Outcasts and Outlaws
Volume 2, Chapter 15
Wounds
Getting close to the end of this volume now, probably within about two chapters of it. Here we have a lead up to a final battle, with two familiar faces making an appearance. Enjoy!
Opening Music: http/youtu.be/iOsN2FP3-l4
[FMA Brotherhood OP 3]
(Shows Connor with his back to the camera)
Masshiro na keshiki
(He raises his arm into the air)
ni ima
(He clenches his metal hand into a fist)
saso
(Shows Kane)
warete!
(Shows Connor in front of beacon with his arm reaching up)
Boku wa yuku yo mada minu sekai e!
OUTCASTS AND OUTLAWS. (Shows the silver bear pendant around Connor's neck swinging) Maigo no mama
(Shows Connor's eyepatch in his hand)
tabi shiteta!
(Shows Connor and Kane sitting back to back in the ruins of Connor's hometown)
Nezumi iro no sora no shita! (Connor and Kane stand up as light hits the ruins)
Hikariwari ohizu ikutsumo no yume ga nijinde ita!
(Shows Ruby smiling with her hands held together)
Itsuka wa sa!
(Shows Jim stood on the Beacon Balcony)
Chippoke na boku no kono hohaba demo!
(Shows Yang)
Ano
(Shows Ren)
Kumo
(Shows Nora) no mukou
(Shows Pyrhaa)
made
(Shows Doctor Brian)
yukeru (Shows Ozpin)
ka na!
(Shows Connor)
Tsugyotte
(Shows Mars)
kizu tsu ita!
(Shows Connor and Mars outside Beacon)
Kokoro sukashita you ni!
(Shows Connor getting dragged away by Murlough's dark clouds) Furidashita
(Shows Ruby sitting next to Connor's hospital bed)
amastu
(Shows Murlough in front of the bodies of Connor's parents) butachi ga!
(Shows Brook and Damien holding the Kalos Crystal)
Ranh
(Shows Murlough covered in dark clouds)
ansha
(Shows Damien pull out his guns) kurikaesu!
(Shows Connor hit the ground with light on his hands and cause a tremor)
Massugu na
(Brook runs across the tremor) hikari
(Connor starts fighting Brook)
ga kousashite!
(Shows Kane fire off a barrage of dark clouds)
Yukusaki mo
(Shows Murlough run through the clouds)
tsugenu mama!
(Shows Jim fighting off Grimm with his boomerang)
Doko made mo tsukinukeru! (Shows Mars in a sword fight with Damien)
Awai zanzou ryoume ni yakitsukete! (Shows Murlough lunging forward with his blade covered in black clouds)
Kono sora no shita
(Shows Connor lunging forward with his metal hand glowing with light)
donna toko ni ite mo!
(Connor and Murlough hit each other, creating a flash of light) (Connor puts his eyepatch on) Toduku hazu nan
(Shows Connor and Ruby walking into Beacon)
da minu sekai e!
OUTCASTS AND OUTLAWS V2
By the time the team had returned to Beacon, the summer break was over and the masses of students had returned. Unlike just a week ago, the corridors and halls were now bustling with hunters in training.
Jim, Mars, Ruby and Kane were sat at a table together away from the masses, desperately needing rest from their last mission. Yang had sat next to Jim and was inspecting the bandaged stump where his right arm had once been.
"Does it hurt?" Yang asked him with concern.
"It did when I cut it off." Jim replied. "I'm feeling okay now though."
Ruby watched from across the table as Yang rubbed and patted Jim's stump. She'd never seen her sister being so affectionate and caring to anyone other than her. Jim seemed to be untroubled by his injury, but Yang was eager to help him anyway. Ruby really did wonder what was up with her.
"If me and Kane hadn't stopped the bleeding you probably would've died." Mars commented, as Yang continued to examine Jim's wound. "What the hell were you thinking cutting it off like that?"
Jim sighed and smiled drearily, secretly wanting leave the table and go to bed early. "I couldn't let Connor cut his arm off...he's sacrificed too much already." He answered, putting his elbow on the table and resting his chin on his hand. "He already lost an eye and a hand protecting Ruby..."
At that remark, a squeal came from Ruby. Everyone at the table looked at her and saw that she was holding her hands together, tears welling up in her eyes. "His injuries are because of me...?" She sobbed to herself, prompting Yang to rush over and comfort her.
While Yang held Ruby and rubbed her shoulder to calm her down, Jim awkwardly apologised, "Uh...sorry Ruby, I didn't mean it like that. Connor takes pride in protecting you, he doesn't care if he gets hurt."
"Hey, why don't you just shut up for a minute!" Yang retorted, making Jim jump with her sudden anger. "You're gonna make it worse!"
"I'm only trying to help!"
"Zip it!"
Before their argument could escalate, Kane slammed his glass down on the table, the last of his juice spilling out as a consequence. "Where is Connor?" He asked everyone else. "Why he isn't he here with us?" Kane's eyes were void of feeling, blunt like daggers as always, but there was even without any apparent concern in his voice the others all knew he was worried.
"When we all got out of the infirmary he said he needed to go lay down, haven't seen him since." Jim answered, rubbing his stump as he recalled how Doctor Brian had fixed it up by painfully stitching the wound. The mood fell solemn after that. Connor had been completely silent while his wounds were being seen to in the infirmary, even when Ozpin had praised him on completing the mission. He had just sat there, his eyes cloudy with unknown thoughts.
After a moment of silence, Mars stood up and began to walk away. "Where are you going?" Yang questioned as he passed her and Ruby.
"I'm pretty sure I know what's up with him, so I'll go give him a teacher-student talking to." Mars answered without stopping.
In his room, Connor was sat on the edge of his bed, hunched over himself. He held his hands together tightly, and looked down at his lap, not having looked anywhere else or even moved for a good while. His cloak was thrown messily on the floor along with his eyepatch, crumpled and creased.
As Connor sat and emptily stared, images of the fight flashed before his eyes. His hands started to shake uncontrollably as his sanity began to waver and he saw rolling down the back of his knuckles. He released his hands from each other and looked at them in terror as the blood ran down his palms and dropped onto the carpet below. On top of seeing the blood, he heard Murloughs laugh ringing through his ears, and then the sound that had escaped his lips as his life was ended.
Connor almost jumped out of his skin when he heard the sound of tapping on wood. He looked round to the door and watched as it melted away into dust, revealing the zombified figure of Murlough behind it. As he shuffled into the room, Murloughs walking corpse moaned, "You killed me...are you happy now? Is your mind at rest?"
Connor wanted to get up and fight back, or at least run, but he found that in his terror he was glued to where he sat. He sat helplessly as the zombie Murlough positioned himself in front of him and opened its voracious maw, ready to feast on Connors flesh.
"Connor!" A voice barked as Connor began to feel woozy. "Snap out of it you bloody fool!"
As the zombie Murlough lunged forward with its teeth, Connor felt a hand on his shoulder and instinctively jumped back. When his vision focused and his heart rate calmed, Connor saw that the figure in front of him wasn't the rotting corpse of the one he killed, but Mars. "Agh! It's just as I thought!" Mars cursed to himself, as Connor slowly began to regain full lucidness. "You're a bloody juvenile!"
"Mars..." Connor muttered weakly, the ordeal of just a few moments ago still fresh in his mind. "I...I killed him Mars. I killed a man."
"Listen to me you stupid little juvenile!" Mars yelled back, aiming to knock sense into his former student the rough way. "I know killing Murlough couldn't have been easy for you! Even if he did murder your parents and almost Ruby too, you're not like him! You can't kill without being affected by it, and that's a good thing! It proves you're not a monster like Murlough!"
Connor was silent for a moment and then quietly replied, "But...Kane was gonna do it, he was prepared to do what he had to...and I knocked him away to do it myself. I wanted to kill Murlough myself..."
"Listen here!" Mars shouted again, desperately trying to get through to Connor. "If you think of it in a certain way, you did Kane a favour! You think he wanted to kill his own brother? He was just doing what he knew had to be done, you spared him that terrible task!"
"But now I've got his blood on my hands..." Connor muttered, now on the edge of breaking down again. "How am I supposed to live with that?"
Before he could shed even one tear, Connor found himself being thrown to the floor by Mars and then pinned down. As he struggled, he felt his hands be bonded together by what felt like metal. "No! Mars! Please! Not the dunce cuffs! Anything but that!" Connor begged, the tears welling up in his eyes now out of fear of his mentors strict punishments rather than the torment of having killed.
Connor remembered the dunce cuffs all too well. If he ever made a mistake big enough during his training, Mars would put his hands behind his hands and hold them there with handcuffs, which he came to nickname the dunce cuffs. He would then be left there, unable to move his arms out of the painful pin, until he saw the error of his actions.
"Just like I'm sure you remember, you won't be coming out of those until you see the error of your ways!" Mars announced, and then casually sat down on the edge of Connors bed and pulled a book out of his cloak.
"Mars, this isn't fair! I'm not just going to over the fact that his blood is on my hands!" Connor protested, attempting to wriggle out of the cuffs, only resulting in hurting himself.
"I'm not asking you to get over it, that's something you might never do." Mars nonchalantly responded, his attention engrossed in his book. "I'm telling you to deal with it and move on for you own sake."
Over the next twenty minutes Connor eventually calmed down and considered Mars' words. After the twenty minutes, he finally got the point and sat completely still and expressionless, signalling to Mars that he understood. "You get what I'm trying to tell you?" Mars asked, looking up from his book for a second.
Connor sighed and answered, "I'll probably never get over what I did to Murlough, it might haunt me for the rest of my life, the fact that I acted out of vengeance. That however, is not I should proceed. If I brood on it I'll never be able to get on with my life. I have to accept that I did what I had to do, and move on, but never forget."
Satisfied by Connors answer, Mars closed his book, put it in his pocket and stood up. "All right then, let's get those cuffs of." He stated, then noticed something about Connors metal hand. "Hey, where's the Kalos Crystal?" He asked, looking at the metal indent where it had once been.
"Uh...I think I dropped it in the hall somewhere when I was still all gloomy." Connor nervously responded and then winced as Mars immediately grew angry.
"You stupid juvenile! Come on and help me find it!"
It was too late for their search however, as standing in the lunch hall in the middle of the mass of students, was Damien and Brook. The two of them were stood up on the centre table, elevating themselves above everyone else. In his hand, Damien held the small purple Kalos Crystal, which was glowing dimly.
"What the hell are you doing here?!" Kane questioned, yelling up at the two who had once been his comrades. "How did you get in, and how did you get the Kalos Crystal?!"
Ruby, in the crowd behind Kane, looked up at Damien's hand and saw the Kalos Crystal in it. She also began to wonder how he had gotten his hands on it. It had been in Connors possession, so did that mean that he'd attacked Connor and taken it? If so, where was Connor now?
"Well this place isn't exactly guarded, Kane!" Damien replied, keeping one hand hovering over his weapon on his belt as Kane stepped forward out of the crowd. "As for why I'm here, you should've assumed I'd come after you again eventfully. Now that we have the Kalos Crystal, it'll be easy to get our revenge for your betrayal!"
"Over my dead body!" Jim snapped back, stepping out of the crowd and standing side by side with Kane, his sleeve folded up where his arm had once been. "I haven't known Kane for all that long, but when we fought together, we formed a trust bond! I will not let you take him!"
"What're you gonna do with one arm, you cripple?!" Brook taunted, chuckling manically between words. He seemed even more unhinged than the last time they had seen him, closer to the level of Murlough's insanity.
"He's got me to back him up!" Yang fiercely retorted, stepping up next to Jim and activating her gauntlets, raring to rain down fire on the two outlaws.
"Me too!" Nora exclaimed excitedly, running up to the three with her sledgehammer at the ready. One by one other students readied their weapons and chanted alongside each other. Soon every hunter and huntress in the hall was raring to fight.
Damien stared down at the masses with contempt, thinking them fools. They thought they were really going to fight a hundred to two? In one swift movement, he smacked the Kalos Crystal into the side of Brooks exposed neck. Brook gasped in pain and pleasure simultaneously and the crystal embedded itself in his skin and began to glow brighter and brighter, blinding everyone else in the hall.
When the light died down, they were met with the true power of the Kalos Crystal, the power to amplify ones semblance. Brook had used his cloning semblance in combination with the Kalos Crystal to create a battalion of clones. It was no longer one hundred versus two, more like one hundred versus two hundred. The students of Beacon were considerably outnumbered.
The original Brook scanned the room, looking at the shocked faces of the students, and settled on Ruby. Recognising her immediately, he ordered his clones, "That one! Kill that one first!" On his command a large group of clones in front of Ruby fired machine gun rounds at her from their hooks. The bullets sped towards her lightning fast, almost certainly on track to hit their target.
Music: http/youtu.be/mvFQ_BdGcB0
[Fairy Tail Main Theme]
Then they didn't. A flash of light appeared before Ruby and the sound of rebounding bullets was heard. Ruby removed her arms from on front of her face and looked up at the figures standing before her. To her left stood Mars, holding a sword and shield made of green and transparent telekinetic energy. In front of her however, was someone who inspired so much more hope.
The flowing white and gold cloak. The metal hand. The specially forged katana the hand held. The black eyepatch. The other arm, stuck out in front of Ruby protectively.
Mars couldn't help but exchange a smug smile with Connor as the two stood in front of Ruby like a barrier.
"You can mess with me, my friends, and this academy..." Connor announced proudly and then charged forward and yelled at the top of his voice.
"But if you hurt Ruby, I'll beat you to a pulp!"
Ending Music: http/youtu.be/XHy8bnVVpo4
[Beyond The Boundary ED]
(Shows a cherry blossom tree)
(Flickers between Ruby raising her arm, and cherry blossom leaves falling)
Seijaku wa
(Shows Ruby with her hand held out in front of herself)
kirisaku you!
(Zooms in on Ruby's face) Otuzuretta no wa!
(Shows Yang walking across) Hitsuzen to shite no kaikou!
(Shows Jim walking behind her) Bokura no tame ni!
(Zooms in on a tear falling from Ruby's eye)
Koukai wa nagaku me
(Shows Connor walking from behind)
ni utsuru kimi no soul!
(Shows Ruby's skirt flapping in the wind)
Rainbow
(Shows Ruby clenching her hand) wo tootte!
(Back to Ruby standing with her arm out in front of her)
Utsukushika saita!
(Shows Connor's silhouette walking across)
Dareka no seimei ni tokeru hana. (Shows Ruby holding a branch of the cherry blossom tree)
Nee
(Zooms in on Ruby's face again) kimi ni mo mieru darou!
(Shows Ruby shed another tear) Kitto!
(Ruby lets go of the branch)
(Back to Ruby with her arm held out)
Kasaneta
(Zooms in on Ruby's face again) ayamachi
(Shows Ruby from behind) nurikaeyou!
(Shows everyone's silhouette walking across)
Nando
(Shows someone's feet in the crowd)
demo ii sa
(Shows Kane in the crowd)
Kurikae
(Shows Mars in the crowd)
shiteku
(Shows Ruby from behind as cherry blossom leaves fly past her on the wind)
sa try!
(Shows Ruby from side view as the leaves fly past her)
Kako to wa chigau asu wo!
(Shows one side of Connor's body as he walks)
Fubari
(Shows Ruby's hand reaching out) dake no
(Shows the cherry blossom branch flinging back)
kibou
(Shows Ruby looking up at the tree) egaku sa try!
(Ruby looks back down and sees someone, then smiles)
I never say goodbye!
(Shows Ruby standing with Connor opposite her, both looking at each other)
Itsudatte sou sa!
(Shows Connor looking at Ruby as the sunlight shines on him)
(Shows Ruby looking at Connor as the sunlight shines on her)
(Connor smiles and raises his hand, then holds Ruby's hand)
END