Not long after he had eaten his fill of leftover food in the cafeteria, night fell across Beacon. Jaune had already put his and Adam's weapons away in a locker and then he awkwardly changed into his onesie pajamas, and now he stood in a large ballroom with students in sleeping bags scattered on the floor, trying to find a place to sleep when he picked up a low shout.
"Wait! What are you doing?!" That was Ruby's voice, so he turned his attention towards her.
And he saw Yang, dressed in an orange tank top and black shorts, dragging Ruby, who was dressed in a black tank top and white pants with a rose pattern, by the arm towards another girl dressed in a robe of some sort, he hadn't seen enough sleep wear to identify it. It took a moment before Jaune recognized the girl, she was the other one that was talking to Ruby earlier, who, according to the process of elimination, should be Blake. She was also wearing a black bow as she sat by candelabra, with one lit flame, reading a worn leather book.
He felt an unfamiliar sense of nostalgia well up inside him. It had come from Adam, who ever since the speech ended had remained silent. 'Do you want to talk to her?' He asked mentally, but he didn't get a response.
The conversation between the three girls seemed to be sputtering out, and Jaune made the decision to get a closer seat, since Adam didn't want to talk to her, he wouldn't, but that didn't mean he wouldn't listen. He managed to sneak along the wall and he stopped when he was well within earshot.
"Almost as lovely as this book." A voice, one he hadn't heard before so it was probably Blake, had said, then she paused. "That I will continue to read." Another pause. "As soon as you leave."
"Yeah, this girl's a lost cause." Yang whispered loudly.
"What's it about?" Ruby asked.
"Huh?" Blake sounded surprised.
"Your book." Ruby clarified. "What is it about?" She asked.
"Well…" Blake sounded unsure if she should answer, but eventually she found her voice. "I-it's about a man with two souls, each fighting for control over his body."
He could hear Yang say something but his mind was too busy reeling. 'There's a book about this!? How common is it!?'
Adam finally made a sound since he had gone silent. He laughed, a wild and unhinged laugh that went on for far too long. Jaune drowned him out by paying attention back to the conversation.
"Yang used to read to me every night before bed. Stories of heroes and monsters…" Ruby paused. "They're one of the reasons I want to be a Huntress!" She claimed.
Blake laughed bitterly. "And why is that? Hoping you'll live happily ever after?" She sounded odd.
"Well, I'm hoping we all will. Since I was a child, I just wanted to be like those heroes in the books... Someone who fought for what was right, and protected people who couldn't protect themselves!" Another proud claim from Ruby.
Jaune had begun to feel a kinship with her, to him apparently their reasons for coming to Beacon and becoming Huntsman were practically the same.
"That's very ambitious for a child." Blake said with joy, but then her tone turned sour. "Unfortunately, the real world isn't the same as some fairy tale."
"Well, that's why we're here! To make it better." Ruby said, determined to make her dream a reality.
"Oh, I am so proud of my baby sister!" Yang shouted, her cheerful tone disrupting the previously serious atmosphere.
Ruby made odd sounds, as if she was being strangled by pillows. "Cut it out!" She managed to whine through gasping breaths.
Blake laughed lightly, but before he could catch what she said next, a white blur went past him. Then he heard the girl named Schnee, according to Adam, scream at the rest of the girls, and then the conversation devolved into a screaming argument that ended with a candle being blown out.
Jaune heard the sound of a huffing girl cross his path once more and then silence, presumably the sisters also went back to their bags. Since it was unlikely that Blake would strike up another conversation, he also went back to his sleeping bag and prepared to sleep.
'I'm going to ask her about her book tomorrow.' He declared as he drifted off.
After a few minutes passed, Jaune had entered a deep slumber, but then his body shimmered a red glow and his eyes blinked open, his body sat up straight and he looked around.
After exiting the ballroom without waking up the other inhabitants in the room or in his body, he stood on a portion of the balcony away from exposed windows. Adam took deep breaths of the night air as he relaxed his mind. Since he first realized that they could sense each other's thoughts and emotions, he has been repressing himself, careful to not clue Jaune in on his more violent urges and ideas, or more importantly, his desire to completely get rid of the other soul in his new body.
Although he had proposed the deal which ensured mutual cooperation, he had no true need for Jaune. He had only made his agreement to buy himself some time undisturbed. He had no intention of leaving his business unfinished, and he also had no intention of passing on, he was given a second chance at life and he was going to take it.
Adam was grateful to the boy, who had forgiven his own murder and didn't mind sharing his body with another soul in exchange for a few combat pointers, but at the end of the day, Jaune Arc was just another human.
A blissfully ignorant human, one who hadn't heard of Aura, and didn't question why the guards didn't thoroughly search his bag with the hopes of finding anything remotely questionable so they could turn him away. He didn't pay a second thought to the news report of a Faunus Civil Rights protest or the White Fang. His brain was wired entirely on his naïve goal of being a hero of legend, he had blinded himself to the harsh realities of the real world to live out his own fairy tale.
Perhaps Adam could understand and sympathize with him if he had a goal, if he was motivated by something deeper than his own fantasies, but he wasn't, so he couldn't. In his eyes, Jaune would just be another casualty of war, and at least now his death will have meaning.
While reflecting on his opinion of the boy whose body he now possessed, he underwent a series of stretches that informed him of the limits his new body was restricted by, to disappointing results. Although he wasn't satisfied with the capabilities, he guessed he should at least be relieved that his new body had roughly the same dimensions and proportions as his old one.
After roughly an hour, he was able to completely update his reflexes to account for any discrepancies in his body. Adam had wanted to train some more, but he couldn't be certain that exercise wouldn't wake up Jaune, so he didn't risk it.
Without something to keep his body busy, his mind began to wander. It had been a few hours since his death, a few hours since his fight with three humans that had thought he could be bought or threatened. He had never been a fan of the carrot and the stick approach to negotiations, of offering rewards for obeying and promising punishment for disobedience.
To Adam it had sounded like the oppression that those with power would use against the powerless. In the history of Remnant, he wondered how many people were forced into obedience when threatened by violence, and how many gave up their freedom for the barest of essentials.
He wondered how many Faunus were still held captive in mines right now, working themselves to death for leftover slop and permission to rest. He wondered how many Faunus men were being beaten to death by human hands right now. He wondered how many Faunus women were having their bodies be forcibly disgraced by human hands right now. He wondered how many Faunus children were being taught that if they obeyed their human captors they would get to eat and sleep, and that if they disobeyed they would be shocked with collars or be branded as property right now.
Adam could feel himself losing control over his emotions, he didn't want to wake Jaune up with his intense feelings, so he attempted to calm down. He wondered how many Faunus were being liberated by the White Fang right now.
'Not enough.' His answer was immediate, and he only riled himself up further. 'It's never enough!' In his first few years as a White Fang member, he'd thought he was doing a great job freeing his fellow Faunus, but as the years went on and the number of bases he'd raided during a single month remained roughly the same as last year, he began to fear the worst. That what he was doing meant nothing.
He began to hate the world itself for allowing that kind of injustice, and then he began to hate the Faunus' that sat back and preached peace as their kind were being tortured and slaughtered in droves. Luckily, the White Fang's current chief understood him well, and they didn't waste his efforts. They taught him that if humans feared retribution, they wouldn't dare harm a Faunus when the White Fang was near.
All he had to do differently was become the source of that fear, he became the face of the White Fang's vanguard force. He was the one leading large scale assaults and the one engaging in attacks against prominent human figures.
His only other source of comfort existed as a Faunus named Blake Belladonna. She was a sign to him that if his fellow Faunus could see and understand their efforts, then they would lend a hand and aid them in the cause.
'Blake.' Luckily Adam's wandering mind had found a topic he was rather calm about. 'What are you doing here? Why did you leave us?'
Even though he wanted to know what was going on through her brain, he wasn't as bothered by her leaving as he had first been. Not that he was that worried in the first place, he had just assumed she needed some time alone, he was confident that she would return soon enough, but now she was attending Beacon. 'Is it really that easy to get in here? I thought this was supposed to be some elite place.'
According to Blake, she had spent her childhood being pampered, having never so much as chipped a nail before she trained to join the White Fang, and then she spent her teen years fighting almost non stop. There was no way she could have gotten into Beacon with her own transcripts, so that made two people Adam knew who successfully managed to fake their way in.
'At least she had the necessary skills.' He thought as he looked down at his body. "You didn't even have your Aura unlocked for an entire day and you still managed to get in." He spoke to the other inhabitant of his body, who was still sleeping. Even now Adam could hardly comprehend what Jaune had been thinking.
"What does that mean?" A silver tone voice chimed like a bell.
His head snapped to the source and Adam could already see the headlines.
Heiress of the Schnee Dust Company, Weiss Schnee, Murdered at Beacon Academy! The White Fang Bites Again!
He could already picture the repercussions. With the loss of the SDC heiress, and the CEO's failure to protect his own daughter, their stocks and reputation would plummet. He could already hear the praise he would get, he could already hear the cheers he would receive, he could already hear the joy and relief from his fellow Faunus. And yet-
"Excuse me! I asked you a question, and I expect an answer in return, soon if you would." She spoke as if her life wasn't hanging on by a thread, as if the blade aimed at her neck wasn't held back by the smallest string of reason.
Adam felt every muscle in his body tense up as he held himself back. "Schnee." He growled at the girl with white hair, who was just outside his arms reach. His anger and desire to kill her barely restrained. He knew that if he murdered her here, the chance he would get caught was incredibly high, and that wasn't something he could afford.
"Watch your tone! I just wanted to know how you got accepted into Beacon if you didn't unlock your Aura until recently. You don't have to be so rude about it." She huffed and with a pout she crossed her arms, the white nightgown nearly glowing in the moonlight almost gave an otherworldly air about her.
Adam began calculating how fast he could reach out and cover her mouth as he snapped her neck, but he didn't know how quick her reaction time was, and he cursed his current body, if he was in top shape, then with just the chop of an arm he could rend her head from the rest of her body. He had also been informed of the Schnee family Semblance, the chance that she could have a Glyph hidden and ready to activate at the first sign of danger was high. And the chance that she was being monitored was even higher.
All in all, he couldn't kill her right now, and these were the thoughts that had transformed his explosive rage from earlier into something colder, more seething. At the moment the most he could do was glare daggers at her.
"Fine, be that way, I wasn't even that curious in the first place!" With another huff she stormed off.
When she was completely out of his sight, he began cursing his new body's subpar hearing capabilities for being unable to pick up on someone approaching him, and after a few minutes he finally relaxed his body. Although it was a nearly impossible task, he prevented himself from killing and getting caught. In a few seconds he found where his train of thought had been stopped and then he restarted it.
Blake had left and now it appeared that she didn't plan on going back, although this should've served to further Adam's confusion, right now he was happy with her decision, if she hadn't left when she did then she might have fought and died alongside him, not that he thought they could lose if they worked together, but the possibility existed.
He didn't hold a grudge against Blake for leaving him, it had been a tough fight, and if she was by his side then at least one of them would've been seriously wounded if they had fought, but at the current moment both of them were perfectly healthy. He just needed a few more days, then he could reveal what had happened to Blake, and together they would get revenge on the humans that had attacked him. Since he had failed to protect the members of Vale's White Fang branch, at the least he hoped that his Lieutenant would play along and make sure there weren't any casualties until he could return.
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