6:06
"We have a problem!" Weiss' voice crackled to life on Adam's Scroll, quality low even with this short a distance. Adam could barely hear it over the sound of Almond's chainsaw. Firing Blush as he drew Wilt, he unleashed a wave of flames that forced Almond away from him. A second fire Dust-infused shot completely bowled him over.
"Busy!" Similar calls from the rest of the team rung out as Adam flipped over Almond with his hand on his blade, but it was too late: his foe had recovered. One swing of his chainsaw launched him through the roof.
"The White Fang wasn't trying to just defend the train!"
He rolled to his feet atop a cart and fired Wilt forward just as Almond jumped from the hatch roaring. Adam grimaced as he rushed forward to grab his blade: this shot didn't carry Dust behind it. Sure enough, he swung, and the blade harmlessly bounced off of his chainsaw. He spun around the return strike and peppered Almond's back with slashes.
"They were trying to stall for time!"
Adam flipped over Almond's saw when he whipped around and, with the next shell-infused strike, Adam swept his blade at his legs and froze them to the ground. The elements must have been separated by a non-Dust shot. Something to keep in mind.
"They didn't want us to find out there aren't any brakes!"
Adam paused.
"Repeat that!" Surely, he'd heard wrong.
Almond snarled and broke one of his legs free. A shot to it returned it to the icy embrace and earned a roar of frustration from his frenzied partner.
"We can't stop the train! Not... not conventionally, anyways." The alternative was left unsaid: any other way to derail the metal monstrosity was bound to be dangerous, dirty, and would no doubt leave them trapped underground. Thoughts frayed, he could barely focus on the battle ahead when he heard the sound of ice shattering again. What came next in the magazine? Energy? Gravity?
"Well then, what's the plan?" Adam heard Ruby ask.
He stumbled away from the first swing, and blocking the second with his sheathed blade nearly ripped his weapon from his hand altogether. The momentum forced him to a crouch, and he flipped over Almond's head, letting the train do the work of making distance. Adam flipped Blush up and started firing, sending bullets and bolts of electricity flying into the captain. It was to no avail: he stormed through all of it and raised his chainsaw high.
He forced out the sound of conversation, took aim, and fired at Almond's weapon just as he reached him. A gravity-laced bullet charged with his aura slammed into Almond's chainsaw. Combined with the momentum of his one-handed swings, it sent the chainsaw whipping across the train until it embedded itself into a far off car and fell silent. Almond took one look back, then rushed Adam without it.
"Don't ask me, you dolt! I thought you were the leader!"
Yang plowed her fist past Neo's parasol and into her face with ease. Two blows had already left her aura crackling. Neo glared up with brown eyes but let Yang remain on the offensive. Yang's speed had not changed; meanwhile, it was like Neo had sped up, trying to let Yang tire herself out by weaving around each glowing swing. She'd just learned the hard way what would happen if she tried to block.
"Well, I, uh... hold on! Let me think!"
A blast of fiery buckshot perforated and scorched half of the car, but left Neo shattering once more. Yang felt the hook of her umbrella swing around and yank harshly at her neck. She didn't budge. Before Neo could slither away from her again, Yang grabbed her parasol, reached back and threw Neo over by her arm. The short girl landed on her back with a crash that echoed through the car. Still holding onto her arm, Yang lifted her leg up to stomp on Neo, ready to twist until either she submitted or her arm did.
Neo focused and vanished in a blur of white light just as her foot came crashing down. Yang turned as Neo dropped from the air and painfully bounced off of the ground again behind her.
Neo blinked as she rose, her eyes brown and white, aura beginning to fade. They became brown once more as she shot another glare at Yang.
Yang cracked her knuckles, grinned, and strode forward. It was over for the little pest.
"We'll stop it right before it hits the barrier!"
Without his chainsaw, Almond was still a threat, but nowhere near where he was before. His swings were quick and aura-empowered, but clumsy. Adam ducked under a hook and raked his sword across his chest. A step away from Almond's uppercut and he was firing the last gravity shot into his head. Almond finally was forced to take a step back, reeling. Adam gave him no time to recover, firing Wilt into his knee, flashing over to grab it and bringing it across his leg as he passed. He spun Wilt, twirled and slashed the back of his knee to finish the job and bring Almond down.
"We will be reaching the barrier in three minutes!" Penny chirped helpfully as his former right hand man turned to try and catch Adam with his elbow, but a Dust-empowered swing unleashed a wave of energy that sent Almond skidding to the end of the cart. Adam was on him in an instant with his blade sheathed and his foot jammed into Almond's stomach.
For the first time, Almond's aura began to wane. Adam placed his hand on his hilt and began to glow. It was almost over, now...
"Three minutes?! We barely even have enough time to get back together!" Weiss called out.
Neo had given up on trying to hold Yang back, now. Every swing and burst from her gauntlets was responded to only with dodging or the explosion of glass that left her nowhere to be found. But Yang had caught on now, turning around to pressure Neo again the moment she realized she'd been had. Neo had tried to make an offensive, jabbing her with the sharpened tip of her parasol, but she'd underestimated the power of Yang's semblance. Each blow only bounced off of her like steel. Yang could bite through the pain.
But could Neo?
"That sure must take a lot of aura, huh? Gettin' tired, yet?" Yang taunted Neo as the air shattered again and she watched Neo keep her distance from over her shoulder. "You know we already got Torchwick, right? A~all the way up there. But don't worry, you might see him again when you're getting dragged to jail!"
Neo's eyes flared white, and when Yang turned and fired another burst from Ember Celica to cover her, for once, she met Yang's attack head on by opening her parasol.
The fires would blind her. It was exactly what Yang was waiting for. Putting everything she had into speed, Yang rushed across the short distance, cocked her fist back and swung.
"Yang, Adam, how far are you?" Weiss asked as the air shattered once more.
Yang smirked. She knew exactly where she would be coming next. She spun and kicked behind her, and the air shattered once more. Flashes of white appeared in the corner of her vision. Her Semblance was running out, but Neo was getting desperate.
She had this.
"Adam?"
What was he doing?
Almond thrashed and roared beneath him, swinging but catching nothing from the desperation of it. Adam had his hand on his hilt, but he couldn't move. It'd be a simple flick of the wrist. One flare of the aura. One use of his Semblance, and it would be done. Almond would be gone. Dead at his hands.
Hands wielding a blade infused with Dust from the Schnee Dust Company. Hands that accepted that Dust from the very Schnee heiress now calling to him. Hands that not just halted and potentially killed dozens of his own faunus, but were about to take another: one who was so loyal he refused to even use Dust in his weaponry, no matter how useful it could've been.
His stomach twisted into knots. His hand trembled on his blade. The weight of his actions were grave enough to crush him, even when his anger was at his peak. He couldn't do it, Adam realized.
He couldn't kill Edward Almond.
He couldn't kill his friend.
"Yang?"
First, there was cold.
"Yang, can you hear me?"
Cold that penetrated her even through the unfathomable heat of her aura. Yang's breath caught in her throat as she forced herself to look down. A thin spike of steel was going clean through her stomach from behind, coated in her own blood. A prismatic glow ran across its length and briefly, Yang swore she could see her own eyes, wide in shock, staring back at her in it, like a mirror reflecting her fears. Her aura and Semblance alike waned, trying desperately to force the stiletto blade out of her or heal her wound shut.
But her aura was still there.
And with that realization came pain. Crippling pain. A guttural cry came from behind clenched teeth. She swore she heard Neo giggling as a boot pressed into her back and slowly, agonizingly so, Neo pulled her blade out.
Strangely, she also swore she heard something in the distance as her vision faded. Rumbling thunder. A bird's call.
"Yang!" Weiss cried out. "Yang's vitals are dropping; we have to help her!"
Adam snapped from his thoughts. Below Almond, a door opened and Yang was kicked through it into the next cart. Neo stepped into sight. Time stopped. Flecks of blood were across her cheek. A blade was drawn, covered in crimson. It was glowing. Aura penetration. No sounds of gunfire. No sounds from Yang.
In an instant, he made his choice: Adam kicked Almond back onto the top of the cart Neo was walking from. He shoved his aura into the last energy shell in Wilt, pulled the trigger and swung. Neo's eyes widened and she leaped backwards.
A neat, thin line of red escaped Wilt and raced through the train. A second passed, then it was not the connector that was cut away, but a quarter of the entire cart ahead. Metal screeched against the tracks as the section of the car left behind scraped against the rails, but the rest rapidly fell away into the black. Adam saw a glint of white in the distance: Neo's escape.
Almond, however, let out a last, defiant roar, fading away into the horde of Grimm.
Frankly, Adam thought as he sliced open the hatch to the cart where Yang was thrown, if they attacked him, the odds were stacked firmly in Almond's favor.
"I'm on my way back, Ruby! Neither of them are responding!"
Blood-red met emerald-green.
"Pick up, would you!"
Adam stood paralyzed in front of the unconscious Yang, eyes wide in shock.
"Say something, anything!"
A woman clad in black and crimson, Mistral-style clothing rose up from beside her. A complicated, plated mask of a Nevermore obscured her face. An ornamental headdress of dark feathers mixed in with her long, raven-black hair.
"Branwen," Adam breathed out.
Her fingers drummed on the hilt of her sword. A moment passed before she spoke.
"You're dealing with things beyond you, Adam. Escape before it's too late." She'd already turned away and drew her crimson blade. A simple flick of the wrist, and a twisting portal of her own colors opened. She'd already taken the first step when Adam realized she was already leaving, just like that.
"What? How? Wait!" Questions rushed to his mind faster than he could ask any of them as he leaped over Yang. Why was she here? Had she been in Vale all this time? Was she a part of this? What about him? What about Yang?
To his surprise, Raven stopped. "Vale will fall. You won't stop that, and every second you spend here will only make it worse." She turned to him and, after a moment's hesitation, offered her hand. "Leave Beacon. You'll be safe. So will Blake. You'll do far better with us, Taurus." A reminder. After all, it was her who gave him that last name in the first place.
It was tempting. It'd be easy. No worrying about Cinder digging her claws into Blake. No having to deal with being Ozpin's pawn knowing Blake would be wrapped up into the game. He'd abandoned the White Fang and they knew it: there was no place for him there any longer. Start anew. Rebuild. Refocus. Let the chips fall where they may. Slowly, Adam reached out.
"Wait, Ruby. Look at Yang's vitals!" Weiss' voice snapped him back to reality. "They're improving... Her aura's gotten higher, too? How?"
"Yang," he found himself saying. "What about your daughter?"
Raven's outstretched hand tensed for a moment, then relaxed. She refused to look back down.
"What about her?"
Adam's eyes widened. His mouth had already opened before he could think. Perhaps to protest, perhaps to bargain, perhaps even to agree. He would never know, for the sound of footsteps were already growing near from behind them. He looked over his shoulder.
When he'd looked back to Raven, the portal was already closing. She was gone.
"Sis!" The door barely had time to open before the wind rushed by him carrying rose petals in its wake.
Ruby was already at Yang's side, shaking her gently. Her sister groaned and shifted. "Are you okay? What happened to Yang? Is she hurt? Was it that girl? Where is she?" Each question came faster and harsher until the last was less an inquiry and more a demand. But that wasn't the question that bothered him, nor did the dangerous glint in Ruby's silver eyes.
Is she hurt? She'd been stabbed: of course she would've been hurt. Right?
"Neopolitan is long gone. I don't know her location." Adam looked down as he spoke, keeping his voice level to mask his stress. He could see the blood staining her stomach.
Yang suddenly took a sharp breath and rose, reaching for her abdomen. "I'm... I'm fine?" She moved her hand away. It was wet with blood, yet none of it fresh.
As Ruby hugged her sister and assailed her with another barrage of questions, Adam was trapped in his thoughts. There wasn't even a scar. How? What had Raven done? Why was she here? How did she know?
"We will reach the gate in approximately one hundred and eighteen seconds!" Penny chimed through their Scrolls.
"I'm sorry to have to break this up," Weiss began as she jogged into the car. "But we don't have any time left! We have to think of something!"
"What about the rest of the controls?" Adam asked, even through the haze of confusion in his mind.
"Destroyed, inoperable or pointless. I'm not a train expert: finding the brakes was the best I could do!"
"Well, we can't just sit around here and do nothing!" Yang hissed through gritted teeth as she forced herself back to her feet, Ruby clutched on tight with her gaze towards the ground. She might not have had a hole in her, but that didn't mean that having her aura strained and broken wasn't better.
"The White Fang has already started bracing themselves: no one even fired upon me on the way back," Weiss said. "This is the closest to full reign of the train that we're going to get."
"Entry into Vale in approximately ninety seconds."
"There's no time to get back to the front and reverse whatever Torchwick did to the train," Adam said somberly. The implication was clear: they were out of time altogether. Silence crept in, threatening to drag all four of them into what could be their last thoughts.
It was Ruby who pushed through it, eyes hard and determined. "Then we derail it. We... we came here to save Vale, right?" To crash the train here would leave them against White Fang and the Grimm. Alone. It'd be suicide. "No matter what—"
"No!" Adam barked without thought, hand clenched tight enough around Wilt's hilt to strain it. He wasn't losing them. He wasn't losing anyone. He realized, in the single moment of stunned quiet that followed after, that he wasn't afraid of his death. He was afraid of theirs. He was afraid of, just like in those dark mines so long ago, the rescue coming just late enough for some of them to die. For the rest to be survivors, bearing that guilt. It wasn't something he would wish on any of them.
He swallowed down his thoughts and straightened himself as the other three looked on in shock. Adam looked towards the hatch. "We're finding a way out of this." He leaped out of it and raced across the top of the train. He didn't have a plan. He only hoped one would come to him by the time he reached the front.
The air was getting clearer, now, no doubt from the fresh air leaking through the gaps in the gateway, whatever it was. Penny was standing at the train's head. Weiss wasn't wrong: even their Praetorians and Paladins were refusing to fire, instead hunkering down and awaiting the collision. He could feel the eyes of the White Fang on him as he passed.
Penny's gaze was locked on the dark path ahead. "I'm not detecting any form of explosive near the gate," she said without looking at him, brow furrowed.
The rest of the team came to a halt behind the two, breath catching in their lungs. They could all see it now: the imposing, steel wall growing closer and closer in the distance, barely lit by red, emergency lights. No bombs, no White Fang, no Paladins or Praetorians. The train was going to crash into the wall traveling at top speed.
As the rest of RWAY and Penny shot countless, panicked plans, scenarios and retorts between one another, Adam stared down at the weapon in his hands. He could see it now: even with their scant amounts of aura left, they could bunker down in one of the carts or behind an ice wall. They may live. The same could not be said for anyone inside the train: cars haphazardly smashing into one another, the ceiling, the walls. Dust crates detonating. The rubble would lock the remainders within with the Grimm until they broke free and assaulted Vale.
And the Grimm would assuredly feast on anything left behind before doing so.
They might live, but every last White Fang member here would die.
Behind him, he heard Yang suggest they put everything they have into slowing it enough to break past only the first gate. The train would still crash, but they could squeeze out from the carnage.
They might live, but every last White Fang member here would die.
But there was an alternative.
Someone called out to him. Time was running out. They were piling into the cab now. Better chance of getting through and surviving, even if they were at the front of the collision. Yet, he didn't move: the plan was becoming all too clear to him, now.
Ruby watched him from halfway down the hatch, holding onto the roof. Adam couldn't bring himself to look back. Not at her. Not after what he knew he needed to do. Slowly, he stepped back towards the hatch.
Ruby wasn't just wrong about her plan to derail the train, Adam knew. She was just as wrong to think that he'd come here to save Vale. She was wrong to think he was so selfless.
She was wrong to think he was a good person.
He pushed Wilt just barely from its sheath, enough to see the Mistrali carved into its side. Chuugi.
Loyalty.
He could deny it all he wanted, but Adam knew the White Fang were still his people. He wasn't losing anyone. Especially because of Cinder. He wasn't loyal to Vale. He wasn't loyal to Ozpin. But he was loyal to his team. Just as much as he was loyal to the White Fang.
The wall was here. Time was up. To think. To plan. To pretend he wasn't still one of them.
Adam felt Ruby grab at his coat, trying to pull him towards safety. It was too late: he had made his decision. Gathering up every drop of his hatred and aura alike, Adam ripped Wilt from its sheath and slashed out at the air. A blinding, red light cascaded through the tunnel. Masked in its glow, the sweep of Adam's Semblance outpaced the train by leagues. In the blink of an eye, it struck the barrier.
And the only obstacle between them and Vale was turned to wilting petals.
Ruby pulled him below the wave of petals as it passed overhead, the vision from the cab's front was obscured by rock, shouts and orders blended together, and then all was black.
Out of the four Kingdoms, Vale was considered the melting pot of the world. Free of the rigid class structure of Mistral, the ingrained racism of Atlas and the absolute chaos of Vacuo, the people mingled freely within its walls. The undisputed winner of the Great War, it cast away its opportunity to dominate the planet and instead allowed the old order to remain, believing that its differences only made them stronger. How right it was: its decision to accept its clashes yet refuse to let them spiral out of control left Vale paradoxically one of the more chaotic yet safest places for all kinds.
People walked the streets free from worry in this grand metropolis of thirty million, entire generations being spent without even wandering outside their district, let alone the city's walls. After all, what reason had they to worry? No Grimm could penetrate their natural barriers nor border defenses, no warring armies, no terrorists until only the most recent years, even their criminals were focused on being 'a step above' the rest with codes and laws rather than resorting to pure banditry and chaos.
They were the beacon of the world. A sign that if they could all come together in peace, prosperity would follow. Vale was not the biggest city, nor was it by any means the strongest, but ask any soul residing behind its numerous walls, and they would tell you that even with the Torches and the White Fang, it was the safest. There was nothing to fear in the night: not the curfews of Atlas, nor the alleys of Mistral, nor raiders of Vacuo.
Those very souls now shifted about in a sleepy haze as the very first of the sun's rays slipped beyond the rooftops to shine upon the streets. It was the crack of dawn, where those stuck in third shift jobs mulled about before returning home, and those unlucky enough to be called in early began their begrudging trek to work. Even in the midst of summer, a cold chill crept through the air: night's embrace tenuously slipping away. Doors were unlocked, 'open' signs flipped over or turned on with the faint hum of Dust, and the beginnings of chatter had begun among the more talkative early birds.
At 6:00 a.m., the first early alarms began ringing in Beacon, causing no small supply of groans, slammed snooze buttons and pillows wrapped around ears.
At 6:01, shopkeepers waved to passing potential customers in the commercial district.
At 6:02, the upper class district remained in peaceful slumber, their days yet to begin.
At 6:03, the rays of the sun left roosters calling in the agricultural south.
At 6:04, workers jogged into factories where gears and machines groaned, punch cards slammed in barely a minute before they would be written up.
At 6:05, Grimm all across the Forever Fall turned their gaze towards the city beyond.
At 6:06, the ground beneath the residential district shuddered.
And Vale's safety was shattered forever.
