pocket. "What is it? This had better be urgent, I'm—"
Whoever had called spoke so quickly that their voice was a garbled mess even to Adam's ears. Winter furrowed her brows.
"Slow down and speak clearly, I—he's done what?"
Adam made a show of leaning in closer. Winter's gaze cut to him. "Penny, can you monitor him for a minute? I need to deal with this."
"I should really return to Mantle."
"A few minutes, Penny, please."
Something in Winter's tone caused Penny to purse her lips in a surprisingly readable expression of worry. "I will keep an eye on him while you handle the situation."
Winter nodded and made a swift exit from the lab. As the echoing click of her heels and her clipped voice faded, Adam returned Penny's unblinking stare. Something else about her was bothering him, something other than her return from certain death without any apparent evidence of her injuries. He knew her from something else.
It clicked, his stomach twisted, and he hoped against reason that her answer to his question would be no.
"Did you fight in the last Vytal tournament at Beacon?"
"I did. However, I was unable to win my final match."
In front of him stood a mechanical girl talking blithely about her own murder utterly unbothered by the horror inherent in the fact that, despite that death, here she stood. There, she had been a sleeper tool just participating to see how effectively Atlas could camouflage their tech while still showing off that same tech's dominance over every other kingdom in Remnant. A proof of concept shredded thanks to that one prodigy's semblance. Here, though? Here she was an abomination—and it was no fault of her own.
"You were killed," he said slowly, "murdered, in fact, to begin the attack on that academy."
"I was. It was terrible to hear how things worsened after my death; I wish I could have been able to help, but my power core and what you would see as a nervous system were irreversibly damaged."
He waved a hand, not caring about any of that. "You died and, instead of letting their pet machine slip from their grasp, they brought you back so they could use you all over again. It's even more disgusting than I thought."
"I'm…sorry?"
"You're a tool to them." He glanced at her but the naïve confusion on her face just fanned his anger. "You're nothing more than a tool for them to use at their convenience; they don't even let you die. They tell you you're a real girl just so you don't realize their requests are orders."
Her eyes widened. For a machine, she communicated hurt with surprising efficacy. "What have I done to you?"
"It's not you."
"Then…Then why are you so angry with me?"
He snorted, turning his gaze to the wall. "I'm angry with your creators. They're using you."
"I have chosen to protect Mantle."
"Have you? Or were you just programmed to think that way?"
"My father would never do something like that. My decisions are my own."
Father. It didn't take a genius to piece together that she meant Pietro: his lab, his tools, his robot. Her earnest surety brought a scowl to his face. Maybe this whole conversation was in vain; if they'd made it so she couldn't question her own motivations, her existence, then no number of words could overcome that code.
Even so, he felt compelled to try one last time. A machine crafted in Atlas with no apparent awareness that it wascrafted and not born and that there was an abyss between the two—it infuriated him that no one else saw a problem with it, that Blake didn't see a problem with it. If Penny didn't understand that she was created to be used, then she stood no chance of cutting those strings on her own.
He reached up and rested one hand on his scar. The tissue wasn't as sensitive as the skin around it, but he felt the pressure of his fingertips easily enough. "What do you know about the faunus?"
"The faunus?" She blinked. "The faunus are an intelligent species very similar to humans. Individual faunus express one trait of a specific animal, most commonly as ears, tails, horns, or fur on their bodies, and these features are hereditary. Different combinations of—"
"Not what they are. Their history. How we've been treated by the humans."
She blinked again. "In terms of their recent history, a dog faunus joined one of Atlas's premier huntsmen squads this past year."
He snarled and she fumbled the start of her next sentence before falling silent. "The camps," he hissed. "Mining Dust from birth until death because it was all we knew."
"Um, I have access to all of the Schnee Dust Company's public information about their practices as well as news coverage and," she hesitated a second, gaze going unfocused before it snapped back to him, "four amateur documentaries on conditions in other companies' Dust mining facilities. There are no public records about child labor. There are some classified government documents that you are not authorized to hear about."
He went rigid. "You think I'm not authorized to hear about what I lived through?" Fury pulled at the sensitive skin around his eye and dropped his voice to a growl. "What I endured?"
Penny leaned back, one hand coming up in a weak defense. "I'm sorry, but the scar over your left eye does not change your security clearance—"
"Enough!" he snapped. He'd been right. It was pointless. He turned his head away from her. "You're nothing but a puppet after all."
Just looking at her made him sick. Bringing life into this world just to make it a weapon? Bad enough that he'd done that transformation to himself; to do it to another was unconscionable.
The door leading to the back slid open to reveal Pietro trailed by Maria. Pietro had Blush laid across his lap whereas Maria carried a duffel bag with the strap over one shoulder.
"Apologies for taking an extra day," Pietro said as he laid Adam's weapon on the desk. "Between the main project and every other thing that crosses my plate, I didn't have the time until earlier this morning to finish testing repairs."
Adam scrutinized Blush as best he could from where he stood, noting a slight warp in the light gleaming off the metal where Yang's prosthetic limb had bent the steel. Better than it had been when she first pulled that move, but there would be no hiding the deformity completely.
His weapons, though, were not at the forefront of his mind, not anymore.
"Do you have any idea what you've done?"
Pietro balked at the venom in Adam's tone. "I know no one can remake the original, but I did try my best to—"
"Not that," Adam snapped, dismissing Blush with a wave of his hand. That hand stopped, pointing at Penny. "Her."
Penny and Pietro exchanged a confused look. "My daughter?"
Adam scoffed. "Daughter? You built a military machine. That you made it look human and made it think it has free will is exactly what I would expect a human like yourself to do. I guess the only positive I can say is that you didn't make it look like a faunus."
"Just a moment," Maria started.
"Stay out of this," Adam snarled. She pressed her lips together, shoulders falling a fraction, but she did not try to interrupt again.
Pietro furrowed his brows. "Now, I think you're jumping to some conclusions here. You should understand, there were many, many ethics meetings during Penny's development. Getting the project greenlit over more paladin designs with those ethics principles agreed upon took nearly three-quarters of a year. None of this was done lightly."
"And yet you display complete disregard for the implications of what you've done. You've made a thinking, feeling, tool. Just because no one can see the chains doesn't mean they aren't there."
"I did not make a tool, young man. Penny, although she has been an asset to this kingdom, is above all my daughter—and I only ever want the best for her. I want her to experience the joy of being alive, learning new things, and having friends." Penny's eyes widened but Pietro didn't notice. "General Ironwood understood this when he approved the project. Some disagreements aside, we are on the same page."
"Oh, good. You got the esteemed general's permission to build him intelligent robot soldiers who can be programmed out of any disloyalty. Well done! Truly covering all angles. As expected of an expert Atlesian scientist."
Pietro held up under Adam's withering sarcasm. "I understand why Penny upsets you. All I can do is assure you that she is my family and not some tool in Atlas's arsena—" he broke off into a coughing fit severe enough to make him double over. Maria was by his side in an instant, her own duffel bag forgotten while she rubbed his back. Penny fetched a water bottle from the desk, but Pietro waved her off as his feeble aura flickered out of view.
Aura that, Adam realized, was the exact same color as Penny's. And Pietro was, in Adam's own words, an expert scientist who had done the impossible and built a robot with aura in a kingdom rumored to be experimenting with aura transfer technology.
"You…gave her your soul," he realized.
Pietro shook his head, but his response had to wait until he took a sip from the water bottle that was now in Maria's hands. Unlike Penny, Maria did not take no for an answer.
"It's not quite that simple, but I did gift her some of my aura—it's hers now, though."
If Penny's aura came from Pietro, then her resurrection wasn't as simple as booting up an old machine in a new chassis. Her aura would have been gone completely after that spectacle at the tournament, meaning that, whatever share she'd been given initially, she'd had to be given again. He wasn't familiar with the specifics of Atlas's aura transfer technology, but given Pietro's condition, whatever aura was transferred probably could not be recovered by what was left behind.
"You're a fool."
Pietro regarded Adam with a saddened gaze. "I understand why you dislike what I have done, but I cannot agree. Penny's life is hers, not some shadow of mine. She is my daughter, my pride, and my joy."
"Even if you genuinely care about her, you've still created a prototype for future Atlesian legions—sentient robots who can be fueled by the souls of those who themselves cannot or do not want to fight. Your personal intent doesn't matter anymore, can't you see that? All you've done is selfishly open the door to the exploitation of a new group!"
The lab's main door slid open. Winter paused on the other side, narrowed eyes taking in the tension that was one wrong word from sparking into a fire.
"Whatever this is about, it is no longer the priority," she said. "He needs to be evaluated. Are we finished here?"
Pietro pursed his lips but nodded.
Winter picked up Adam's weapons before he could make any move to do so himself. "You will be permitted to carry these only in the training hall. Anywhere else and you will be presumed armed and dangerous."
Even though he still had his hands bound. He rolled his eyes; when they settled, Maria was unzipping the duffel and tossing a black coat his way. He caught it awkwardly—having his wrists tied together meant that he couldn't exactly spread it out to take a good look. It was heavier than his previous coats, stretching down well past the waist with a white fur trim around the edge of the hood. Red accented the vent panels under the arms and lined the asymmetrical zipper cover. A familiar white crest sat upon the left breast. Turning it around, an even more familiar red rose decorated the back.
"I took the liberty of putting that symbol you seem to love so much on the back," Maria said as he examined it. "Quite frankly, leaving it empty felt wrong. The rest of it on the back was too much for me, especially in only a couple of days. You'll have to forgive that."
Set low enough that the hood wouldn't cover it, the emblem—lacking its old white backsplash—did not stand out as starkly from the black as it once had. He brushed a thumb over the stem, feeling the tight stitchwork roll under his skin. The rose hadn't been alone since he was…It had been years. Years and years.
"Well? Lost for words?"
Snapped back to the present, he folded the coat over one arm. "It's good work. Very good work."
"Of course it is! My eyes might not be what they used to be, but for this kind of thing they're just fine."
"Thank you," Adam said lamely. After the way he'd treated her, this was more than he deserved.
"You're quite welcome."
Alongside the coat came a simple red shirt. Thick, long-sleeved, and reinforced along the seams, it would serve as a protective underlayer for Atlas's climate. The pants, too, were thickened against the cold, and shared the coat's red accents as triangular panels on the outer thighs stretching from the waist that came to a point at the knees. Four of the remaining pieces—simple black boots with slightly reworked red treads for better tracking in the snow, a red face mask, black gloves with bright red palms, and his old banner—were easy enough to understand. The last, though, he paused to inspect in more detail.
At first glance, it was a variant of his original White Fang mask. But this one was halved so it would only cover the left side of his face. The two slits were screened with tinted glass on the inside; they were black holes to any outside observer, but for him, photosensitive protection. The part of the mask that would make contact with his face was also covered in soft cloth, something he had never bothered with on his own time.
"This…seems unwise," he noted, looking up at Pietro.
"I gathered from our conversation all those weeks ago and the way you fought my daughter that you do have some trouble with that eye of yours. You wore a mask with that slit pattern for years, so it seemed reasonable enough that it's something you're used to fighting with. I was given the impression that it's best if you don't have to devote too much time to adjusting. I had to extend it to go over your nose a bit to keep it in place, but it shouldn't hamper any sight out of your right eye, I hope."
Winter's expression said it all: this had been Pietro's idea. Probably Winter's to leave it blank; already, Adam was considering a new design. This was, however, not the time.
Still, who was he to refuse a gift freely given, even if it was not perfectly to his tastes? He set the mask in place. It was a closer fit than his original mask; the cloth made direct contact with his scar but was soft enough that it wasn't a bother. If nothing else, the slits provided better visibility than the blindfold and he wasn't about to keep walking around Atlas with his scar exposed if he had any other choice. The cold made it itch.
"Taking these too?" he asked Winter, nudging the bag of clothes with his foot. She scowled.
"Carry it yourself."
He slung the duffel over one shoulder as best he could and followed her out of the lab. The other three guards once more fell into step around him. As much as Winter herself, Blush's presence tugged at Adam's focus. Even when they reached the training hall, however, it was still not his to have. Winter jerked her chin at the door to the locker room.
"Get changed. You have two minutes."
He indicated the cuffs with a raised eyebrow. Winter held up her scroll to them. The back of the screen went opaque while she punched in some kind of code and then temporarily removed a glove to scan her fingerprint. The ever-present purple glow dimmed and died, and then the cords were neatly retracting into the cuffs themselves. She took them before they could fall.
This time, she didn't bother with another threat. Adam headed for the locker room with the full understanding that doing anything untoward would end badly.
But of course the three guards still followed him in. With how little privacy he'd had in custody, it didn't stop him from donning his new clothes, but it did grate on his nerves.
He left off the coat and face covering; the indoor training hall was too warm for them. The guards replaced his cuffs in what Adam considered an excess of paranoia before he was permitted to continue. He strolled into the main hall at precisely the 120-second mark like he'd gone all the way to the line purely by accident. Winter, in the center of the massive room, didn't comment on his boundary-pushing.
"We are here to establish a baseline of your combat ability so we can best understand how you fit into a team," she said. "We will start with accuracy."
Six pillars at varying distances rose up near the far end of the room. Each one had a glowing blue target at a different height. Adam tilted his head, confused.
"I've fought your robots and you. What don't you know?"
"Your semblance and combat have evolved since then."
"If it's just about my semblance, why all of this?" He gestured at the room.
"It's not just about your semblance. To work in a team, you need to know everything about your allies and establish baselines."
"Watch the robot girl's recording; I'm sure you store what she sees somewhere. That will tell you everything you want to know."
Winter's eyebrow twitched. "Perhaps we just want to make sure that the repairs to your weapons aren't flawed."
"Do you have so little faith in your engineers? I thought you were supposed to be the most advanced kingdom. Or was I wrong?"
"You—it's like you want to go back to that cell. Establishing baseline combat ability in controlled circumstances is standard procedure when forming new teams. Establishing the limits of one's semblance is equally standard for those who have them. Verifying that damaged weapons are viable again is common sense. Even with your unorthodox training I'm sure your organization had some equivalent protocol." She took a calming breath. "Either you start cooperating or I see fit to end this charade."
Pleased that he'd gotten under her skin and doing the bare minimum to hide it, Adam held up his bound wrists. "These are going to make it hard to shoot."
"I'm well aware." She gestured for him to keep them upraised and once more held up her scroll. This time, after releasing them, she clipped them to her belt.
Adam flexed his fingers and rolled his wrists. While Winter checked over Blush one last time, Adam began casually rolling up his sleeves to disguise how his hands were shaking. Ah, hatred. It was almost reassuring, in a way, to know that he could still feel it so deeply. The sight of Winter Schnee handling his weapons in such a cold, clinical fashion stirred it in a way not much else could. With it burning in his veins, it was damned hard to focus until he forced himself to breathe slowly and evenly.
It passed. Like an endless chain of storms, though, its heavy shadow lingered on every horizon.
"One full magazine," Winter said, extending Blush. She'd taken Wilt out of it; the gleaming red blade was left naked on a nearby upraised block. "Shoot the targets that light up and shoot them quickly."
He took the sheath and shifted it to its rifle form with a flick of his wrist. The transformation felt right—nothing sticking, no unexpected jolts or out of place clicks. A quick visual inspection confirmed the slight deformations along the outside of the barrel but anything extending to the inside would have been reshaped.
He spent a couple seconds confirming the magazine was full, the safety was off, and a round was chambered. Satisfied, he walked up to the line in the floor glowing brighter than the rest and nodded at Winter. Winter signaled someone else, and then the farthest target lit up red.
Aim, exhale, fire. The target flashed green, another flared red. He fired again, and again, and again, like a machine. Every trigger pull was smoother than the last, every return to center after the rifle kicked in his hand faster than the one before it. Each bullet flew true. No flaws in the barrel, the firing mechanism, anything. The repairs were good and he was better.
The last bullet crashed into the nearest target. Another lit up but Adam made no move to shoot it. "I thought you said it was one magazine."
Winter noted something on her scroll.
"Unless," Adam drawled, "you were checking my ability to keep track of my bullets. Do I look like an amateur to you?"
"You look like someone who was on death's door until recently." She flicked her scroll closed and gestured for him to hand over Blush. He did, though it hurt. The way she pulled it from his reticent grip felt personal. "We need to see how efficient your semblance is both with and without your weapon. Without comes first. You will be dealing with that block." She indicated a single cube raised a few yards away.
"You want me to use my semblance on a cube."
"Yes."
Muttering another unflattering comment about Atlas and technology, Adam placed his hand on top of the cube and concentrated. His aura flared, activated for the first time in days. He poured its protective warmth into his hand and then pushed it out, in the process twisting that comfort into contagion. The cube offered some resistance as a solid object, but he had his full store of aura to waste, and so waste it he did.
Within a few moments, he was encased in a storm of petals and his hand was no longer making contact, the surface having peeled away under it. By the time the last of the cube disintegrated, nearly a minute had passed, and Adam was sweating.
Fifty percent of his aura, if not more, to wilt away a cubic yard of solid matter without any stored power or tools. Just like in the cell, too, he'd had to stand perfectly still to maintain a consistently high rate of decay.
Straightening and dusting off his hands purely for show, he turned to Winter. "Satisfied?"
She was frowning at her scroll again. He scowled.
"What?"
"It was slower and costlier than expected relative to your effort against the cell walls."
"It was bigger, denser, and not made from Dust. Harder to break apart." Half-truths. He'd limited the decay and its efficiency on purpose; best to keep at least some of his abilities to himself.
She made a note of that, then raised up another cube to replace the one he'd disintegrated. "You will do the same thing again with your sword."
If she noticed his hand shaking slightly in anticipation when she handed over Wilt, she didn't say anything. Adam ran his fingers down the length of the Dust-infused blade, eyes scanning the metal for any hint of imperfection while its ever-present heat soaked through his gloves.
No nicks, no cracks, perfectly polished and honed to a bleeding edge. He nodded his approval and then held out an expectant hand to Winter, which she stared at with a raised eyebrow.
"My rifle," he said, exasperated.
"You don't need that to use your sword. I've seen you do this."
"You said this is about efficiency. I'm at my most 'efficient'"—he paused just long enough to let his disdain for the term shine through—"when drawing Wilt directly from the sheath."
She mulled it over for a second before she sighed and tossed Blush over to him. He caught it and shifted it back to sheath form. Wilt slid home and that soft click undid a knot of tension he hadn't even realized was still curled up in his chest.
When he opened his eyes after drinking in that fleeting moment of peace, he saw Winter regarding him with one hand hovering near her sword.
Rather than comment on that and sour his own mood further, he turned to the second cube, poured half of his remaining aura into Wilt, and swung. The blade was in open air for only an instant. In that time, its aura-enhanced reach cleaved through the cube in a perfectly horizontal cut. The top half broke apart in tandem with Wilt being sheathed again; the bottom half, still connected to the rest of the floor, took a moment longer.
"Less aura, more power, and more range," Winter noted. "As expected."
"Are you satisfied now? Or will you waste more of our time confirming what you already knew?"
"We have enough data on your static abilities," Winter confirmed, pocketing her scroll for what Adam hoped was the final time. "As for how those abilities perform in combat…"
One last cube, this one glowing red, rose up from the floor some thirty yards away. A moment later, a veritable maze of blue walls, all of them varying in height, width, and length, rose up to cut off his view.
"The red cube is your target. You will destroy it with your semblance, and I will work to stop you."
A chance to fight a Schnee? Or a trap?
"Let me guess: I can't attack you. What kind of target are you pretending this is, exactly? Taking out the guard should be—what did you call it? Common sense."
"Equate the cube to whatever objective will make you realize that defeating me is not your primary goal. You can attack me if you wish, but take more than five minutes to destroy the cube, and you lose. The test starts now."
He was fast; Winter was, just barely, faster. His slash cut through where her chest had been while she skated away on a short track of white glyphs that had begun spawning even before she finished speaking.
She disappeared around the nearest corner. He gave chase, dropping into a slide past that corner with Blush raised and ready in rifle form. Winter's thrust went just over his head and Blush's shot caught her in the stomach. Her aura flared white but, undaunted, she sent her knee arcing towards his face. He tilted his head back to buy the split second he needed to get Wilt in the way.
Instead of smashing his nose, her knee strike to the flat of the blade served as a springboard for him to flip away and land back on his feet. He sheathed Wilt and they regarded each other for a second, any of a dozen moves planned and discarded with every minute shift of their feet.
She narrowed her eyes. "Four minutes and thirty seconds."
"Forgotten how to count? It hasn't even been twenty."
She smiled and beckoned him on with her free hand. "You'll get there."
He met her smile with one of his own, secure in the knowledge that she'd made one critical mistake: in telling him how long the test lasted, she'd revealed exactly how long he had to inflict pain. He was going to use every last second.
For a moment, their standoff held—but only for a moment. Adam blitzed forward with a flashy five-strike combination that left no room for a counter. On the last strike, he followed up with a shot from Blush, which he'd hidden in the shadow of his own back. The bullet caught Winter in the stomach but only irritated her.
She launched into a counterattack every bit as quick as his own. With every strike, though, he found it harder and harder to hide his grin. She finally noticed the light in Wilt and tripled the strength behind her next flow.
He flipped in the air to land against the wall in a crouch perpendicular to the ground before gravity mandated that he drop down. When he did, he saw Winter with her blade jammed into the floor and a white glyph more intricate than her usual fare lighting her up from below.
Summoning. But where was the—
Something slammed into him from behind. Teeth gripped his abdomen while the icy grimm let out a muffled roar. He hadn't even heard it coming! How had it—
A flash of white in the corner of his eye revealed the answer: wings. It had flown through that fucking wall to surprise him.
Gritting his teeth against the pain of the beast's bite, he spun Wilt into a reverse grip. Bits of wall flew past him while he stabbed blindly down at the beast taking him for a ride. It crashed through another wall with Adam as its battering ram and on the next stab he released the power in Wilt without care for direction or control. The beast all but exploded into petals and Adam was left to tumble in a heap onto the ruins of the cubes he'd just been shoved through.
Panting, he used Wilt as a crutch to lever himself back to his feet. A manticore; she had a gods-damned manticore.
That was new.
"Tired already?" Winter taunted. Her voice came from his left but the rain of miniature nevermores, white and cold as frost, fell from above.
"I started with a quarter of my aura!" he snarled as he fended off the onslaught with a whirling wall of bladework. Disintegrating nevermore halves piled up at his feet. "Do you really need such an overwhelming advantage, Schnee?"
A glimmer of reflected light hit his left eye, the only detail it could pick up, but it was enough. He whirled and deflected Winter's lunge high with Wilt and her follow-up stab with that irritating second blade wide with Blush. Their momentum left them inches apart. Winter glared up at him.
"Do you think you'll have the luxury of being prepared when the time comes?"
His answer was a headbutt that staggered her. He swept her legs before she could get her balance back and then, as he rose and she fell, stabbed down with Wilt. Her breath left her in a gasp when she slammed into the ground but she still got her blades up in a crossed guard to catch Wilt's point before it could tear through her chest.
A glyph spun up behind him; a bullet from Blush shattered it, along with the next three. He leaned more weight on Wilt until her weapons were pressing against her own chest.
He grinned. "Two minutes and fourteen seconds."
Her eyes went wide with anger and then she was throwing Wilt aside with a shout. The glowing red blade skated across her flaring aura for an instant before he pulled it back to defend against a barrage of bladework. Her form was tight, disciplined despite the rage, and she refused to give him any opportunities to parry, much less outright counter. Within two strikes he was on his back foot; within five he was retreating. She refused to give him any room and pursued him too closely for him to risk a full retreat.
His sword was made for straight thrusts as much as slashes; hers, particularly that smaller one, for rapid and pinpoint thrusts. Lacking a weapon as nimble as her own, he found his defense pushed to the limit. Every time he tried to surprise her with a shot from Blush, she saw it coming and either dodged the bullet or knocked the barrel askew at the last second.
The maze's narrow halls turned claustrophobic as they clashed across every available square foot. Adam could outpace her moment-to-moment by flooding his limbs with aura, but that move risked injury and whenever glyphs came into play he was still at a disadvantage.
He ducked under a stab and fired Wilt into her stomach. She staggered back but summoned a blue glyph between them. He slashed it only to realize as it disappeared that it had been a decoy. An ice spear slammed into his shoulder from behind, nearly jarring Blush from his grasp, and in that brief moment of vulnerability a web of white glyphs sprung up around him. His aura, flickering from that last blow, couldn't now be higher than fifteen percent.
And as Winter blitzed him from every conceivable angle, his desperate defense couldn't stop her from chipping away at what was left. Every glyph he destroyed was replaced in the next instant, every slash he could dodge followed by another two he couldn't. Both of their styles relied on precision and her semblance gave her the edge over his speed and aura control.
He needed her upset, making mistakes, overcommitting, or he was going to lose. But what could he say? She didn't care about him beyond her dislike of him as an ally and he knew precious little about her outside of their clashes. What else was there?
As he tilted his head to avoid one thrust and deflected the second with Wilt, the answer came to him. A kick that Winter drew back to dodge bought him the time he needed to say it.
"It's too bad your sister couldn't put up this much of a fight," he sniped.
It was only as he smashed clean through a second wall, the blow that had caused this flight too fast to recall, that he considered to just how risky of a ploy he'd now committed. Dented cubes tumbled down around him when he slid down the intact third wall. Spitting out blood from where he'd bitten his cheek on impact, he shoved himself to his feet. His aura flickered; single digits at best. He'd had barely any margin for error before and now it was gone completely.
Winter leaped through the holes he'd and dropped to one knee with her weapons held out in front of her. Intricate glyphs interrupted the space around her and in seconds she had a small zoo's worth of Grimm surrounding her. Nevermores, beowolves, a few centinels, and even an ursa. That many summons? More than a few were fuzzy around the edges and he could see the sweat beading on her brow; she was being wasteful.
Good.
"You will keep any comments about my sister far from your tongue," she snarled.
At her command, her creations hurled themselves at him with all the grace of drunkards. Perhaps their number reduced her control; perhaps she was just too angry to care. Either way, their sloppy movements left them full of openings that would render them little more than springboards for him to get to her.
He spared a split second to identify his route, concentrated his aura in his legs, and lunged for the closest centinel. To the beast, he all but disappeared from where he was and then the beast knew no more, its head separated from its body while he was already converting that swing's momentum into a thrust that speared the nearest beowolf's chest.
His feet turned, his hips turned, his chest and shoulders and all of him turned in a dance too fast for the eye to follow. Wilt was a red blur flashing through the air until he emerged on the other side of the horde. The last of its blade slid into Blush the instant the final ursa broke up into wisps of snow.
In that same instant, a searing blue glyph flared beneath him. Still empowered from his rush, he threw himself out of its range and winced at the pillar of ice that exploded up from it. Winter broke through it from above with a cry and those crystalline shards, under the command of the white glyph that had been hidden inside the pillar itself, aimed themselves and shot towards him.
Even at his best, one—or worse, Winter herself—would slip through his guard, and he was far from his best. Rather than take the risk, Adam dropped into a crouch. The shadows surged, his red shirt and accents pulsed, and then he ripped Wilt from Blush like a bandage from a wound. The bloody crescent devoured every shard and only her last second kick off of the nearest chunk before it was obliterated saved her from the same fate.
She landed badly, though, and he pressed his advantage. He couldn't give her a chance to catch her breath and realize what he was doing. A silent aura clone shot out ahead of him and knocked the smaller of her weapons out of position. He was an instant behind it to deflect the lunge that would have pierced the clone through the chest and wasted all of the aura he put into it. Inside her guard, he aimed Blush's barrel under her chin, savored her eyes flicking towards it in realization, and pulled the trigger.
Now with space and just enough time, he angled himself, flooded his foot with aura, spun, and buried his heel in her stomach. Her aura flared, spittle flew from her lips, and then she was flying through the wall to Adam's right. He gave chase through the crumbling hole in her wake.
A beowolf tackled him when he cleared the gap; he kicked it away and took it out with a headshot from Blush, and though Wilt could deflect the icy spears from the next glyph, it could not simultaneously save him from the pommel of Winter's smaller sword crashing into his temple. The blow sent him sprawling, head ringing, nausea bubbling in his stomach while his aura flickered in warning.
He lifted his gaze. Three yards away: the red cube.
Winter's furious cry warned him to roll in the opposite direction. Her blade stabbed half a foot into the ground where his chest had been but she used the other to deflect Blush's shots without any difficulty.
"Your aura is about to break," she said, freeing her main weapon. "Yield. This assessment is over."
He pretended to think about it while pulling on that thread of power he'd planted with that earlier kick. "You gave me a target that's supposedly valuable enough to supersede you. At that point, my life—my aura—is no longer a concern. If you want such a cheap victory, take that into account. Then again," he pointedly angled his gaze towards her stomach, "awareness of my goals doesn't seem to be your strength."
She followed his gaze to where a growing line of crimson decay was eating away at the bright white of her aura. Snarling, she flared that aura, dispelled the wilt, and retaliated with another ice wall—probably intending to freeze him and force him into submission. He dove back through the hole in the wall, stabbed Wilt into a cube to his left, and used it as a lever to yank himself out of the way of the surge. He hit the ground and rolled awkwardly, a chill on his back letting him know he hadn't come out unscathed.
No matter.
He rolled his shoulders to shake off the worst of it and assessed the ice spears now plugging up his route. He didn't have enough power stored or a convenient projectile to break the wall again, so instead he bounded up the ice like it was an inconvenient staircase. Wilt again became a fulcrum when he stabbed it into the topmost piece to give himself the grip his feet had just then lost.
As he slid down the slope leading back towards Winter and the red cube, he glimpsed a slew of white glyphs already vanishing out of the corner of his eye. He threw himself off of the ice and twisted in the air to catch Winter's downward slash on Wilt's partway drawn blade. The metal lit up red but that small relief was wiped out by Winter planting her boot in his gut. He crashed to the ground but turned his tumble into a flip back onto his feet.
The small moonslice he unleashed, not even strong enough to alter the world's colors, was still enough to break her concentration and force her back to the ground. She landed just off of the line between him and the cube. To his left, the ice spears; to his right, a sharp corner cutting off any quick escape. The wall with a small moat of debris behind him was no better.
"You waste Dust better than any human I've seen," he said.
Winter smirked.
A black glyph spun up in front of him. Behind it, a second glyph promising the end of the fight if he was sucked in bloomed. He shielded himself against the pull, but though he remained still, the boxes behind him did not. Sharp corners dug into his back and legs as the boxes were yanked into the gravity well. One clipped his horn and snapped his head down and to one side. His neck twinged from the abrupt motion and a harsh burning sensation radiated up its right side just under the skin. Something had been pulled or torn; he wasn't sure which.
The next cube he saw coming from the shadow it cast on the ground. He jumped, ignoring the vertigo of the glyph's pull, and landed a bicycle kick on the cube's nearest face. The newly christened missile smashed through both glyphs but Winter wasn't on the other side of them anymore.
He landed on his feet but immediately let his knees buckle. His momentum carried him into a side roll under Winter's swipe and as he was just beneath her, he aimed Wilt and fired the hilt directly at her left wrist. Even her aura couldn't deaden the impact completely and it knocked the smaller blade from her grasp.
She tried to grab Wilt before he could recover it but the blade had never even full left the sheath so it was child's play to yank it out of her reach.
The cube was a mere yard behind him.
Winter lunged with a cry. Though she'd lost her secondary weapon, her swordsmanship with a single blade was still harrowing. Adam let her dictate the direction, absorbing blow after blow on Wilt, until she'd put herself back between him and the cube.
They were both breathing hard, Adam far more so, never mind that the burn in his neck was getting worse the less aura he had to deaden the discomfort. One of his shirt sleeves had come unrolled sat heavy with sweat. A stray hair kept getting tangled in his eyelashes.
"You and your sister fight the same. Same wasted Dust, same reliance on your semblance." He caught her in one last deadlock, left Blush hanging from his belt, and grabbed her sword hand with his free hand while she did the same to his. "Same weaknesses."
Wilt lit up like a torch. The air itself began to peel away and Winter's aura lit up just as bright when his semblance began eating at her weapon and the aura infused into it. He pushed the decay out farther, down her wrists, up her arms, across her chest—
The red glyph was there and detonating before Adam could blink. Thrown back, he slid into a stray cube and desperately grabbed onto the scraps of his aura. Winter was faster to get up, her substantial aura nevertheless flickering under the strain of his power that refused to be dispelled like before. This had come from his blade, not his body, and it would not be shaken so easily.
He had what he wanted, though: a clear shot to the cube that Winter was now conveniently leaning against for support.
One last time, he gathered his power. One last time, he wrapped his fingers around Wilt's hilt and readied himself for the draw.
One last time, he drew, slashed, and sheathed in one uninterrupted motion.
Winter had plenty of warning; the world-darkening effects made a moonslice as powerful as this impossible to hide. She jumped over the attack, breaking out of his semblance's lingering grip in the same moment, and landed in front of him. Her sword came to rest with its point hovering just over his heart.
Too exhausted to put up a convincing front of control, he allowed himself to slump as much as her weapon allowed while he took his hands from his weapons. Every breath rasped against his throat.
"Yield," she commanded. "You've lost."
He could, at least, manage a grin. "Have I?"
"You missed."
He tilted his head to see over her shoulder. The cube did, in fact, appear whole. It was only his sharp eye that could see the tiny nick down one side almost at the floor and it was only his soul that could feel the thread of his semblance's latent power.
"Even if I did, I told you, your test is flawed. I won't yield."
Frustration flared in her eyes but she merely exhaled, recentered, and met his gaze once more. "Putting on this show helps neither of us. You weren't expected to pass the test. You've done everything we needed you to do. So yield, and we can both be finished with this."
"Fine, then. I'll yield—" her relief was short lived "—just not to you."
"You cannot be serious. This is not the time to be petty."
"Rich, coming from you. I have my pride. I'm not sacrificing it for the convenience of a Schnee."
She pulled in a considerably longer breath this time. "If we call it a draw, would your pride remain sufficiently intact?"
Ephemeral black petals drifted up over her shoulder. A little longer. Starting it from such a small cut made ramping up the effect a much slower process. "A Schnee, willing to compromise? Are you sure that won't damage your precious reputation?"
"Pride, reputation, it's all the same. Now just say—"
"Schnee."
Both of them stiffened at the sound of Ironwood's voice. The man strode up to them while looking over the destruction with an appraising eye.
Winter lowered her sword.
"I had this under control, sir."
"I don't doubt your abilities, Winter, but it was clear from the first minute that this wasn't about the test for him or for you."
She pressed her lips together and looked away. Ironwood sighed. "This training room is not the place for either of you to settle grudges. This is a place where our people come to develop as students and warriors. Respect it."
"Yes, sir."
Adam, about to scoff, instead found his balance vanishing and his vision going gray at the edges. Heaving himself through the vertigo by sheer force of will, he fell on Blush as a crutch and caught the final glimmers of his crimson aura winking out through blurry eyes. He bowed his head even though it made his neck burn, allowed himself a few more beats to recover, and then turned a vicious grin on Winter.
Her confusion lasted for only a moment before she whirled to see the last of that red cube breaking apart into nothing. "When did you—"
"Deliberately exhausting your aura with your semblance is dangerous," Ironwood said. He didn't sound surprised, but of course he would've seen the cube wilting away on approach. "Doing it for something as petty as 'winning' a test that was already over doesn't reflect well on you."
"Petty to you," Adam returned, straightening as the dark spots in his vision receded. Four minutes and fifty-seven seconds. He'd cut it close. "What do you want? Is the Schnee specialist no longer good enough?"
Ironwood glanced at Winter. "The situation has worsened. You're needed to run the relief teams backing up Penny. Immediately."
Winter acknowledged the new orders with her lips pressed into a thin, somewhat worried line. Before she left, though, she took Wilt and Blush to hand off to the other guards, much to Adam's irritation. She walked away and Ironwood clasped his hands behind his back.
"I see a certain value in understanding why every soldier is on the battlefield. You can call this…ensuring we're all on the same page."
An interrogation of his motives? Really?
"You're the ones who recruited me after you couldn't kill me. I would've expected a great leader like yourself—" his voice dripped with sarcasm "—to be a bit quicker on figuring out whether or not you can trust me."
"I'll admit that disaster makes for unusual alliances and even worse timing."
"But why?" Adam pressed. "Why me? Why do you need me? You have nearly every huntsman in this entire kingdom at your beck and call. It doesn't make sense."
"You have unique talents that align with our plan to stop her and the skill required to use them."
Adam was rolling his eyes before Ironwood even finished. If the general was trying to both figure out why Adam was willing to work with him and give Adam a good reason to keep doing that, he was failing on both counts. He should have just left things in Blake's hands; she at least understood why Adam did what he did. "So it's just because I'm convenient? You're not giving me a good reason to fight, general."
"You wanted revenge on Cinder Fall, didn't you? The one targeting Atlas now is the one who made her what she was."
Offended that Ironwood thought he'd care more about revenge than stopping the tens of thousands of faunus in this kingdom and across Remnant from dying horrible deaths by Grimm, Adam prepared to retort with just that—and then realized that no, he'd been doing exactly that until Blake managed to get through to him.
Instead, he inhaled, drawing in air until his lungs shook. He held that for a second, ribs aching, before he let it out all at once.
This…these constant remindersof what he had done, what he had been—it was never going to stop. It made him tired, tired of what he'd done, tired of what he still had to do, and more than anything, tired of bridging that gap. And he was still only at the start of this journey.
"I won't pretend I'm a changed man."
"Good. I wouldn't believe you."
"But even I can see now the short-sightedness of letting Atlas fall to her. If Atlas falls, so does Remnant. The faunus can't have a better world as long as she exists."
They stared each other down, general to ex-commander. Though the general had two inches and decades on him, Adam refused to acknowledge the gulf between their respective ranks.
Finally, Ironwood nodded, acknowledging the steel in Adam's gaze. "You will have more training sessions to ensure your ability to work in a team. Once Mantle's situation is stable, we will see how you fare with the Ace Ops."
The Ace Ops?
Adam casually ran a hand through his hair, hiding within that motion a brush of his thumb over a section of his horn still scuffed from where it had smashed into the cave floor.
Sure, why not.
This wasn't Blake's first time standing guard in a command tent in a busy camp, but it was her first time doing it for someone who so clearly did not want her or her team to be there. Robin had said as much—loudly—when they showed up and even in the time since her distaste for her guard detail was evident. That distaste was echoed in every Happy Huntresses' attitude with the exception of Fiona. Although not a fan of theirs, she at least made an effort to be welcoming.
Even Joanna, who was helping Robyn at the tent's central table, was less than neutral towards them. May had always been skeptical, but after the concert, most of her more caustic comments had lost their edge. She was more…irritated at the situation in general than them specifically.
Robin, though. Blake glanced her way. The leader of the Happy Huntresses was rifling through folders of papers on the hunt for a copy of some obscure property form her organization needed for their rally during election night. A scroll off to one side was attempting to search through its terabytes of files to find a digital version without success.
And of course Robin caught her looking. The stare wasn't asserting dominance; if anything, it felt more like Robin was expecting her to ask something. It made sense, in a way. Blake had seen this same expression on her father's face a handful of times before he realized that she was the one who had been seeking his attention. Such was the burden on a leader.
Blake shifted her weight for the umpteenth time in the last ten minutes and used Gambol Shroud bumping against the support pole behind her as her excuse to break eye contact. Whenever Yang got back, Blake was going to ask if she could go on a walk of her own. This tent was stifling.
Another five long minutes passed before Yang finally returned. The tent's entrance flap opened and Yang strode in alongside a burst of sunlight previously restrained to the narrow gaps in the fabric walls.
"Hoo, I needed that," she declared to the room while she rolled her shoulder. "It is nice to be out of the wind, though."
"I take it you didn't see anything on your patrol," commented Weiss.
"No, not really. I mean, everyone's a little," she tilted her head, "anxious, I guess. Uneasy. Is it always like that?"
"Of course they're on edge," Robin said. "Election's in two days. I win, they actually get an advocate in the sky who can bring them the help they need. Jacques wins, the boot presses down even harder. Anyone who can help, is. Anyone who can't wishes they could. That energy's been building up for weeks."
"Is there anything we can do to make it better?" asked Ruby.
"You? When you're just here to babysit? No, I really don't think that's your area of expertise."
Ruby went to argue but the near-simultaneous ringing of all of their scrolls cut her off. Weiss was the first to pull hers out and Blake glimpsed Winter's reversed image on the caller ID.
"This cannot be good," remarked Yang. Into her scroll, she asked, "Uncle Qrow, what's going on?"
"Blake, this is Alanna from the Atlesian military faunus group. Have you heard what Jacques did? Does your Schnee friend know anything?"
"Um," she caught Weiss's eye. All of the color had drained from Weiss's face and she met Blake's confused look with one of horror. "I'm not sure. What's happened?"
"This." Robyn all but slammed her scroll down on the table. A projected message attachment queued up and ready flickered to life above it and began to play. On it, a pristinely groomed Jacques Schnee gripped the sides of a podium as he spoke on some kind of news broadcast.
"With no shipments allowed to enter or leave the kingdom, I know many are suffering, and my family has been weathering the same storm as many of you. Effective immediately, I'm forced to shut down all non-essential SDC operations. If elected to office, I will make the changes necessary to fix what Ironwood has broken. I hope you ask yourself before the vote: can you trust anyone else to stop Ironwood? Will Robyn Hill be able to—"
Robyn closed the message with a scowl on her face and brought the scroll back up to her ear to finish her call with whoever had sent it to her.
"Has he lost his mind?" Weiss demanded, half to the room and half to Winter. "People could die without those resources!"
Winter said something back. Ruby was on the line with Jaune, Yang with Qrow, and Blake tuned all of that out to focus on Alanna. "I just saw. Weiss only heard just now too. Is everyone okay?"
"It's all hands on deck. I was hoping you knew something, but…It was worth trying. Stay safe out there, Blake. He just poured gasoline on this kindling-ridden kingdom."
"You too," said Blake on reflex. She stared down at her scroll, lost. Where were they even supposed to begin with this?
Robyn, the polar opposite of Blake's overwhelmed inaction, was already barking orders to the person on the other end of the line. With her free hand, she gestured to Joanna, who fetched the other two from the tent's entrance.
"Whether or not he's lost his mind isn't our concern right now," she stated as the Happy Huntresses filed in and Ruby and Yang ended their calls with equally grave expressions. "Private heat banks are going to close down fast and public heat sources won't be enough. We need to get ahead of the riots. More negativity means more Grimm and we're already stretched too thin even with Atlas finally giving us the time of day." She paused to listen, then hung up the call after giving the person on the other end an affirmative. "Do we know where Penny is?"
"I think she had maintenance planned," Ruby said. "I'll call Pietro."
Robyn tsked. "It's going to take her a minute to get here. That's a blow; we could've used her for Grimm control."
For a second, Robin hesitated, eyes darting across the documents strewn over the table. Then she blew out a breath and drew herself up straight. "Joanna, handle coordinating the Grimm response without her. Fiona, you're on supplies. Tap our emergency stockpiles—this is what they're for. Bribe people if you have to, just get them inside and warm. May, crowd control. Anyone who's homeless or desperate, direct them to the Crater—we've got a little more natural heat and a bit of room to spare if we get cozy."
All three Happy Huntresses saluted and hurried out of the tent, each of them already calling orders to nearby people. Robyn stared after them a moment before she set her jaw and unceremoniously tossed her scroll to Ruby, who fumbled the catch.
"I need to record a message, tell people not to panic. Congrats, pipsqueak; you're the camera woman."
"W-what?"
"Camera. Message. Record." Robyn crossed her arms. "Where'd I lose you?"
"Right, okay. Um. Ready?"
Robin straightened and, when Ruby began the recording, spoke.
"For those of you who haven't heard, Jacques Schnee has just shut down all non-essential SDC operations, effective immediately. Shops are closed and shipments aren't coming.
"I know you want to panic. I know you want to hoard every bit of Dust you have or do whatever you can to get some. I know. But that will only hurt all of us in the end. Don't panic. The Happy Huntresses and I are here to help you.
"We have emergency Dust supplies for any life-support care, spare blankets and clothing, and if you need to move but fear the Grimm we can provide you a trained escort to keep you safe. Our website on the local net has all the information you need. It has an up-to-the-minute map of shelters with space around Mantle, known Grimm locations, and more. If you aren't safe where you are and don't have anywhere to go, come to the Crater and we will make room for you.
"If you believe that you, a loved one, or anyone you know is vulnerable and not in a position to help themselves, please contact one of us and we will check on them. If you are in a position to help yourself or others, please do what you can. And if you can fight, let us know so we can coordinate our response while Atlas decides whether or not we're worth protecting.
"Jacques Schnee," she all but spat his name, "has done this to make us desperate for his help, to divide us in a time of need, to make himself the answer to the problem he'd prefer you forget he's created. This isn't about Ironwood or his policies—this is about Jacques refusing to compromise or adapt when the SDC isn't allowed to do what it pleases. Don't let him intimidate you. Instead, it's high time we remind him that all of Mantle stands together and that we will not be forced into playing his games!"
As Ruby ended the video and lowered the scroll, Robyn let the fire bleed out of her and rested her hands on the table. Her fingers slowly curled into fists.
"That rat bastard," she told the table. "He's losing so he's using this to blackmail Mantle into voting for him."
"This can't be legal," Ruby tried, "right?"
"Who at the SDC is going to tell him 'no' right now?"
"But the Council—"
"No one's had the power to do something like this before so no one thought to write a law that explicitly bans it. And if he gets on the Council, no one ever will." She shook her head. Outside, the constant hum of activity had risen to a chaotic din so they all had to raise their voices. "I didn't think even he would sink this low. That's what I get for believing in his humanity."
"I…wouldn't have expected it either," Weiss said slowly. Under Robyn's dour look, she frowned. "Believe me, I am well aware of his worst traits. Something has made him cross this line."
Jacques's final words to Weiss in the manor all those days ago floated back to Blake: I. Don't. Lose.
"Maybe your brother knows something?" she suggested to Weiss, who nodded.
"Good idea. Let me message him."
Yang consulted her own scroll while Weiss waited for her brother to pick up. "This isn't good. People are rioting. We should be out there—"
Ruby rested a hand on her arm. "I know, I want to help them too. I trust the others to do what we can't be there to do ourselves. And besides, what if this is just a distraction?"
"A distraction for what, exactly?"
Robyn's pointed question had Ruby floundering for a reason that wouldn't hint at a grander plot. Blake prepared an excuse but Weiss held up her hand in a signal for silence. In that relative silence, Whitley's voice carried over the din outside to Blake's ears.
"I don't know why he's done this. He didn't warn me at all, and that is not like him. I am supposed to be the heir."
"There was nothing?" Weiss pressed. "No one, I don't know, called him? Wrote to him?"
"Well…a couple of weeks ago, father received someone in the middle of the night. I do not think I was supposed to know; I was having trouble sleeping and only heard them talking in his office by chance. He would have been angry at me for listening, so I…I kept it to myself."
"Did you see who was there?"
"No, the door was closed. He was…he spoke in a certain kind of way. I can't describe it, but—as though he and Father knew each other somehow."
"What did they talk about?"
"I didn't hear the beginning, but…Father was irritated with Ironwood's policies, the embargo in particular."
"Of course," Robin muttered.
"He felt the election was getting in the way of doing what needed to be done for the company, and the visitor—he said that he had a solution for both that and the 'Ironwood problem.'"
"Ominous," noted Blake. Yang nodded in agreement.
"Did they say anything specific?"
"They got quieter when they talked details. I couldn't hear them through the door."
If the office door was anything like the overwrought constructions at the front of the manor, then it was no wonder. Wood that thick and that finely fitted to the frame would deaden any sound inside.
But Whitley wasn't done.
"Ever since, Father has sometimes taken calls that I am forbidden from observing, even though I'm supposed to be the next leader of the company. I can't explain why it's so unsettling, but…I have a bad feeling about this."
Weiss met everyone else's worried looks with one of her own. "If you remember anything else, let me or Winter know. We'll get you out of there as soon as we can, I promise. Stay safe."
"You as well, sister."
I like Penny, I swear I do. Adam just has some hangups.
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