A Leaf Turned
Chapter 9
Confrontations
Adam couldn't have been more annoyed than he was at that exact moment as he and the rest of team RWBY stood by the crime scene to a Dust robbery, one of many others that had been carried out in the last few weeks and like them it had been very successful. The two officers on duty had made passing comments about possible suspects and it naturally ended with the "White Fang". As if they hadn't paid attention to the fact the White Fang had never needed this mch Dust in such quantities before and now suddenly they were intent on robbing the entire kingdom of it?
The bull Faunus called all manners of Grimm crap on that.
Not that he could outright come out and point this out, his being a Faunus who paid such close attention to the White Fangs' previous dealings with crime? He'd be a suspect so fast it wouldn't be funny so he kept his silence and bit his inner cheek as they made their way along. He of course wanted to defend the honor of his former comrades and try to get some facts off his chest but while he tolerated RW and Y he wasn't going to call them trusted friends anytime soon.
And that was when Weiss Schnee decided to open her massive mouth. "What a bunch of degenerates." She sneered to seemingly no one in particular.
But Adam knew she meant the White Fang, And quite possibly other Faunus. But he didn't addres this and simply continued to move with them towards the docks and hopefully that would be the end of the Schnees' ignorance.
Naturally, it hadn't been.
"Honestly, what do those fanatical idiots hope to achieve with their efforts?" Weiss apparently took the silence as a "please go on we care" signal because she didn't seem the least bit deterred.
Adam knew he shouldn't say anything because it would only end in an argument between them and yet he felt the agitation bubble over and he cast his eyes over to her briefly before muttering, "As if you're one to talk."
The reaction was expected as it was instant. "What is that supposed to mean?"
She even had the gall to sound offended and act like she didn't know what he was referring to.
He despised that.
"I mean your family," The "And you" was so obvious Weiss scowled even more, "is so infamous for its mistreatment of its Faunus Workforce it's a wonder you haven't gone to trial." He didn't growl, no that would come later if she pursued this damned argument.
Lo and behold she did!
"What?!" She both hissed and screeched in a way only a Schnee could and her usually pale features were flush red with indignant rage and she wasn't making an effort to hide the fact it was all focused on him. "How dare you speak of my family that way! We at least hire them!"
His brow arched in so casual a manner that hers twitched. "And that excuses borderline slavery?" Weiss opened her mouth to retort and he was again quick to cut her off. "Don't even try to spin that in a good way. You can hardly speak about the White Fangs' dislike of Humanity when companies like yours exploit them so obviously and get away with it because they have the lien to throw around."
The entire team had stopped now and Ruby and Yang were both observing the Heiress and Swordsman glaring at each other, teeth grit and gazes so fierce you're think they'd spark lightning without how strong they were glaring. "My family doesn't exploit the Faunus so much as give them a chance when no one else will, and the terrible conditions? The low pay? That's the price they pay because of organizations like the White Fang going around and sewing chaos wherever they go!"
"So because your own private security and local law enforcement are so inept at their jobs to catch the White Fang you have to make other, innocent Faunus suffer?" Adam growled then, he really growled.
Ruby looked visibly worried, and even Yang looked ready to jump in if the pair came to blows. But Adam wouldn't snap that easily, he had restrained himself thus far and it was clear the Schnee was used to holding back physical violence as well with how her face flushed in rage...But she didn't so much as shake.
That only made the next sentence all the more venomous.
"You sound like you sympathize with those lunatics!" Weiss accused with a harsh whisper but her eyes spoke a larger accusation. She wanted to outright call him out on him being a possible member.
His reply was on his lips before he could even consider the consequences. "I do." He ignored the way the others look at him, he relished the way the Schnee seemed much more guarded though, as if he were some new threat to her life. She had no idea how true that was, if he really wanted to he could end her.
Instead he went on. "I have seen what Humans do to us, what depths of cruelty your kind can dive to when its against things they don't even consider Human enough. And if you're going to stand there and treat the Faunus who got sick and tired of the crap bigots like you," He pointed at Weiss, "Like trash because they decided to dish out what they got. Then you can bet I'm not going to just stand here and let you go on about it because I understand."
"You...You...!" Weiss hissed, as if steam would shoot from her ears any moment.
"Go on and say it, Schnee!" Adam snarled hotly. "I'm just waiting to hear it."
"Degenerate!"
"Uptight princess!"
"I am not a princess!" Weiss screeched and it actually hurt his damn ears.
Adam wasn't done though. "You're right, you're the heiress to a tyrant name!"
"And I think this is a sensational way to clear the tension between two friends!"
"I-What?!" Weiss and Adam jumped, they literally jumped to the side and reached for weapons, their fingers curled around the handles of their respective swords and stared at the smiling ginger who was just...standing there, smiling like she was pleased to just be doing that.
A moment of silence, three...Five.
Ruby broke it. "Uh...Hi?"
"Hello!" The new girl replied with a wave that was almost over exaggerated. "My name is Penny! And who might you four be?" The girl, Penny, tilted her head with that same, cheery smile.
Ruby didn't look the least bit phased. "I'm Ruby! And these three are my team! Team RWBY! Sound off!"
Weiss groaned and palmed her face. "Weiss," She mumbled into her palm. "Weiss Schnee." She could feel the headache coming now.
"Adam," Said bull Faunus pulled his hand away from Wilt. He frowned at Penny...And she didn't look slightly deterred.
"And I'm Yang Xiao Long." Their busty blonde brawler thumbed her chest and grinned. "Arguably the best fighter on the team."
Adam scoffed.
"Arguably." Yang affirmed as if that made the insult to his skills better.
"Pleased to meet you all!" Penny moved forward, closing in three steps. "I couldn't help overhearing your argument and I have to say, seeing two friends argue like that, it doesn't seem a good thing to do, but with you both ready to fight after being surprised, together no less! I see you were just clearing the tension!" She announced, making the four blink. "Good work!"
Vale is insane. Adam determined then with a scowl so fierce it might freeze his face that way. Vale, Beacon, this girl and everyone else in the kingdom is obviously insane. It had to be the water supply.
"Pleased to meet you too, Penny, we were just...Going down to the docks." Ruby began when no one else spoke up, smiling a little sheepishly. "To...See people, and stuff...Yeah."
It was truly impressive how much of a social trainwreck Ruby could be in so short a time. Adam glanced to the side, eager to vacate the area and leave Penny with the others when Yang nudged his side and when he looked over, he could already see she and Weiss were ready to bolt too. Fleeing with the Schnee?
"Sounds exciting!" Penny sounded like she actually believed it was.
"Want...To come?" Ruby probed.
Yeah, fleeing with the Schnee and Yang was a good plan. Together, while Ruby was talking with Penny, who didn't once look away from their leader, Adam, Yang and Weiss made their escape and left their leader to her awkward fate.
Adam almost felt bad. Almost.
"You ever feel like we're terrible people?" Yang wondered aloud while they sat at some little ice cream shop by the docks, sipping various milkshakes. Weiss was of cource going standard vanilla, Yang was sipping on chocolate and Adam went strawberry. "We did just leave Ruby to deal with awkward girl."
"It was for a good reason," Weiss said between sips of her 'shake.
"We need to be covert," Adam didn't bother they were a group so mix and matched they stood out like neon signs. "Quiet." They had also gotten into a shouting match that had attracted the awkward girl. "And observational." He even didn't point out the blonde monkey Faunus running by the window laughing about being a good stowaway.
He just sipped his milkshake and let the Schnee have her delusions.
"Not to poke a hibernating ursa here, but I have to ask," Yang suddenly spoke up with a glance between them. "Do you two have beef with each others species because your whole argument seemed to go from defending one side to insulting the other. Like an old married couple." She snickered.
Adam and Weiss both gave disgusted scoffs. They also both ignored their synchronized scoffing.
"See? You two are so alike it's probably why you're so tense around each other! It's like looking into a mirror!" Yang grinned at them now.
Adam spoke up before the Schnee could. "She and I are nothing alike bar our mutual dislike for the other."
"Indeed," Weiss grumbled, taking a longer sip. "Beyond that we're oil and water."
"And I'm the fire that sparks your eventual angry sex!" Yang announced with a grin so wide her teeth may have sparkled and blinded them.
But that wasn't nearly as blinding as the image of he and the Schnee doing something so intimate together. In fact it was so disgusting that his shake slipped from his grasp and clattered onto the tabletop, as did Weiss' but he ignored that. He also pointedly ignored the synced response.
"Never say that again!"
"Okay, Red Frost." Yang winked at the combo name they'd come up with when Ruby had given them that particular assignment some time ago. "Whatever you two say, I'm just telling you. If you two need to take an hour sometime to just work off that stress, just say, I'll Take Ruby out to a movie, leave the dorm, buy you both a bit of alone time~?" She waggled her brows suggestively.
And then she burst out laughing when their expressions of disgust warped to utter horrified disgust.
Adam just took this time to retrieve his milkshake grunted. "Ridiculous, Yang. Just ridiculous."
"Agreed, for once." Weiss hissed, sipping at hers. "Like I'd ever consider intimacy with some White Fang sympathizer."
Adam growled and Yang groaned. "And I've never sleep with an uptight heiress to some borderline slavery ring leader."
Weiss glared and set her milkshake back down, ignoring Yangs' "Here we go again..." And opened her mouth.
By the time RWBY returned to the dorm that night, Adam and Weiss were practically radiating restrained anger and spite, Yang looked suitably exhausted dealing with it and Ruby was still riding all three about abandoning her to Penny, who turned out to be really good as a person and a little weird but still someone Ruby could be friends with. This tension between Adam and the Schnee however began to boil over as they readied for bed.
"I hope you realize our efforts today to get the leg up disrupted because of your poor behavior." Weiss grunted, brushing her hair.
Adam growled again. "My bad behavior? I'd have been content to be silent if you'd kept your massive, racist mouth shut about the White Fang, Schnee."
"I call them as they are!"
"Funny, I do the same to you!"
Weiss finally threw her brush to to the floor and it broke. "I am not attacking you, Adam! I am attacking the White Fang, and because I have a right to do that at least because they are fanatical, Human hating Faunus who have no qualms making a huge mess of innocent peoples' lives as well their own kinds!" She panted, cheeks red and fists clenched. "It's because of them my childhood wasn't exactly easy. They're murderers, low lives who took friends and family from me my entire life and do you honestly say you can sympathize with them? How on Remnant do you just sympathize with such a group?"
To her credit she looked so curious angry and full of hurt she was trying to hold back and it tug as a part of Adam he long thought dead, but that was when he finally closed his eyes and took a long breath. "Fine, if you want to know I will tell you..." He turned, moved over to the closet and grabbed his travel bag, the one he'd had for initiation.
He unzipped it, retrieved the bone white mask. Decorated with crimson lines of his own design, it felt so heavy in his hands...But so familiar. This had been his face for so long, he stared at it. Hiding it from sight, there was a portion of it missing from the upper left middle, a fragment where his sword had pierced when he'd attempted to break it after Blake smashed hers.
Adam turned and tossed it onto the floor at Weiss' feet, it landed face up, staring up at her and she gasped, her posture went rigid and stepped back against the dresser by the window. The look in her eyes was also gone, anger and frustration were replaced by fear. She was frightened of him.
"H-How?" She whispered. "How did you get into Beacon if you're..."
Yang tensed and Ruby looked at Adam, and the mask, then back to him. Her eyes were begging for some sort of explanation.
Adam didn't speak for several moments. "I got in because I am good," He replied, tone low. As if the walls had ears themselves. "Better than any of you know, I was part of the White Fang until a week after initiation because someone...close to me convinced me that the White Fang I had joined and the one I was part of were two different things now."
They needn't know of Blake, lest they turn on him then she would at least be safe.
"Someone? Wait...is that you've been texting before you go to bed?" Yang asked now, looking more than a little cautious. "So...They got you to leave with them?"
"She and I are close, I trained her," Adam explained vaguely. "She was planning on leaving...And she convinced me to join her."
"So you're not part of the White Fang anymore, right?" Ruby piped up, looking much more relieved. "So...It's fine then, right? You're not part of them, so...No big no foul?"
"Are you two insane?!" Weiss yelled then, her frosty blues staring at Adam with a sharpness matched only by the glint of Myrtenaster in her hand. "Whether or not he left, he was still part of them! He committed crimes, he's a criminal! A terrorist. He might even be lying! He could still be part of them and just lying!"
"If I were a spy I'd be a pretty bad one for revealing my so called secret identity." Adam deadpanned, raising a brow at the weapon pointed at him, Wilt and Blush were on his bed...At Weiss' side. "And she isn't wrong. I've killed people, destroyed lives and if it wasn't for...My friend, I would still be there. I'm not a good person."
"Then why're you here?" Yang asked now, her eyes narrowing and unnaturally serious, as if daring him to lie.
"I...Need to learn to live among Humans, my friend told me I had to if I wanted to fight the way I was supposed to. How I wanted to. She said to come here, see how the generation was growing up, learn to talk and be around Humans without seeing them as enemies." Adam explained, standing his ground, He could go to the door and flee...But that would confirm his guilt. "I didn't want to, but she urged me to and here I am. On a team with three Humans...One being a Schnee who's throat I haven't slit in her sleep."
He grunted, pulling a small smirk. "I like to think it's progress."
"So, You're really, really, honest to all things good, not part of the White Fang?" Ruby asked again.
"Yes, I am not part of the White Fang." He looked into Ruby's eyes, then to Yang. Meeting their stares.
Ruby sighed in relief. "Than, you're alright by my books! I mean, this is your second chance, right? Make things right! Balance out the wrong!"
"Sounds 'bout right." Yang nodded, crossing her arms. "I mean, I do like dangerous men, but sorry, bullboy, you just crossed into too dangerous." She placed a hand on her chest. "Ours was a love never meant to be."
Adam ignored them, instead he looked to Weiss. "And you, Weiss Schnee?" He asked, staring at Myrtenaster, which was still pointed at him. "What is your judgement?"
She stared, looking him over, then to his eyes, those crimson eyes. Her lips tightened and her arm shook, as did the tip of her weapon. "I...How can I believe you without proof?"
He stared before nodding with a frown. "Very well." He stepped forward and when she raised her weapon, he batted the edge away with his palm and took hold of his coat, then Wilt and Blush. Getting dressed.
"Where are you going?" Ruby was again instantly worried. "Don't run away, Adam! We can work this out as a team."
"I'm not running away, I'm going to get evidence of my having left." He fixed his coat. And stood tall. "If it proves to you," He looked at Weiss, frowning. "That I left, then I will remain with team RWBY."
"Why do you want to prove so badly to me?" Weiss asked then, confused and suspicious.
"Because if you can't trust me even a little in the field, then Yang and Ruby could be compromised for it and I don't want to lose my friends. And much as I despise your family reputation, I know enough about you now to say that your dislike of my kind isn't surprising. It still irks me, but at the least I'm willing to prove this to you."
"But not for free, if I prove to you that I'm no longer in the White Fang. I need you to promise to keep my old life a secret. I'm trusting you, alot. More than I should. So, are we agreed?" Adam asked.
"...Yes, if you can prove it. Then...yes, I will keep up this deal." Weiss lowered her arm.
"Let us come with you, we'll help you!" Ruby hopped off her bed.
"No!" Adam snapped at her, making the three flinch with the tone of his voice. "I need to do this myself. This is my issue, my proof to Weiss. If I get into trouble I can't handle, I'll send you three a message. But until then, don't look for me." And with that, he turned and leapt out the window.
And when they peered over to check for him, he was gone. Just the trees and the courtyard.
Adam needed to track down his former allies...And destroy them. All for a Schnee's acceptance. He thought. No, not just for Weiss, but for Ruby and Yang. They wanted to believe in him...Like Blake did. And he could still see hesitation in their eyes. He needed to prove to them that they could believe in him and that he could be their teammate all the same despite his past.
So he'd hunt his former allies and get the proof.
End of chapter 9
Sorry this chapter took so long to get out, reason being my computer, one from 2003, took the 14th of this month to finally die out and with it all my previous works and such. Now I am unsure when I will get my hands on a replacement, but for now assume my posting time will be...Spaced to say the least.
Sorry for that! But I hope you continue to hold an interest in this fic all the same! Until next time, peoples!