Red Moon Rising

by MasterofMasyaf9000

The beating of a butterfly's wings can lead to the whipping of a tornado. A world of bloody evolution is forever changed with the most minute of choices: What if Adam Taurus had never joined the White Fang?

13. The Bull and the Spider

"A wise man turns great troubles into little ones, and little ones into none at all."

---

Chapter 13: The Bull and the Spider

---

"The Yatsu-no-kami was a serpent Grimm deified by ancient humans as a god, with a horn made of countless blades protruding from its forehead. These blades could be shot like arrows at foes. Additionally, when cornered, its snakelike arms were also reported to gain a limited degree of sentience and spring forth from its body to join the fight."

"While it was once considered a guardian deity to humans who were in pursuit of certain goals, it is now believed that Yatsu-no-kami was the ancestor to what would eventually come to be known as the Taijitu and King Taijitu, although reports of its existence still circulate in the modern day. While studies made by Doctor Bartholomew Oobleck imply that this type of Grimm typically preferred wetlands, the waters where this Grimm were typically claimed to appear are highly toxic to other forms of life. As such, other studies posit that the Grimm seemingly spewed corruption from its body, actively creating poisonous swamps wherever i—"

A loud harsh buzzing- like a nest of angry wasps filled the air, as a Scroll vibrated harshly against solid wood, startling its owner from her train of thought.

"Shit!"

An exceptionally large blot of ink came loose from her pen, rapidly expanding over her notes. Sable swore again, leaping to her feet in a surge of sheer desperation, searching for something to dry the ink. Seeing nothing, and with her window for salvation rapidly closing, she finally decided to use her sleeve. It would be a bitch to wash out, but compared to losing the last hour and a half of effort…

Not that it did her any good. With every desperate attempt, the ink spread, staining her hands as much as the page, until finally…

It was no use. Her homework was fucked.

She tossed the useless pen clear across the room where it shattered against the door, as her blue eyes stared out of the window in irritated despair.

The essay wasn't even due yet anyway, so she wasn't too sure why she was even wasting her time on it now. Especially since she'd be graduating in just over a fortnight, and she had more than enough credits to not bother. Sable groaned, slamming her head into her desk.

On second thought, she knew exactly why.

Professor Orchid Vector was a miserable dragon of a woman, who quite frankly, had missed her calling as a Beowolf. She was cantankerous, ornery, narrow minded and sadistic beyond belief. The insipid, cruel harridan made her hatred of her students plain, plain for all to see, seemingly devoting all of her time to spreading as much malcontent as she could muster, and yet somehow, Lionheart had never seen fit to dismiss her. She would regularly focus abuse at younger students for any transgression they made, however small, be it through liberal usage every harsh, demeaning word ever devised by man or worse, she would turn her ire to their grades, regularly allowing her own personal bias and flagrant racism to dictate her marking in such a manner that unfair did not begin to describe it. Sable still vividly recalled textbook examples of her unmatched tyranny, like the time one of her fellow yearmates received a zero for an essay, simply for the pedantic offence of using a pen colour that she didn't like, in spite of the fact that it had been perfectly acceptable the previous week. She also remembered how nothing, of course, had been said about the students who had used the same colour of pen, and had received all but glowing praise, being entirely human. In essence, that particular incident was a perfect microcosm of Vector's gleeful abuse of authority. If a student so much as coughed in a manner that displeased her - and it always would - she would find a new way to make their life a living hell, particularly if they happened to be a faunus. Even more so with the ones that dared to show backbone. In short, she was a real, ill-tempered, ill-mannered slug. And Sable was pretty sure that the woman had to toil long and hard to work her way up to that.

Naturally, despite the latter's humanity, Vector and Sable had a legendary enmity, and the malignant bitch seemed to have an extra reserve of inhuman spite tailor made just for her, one that only seemed to grow each and every time Sable outwitted her. All of this, the Arc could have tolerated, if she wasn't stuck with her as her History, Ethics and Tactics Professor.

It was the second one that the young Arc found the most laughable of the three, given that the only consistent Ethics that the woman had were those of a rabid honey badger. Their opposition to one another ran all the way back to Sanctum, where the old hag had been every bit the menace she was now as an assistant Professor. What was worse still was that when she finally graduated Sanctum, it was to the knowledge that Vector had not only been promoted ,but had been accepted as a full Professor at Haven! Of all gods damned places! She seemed to follow her everywhere like a bad smell, intent to make Sable's life difficult at every opportunity. Another four years of this… horseshit!

Case in point, unlike everyone else in the modern world, Professor Vector insisted on all written work being handwritten instead of typed, for no other reason than to provide an extra inconvenience. Hence her current frustration.

She grumbled, trying to look at the positives. She didn't have to deal with her much longer anyway, because after graduation, she would finally be out of her life for good, and at least the rest of her notes were still legible. Sable didn't exactly fancy the prospect of copying her work out again, but neither did she enjoy the idea of letting Vector bitch to Lionheart about holding her back an entire year over a single immaterial piece of missed coursework; she certainly wouldn't put that level of pettiness past the bitch.

With a sigh, the blonde pushed her ruined draft away, and reached for her scroll, which had been knocked to the ground in her panic. She might as well see who it was that disrupted her studies,

[U done with the Grimm History Coursework yet? Kinda lost my notes.]

[Lye.]

Equal parts irritated, yet thankful that her semblance was not capable of strangling her erstwhile partner remotely via telekinetic hatred alone, Sable narrowly resisted slamming her head into the desk again. Lye Lectrie was an…. ok partner— Ditzy like you wouldn't believe, —but despite working together for the last few years, Sable never really felt close to her, even by the standards of the dispassionate detachment of their so-called team. She was a slacker, which was something the blonde could kinda relate to, but it was hard not to get annoyed by the way she seemed to constantly coast on the efforts of those around her instead of actually studying.

Even still, her increasing absences from their dorm of late had not gone unnoticed, and while most would assume that Lye was simply attempting to gain practical Huntress experience like most in their year, Sable had enough knowledge of her partner's personality to know better. Came with the territory of having her as a roommate for the past four years.

Of course, that didn't mean she cared all that much about what her erstwhile partner was doing. If she was smart, she was probably trying to find some way to pay for decent quality Dust- Students were expected to come out of their own pockets- And since Huntsmen in Training weren't registered, they couldn't get paid a salary. And for those without parental support, which pretty much included her…they were pretty much screwed. Well, they were supposed to get a bursary to cover that, but to the poor sap that with the will to cut through all the admin and red tape to actually get it…. Sable wished them the best of luck.

In any case, Lye was on her own, and after what her distraction had just caused, Sable wasn't exactly willing to be charitable to her as it was.

Besides, she wasn't going to pretend she didn't have anything she'd rather be doing than homework of all things.

She groaned again.

This just hadn't been her week.

She was out of Dust Crystals, she had a six-thousand-word essay to rewrite, Saphron had butted in on her main source of income, and she had ended her day with a double lesson with Vector.

There had only been one bright spot in the entire shitty cascade.

She'd finally met a cute guy that she actually liked! He was strong, funny, and hot….and Saph had gone and ruined it for her by freaking him out! Sable hadn't even known she was in town, not that her big sister ever bothered to let her know those things, and she had absolutely no idea how Saphron had even known where she was. It wasn't as if Sable went around telling people she was working the syndicate fight circuits to pay for her own apartment in the city and cover her student Huntress expenses. Sure, Haven issued Scrolls had trackers set in them, essentially turning them into blackboxes you could play games on, but they were only to be used in emergencies, and only the head of the school had the access codes to activate them. So how had Saph found her? A mystery for later, and possibly a liberal application of force to help certain people keep their nose out from places it didn't belong…

Sable stood up, tossing her Scroll aside and massaging her temples. In the meantime,… She needed to find something to keep herself busy, before she went absolutely nu-

Walking past her bed, a golden glint caught her eye, drawing her attention to the objects haphazardly propped up behind the headboard. It took her a valuable second to register precisely what it was, but when she eventually did, a wry grin broke out across her face, and quickening her steps, it was nothing for her to simply wrap her hand around the offending object and pull it free.

When there was nothing to do, there was always weapon maintenance.

In her hands, lay a colossal obsidian warhammer, at least half her size, with golden accents, and a single scarlet jewel embedded at the end of its handle. Although, perhaps calling it a hammer was something of a misnomer, given the business end was distinctly bladed., looking much more reminiscent of a single edged battle-axe than a hammer, not to mention that the blade was the bladed side was her most favoured, but since she still used the blunt side to club foes into oblivion, she figured it counted. Or at least it should.

Sitting in the centre of her bed and crossing her legs, she began to admire her tools of destruction.

She had fashioned Fulgora all the way back in her first year, treating the head of an ancient bladed warhammer she had 'borrowed' from the family armory, with a graphine coating and fitting it with a new steel grip and handle. Though powerful when swung normally, with added centrifugal force it could lay waste to anything unfortunate enough to be in its way, be it a Grimm mask or a human skull. Not that she'd ever done the latter, but she'd be lying if she said she'd never felt like it, especially these days.

But as mighty as Fulgora was, it was nothing compared to her other weapon of choice, currently propped up on the other side of her bed, next to several spent casings. and draped in belts of custom ammunition.

The Sidewinder Type Heavy Machine Gun.

Most would consider it unwieldy, at a bare minimum, and fewer still were able to lift the thing, much less wield it with any semblance of accuracy, but her arms were more than a match for the monster that was currently propped up against her bed. Designed for rapid fire, it utilized a one-of-a-kind blow-back system for low recoil, which combined with her exceptional strength, allowed her to easily wield its heft in her offhand to take out targets that were a little nimbler than she could normally handle. An elegant, uncompromising, superbly made firearm, if she didn't say so herself. The fact that it annoyed her old man—who hated guns— to no end only made it that much more beautiful in her eyes. She hadn't yet figured out a way to incorporate it into Fulgora, as was generally typical with most Huntsmen class weapons, but then, as she would put it, why fix what wasn't broken?

Picking up a weapon in each hand, she laid the warhammer on her bed before carrying the machine gun over to the table to take apart. Fulgora was in fairly good condition, but her Sidewinder had felt just a little sluggish lately and she suspected she knew why. Practiced hands ran over the weapon before unlocking the bolt latch and releasing the cover.

Satisfied, she set about slowly and carefully removing the barrel assembly, before raising the mechanism to the light.

"Of course."

Inside the barrel, a grey layer of fine powder, almost resembling salt, had built up on the inside of the barrel, almost clogging the tube entirely. With a sinking suspicion, she shook the barrel, and the powder fell out in uneven clumps. She rolled her eyes and sighed.

Dust impurities, she realized. Which meant the place she was spending her hard-earned lien buying Dust crystals from was selling her subpar product. Again.

She knew, even as a technical Huntress in training, that the purity of any Dust crystal she used could be the difference between life and death in a battle with the Grimm, but more importantly, the legitimate retailers knew it too, and easy profit margins were too tasty a bait to pass up when it came to refining the mined crystals and the expensive process it required to do so.

Which gave them all the reason in the world to short-change her, especially with Dust being so damned hard to come by to begin with.

Tapping the barrel against the table, the dust came loose in heavy clumps, eliciting a frown.

Even so, she mused, as she set about cleaning the barrel, and seeing to the rest of the weapon, it was hard to contain her annoyance.

Say what you would about the Spiders, but they were infamous among Haven's student class for selling better quality product at reasonable prices, and while Sable had never indulged in their services as yet, if this kept up….

No.

Sable finally replaced the barrel, before laying the weapon on down on the table and leaning back in her chair.

'No.' She reprimanded herself. 'She wasn't that desperate.'

Sure, she didn't have much of a problem with taking part in their fighting rings, but beating them up and taking their money was a lot more of a public service than a crime, in her opinion, and her conscience could live with that. Besides, the cowgirl stage persona that she had concocted was actually kinda fun. She didn't get to cosplay nearly as much as she liked, after all. Actually feeding a brutal crime cartel her money of her own free will, even if she got something good out of it? That was a harder sell. Especially when she knew that lien would buy the blood of countless people, people as a Huntress she was supposed to be protecting; she figured the Spiders didn't end up as the most well-known syndicate in Mistral for their immaculate manicures.

The buxom blonde gently pushed her weapon away from her, before walking back over to her bed, flicking out the light on her way, and collapsing unceremoniously face-first into the sheets.

Even still, dwelling on those thoughts only served to make her more restless, and as time began to draw on, it reached a point that she could no longer contain herself.

At the heart of the matter, Sable Arc hated feeling trapped. Wherever she was, she always wanted to know that there was a way out. And being stuck here, wasting her time instead of being proactive, actually doing something, was hardly doing wonders for her fraying patience.

Lying here, in her dorm, she mentally wandered the dark maze of corridors and staircases that made up Haven's fourth year dorms.

There were several doors that led downstairs, but few that students had access too, and by now, they'd all be locked for the night. Usually, that would be no concern of hers— she'd had her own way out, one that she'd thought no one else knew about, but apparently that wasn't nearly as true as she liked to believe.

For her, the most important thing was to be in charge of her own life. It was why she didn't fit in with her own family for the most part, with her domineering father and a older sister that seemed to constantly meddle in her affairs. Even less so with Haven, with its endless rules and age-old traditions, but Haven couldn't hold her if they tried.

Especially now she had something worthwhile out there waiting for her.

She ran her fingers over her lips as she remembered their kiss. She smiled to herself as she lay back on the bed, as the taste of his lips and the warmth of his touch came rushing back to her. The sheer intensity, the spark of the fight, the kiss, all combined to make her feel a strange euphoria that she had never felt before. Desperate to regain her breath, Sable rolled over and felt over her breastbone to be sure her heart was still beating.

Oh, it was. It was beating so hard she could hear it in her ears. It would burst soon enough anyway, and she'd probably turn into a zombie or something to come back from the dead just to try to eat him.

Pausing for a moment, and attempting to still herself, she couldn't help but laugh, giggling senselessly to herself like a madwoman.

She really needed to stop living vicariously through comic books.

When she calmed down, she sighed, folding her arms under her head and staring up at the ceiling.

It had barely been a day since she had seen him last, since she'd met him, and he had occupied her thoughts ever since. Sable could say with certainty that she'd never felt this way about… anyone, before. Getting through classes for the day had been even more of a chore than it had ever been before, her concentration repeatedly stripped from her by the monstrous feeling that ran hot in her veins whenever she remembered that cocky smile, sharp tongue and just how it had felt to thoroughly smother the latter with her own.

She wanted him here, now, in this bed, doing… something. Anything. But he was so far away, somewhere in the city without her. Every time her thoughts started to stray, she found herself swept away in a storm of emotion she was helpless to navigate. 'It's too quick to feel like this,' Sable thought to herself. 'But it feels right.'

'Was it normal to feel that way?' To feel that kind of connection to someone you only met once. Not for the first time, she wished she could ask her sisters for advice. But most of them were too young for the kind of advice she needed, Saphron was obviously no help, and while the next best person was her mother…. Sable knew the Arc Matriarch would invest herself far too deeply into her love life for her liking, particularly with how invested she was in the idea of grandchildren. Plus, she also knew her mother, romantic that she was, well enough to know that she would inevitably ask how and where they'd met, which would force Sable to admit that she was sneaking out from school after curfew to beat up criminals in illegal fighting rings to pay for her operating costs and rent of her apartment down in the city, lest Saphron contradict her story. And that had its own problems.

No matter how she looked at it, Sable would have to do what she had always done; take matters into her own hands.

She didn't know his name, but how many people could have hair as red as his, with horns sticking out proudly? She certainly hadn't seen anything like it before.

So how was she going to find him again?

Her mind raced, happy to have something to do, to form a plan for adventure.

Age wise, she was betting they were pretty neck and neck. He couldn't be much older than her. But he definitely wasn't a student at Haven. She would definitely remember living around a man like that— It would have made her first few years here markedly more tolerable, to say the least. But he didn't seem like a career criminal either. She'd watched him fight, and she'd seen the contempt that those thugs had held him in, the slurs they'd muttered from the ringside, and the contempt he felt for them in turn. He wasn't one of their own.

Think. Eliminate the absurdities first, focus on the most likely of his range of access. He obviously wasn't local, which meant he was either sleeping out in the streets, or shacking up in some low-cost motel or inn: one that wouldn't give a shit about him being a Faunus. Thinking back to how he was dressed, she felt pretty comfortable ruling out the homeless theory, even more so with the prize pot he'd disappeared with. It would have been more than enough for a few nights in under a warm roof. Which left her with the second theory.

That just left location.

Wherever he was hiding out, it couldn't be that far from the abandoned construction site, and she could confidently rule out the upcity districts: Namely because if he was from there, he wouldn't need to fight for money. All things considered, (and all racial stereotyping aside), he was probably somewhere in Yajū. It was the only place she could think of that someone like him could walk around without being constantly harassed, either by prejudiced humans or worse, those Bloodhound shitheels that had been parading themselves around lately.

A twinge of worry hit her like a sharp shock.

What if they had caught up to him?

It was certainly a cause for concern.

Their entire manifesto was explicitly anti faunus after all, and after that slaughter of protesters that their Atlas chapter committed had been all over the world news, there had been a disgusting surge of local recruits. Even people at Haven had started wearing their insignia, proudly in the corridors, as if nothing was wrong! While it made her want to introduce them to the business end of her Sidewinder, she was well aware that there was little she could do about the greater picture, especially as an unlicensed Huntress, despite how utterly revolted the act of doing nothing made her feel. There were only so many kneecaps she could shatter before she realised she was outmatched, and all it did was give Vector more ammunition to come down on her with. It would be no surprise to Sable to count her among the Bloodhounds' cheerleaders after all.

Besides that, they had, by all accounts taken over the flooded district in its entirety, and had turned several others into "sun-down" neighbourhoods. Their grassroots support was growing, and fast, to the point where there'd been talk of them forming outright mobs to patrol the streets. Lionheart and the other teachers had underplayed the dangers, but the Junoesque Arc had crossed paths with them on her trips into the city enough to be uncertain.

In hindsight, it was really no wonder the apple of her eye had made himself scarce so quickly.

Her boyfriend was a formidable fighter, and she had the bruises to prove it. But what if they'd overwhelmed him? What if he'd gotten caught up in something?

Her hand tightened into a fist.

Well, she couldn't have that now, could she?

Her decision was made.

Screw Saph. Sable was stepping out for the night.

She lay perfectly still in her bed and listened for any sounds. Nothing. It was all quiet.

The moonlight spilled onto her chest and shoulders.

She slipped out from her bed and went over to her wardrobe. From the untidy mess within, she sorted through her clothing with frantic vigor. The window behind her was pretty much her only point of light, but she persevered, peering through the dark. She callously tossed aside various items, before her hands finally closed around her Huntress outfit. She smiled, recalling the reactions when she'd first donned her look; a skin-tight leather leotard; compressed and cut in ways that reveal her midriff and breasts. Her darling big sister had seemed moderately scandalized that she had the taste in outfits that she did, remarking that the black attire looked something that was more fitting to a pole dancer or a bondage slave than any warrior, but it suited Sable just fine. If Grimm were going to eat her, covering herself up and being uncomfortable would hardly inconvenience them.

People could say what they liked about how she looked, but then, she'd never been one to put stock in other people's opinions, and she wasn't about to start now.

' Besides…. ' She thought, as she slipped out of her clothes, and grabbed her turquoise, diamond shaped earrings from the table. 'I make this look good.'

Her smile grew wider.

Fully dressed, having finally worked her thigh-high boots up her legs, she fastened her earrings and stretched.

She couldn't use the door, not at this time of night. Curfew had come into force a few hours prior, and with her luck, that bitch Vector was on patrol duty. Even more so, there was the matter of how the dorms worked. Each room had two students assigned to it, and each door had been retrofitted with one-of-a-kind locks, with the electronic signature of a student's Scroll serving as keys. This had been done presumably to keep students from entering each other's rooms without permission, or simply picking the locks as one would a traditional lock—in her first year there had been an epidemic of that going around, and the complaints had, after some time, stirred old Lionheart into action. If she used her own Scroll to leave, it would be logged by the system, and anyone who cared to look would have some very pointed questions for her when she returned.

That left the window. All the bedroom windows were fastened with a steel rod that allowed them to open ten inches but no more. Would have been easier, and probably more aesthetically pleasing for the faculty to keep up with the original architecture that was still intact across the grounds; sliding outer partition doors and windows made of a latticework wooden frame and covered with a tough, translucent white paper. Getting around that would have been a cinch, though admittedly, it'd probably be messy. But luckily, she had her own key. A single swing of Fulgora was enough to see to that— she'd blame that one on Lye.

Catching the remains of the steel rod before it could hit the ground and make noise, she was immediately met with a breath-taking view of Mistral's skyline far below in the distance. Buildings raced each other in a quest to touch the cold moon, and thousands upon thousands of little lights lit up the city far below.

Hefting the polearm onto her back again, and tightening the straps on her ensemble, she picked up her Sidewinder, and stared at it intensely, before finally slinging it onto her back with Fulgora. She didn't think she'd need it, but experience had taught her it was better to have and not need than need and not have.

With the window open, it was far easier to hear the overwhelming sound of the nearby waterfall that ran through the mountain below. While not quite the undisputed wall of sound it was up close, it was enough for her to need a few precious seconds to collect herself and adjust her hearing in an attempt to sense noise beyond it. It was an auditory smokescreen that all but shielded most other sounds from earshot… that is, if you weren't a faunus. Whether that worked for her or against her, remained to be seen.

Forcing her eyes down, she found herself looking into Haven's gardens. A complex amalgamation of intricate hedgerows, stone paving, koi pools and wooden bridges, In truth, she herself wasn't entirely certain of its purpose. Haven, long before the rise of Huntsmen, had gone by a different name, and had been the palatial seat of the ruling imperial monarchy of the Mistral Empire, a wide spanning regime with provinces that expanded across Anima and beyond. Sable remembered Vector talking in one particularly boring lecture about how the garden had been founded by the last Empress Dowager before the Vytal treaty had disbanded the empire and the other kingdoms had absorbed what few provinces they still had abroad, that hadn't already been taken during the Great War.

The palace and its grounds had for the most part been gutted of most of their gold and splendour over the decades since being repurposed, but yet, the garden remained mostly untouched. It didn't bother Sable or anything, just… confused her. It was impressive, sure, but it wasn't exactly like Mistral was short on natural greenery. In any case, she supposed she should be grateful. Not just for the beautiful view, but additionally, for the fact it would be this very garden that would provide her way out.

She had been faced with a dilemma the previous night; to try and use the elevators get down to the city through Haven's main hall, or simply leap off the edge of the mountain and let her Huntress training do the rest. There had to be a point to all that talk of landing strategies after all. But what she hadn't remembered then, and was kicking herself for now, was that on the southern side of this spectacle of natural beauty, there was an oft used system of automated gondola lifts, designed to carry passengers between Haven and Mistral. Most people used the Bullheads to make the journey nowadays, which meant not much attention was paid to it. Since she didn't know how to pilot, let alone hotwire a Bullhead, it stood to reason that this was her best bet of getting to Mistral unnoticed.

All she had to was make it to the other side.

Throwing caution to the wind, she crossed her fingers, before climbing out of the window. She was five floors up, but it didn't take much to carefully manoeuvre herself onto the outer ledge under the windowsill.

That was where her troubles began, for no sooner had she set foot on it, when disaster struck. It was subtle; the clatter of small pebbles against the wall below, a small noise that somehow managed to echo briefly, before being drowned out. Before she could even process what that meant, the ledge buckled, and in an instant, before she had time to react, it crumbled under her feet entirely.

Surprise morphed into a surge of terror as she began her plummet. She sought purchase desperately, anything, to stop herself, and her hands caught the edge of the windowsill stopping her momentum. The terror calmed.

It didn't last.

Her heart leapt from her throat, as almost immediately, the windowsill snapped under the pressure of her grip, and she felt gravity take her again, dragging her uncontrollably down into the darkness below

There was ivy along the wall, and she quickly grabbed some to steady herself, wildly scrabbling for purchase. Fortunately, the vines below her was dense and overgrown, clumping together enough for her to stop herself falling further. The remains of her window ledge continued to the ground, bouncing off the wall hitting the grass with a loud thud.

And then there was silence.

Sable hung from the ivy, desperate to try and slow her racing heart as she took stock of the situation.

She was about twenty-five feet above the gardens, nesting in gnarled tendrils each about as thick as the branches of a tree. The stonework of the wall was crumbling and uncared for, and so saturated with ivy, that the blonde, were she anyone else, would have thought she was scaling some abandoned jungle temple.

Just as she was considering whether to attempt climbing the rest of the way down, or simply jumping, a light showed in a ground floor window, and shortly following that, a door opened, and she could hear faint voices.

The dim light alone wasn't enough to show her what was going on, but as the figures drew closer, she could make out two hazy shadows.

Footsteps walked past and rounded the corner. Their path would take them under her dorm room. Would they see the open window? She had been smart enough to leave her light off. With luck, there would be no reason for them to look up. Even if they did, she had to hope they couldn't see her; she was safely nestled in the thick waxy leaves of the ivy, and her dark leather ensemble would help keep her hidden. Ideally.

She breathed a sigh of relief as they passed without so much as a blink, moving further into the greenery. While it was a concern that they'd seemingly gone in the direction she was supposed to be heading in, the space was large, it was dark, and there was plenty of cover. She was no ninja, but she should be able to avoid them easily enough.

Her gaze hardened.

First things first.

Normally a fall from that height would have broken an ankle or a leg. But she had aura and a dirt bank had built up against the wall right beneath her. Sable lowered herself as far as she could, then let go. She fell through the air, and immediately felt her feet strike the hard undersoil below with a thump, skidding down the bank before coming to a complete stop at the bottom.

Careful not to allow the bulk of her weapons to overbalance her, she began to move around the side of the building, staying as close to the wall as possible and in the dirt.. She was running the risk of leaving tracks, but it hadn't rained in weeks, and she couldn't take the risk that the crack of dry grass under her heels might alert a teacher patrolling in the gardens. Aside from them, most of the other students would be asleep. Even the ones who were awake wouldn't be going anywhere, which aside leaving her free to do whatever he wanted, coming and going as she pleased, as long as she kept quiet.

The towering hedges cast black shadows across her path; whether because they were so tall and thick or because she was just jumpy, but it was enough to instill her with a rare sense of caution. As she traced the familiar path, she could make out far more details of the gardens now, and as she made her way deeper into them, the feeling that she was being watched grew ever more pervasive.

There was a round construction that may well have been a statue, the remains of some stone pillars, a sunken pit, and a section of broken brickwork what could have been a wall with some carvings in it. She gingerly approached for a closer look, 'A fountain,' Sable realised.

A splash caught her attention, , and moving closer, she could see all kinds of colours with various patterns, moving under the silver waters. She watched for a while, entranced by the kaleidoscope of hues danced before her eyes, seemingly at random, without regard for rhyme or reason. Then, one of the patterns broke from the canvas and broke the surface of the water. It was bigger than the other fish, because that was the only thing they could have been, Sable realized, but there was something odd about it; a flicker of what someone with less perception might have called intelligence, behind its flat dead eyes. It seemed to examine her for a brief second, before flicking its head towards one of the passages out of the clearing and diving back down,

Before she could ponder this strange behaviour, the sound of voices emerged from the direction the fish had indicated, and before she knew it, Sable was scurrying behind the crumbling wall, sequestering herself between the brickwork and the bushes on the other side of the fountain. There was just enough space for her to fit, and she tried to ignore how the waxy leaves brushed against her bare skin. There was no telling what could happen if she was discovered. Fortunately, there were enough loose bricks in the wall to keep a clear view of the fountain as the newcomer approached.

From where Sable was crouching, she could see a figure as they approached the clearing. His image was reflected in the water, and with a sense of total shock, Sable realized that she recognized him. Grey hair with flecks of tan, rising up in a bedraggled mane, as if it had just been blown dry. The same weathered brown greatcoat he wore day in, day out. Small, watery eyes. Headmaster Lionheart. She'd recognise him anywhere. She should have been horrified. Of all the faculty she could have encountered…him! Here! Ignoring the very pertinent fact that he was the man in charge of the entire school, Lionheart was a faunus; his sense of smell and hearing were unparalleled. A moment's focus should have been all it took to identify her; her hiding place wouldn't have fooled a child. . But as she was silently cursing herself for being so tall and her panic swelled, Sable's instincts screamed at her that something seemed wrong. Very wrong.

Studying the Headmaster's features, she wasn't sure if it was the moonlight, but his face seemed ashen white, as if he was a walking corpse. His shoulders were tight and his steps stilted, as if he were in the grip of a vice, but still trying to move forward. She knew the man was jumpy on the best of days- probably a tradeoff coming from his tenured years as a Huntsman, but she had never seen him quite like this.

But it was the other, newer voice that drew her attention.

Sable couldn't see their face. They were clad in a long-hooded cloak, one that obscured their identity well enough that Sable couldn't see a single identifying feature from where she was, which wasn't helped by the fact that the figure soon turned its back turned to her.

She could only watch and listen as the two of them talked.

Headmaster Leo's voice came first, fraught with nerves, and tinged with a cocktail of frustration and anger.

"…And as I've told you already, you're not supposed to be here! You need to leave! What if someone sees you?!"

"Why, friend, I'm afraid that is not possible." A male voice; there was amusement in his words, but an unmistakable and creeping sense of raw malice bled from every syllable. "My assignment from Her Grace was to ensure your cooperation. So, that is what I must do. One does not upset the Queen, after all."

" That's not-"

The Haven headmaster was quickly cut off as, at lightning speed, a black shape shot out from the back of the hooded man's cloak, aiming straight for the older man's neck. Sable's hand immediately went to Sidewinder, but before either of them had a chance to react, it whipped around, revealing a deadly stinger. The hooded man chuckled, and his tail, as that, Sable realized, was indeed what it was, appeared to curve under Lionheart's neck, tilting his chin with its deadly stinger.

"And I would just hate to tell her that I was refused your hospitality…"

Sable knew she couldn't shoot. She couldn't trust her aim in this tight space, with so little light, and certainly couldn't risk blowing the headmaster's head off; worse still if she revealed herself, or missed, there was no telling what could happen to Mr Lionheart. Her jaw clenched. What could she do? She made to shift positions, but to her horror, a small cascade of pebbles fell into the fountain. Sable froze.

Abruptly, in an instantaneous blur of speed, the tail shot away from the headmaster's throat, and dived into the water, with a loud splash. Before either of them could cry out, the stranger's tail emerged from the water, with a very familiar fish impaled on it.

"Apologies, Headmaster." The stranger remarked with his increasingly irritating faux politeness and a mock bow. "I thought I heard something…."

The stranger turned her way, his eyes, a sickly yellow, snake-like, and inhuman filled with sadistic malice, still waving the dead fish on his tail like a trophy of war as it flailed desperately for life. He didn't even care to put an end to its misery, content to watch it writhe in agony with a dispassionate smirk, as if he was merely watching a sunset instead of torturing a harmless animal for no reason at all.

In her third year of Haven, Sable had taken an elective in criminal psychology. It wasn't particularly as interesting as she expected, no doubt because most of Mistral were affiliated with crime in some way and it didn't exactly do to draw attention to that fact too heavily if you wanted to live comfortably, but she couldn't say that she hadn't picked up anything useful. There, she had learned that there were six eye movements that revealed motives, and fifteen variants of each. On most faces, on even the most hardened and deadly criminals, the pupils contracted and expanded depending on emotions.

Happiness, laughter, affection; the pupils opened.

Fear, hatred, rage; they narrowed.

But not his.

Eyes that let in no light, that saw through the darkness, stared into you, each pupil a serrated dagger in the dark. His pupils stayed fixed, tiny points of blackness, the eyes of someone who hated everything, and everyone. And worse still, enjoyed it.

They really were the eyes of death, of pure unrelenting evil, and for as long as she lived, she would never forget say it made the woman uneasy was an understatement of colossal proportions. Could he see her? He was a faunus; it was a given that he could see in the dark, but could he see through stone? A semblance or something.?

Even Lionheart seemed horrified.

"All I want is to examine the Vault door on her Grace's behalf. Or would you rather she come herself?"

Though she had no idea who he was talking about, even in all this darkness, Sable wasn't blind to the tension that seemed to ripple through the air at the mere mention of this mysterious woman. The elder faunus took some time before composing himself, a hardened glare swallowing his features. It seemed for an instant that his hatred of the stranger swallowed any fear he had of him, straightening his spine and inflaming his resolve, however brief it may be.

"Very well. But you will be quick, and when you are finished, you will leave. And you most certainly will not lay a hand on my students. Is that clear?"

"Crystal, Prof! Though admittedly, I'm not really a hands-on kind person. I prefer to let my tail do the messy stuff. Care for a snack?"

He waved the fish around under his nose, relishing that it was taking every ounce of bravado the old lion had not to outright cower. Finally, no doubt seeing that he was pushing Lionheart to his breaking point, the cloaked stranger sighed with exaggeration, but anyone with even the barest baseline of social cues could hear the satisfaction and vindictive glee in his tone.

"Well, you're no fun anymore. Lead on, Mcduff! The sooner I get this done, the sooner I return to Her Grace and get out of your oversized hair, hmm?"

With his tail proverbially between his legs, Lionheart did as he was told, and his guest followed, hands folding behind his back as he whistled a jovial tune.

A single flick of the stranger's tail sent the unfortunate creature careening back into the fountain with a loud splash as they walked away and disappeared into the darkness. And then there was silence.

Sable remained stock still, barely moving. Barely breathing.

When she was sure they were gone, she clambered out from her hiding place, walking over to the fountain. The corpse of the colourful fish bobbed on the water's surface, purple veins marring its once colourful scales. Whatever that tail had done to it, she suspected it had been poisoned. Painfully, if the open mouth and dilated pupils were anything to indicate that. And had she not done what she had, that's what he would have done to the Head-

Closing her eyes, she turned and walked away.

The rest of the journey was without incident. No teachers, no animals, not even any noise. That was just as well, really, because every step she took was if she was in a daze. Finding the gondolas wasn't much work- and neither was starting them up again- not with her semblance.

It wasn't long at all before she was seated inside, and the gears sprang to life, bringing her and the rusty carriage down the mountainside. The lights of the capital were closer now, beautiful, shimmering and gold, inviting in their warmth.

And all she could think about was those haunting yellow eyes.

---

Adam Minos Taurus was not a man that typically went about his business unprepared. If anything, in contrast to popular belief, if his plan A did not work – hit it until it stopped moving – he always had a plan B, C, occasionally even D up his sleeve.

The past few minutes however, nay, the past few days, had thoroughly convinced him that those plans, if indeed they existed at all, were in dire need of adjustment. Because if there was one thing his recent experiences had taught him, it was that no matter how well thought out the scheme, how well prepared he thought himself to be, and how many prayers and entreaties he made to cruel, deaf gods… there wasn't a plan on Remnant, great or small, that could survive his luck.

Or rather, lack thereof.

'Ok, Mr Hotshot Super-Bounty Hunter… At what point did you start to lose control here?

His muscles tensed as he hugged the wall, moving beneath the line sight of a wall mounted camera.

'When exactly did your luck decide to triple somersault off a cliff?'

A shuriken knocked a second out of alignment, sending its gaze away from his route.

'This was supposed to be a simple job. You go in, you talk to a few girls, get your information and you leave. Rocket science, it was not.'

Moving carefully and swiftly, the faunus moved forward, bending briefly to collect the fallen tool before continuing on his way.

'So when did whatever the hell this is, start sounding like a good idea?'

The ridged grip of his weapon was a comforting one as he held it tightly, moving from hallway to hallway. Avoiding the cameras was tricky work, and while his first instinct had been to bring them down; he quickly slapped that down. For one thing, all it would probably do was give his enemies advance warning of where he was. And for another...he was still trying to get used to Thorn's unwieldy nature again. It would come back to him, he was sure, but until then, he would at least make half an effort to be careful. He wasn't much better with his throwables either, even less so with such a finite amount of them, but he at least had more recent practive with those; making them the safer option for weaponry by default.

Especially since his sword was still downstairs.

He felt his anger start to grow, doing its best to exert control. But it wasn't going to work this time, he thought, as he fought back. He needed to end this quickly. He couldn't afford to lose himself here. Not for the first time this evening, he had the thought that he should've come up with a better plan. Something a little better than: Get in, get the info, don't get seen, get out .

He had no idea why he thought it would work.

Admittedly, it had been a work in progress.

'Nothing behind Door Number One.' He sighed. Or door number two. Guess that only leaves…"

He didn't think his situation would or could get any worse, until he rounded one last corner and came to a final set of closed doors. This normally wouldn't be a problem, until he tried the handle and found they were locked.

Adam glanced through the inset windows. Most of the rooms on this floor were empty as far as he could tell. Save one. As he moved out of sight of the glass, he picked up a string of indistinct words. The conversation got marginally louder as he closed the distance, enough to make out the edgy tone, but the door was thick enough to muffle what was being said. He leaned forward anyway, making a few alterations to muffle his steps in order to sharpen his hearing.

"…some guy snooping around our business," a deep voice said.

"They cops?"

"No, and that's what I'm afraid of. Ain't cops. Most they've done is put this place under surveillance. They know to stay the hell away. whoever he is, he's fucking with us. Asking questions that don't need to be asked. We need to find out who he is and what he knows."

Adam smiled.

"Bingo."

Kicking the door down, he was rewarded by the scream of someone being hit by the flying door and falling flat on his back. He had a policy about entering a fight – unless stealth was absolutely vital, there was absolutely no reason not to make a lasting first impression.

And by the looks of things, he very much had.

Wide eyed, slack jawed, entirely unprepared for his arrival, one could forgiven for thinking they'd never seen a faunus before.

"What the hell?!"

"He's here! Get him!"

With a horrified look on his face, the man took a step back from him but grabbed an object from his pockets and brandished it unsubtly in his hands.

'Not that prepared, it seems.' Adam thought to himself as the first one pulled a gun. But the man was moving at merely human speed, and his opponent had a lifetime of battle tested swiftness of reaction. Adam flung out an arm, sending Thorn's tip hurtling towards the gunman.

The sickle-like hook affixed to the blade caught the weapon, allowing the faunus to yank the pistol out of the man's hand and send it flying across the room. The man yelped—apparently his finger had gotten stuck in the trigger guard, and now he stood there shaking and cursing.

Adam wondered how the man would feel if he'd told him he'd actually been trying to hit him between the eyes.

'Stupid depth perception.'

Best to keep things conventional in the meantime.

Giving no outward sign of his embarrassment, he scoffed, twirling the slack length around his knuckles. "Serves you right." Adam spoke calmly, doing his best to keep his ire out if his voice. "Ok, gentlemen. Let's not do anything rash here. Just tell me what I want to know, and we can call this a night. Unless anyone else wants a turn?"

The first of the thugs came at him in an attempt to get up close and personal. "Oh well, if you insist." He said, with resigned amusement. Adam easily sidestepped the man's headlong rush, simply sweeping his ankles out from under him to let him sprawl face first to best effect.

So much for diplomacy.

The second, deprived of his gun, swung a bottle, and missed in his excitement. Wrapping the loose wire around his knuckles, and on the verge of becoming even more disillusioned with the weak show of force, Adam cocked his own fist back and did not miss. The man dropped like a sack of bricks, and didn't move again.

"Glass jaw. Guess the guns make sense now." The third came, throwing a kick that under normal circumstances would have been a fairly respectable rear thrust kick. Unfortunately, these were not normal circumstances, primarily because Adam had spent the better part of half a year at that point having kicks of the same calibre being thrown at him by every two-bit crook he could think of. While the kick was good, the idiot throwing obviously had no training in any of the defences against it, and the faunus merely stepped back a pace, grabbed the foot hanging so invitingly in the air with his free hand, and pulled. Hard.

The man fell right out of his inadequately balanced stance and straight onto his tailbone with a crunch and a shriek of pain. "I'd probably think about getting that X-rayed if I were you. Now as I was-" The sound of a hammer locking behind him was enough to jump Adam into action again, throwing himself as hard and to the right as he could, to avoid the incoming bullet.

He rolled aside, grabbed the man's hand, pulled him down and grabbed him by the neck. Pulling himself upward, he put his new victim between him and the other gunmen, reaching for his shuriken, and sweeping his eye over the newcomers, debating his next move.

Instantly, he could read their intent. They were feeling big, enjoying the feeling of superiority that came with having a target dead to rights. The second from the right —Adam decided— He'd be the one to start it and trigger the others.

3.

2.

"Don't shoot!" cried the man being held hostage.

1.

Moments later he was perforated with bullets as Adam kicked his human shield forward and leapt into the air. It would be a rough storm to weather when gravity brought him back down, but it was nothing he couldn't handle.

Fist and feet flew, and the gunmen, who might have once believed that their safety lay in proximity, ballistics and weight of firepower, were soon taught that their true safety lay in distance alone.

The rapid chatter of automatic fire echoed throughout the room, bullets flying with blatant disregard for even the gunmen's safety. For the briefest of moments, Adam wondered if any of the other "customers" could hear anything over the copious amounts of drugs and sex they were consuming like they were going out of style. Then again, given the owners of this place, he highly doubted any of them were unused to the sound of gunfire, though perhaps not used to gunfire that was rapidly approaching the noise level of a small-scale war. It was no matter, Adam decided. They would either have the sense to get to cover, or they would die a bloody death.

He had higher concerns than the plight of mewling weaklings, after all.

Even so, that left him facing six, no, eight gunmen, all firing rather chaotically at him. Or at least in his general direction. As it turned out, be it pistols or automatic rifles, being given nice shiny new guns did not a marksman make, and wherever Malachite scrounged these idiots, it certainly wasn't from the Atlesian Army Sharpshooter division.

Giving silent thanks for this, Adam bounded towards the gunmen, never moving in the same direction for more than a second, bouncing and flipping off the walls for the added advantage that came when he came back down.

Once again it proved true that a rapidly moving, rapidly foreshortening target would play hell on anyone's aim- Though never so much or so fast as when said moving target would finish its last leap with both feet full in your chest. Or your stomach. Or the one man that Adam took out simply by landing on his head.

He hit the ground rolling, winging Thorn at ankle level, and neatly chopping both of another man's legs right out from under him with his free hand. The rifle went one way, his legs went another, and the Spider's head hit the ground with a hollow and somewhat unsatisfying clonk.

The sickle meanwhile had met flesh, and Adam instinctively pulled, eliciting a scream of pain as he dragged his target to the floor. Before the faunus could finish him however, he caught movement from behind him, and heard the distinctive sound of a magazine being replaced.

A shuriken came flying out of Adam's hand at lightning speed, hitting its target clean at the bridge of his nose, with enough force to send his head staggering back. The goon's trigger finger squeezed by reflex, sending a hail of bullets skyward. Before Adam even had a chance to react, there was a loud groan of wood, and a solid block of plaster came down on the thug's head with an explosion of dust.

It took Adam a precious second to process what had happened.

"…I admit I'm surprised I even managed that."

Another of the thugs sprang at him, something shining silver in his hand. Adam braced himself as the knife flashed up in his face, and he blocked, stumbling slightly as a fist swung into his face, landing hard on his jaw. His head snapped back and still a little dazed, Adam scrambled up to silence the guard, but wasn't expecting the swing of a club. He caught his wrist and planted a hard elbow in his stomach.

His fury aroused, Adam struck him in the face full force, grabbed his foe before he could reel too far back. The man's feet went flying out from underneath him as Adam followed up with a swipe of his legs, knocking him to the ground as well.

"No falling down on the job," he quipped darkly. "We're just getting started."

The kusarigama relied on slashing with the kama up close or swinging the heavy weight and using its deadly momentum to literally smash the enemy to bits from afar. With its chain, its wielder could disarm the opponent or entangle him or her in a way that would leave the target vulnerable, a trait held in common with the rope dart. But for all its features, the weapon had a major flaw to it, one that its derivative successors had ultimately inherited. In order for the weapon to be wielded effectively, the user generally needed a wide and open space. And while to an extent, this was true of Thorn, the personal adjustments made to that particular instrument, however made it quite another story entirely.

He held the rope at the weighted end with his left hand while placing his right hand further up the length, leaving a foot and a half of slack, where he began rapidly spinning it at his side counterclockwise.

Adam suddenly threw the weighted end that he'd been spinning underhand, swiftly aiming at his opponent's body before he moved around it and went right for him. The faunus immediately pulled the weight back as quickly as he could and spun around in a circle while it was retracting, turning it into a swinging weapon, before kicking the bladed tip on the other end forward, flying into a thug's upper thigh. Whipping it free, Adam knocked the iron weight on the other end forward with his elbow, letting the momentum and weight at the end of the rope wrap around the injured man's neck. Swiftly, the faunus tugged, sending this target stumbling forward, giving Adam enough time to bury Thorn's blade into his throat.

'Huh. Guess I remember more than I thought.'

Or maybe he was just lucky? Undoubtedly, that probably played a factor, but Adam's advantage was the size of the room. The furthest target was less than three meters away; it wasn't like he was going to hit anything else.

Moments later, Adam felt something approaching from his blind side, and struck again, sending the blade forth with great force, but at the cost of his aim, which harmlessly struck the wall, inches away from his target's head.

Maybe he was a little rusty after all.

He pulled with all his strength, but the blade wouldn't budge an inch. It was stuck!

Thinking quickly, he held tight to the other end, and trapped the dead length around the nearest goon's neck like a noose. He struggled like a stuck pig, as the rope cut deeper and deeper into the flesh of his neck, and his eyes began to bulge.

If he had been the last enemy in the room, Adam could have called it quits then and there; He did need at least one of them alive, after all. But this particular thug, as the faunus would shortly discover, had managed to damn Adam by weaponizing incompetence. For as long as the faunus was forced to hold him there, he himself couldn't move, lest he be forced to release his victim, and forfeit his weapon.

A fact his remaining foes were quick to take advantage of.

Cursing to himself, Adam tugged again, pulling at Thorn's rope harshly, ignoring the cries of its enstrangled victim.

It wouldn't budge!

Dodging a fist, the faunus rolled forward, momentarily slackening the rope, before pulling tightly needed to buy himself some breathing room to retrieve Thorn. But how?

Slipping out of the way of another attack, he noticed a fallen chair to his side, strewn haphazardly on the ground amid the chaos. Hooking the backrest under his heel, he flicked the chair upwards into the air, catching one of his attackers under the chin with its legs and sending him backwards. Before it could fall, the faunus again caught it, spinning and kicking it into the air a second time with his other foot, just in time to block another broken bottle. With his two closest attackers distracted, Adam released the rope, allowing the thug at his mercy some much needed breathing room. But as he rose to his feet and made to attack, the red-haired faunus caught the chair for a final time, the toe of his boot snagging the backrest and turning the furniture into an extension of his leg as he twisted into a brutal spinning roundhouse.

The once captive thug barely had time to look surprised as the plastic shattered against his face with a loud crash, and the sheer force of the impact, jarred the blade from the wall and unravelled the length of rope from his neck, as the body sailed over a desk before crashing onto the ground behind it.

Once again, he heard chambers being loaded, and Adam knew he had seconds to act.

Pulling the rope to him, the faunus quickly adjusted his aim, whipping the blade back, performing a shoulder twirl, and swinging again, striking a new target, this time in his right shoulder. Yelling in pain, he returned fire, the shot missing a foot above Adam's head as the faunus vaulted over the desk into a two-footed kick that snapped his opponent's head back into the solid glass of the monitor bank, shattering it into a spiderwebbed pattern.

The first swing grazed someone's ear, the second shot hit the man in the stomach, and the third revolution sent it screaming into his chest and struck his left lung. He fell backwards, flipping over a table and sending his friends scurrying like cockroaches. Two shots, and two more fell with no resistance. Adam forgot about sentiment. Whatever was going through his mind was gone; the reasoning behind his actions, and all that was left were the automatic responses: Pull rope. Neck twirl. Shift foot backwards. Turn. Slash. Jump. Turn. Strike. Move.

It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Blind fish. Blind fish in a coma.

The room echoed with the tumultuous conversation of bullets as each opponent clarified his stance.

Half a dozen bullets later and most of his would-be killers lay dead, mostly at the hands of their own cohorts. If Adam had the time, he would have laughed.

But now wasn't the time to congratulate himself.

He needed answers.

As he made his way across the room, he noticed one of the men twitching, trying to clear away the haze. Before he could, the faunus slammed his foot into the man's face. The red-haired bounty hunter closed in on the last man standing. Maybe it was because the man's poise was completely different now, crooked and ashamed instead of straight and proud, but it took him a moment to recognize the stranger that lay before him.

"You!"

'If you're all tuckered out, you can go now.'

He remembered the words well.

To his credit, the familiar stranger lashed out scrambling for one of the fallen weapons, a pointless act of desperation. "St-Stay away from me!" He pointed a pistol at him, but Adam was a fraction of a second faster.

The goon let out a scream as his leg gave out from underneath him, the sickle shattering his kneecap with explosive force. Still, stupidly, he tried to raise his gun again to shoot at him, but his hand was reduced to meat when Adam's boot trapped the hand under his heel, and both of them heard the bones snap and crack. It was only when the thug howled in pain that Adam considered that he might have been overheard, and so he released him, replacing his foot with the a blade.

In six to eight months, he might be able to use his hand to feed himself, maybe even cut food, but nothing else. But Adam didn't know that. What he did know, was two things. Firstly, that he'd just wasted yet another bullet. And secondly, that allowing this shrew to escape him before was the source of his current problems. And this was the thought at the forefront of his mind when he spoke.

"The missing girl. Where."

"I...don't.."

Before he could answer, a flicker movement on one of the ten screen monitors affixed to the wall caught Adam's attention. It had displayed a view of the room he'd been in with Cerise, before dissolving into a partial view of the street outside. He'd been about to turn his attention away from it entirely, when, having held that view for around thirty seconds, it switched to another scene, one that quickly captured his full interest. Someone, no, several someones had entered the reception area. They paused for a moment, remaining in view. The feed was grainy, and in monochrome, but he'd wager they were Spiders by the looks of their clothing, even if he couldn't make out colours on the monochrome monitors. What had caught his attention though, was that they were struggling with someone. Two of them were struggling to keep their victim secured, whereas a third moved behind the couch to the panelled wall.

To Adam's shock, the man pulled on some part of the wall and punched in what looked to be a keypad. 'A safe maybe?' He was immediately proven wrong when a door opened four of the previously empty wall, the man dragging it back to allow his friends to drag their resisting victim out of view, before shutting it behind them. A door. Several thoughts went through his head. On the one hand, a secret door was hardly proof of anything other than a desire to keep private things private. Cerise had told him that he'd want to snoop in the Madame's office if he wanted to find about 'missing girls.' But a lead was a lead, and Adam found that morbid curiosity compelled him to pursue it.

"Where are they taking her?"

The goon went white as a sheet and only stammered as Adam counted down. By the time he got to one, he broke.

"Whatever works for you." The faunus slammed him over the edge of the desk, scattering equipment and glass, "I tried to play nice, so here's where we do things the hard way." He grabbed one of the empty beer bottles and broke it against the desk, quickly pressing the jagged end to his cheeks hard enough to make him start bleeding, "Let's try that again. Where?"

"Boss… Boss t-told me to s-ssend the bitch to Isla Del Sol."

Adam couldn't help but raise an eyebrow. Isla del Sol was a resort island. On the other side of Remnant. His eye flickered with red sparks.

"Care to be more specific?" And then a thought occurred to him "How many men are holding your prisoners?"

"A dozen. Maybe more!"

"Where do you keep your abductees?"

"Fifth floor!"

On a six-floor building. Adam hummed himself. "I'm guessing your friends are pretty spaced out?"

"I… I...guess—"

"Hey! What the hell—?!" a voice suddenly shouted behind him, making Adam jump, releasing the man from his grip. He spun around, facing the thug that had just walked into the room — the two stared at each other in shock, neither knowing quite what to make of each other.

It took the new arrival two whole seconds to react to him. Holding up a finger, the man stumbled back, his eyes going wide as he spluttered,

"Uh," Adam said, then put up his hands. "Surprise?"

Everything happened in a blur of motion.

The thug who had just entered snapped to, scrambling for something in his pockets. His former interrogation victim tore free from his grip, scrambling again for his fallen gun with his good hand. Before Adam could stop him, the first shouted, "Boss, we got a prob — auughhkk!"

His voice died in a gargled cry as Adam launched forward and buried the end of the bottle into the man's neck. The faunus ripped it out before the man could drop and take the weapon with him, and Adam winced in silent disgust at the blood blooming across his shirt like a violent flower. The dead man mouthed silently, unable to speak, before crumpling against the wall and falling still.

In a split second, the second man had reached his gun and fired off a shot. Adam brought up his aura out of reflex. Had he acted a second later, he'd be missing critical brain matter. The bullet singed past his ear, blowing apart a chunk of the doorframe. He went to take aim again, still fumbling with his gun, but Adam was ready for him. Thinking quickly, he pivoted on his heel, and swung his arm over his head, almost like he was pitching a baseball.

...If baseball was a deadly game, and instead of balls, pitchers threw broken bottles.

The glass shattered over his face, digging deep into the man's flesh. He screamed, twisting and snarling in agony. Moments later, a metallic whine rang out across the room, Thorn shot out a lightning speed. The point of the weapon struck thome, burying itself into soft flesh with a discussing squelch. Without hesitation or remorse, the faunus yanked it free, tearing away blood, skin and muscle with its departure, as the weapon left its victim's body and returned to its master, who deftly caught it in one hand. The man fell back to his knees as if praying for help, but having received no response, collapsed face up on the raggedy shag carpet.

"Oh, great," Adam muttered, grimacing again at his own stupidity as he used the corpse's shirt to wipe Thorn clean. There was already chatter on the dead man's Scroll, strewn next to the first body, as what was presumably reinforcements responded. Adam snorted, despite himself. If whoever on the other end wanted their friend to hear them, they'd have to talk a damn sight louder than that. He picked it up, and backed away towards the door for a moment, his first natural impulse being to leave. He wasn't going to get anything else from here, he didn't think he had the time to find another goon to interrogate by the looks of things, and the ones in here were...otherwise occupied.

But there was the matter of the code.

He thought he could hear the thug making his last desperate attempt to warn the others through his Scroll, but his voice was barely comprehensible now and his body limp. He wouldn't last long enough to tell anyone anything. Ignoring his first instincts to rush down and investigate, Adam pocketed it, turning his attention to the cabinets and drawers. They were unlocked. The lower drawers contained dozens of different documents and photographs but most of them were nothing more than lists of figures and hardly looked promising.

'Stupid, stupid stupid!'

And all because he was too much of a moron to lock a damned door.

Rather than take the time to further examine the items on the cluttered desk, or rifle through the drawers of the three-drawer filing cabinets in search of the password, He might have hit the jackpot with a wall safe, poorly concealed behind a broken cabinet. Lacking the combination, knowledge and the patience to listen to the tumblers, he considered prying it open and ripping the door off its hinges. A closer look determined that was a lost cause too.

He was strong, and had plenty of aura, but the gap between the safe door and the wall was too narrow, and there wasn't enough room to get purchase in order to pry of the door. He could have cut it open with his semblance, but again, that would need his sword, even if it didn't end up destroying whatever was inside.

He really needed to get that back.

But first…

His heart beat like a trip hammer as he searched. There was a rats nest of wiring and dusty black boxes he was forced to trawl through, but a few precious minutes later, Adam had managed to find what he was looking for, ripping random bundles of wires free from the system in a frenzy and watching with silent satisfaction as the monitors' screen blinked once before going dark. No sense in leaving more of a trail than he had to.

For good measure, he grabbed another stray bottle, this one still half full and lukewarm to the touch. For a brief moment, he was seriously tempted to down it all—chances were he'd probably need it—but he'd rather not swap spit with some random gangbanging security guard. Instead, he held it over the computer monitors and tipped it.

The liquid poured over the plastic shells of the monitors and trickled into the vents — the wires beneath hissed and crackled, and Adam watched as one by one the screens went black. A bitter scent filled the air as the whirring noise of the fans came to a stop; Adam noted idly that it smelled faintly like barbecue.

He dropped the bottle, paying no attention to the sharp chink as it chipped on the floor, next to the ruined monitor before he left the room hastily quickly turning and reaching a corridor patrolled by a single bouncer.

He strode past him without a word.

His cursory scan of the security footage hadn't given him much to work with in regards to the door code but it didn't matter much, he supposed. All he had to do was go back the way he came without drawing any more attention.

He'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

That however, might have proved to be a little more difficult than he planned.

Cerise had given as many details as she could on the brothel, detailing the layout and spouting any rules she knew about. Five levels and a basement, two for the use of customers and working girls, the top level used exclusively by high ranking members of the syndicate and the Madame herself. He was on the fourth, he realized, remembering that he'd come up two floors to get to the bar, and supposedly, the Widow housed nearly fifty working girls a night, and only the special girls and especially rich paying customers were ever allowed into the upstairs lounge proper.

What he had somehow forgotten was that he'd have to cross through the lounge to get back downstairs. The lounge that was filled with customers, other prostitutes, and most importantly, more enforcers. There was one standing at the exit, and unlike the others, he seemed to be searching for something. Adam knew the guards wouldn't pose a problem, not for him. They'd fall like chaff before a plough. But a tussle would also create the perfect diversion for someone to move the girl—if she was being kept here— and to escape in the scuffle. Which meant he'd still need to keep things quiet if he wanted to salvage things. Joy. He made to double back the way he'd come, skirting the revelries as best he could and using the walls of people as a shield between him and the vigilant thug.

in the corner of the room, a topless dark-skinned woman with long, black hair and long rabbit ears, dressed in jeans and black sandals, was in the midst of snorting a mountain of what looked like cocaine propped on a table, a rolled up piece of paper stuck in her left nostril. She was surrounded by her friends—or were they co-workers?—but seemed jumpy, almost totally unhinged with panic. There was a patch of shadows nearby, and Adam allowed himself to settle there. Her ears would provide enough of a distraction. He realized with a start that these were the girls he'd seen in the reception area when he'd first arrived, which meant… he had a window. But then there was that annoying thug at the entrance to the stairs.

Just as Adam was about to leave, consequences be damned, they started to speak.

"I just saw T. He said if I didn't dance for his friends, I'd be going… going!" She sounded like she was hyperventilating, her words clogging in her throat.

They were quick to reassure her, but Adam recognised the false encouragement all too well.

"Hey, Hey, you just gotta entertain his friends. You can't let them think they own you… and just… try to think of something positive."

"We… we've all been there, honey. Luckily, they don't ask twice."

"Just tell me, what happens in there? I mean—it's just— you all say it's really bad. Is it like a private club or something, or a back room? Or-"

The fake blonde to her right sighed.

"Yeah. Something like that. But it's not a club you really wanna be a member of. Just... be strong, baby."

"Yeah, pretty girl. You show them all how good you are, but just don't say yes to everything."

"Ok, Ok. Thank you… thank you. I won't. I won't."

"Poor, poor, poor, thing."

Adam's heart sped up. All right, so there was still a chance the Spiders just had piss-poor interior decorating skills, or really hated having extra space, but he'd be willing to lay down lien that they'd hidden it for a reason. He was irritated that their conversation had been interrupted, even more so that they hadn't specified, exactly where it was. Though he had a feeling he could guess.

His train of thought was promptly derailed when he caught sight of her across the room, sashaying with the man who'd been guarding the exit. Cerise was leading him away, towards the bedrooms. She caught sight of Adam, winking over her shoulder as she went.

Cerise had helped him. But why? He couldn't help but find that suspicious, but he figured it was best to take her at her word. If she meant to sell him down the river, she'd probably have been less subtle about it.

if Adam had any surety of tonight's events, it was that the word " subtle" didn't rank anywhere in her vocabulary.

---

"Seduce me…"

Adam's raised eyebrow displayed how weird he found her suggestion, but he couldn't make the words leave his throat. He prayed she couldn't see the expression on his face. A million thoughts raced behind his eyelids, all of them of Charlotte, before he dismissed them, summoning the devil-may-care persona that was beginning to fit like old leather as a grin threatened to break over his lips.

"Don't suppose you'd take a bonus for tonight instead?"

His voice didn't waver, and there was nothing odd in his inflection that betrayed the chaotic Charybdis of his mind, but she seemed to frown at him, as if she could see through his words. It was… unnerving.

"Is there someone else in your life, Handsome?"

A shadow of blonde hair flitted across his vision, shifting into an inky black as he blinked. Ignoring his misgivings, he met her gaze again, unwilling to let the silence be drawn out.

"So it's no problem!" She clapped her hands together happily, as if she had solved some great mystery or dilemma, either unable or unwilling to perceive his doubts.

"Still…"

She tittered, looking downward to draw his attention to the large swell between them. "I suppose it's unfair to let you do all the work, isn't it?"

Before he could speak, she was kissing him again soon after, and the feel of her lips on his felt cold and foreign. He tried to hug her and hold her, the way that he vaguely knew that girls liked to be held, but his arms felt floppy and weak. Instead, he let her kiss him silly until both their mouths grew tired and sore and Cerise fell back at his side, once again anchoring her body to his.

It was so… easy to forget himself.

To cast aside his doubts, his fears, and—

Adam stopped.

When they heard the small jingling of a set of keys from behind the door, he saw the desperate panic in Cerise's eyes as she looked at the door. Her eyes had widened- was it from fear? It had to be. The once confident and seductive air she'd had vanished, broken at the sound of the voice, and her whole body would have shaken if she wasn't already paralyzed with terror.

"Wha—?"

"The rooms…They're wired for sound..."

The euphoric daze Adam had felt evaporated into smoke.

"And you didn't think to mention that before?!"

But then she was interrupted by a loud banging on the door.

Fuck.

"I'm with a customer, Fuck off!" She called out back to him. Adam was already reaching for his jacket. He hurried to get it back on and take his leave, but just as he completed working his arm through the last sleeve, a square-shouldered brute swept into the vacant position in the doorway. "I'm sorry to interrupt, sir. Would you kindly step into another VIP room for a moment?"

Now, nobody would accuse Adam of anything remotely approaching subtlety even if they were in a charitable mood, but he liked to think he had become something of an expert in spotting danger. He might not trust people as a whole, but he did have at least some level of social intelligence, and had spent just enough time around the lower rungs of the criminal underworld long enough to know that sudden requests to visit the VIP room were generally invitations to a shakedown or a good, old- fashioned pummeling.

There was something puzzling in the man's gait too, enough to send Adam's hand to Thorn just in case. It was like something was weighing the other man down on one side and his muscles were struggling to compensate for his lack of balance.

He recognized it, perhaps too well, having spent the better part of a fortnight adjusting to a limp just like it.

A holster.

"Why?"

The man sneered at Adam's flippant attitude.

"Well. A few days ago, some crazy nut went on a few rampages. Cost us a lot of manpower. So you can probably guess that we aren't too happy with this guy?"

"Probably not." Adam kept his voice indifferent, which wasn't hard; he genuinely didn't care much for the man's hurt feelings . "Why the hell should I care about him?"

The redhead saw a vein on his head pulse slightly at his words, eliciting a closer thing to a genuine smile.

"You should care an awful lot, 'cause a little birdie told me that this guy looks just like you. Now are you coming along or not?"

He jabbed a finger at Adam's face with the last word, and the impulse to break it, lashing out and removing the offending limb then and there flared momentarily.

'They say the truth hurts,' Adam thought. In this case, it hurt the man standing directly in front of him. The setup was blown, and the only thing he could do from here was fight his way out. As ever, diplomacy had failed. Why had he even bothered again?

"Let me save you time," Adam said with a brazen confidence that barely disguised his utter infuriation.

The faunus waited until they were less than a metre apart before swinging the butt of his gun with all of his might. He heard a gasp behind him as metal hit bone, making a sickening thunk and tearing a bloody gash in the bouncer's cheek. As he stumbled back in a daze, Adam hit him with a brutal roundhouse kick to the ribs. From the moment he'd noticed what was going on, he'd been keeping his hand near his hidden weapons. One of his semi-automatics bucked in his hand, there was a muffled boom, and the man on the ground never knew what hit him as he slumped backwards.

---

Things had been pretty quick after that.

They had stepped out into the corridor, and she had rattled off what she knew, before she left him there as fast as her legs could carry her. She wasn't going to warn anyone. That had all been genuine, that much he could tell, and he had all she needed from her.

Apparently she had decided to come back and run interference for him for…whatever reason.

'I guess street honour's a thing here, huh?'

Now, Adam felt irritated… and oddly relieved. It was bad enough that Cerise had already confused him, He was nearly twenty, with a birthday mere months away, and in peak physical shape, not to mention that for all his misanthropy, his self control generally left a lot to be desired. Of course it didn't take much more than a wink and a promise to get him to rise to attention. Charlotte had proven that much months ago. But he was better than that now,

And he most certainly would not think about—

Her pressed tight against him—

Shut up.

—her hand sliding up and down his body—

Shut up.

Shut up!

Adam restrained the urge to cover his face with his hands, which honestly made it worse, because cutting off his sight meant his active imagination took over his mind's eye.

He could still see her there, and with the image came the memory of her breasts against his chest and her lips against his neck and her breath in his ear and her hand cupping his crotch.

He could physically feel his blood rushing as his brain sent him erotic images and phantom touches and whispered praises and pleasure, pleasure, pleasure—

The lustful buzzing in his head didn't slow down, as green eyes and dark hair swam in the back of his vision, and his hands curled into his palms. God, he thought he'd stopped acting like a moron after Charlotte. A girl acts nice to him, and suddenly he's compromising his beliefs and melting like putty in their hands. First that stupid infatuation with Charlotte, then, the nonsense with that blonde the previous night, and now this. Was he honestly that desperate that he clung to any woman to try and make nice with him ?

As it was, this one had probably been hoping to rob him blind, and with his apparent lack of wits making him such an easy mark, it would have been as easy as taking candy from an overgrown baby.

With a frustrated growl, he wiped his lips with his sleeve and tried to gather his scattered wits.

It was a good thing that he'd blown his cover before thing had the chance to go further, but there was no point in wasting time on it now.

If someone had been listening to the hidden microphones, then what he had needed to do was find the security room, which he'd done.. And from there, all there was left was to find the Madame's office. That had been the logic anyway. Cerise had been kind enough to mention where that was, and assuming she wasn't selling him down the river to save her own skin, it did at least sound plausible.

That should have been his next stop.

'Should' being the operative word.

Instead, in a few short minutes everything had gone pear shaped, a whole host of other problems had cropped up, some more literally than others,and now, he had found himself moving away from the bar and crowd, and making his way towards the stairs, poking his nose into things that could be totally unrelated to his goals.

It was after midnight now, but the party scene downstairs was still going strong.

Adam made his way to the main stairway, crossing the floor with a gait that was brisk, but not too quick to be more than casual. He counted several bouncers along the way; two near the stairs, and another at the bar. all on their leisurely patrol throughout the halls. None of them looked particularly threatening, nor did they appear on alert — good, they hadn't found any bodies yet. Adam imagined they didn't run into too much trouble here. Which meant he had the element of surprise a while longer, in case this whole night went south. Well. More than it already had.

He tried to piece together what he had heard. Something about a secret club. And they were afraid of it,

But what? Why?

Adam stopped at the bottom of the narrow staircase, listening at the door that led into the reception area. The sofas where the girls sat waiting for customers were out of view, but he could see the bouncer's empty armchair and best of all, his blade hanging tantalisingly from a rack inside the cabinet.

He quickly reclaimed it, glad to have his trusted weapon back where it belonged.

He gave his sword a single flawless spin and eased it back into its sheath, before turning his attention to the door. He thought briefly about moving the sofa in front of one of the doors to form a barricade, but he didn't know how long this area was going to be empty, and he needed to move fast.

It looked as if it had been locked forever. Like the stairs, it was not labelled. And somehow it seemed too small to be important when he arrived. But he knew better now.

He tapped a knuckle against the wall. Curiously, it seemed to be made of metal, but unlike what he'd been expecting, there was a handle, and a keypad with twelve buttons jutting out, the chrome color incongruous with ugly lavender paint. He reached for it and tried the handle. It wouldn't move. He pressed his ear against the metal and listened. Nothing.

Adam glared.

The first ten buttons were labeled as numbers, 0 through 9, and the remaining two were letters: Y and C. He assumed the C was for 'cancel', but what was Y's purpose? And how the hell was he supposed to guess the code? He could cut down the door with his semblance, Adam reasoned, hand going absently to his sword. But that would just tell everyone where he had gone, and possibly make his job even harder than it needed to be.

Even more so, he'd have wasted the past few hours. So against his better judgement, he decided to try for a subtler approach. But what?

There was definitely something behind it, but maybe…

It took him perhaps a second – one precious second – to work out what he'd need to do.

He had an idea.

A month ago, Charlotte had changed the lock combination to the storage room at the bar, and had promptly forgotten it when she'd tried to open it a week later, when the liquor distributors had arrived to deliver new stock. He'd laughed at the time, but staring in frustration at this lock, for a few moments, he had come to a startling conclusion.

This was the same kind of lock. Larger, and more well worn, by the looks of things, but the principle should be the same.

"I wonder…"

He grabbed the handle again, applying gentle tension to the knob. Not enough to register a full turn, but enough to apply pressure. Still holding the handle, with his free hand, Adam pressed '0'. The button remained rigid, not reacting at all. He tried again with '1'. Nothing. He forced himself to be patient, feeling like an idiot the longer he went. '2'. This time, the button sank easily into the keypad. He had a part of the code. '3' followed suit, and Adam was starting to get his hopes up. '4' was a bust, but '5' yielded another success. He went through '6', '7', '8' and '9', and found that the two odd numbered keys could be depressed, albeit with some difficulty. Another two digits. Finally, and mentally crossing his fingers, he pressed Cancel, and re-entered the digits in the first combination he could think of.

'I'm going to look like a moron if this doesn't work...'

Turning the knob fully for a final time, he heard a click and the door retracted from the wall with a near-silent thrum.

Maybe it would all be this easy.

Adam disappeared into the darkness.

---

It was a complete mess, to put it nicely.

Constructed with industrial cement and stained, chipped tile, it was much darker and gloomier than the bright façade of luxury upstairs. From inside, the boarded windows, the shabby wood paneling and the exception of the door that had swung and clicked shut behind him, all looked scary and threatening enough to keep the undesirables away. However behind the exterior the innards were equally destroyed, if not worse off.

It was like stepping into a morgue.

There were few doors separating the rooms on the ground floor, yet he had found fragments of wood and brick aplenty among the rubble of what had once been walls a few feet into each room, often with large chunks torn out of them, large scratch marks creating cross hatched patterns and occasionally there was still paint left clinging to the worn wood. Surprisingly what furniture there was down there had survived with minimal damage, only a few scratches and chips to their name. He soon realized that there was only one rickety staircase leading to the first floor, and that again, the same long scratch marks could be seen all the way to the wall opposite the worn, beaten banister.

The first floor was in a considerably better state than the ground floor with all doors still in their rightful places, however the paint clinging to them, once colourful, now many shades of green. Dust motes drifted through the shafts of starlight that slanted down from holes in the floor above him, giving the place an atmosphere of being untouched for many years, unlike downstairs, where the dust hung in the air had been clearly disturbed at a regular occurrence. It was also a labyrinth of dead ends and circuitous halls.

"And of course I'm lost now." Adam muttered under his breath as he soon found he had been wandering around for at least fifteen minutes. Who designed this place? He had come across several destroyed staircases, but couldn't even find a map, or an exit sign.

It was incredible he hadn't run into any security yet, but so far he had managed to avoid being spotted by more security cameras. He'd taken care of those, or so he'd hoped, but he couldn't be sure that there wasn't a second security room, or if he'd been thorough enough with the first. He just had to hope.

As he was nearing his destination, he suddenly caught several flashes of brown, and silver, and instinctively, he ducked into the nearest patch of shadows, diving through a hole in rotted floorboards. Peering out, he saw, to his horror, that two policemen had appeared, one of them holding a large dog on a leash that was sniffing the air in the room curiously. Adam could easily pick up their conversation.

"We only checked in here a couple of hours ago. I can't believe he's making us repeat the search already," one said to the other, looking fed up.

"Oh, you know what the chief's like,'' the other replied. Everything by the book. Still, he's definitely right. There's definitely a body in here somewhere, I just know it." The other remarked, sifting through trash.

Adam noticed that the dog was sniffing curiously around the entrance of the door that he had come up through. He couldn't understand it. Adam shouldn't have any particular scent – At least not one that should stand out to the mutt– so why should the dog be so interested in his particular hiding place? The dog turned, following the scent across the floor, tracking the precise trail that he had followed. Suddenly it struck Adam. He was such an idiot, he told himself. He might not smell of anything that the dog would be able to track, but he'd just doused himself and his weapons in the fresh blood of several of the Spider Syndicate's best and brightest and you could bet that would leave a scent trail that the animal would be able to trace. He saw the dog still sniffing the floor, advancing with its handler in tow. 'Looks like Rex has got something here,' the handler remarked, kneeling down beside the dog. 'What you got, boy? Smell something? Go get it.'

He unclipped the dog from its lead and it padded across the room, getting closer and closer to the faunus' hiding place, who was trying to climb out and move deeper into the darkness to avoid further detection.

Unfortunately, this tiny movement caught the dog's attention and it started to bark repeatedly, scraping with its front paws as it tried in vain to get closer to dig through the floorboards. The two policemen walked across the room towards the agitated dog, the man with the leash looked curiously at his canine companion.

'Well, he can definitely smell something there. We'd better check here.' Adam's blood ran cold. He edged away – The hole was fairly deep; if he could just get a few more feet, he knew that the darkness would conceal him, but he only had a couple of seconds. Suddenly the face of one of the policemen appeared on the other side of the hole, peering curiously into

the gloom.

'I can't see much in there,' he informed his unseen colleague.

'That's what flashlights are for, genius,' replied the other policeman. Adam's blood ran cold. If he turned that on, there was no way that he'd miss him sitting there. Equally, if he tried to move to a better spot, there was no way he wouldn't be heard.

There had to be a way out of this.

He just needed get away from-

Wait.

That was it!

Instead of trying to move away…

Timing his movement perfectly, he swung his body forward, obscuring the majority of his mass under the same floorboards the two men were standing, fractions of a second before the hole was bathed with blinding golden light.

Adam dare not move. Dare not blink. There was just enough space to keep himself from view, but any shift or any hint of movement would immediately draw the attention of the keen eyes above him. The light roved, up, down, side to side, each pass making his heart beat faster.

Finally, the beam shut off, and a frustrated growl came from above him. "Well, I can't see shit. I don't know what Rex is getting so wound up about. You sure we feed him enough?"

A third voice joined the duo. "Ugh. This place is a shithole."

The voices and footsteps began to move away, and Adam allowed himself an small exhale of relief, but no more. He could still hear them, which meant he wasn't out of the woods just yet.

"Yeah. Exactly. That's why it's perfect. Look. All the clues here point to somehow the club is all part of it. I don't know care if we find some old junkie's blood or her fucking piece of rotten chicken."

" You want to close the place down?"

"Hey, the fucking parasites... they sell lives of these women. They sell their fucking souls!"

" Listen, I , uhhhh..don't know if you know, but it's one of the number-one occupations for young women down here. It ain't pretty sometimes. But neither is life. They're makin' do with what they got, and I support doing what you gotta do to eat, you know? A job is a job."

" Yeah, and so is waitressing, that's an honest job. I can't believe I would ever hear that shit from a damn cop of all people!"

"Hey, look if TV dancing ain't illegal, I don't see the problem right? I mean, more power to em, right?"

Finally, Adam pulled himself out of the hole, and began making for the stairs, using what little cover there was to stay out of their immediate line of sight.

" Excuse me ladies." A new voice hissed. "Aren't we supposed to be looking for a corpse or something?"

" Hmm, you've been giving this a lot of thought, huh? "

" Ah! For the love of Mita, fucking relax, guys! We ain't gonna find jack-shit by arguing about the merits of fucking titty dancing! Get your shit together, ok!"

" You're right. The man sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Alright so we checked the whole area now, the whole area is swept and the others are giving it a second comb over. Our surveillance shows for a fact that she was last here, same as the other missing persons reports. That's a damn good start, but we gotta think creative here! These sick bastards have been outsmarting us for months. We...".

Adam shut them out, making good his escape. Ascending the first flight of stairs, it hadnt taken him nearly as long to find the second, though the light from above him stopped about halfway down. It was almost as if the stairs were trying not to get themselves noticed. He was about to go up until he heard footsteps and raucous laughter. Adam shot a look down the stairs to hear someone talking.

"Hey, It's me. The new girl's here. Our boy is gonna go apeshit for this one. The room's prepped."

He waited for a reply. Adam could make out speech on the other end of the line, but it was all murmurs, even to him.

"Got it. We'll make sure there's liquor and plenty of it. Spare no expense, and all that shit."

"Another pause.

"Yeah, they're set up too. The video should b-"

Naturally it would be then when things for Adam once again took a turn.

The stolen Scroll in his pocket rang, singing through the silence of the building. And of course, the man on the stairs above his head had no problem overhearing the noise.

"What the-? Boss I'm gonna have to call you back."

He was coming down the stairs.

Thinking quickly, he flung the scroll out into the open passage, and put his back to the wall underneath the stairwell, tensing his muscles; This had to be hard and fast. If he made any movement too soon, he'd see him. If he came too close, they would probably see him anyway. Adam slowed his breathing as the man passed right by him without noticing, thankful for his black clothing. As he got close enough, kneeling to examine the Scroll, Adam struck. The ring of his sword drew his victim's attention, but it was too late. The crimson blade sank into the flesh of his thigh, dropping him to a single knee as Adam wrapped his hand around the man's mouth and popped him in the base of the skull with an elbow strike.

After he rendered the man unconscious, he got a good grip on the collar of the man's purple jacket and dragged him into the shadows under the stairs. Ideally, he wouldn't be noticed there, though part of Adam questioned if there was even a point for subtlety by now. He couldn't guarantee his little stunt with the cameras had actually worked and the goons weren't swarming their building looking for him. Moreover, the act of hiding the man hadn't been as easy. The bull faunus weighed around 187 pounds, the dead weight on the ground closer to 225, and Adam ended up tripping and falling backwards, bumping the back of his head against the stairs as he lost his grip momentarily, swearing loudly before clamping his own hand to his mouth.

Adam remained still for a moment, listening intently.

Satisfied that no one had heard him and irritated with himself, he scrambled to his feet, sought a new grip, and threw everything he had into towing the bastard's body into the shadows. As darkness wrapped itself around him, he allowed himself a sigh of relief.

"Just when I was getting warmed up." Adam muttered, rubbing the back of his head as he retrieved the Scroll, removing its battery, shoving both Scroll and battery into his pockets before he made his way forward. There had been some pathetic attempts to try and make things more festive. Tavern style bunting hung over the remains of rotting rafters. Beer placards and more disturbingly, holiday advertisements for 'Isla Del Sol' hanging from strings of lights. They shivered in the breeze, casting swaying shadows over what little light sources there were to be found.

But those vain attempts at gaiety were not only doomed to failure by the state of the surroundings, but they were also further diminished by the stench flooded out from the upper levels. The smell of something, or someone... rotting.

The second thing he noticed was that he smelled blood.

It wasn't fresh; at least he didn't think so. But he'd become ever familiar with the scent over the course of his life, even more so recently, and without anything to distract him, he couldn't have mistaken it for anything else. What was worse, was that it was still recent enough to have a scent, and so he set his mission aside and stalked off to follow his nose, the sinking feeling that it could well be the girl he came for rooting itself in his chest.

It wasn't hard to find a trail. On second thought, that wasn't exactly true. There were multiple tracks of faint bloodstained shoe prints, old and new across the ground, and following them directly quickly led him in circles, confusing his senses even further.

He heard voices once again … more men, walking slowly down the corridor. Adam saw a door and slipped inside, once again ducking out of sight.

Adam surveyed the men from behind the door with scrupulous detail. He kept still, reading every gesture and tick, as if he wanted to prepare an impersonation, when in reality he was checking their defences for weak spots. From what he could gather, only the one he could tell was carrying a gun while the others seemed to be no more than petty thugs and country rubes, culled from the hillsides of their homeland.

Finally, they passed, and Adam felt safe enough to look around the room he found himself in.

He was in a laundry room of all things. There was a washing-machine, a tumble-drier and even an ironing-board. What was confusing, was that the remains of the room had clearly been the background for some kind of a struggle. There were stains and of long dried blood all over the floorboards, that had Adam not been a faunus, and hadn't already been tracking the footprints, he could have easily missed. Despite the quantity, it's dirty brown color blended so well into the dark termite-ridden wood, that he could have still strode right past it, were it not for the overwhelming scent of rust and—Wait, he sniffed the air again. Some of it smelled different. Fresher.

Wherever the source of the blood was, it wasn't here.

And more importantly, the guards had gone.

He crept out and hurried forward.

Turning the corner, he found himself on a decimated landing. He made a face, pausing at to catch his breath. He leaned against the railing, taking a second to ask himself: 'Are you fucking nuts? What the hell are you doing?' There were no more guards, which was a plus, but looking around, he found himself with a new problem.

The stairs were gone.

The flimsy wood had buckled and shattered in the middle, leaving only two thirds of stairs before him; a section at the top and a section at the bottom.

So much for the shortcut.

Adam swore.

It was maddening. Half of the building– perhaps more – was closed off to him and he still couldn't think of a way of getting up there. At least, not without circling back and potentially running into more guards. He couldn't see anything he could climb. He looked at the adjoining wall. The brickwork was broken and uneven, with plenty of hand and foot-holds, but he didn't know if they could support his weight.

There was a ledge, a piece of prominent skirting jutting out halfway up the wall; that was unstable too, but there was a chance he could shimmy across, if he could climb up somehow. The question was, would he be able to risk it? A second later, he shook his head. It was a coin flip on whether it would be able to sustain his weight even for those brief moments, or whether it would crumble under his weight and collapse entirely. The only other option was finding the main stairs, and risk taking on more security, which would cost him even more time. He weighed his options, clenching and unclenching his fists. Finally, he reared his head backwards, exhaling in frustration. That's when he saw it. The hole.

The ceiling was missing some of its tiles and he could see a gap underneath the pipes and wires that ran above. The gap was just big enough to crawl through—provided he could jump up there. Could he risk it? A moment later, Adam heard feet stamping along a wooden corridor somewhere nearby. It looked like the choice had been made for him. He tensed himself, then sprang upwards. His hands caught hold of an old water pipe and now he was dangling just below the ceiling, his arms disappearing into the space above.

Gritting his teeth, Adam summoned all his upper body strength to pull himself up into the cavity, praying the pipe didn't snap under his weight. His face passed through a cobweb and he grimaced as the fine strands laced themselves over his nose and mouth. His stomach touched the edge of the hole. He was half in and half out by now, having maneuvered himself so that he was almost flat on this stomach, using his arms to pull himself forward. The footsteps were getting closer, and he doubted they would be so blind to miss the pair of legs dangling down from the ceiling. Hopefully there would be no reason for them to look up. But he was still aware that he might not have much time. He had to move – now.

Adam dragged himself along the pipe, bringing his feet up into the ceiling recess, before twisting onto his stomach. The crawl space was in front of him. His eyes took less than half a second to adjust. He was somehow between the insulation and the floor boards. Dozens of wires and insulated pipes ran inches above his head, stretching into the distance. Dust stung his good eye. What now?

He did the only thing he could. Crawl forwards. Minute by minute, as he inched along on his elbows and stomach, it was getting darker and was horrible here. It really was like being buried alive, and it took all his strength to force himself on. After about fifty paces he came to a splitting path, branching off to the left and right. He cursed his wide shoulders, and the fact he'd made a habit of buckling Wilt to his hip; it kept getting caught on the coarse remains of the insulation, and when he wasn't regularly attempting to rip it free, he was trying to coax it through tight corners, that despite being a curved blade, it didn't exactly lend itself to.

While he could see just fine, any trace of light or sound beyond the hum of the wires inches away from his back, didn't seem to be getting any nearer. As time passed, Adam found it difficult to manoeuvre himself. He could feel the pressure pounding in his ears and the darkness seemed even thicker and more oppressive.

Then inevitably, it happened. He had reached a dead end.

He could barely breathe. His entire throat seemed to be coated in soot and dirt. Adam felt a jolt of alarm, then forced himself to relax, curling his fingers tightly into the insulation to brace himself. Pinning himself in place, Adam reached forward and tried to feel where he was going. Whatever the obstruction was, it effectively cut his route in half, leaving only the narrowest of gaps for Adam's shoulders and body to pass through. He knew at once that he wouldn't make it. There was a triangle-shaped wall jutting out above his head. His head had hit the bottom part of it. He didn't have nearly enough space to turn around, and he doubted he'd be able to shuffle backwards blindly. In his flailing, one of his elbows caught on something woollen. Beset by panic, he struggled pulling it free, and banging his knuckles on one of the walls.

He tried to regain his focus, orientate himself but his blood was beating so fast in his ears that it was all he could do; force himself to slow down. He knew he couldn't panic. If you panicked, you lost. Think about what you're doing. Be careful. One step at a time. Once again, the nightmare prospect of getting stuck flashed into his mind. Nobody would ever find him. He would suffocate in the dark.

No. That wouldn't happen.

He thrashed again and this time his knuckles banged into wood, sending a spasm of pain down his arms. Striking again with all his strength, he was astonished when he'd felt something give way. Suddenly, Adam was struck blind by something, sending his vision into spots. It took a few seconds, screwing his eyelid shut, but his brain finally put the dots together. 'Light..' he realized with a start. It wasn't much, but to a faunus in pitch black darkness, it may as well have been a flash grenade. But more importantly, he also realized what it meant.

There was an empty space underneath him.

Channelling his aura, he used what little wiggle room he had to kick downward. More ceiling tiles fell loose, making a ridiculous amount of noise, as they shattered below. He could hear voices now, but by then, Adam could care less; he wanted out. There was a drop of about four metres. Peering through the gap he had made, now that his eyes had finally adjusted, he could see someone's leg on what looked like a mattress below him. He struck the area beneath him again, and that was that. The faint creak was his only warning. The ceiling beneath him crumbled under his weight. He tumbled down in a shower of debris, falling clumsily onto his face. He coughed and spat into the palm of his hand. His saliva was black. He wondered what he must look like.

He stood up slowly. Typically of his luck, he'd missed the bed completely, Dirt and grime trickled out of his hair and for a moment he was blinded again.

His vision slowly returning, he found himself in a windowless space three metres square, surrounded on all sides by bare sheets of plywood and almost choked on the cloying scent of pine air freshener. A low energy bulb—The source of the light he'd seen in the crawl space— dangled bare from the ceiling, and there was a double bed with a disposable sheet stretched over the duvet and pillows. This had been where he'd landed. As his senses returned, he had begun to realize that the voices he heard hadn't been talking at all. It was music. A tinny speaker crooned out some generic love song; some 'pop sensation' crap. But at least he knew where the strange voice was coming from, now. There was a small table at the outskirts of the room, upon which sat an ancient brown stereo. This close, he could catch the crackling of the speakers beneath the woman's high pitched voice. Was that really it? Why had it been left on? He didn't know, but it was rapidly getting on his nerves and the overwhelming temptation to put a bullet in it was a compelling one. He reigned it in at the last moment.

That would be loud, and he couldn't trust that it wouldn't carry over the music if his crash through the ceiling hadn't already. Not to mention, he'd given away his guns, and the one he had kept was shattered to shit right now. Rolling to his feet, he made his way over to the nearest door. There was no sound coming from the other side. He knelt down and looked through the keyhole. No lights were on outside the room. He could see almost nothing, not with his narrow field of vision.

He tried the handle.

The door was locked from the outside.

Because of course it was.

Tonight really was a three ring circus.

He wished he knew how to pick locks. Charlotte probably knew how to do that. Of course he'd faceplant into the one room that didn't have any of the walls knocked through. He considered taking one of the pieces of wood that had fallen with it and using it as a makeshift crowbar, but one look back at the bed told him he might as well toss that idea. It was stupid. The fallen pieces of ceiling strewn over the bed were already broken, and he doubted it would stand up to him trying to pry it open. He'd have to try something else. Maybe the sleeping beauty on the bed might have a key. As he turned and moved closer to the bed, he stopped abruptly, his muscles ceasing to move as his eyesight clouded with bleak realisation, a sense of dread storming through his clenching gut as his thoughts stopped dead in his tracks.

That smell….

It seems he'd made another mistake.

The bedspread wasn't a natural red. And the person in it wasn't asleep.

The corpse was grey and pitted by burrowing insects. Adam almost turned away again as his stomach heaved, nostrils filled with the smell of rancid meat. It's blood had soaked into the white sheets, leaving them a largely crusted dark red. Without eyelids, the milky blue eyes; what was left of them, stared into the ceiling while parted black lips hung open in terror. Obviously, it had been there some time, but there were a few distinguishing features that could tell him something.

The locked door, the air freshener. All of it made a horrifying amount of sense now.

It wasn't Malachite, at least.

That much he could tell, despite her disfigured face.

The dead woman was clad in leather straps and netted stockings; a prostitute, by the looks of it. Her face had a bruise on the right cheek and her makeup had been all dried out. Black flaking streaks under her eyes made it look like she'd been crying at one point. Most notably, there was a red ring of raw skin around her neck and jagged lacerations on both her clothes and skin. Adam was no investigator, but if he had to guess at a cause of death, he'd have gone with the idea that she'd been strangled . She'd also been tied to something, if the matching rings around her bare wrists and ankles meant anything at all. But what?

Adam looked around.

It wasn't going to be any of the surrounding supports. Half of the building was crumbling on its own, and he doubted the supports would put up much of a fight against a full grown woman, who had clearly struggled fiercely before she'd been killed. Whoever this woman had been, her death had been neither quick nor painless.

He noticed a CD case lying on the ground next to him, and absently he examined it. The name of the album was spattered in blood, but Adam was able to recognize the girl on the front, and it made a great deal of things clear, primarily his current splitting headache. 'After all,' he remarked, with a mental smirk. 'If I was trapped in a room, tied to a chair and forced to listen to Weiss Schnee's music, I might well have beaten myself to death too.'

What people saw in that prepubescent brat was a mystery to the faunus—her voice sounded like a stray cat going through a live vivisection. Her popularity was something of a masterclass in proving Adam's long-founded belief that humanity wasn't worth the trouble; because if they could enjoy a so-called artist that couldn't carry a tune if it had handles, then he was allowed to hold a grudge.

In the name of good taste, if nothing else.

It was then that he saw the tripod and camera. It was next to the stereo, propped up against the wall, its field of view focused on the bed. That sinking feeling in his chest only grew as he approached it and removed it from its perch. Each of the videos was dated and numbered one through fifteen. Adam hadn't had any idea what he would find, but what he had already seen tonight was far beyond anything he could have imagined. Might have recorded something useful. He selected a video at random and set it to play.

Sounds of screaming, tearing, and a woman's shrill pleas immediately started up, and he quickly jabbed at the power again. Stomach doing backflips, he stumbled back and covered his mouth, feeling suddenly nauseous. He turned his head away, unable to stand the sight any longer.

The woman who had been screaming, that was probably the body he'd found. Or, he amended— he hadn't been able to get a good look at her face in the video— looking at the numbers on the videos, another like her. That was worse, because even if it was or wasn't, that meant there had been at least fourteen other women who had died in similar if not worse ways, likely in this very room. If she was a prostitute like her clothes had suggested, then he was pretty sure he had the answer.

He stalked across the room, nostrils flaring as the scent grew stronger. The footsteps led across to another door, and into a curtain – a curtain, which, when he pulled it aside, Adam realized that he had stepped into what could best described as a torture chamber.

Behind it was a bathroom of sorts at first glance: a set of clean towels, a shower with mould growing on the curtain and a heavily stained, seatless, toilet. But that was only the first glance. It hardly took a second and third to see the signs that this room had long since outlived that purpose. There was a rack of knives above a bloody bathtub. A washbasin streaked with even more dried blood. Bloody handprints marked the drywall where the tropical wallpaper had ripped, some of them still tacky. And perhaps most insultingly of all, was the gaudy little banner. "We hope you'll visit our sandy shores again!"

It all painted a bloody picture, and one that despite being well versed on the needless cruelty of mankind, was one he simply couldn't find a rationale for. What purpose did it serve? At the very least, he had a good idea of how the corpse in the other room had been put out to pasture. Possibly strangled, judging by the bruises; possibly bled out, going by the blood all over the place. Most likely all of the above.

Fucking hell.

He needed a way out of here.

There was no way of telling how thin the walls were between each room. Someone had probably heard the earlier commotion and it wouldn't be long before they came to find out what had happened. He was already on the clock as it was.

There were just two ways out of the room: the door and the ceiling he'd fallen through. Short of kicking it in, the door was obviously hopeless; all the noise would do is draw even more attention to himself. But what about the walls? They were made of plywood and plaster. On the other floors, they'd been knocked through. Maybe he could do the same here. Experimentally he ran his hands over them, pushing and probing, searching for any weak spots. If he could find a seam somewhere, he could probably pry the brittle sheet off entirely, or at least enough to form an opening to crawl through. Before long, his curious fingertips caught on the edge of a particularly flimsy sheet, leaving the edge to crumble away in his hand.

By the time he heard the voices, he had made a peephole.

"Are you afraid?"

Adam paused in his work. The music, he realized, was covering his actions.

Blood trickled down her nose and skull and the many lacerations along her chest and back.

"Please...Please, I'm sorry… I'm so sorry"

"It's alright to be afraid, you know. All the others were afraid too."

Adam couldn't make out a face, but he could see enough.

"It was stupid to run. The Madame took good care of you, as she does with all her property. By trying to leave, you stole from us. From her. And that means, that you..." The pacing stopped. "Have a debt to pay"

Someone wielding what looked like a bicycle chain he'd found, holding it dangerously limp to one side as he prepared to swing overhand at whoever was sitting in the chair. Adam could hear her tried to break free; but the man still completed his whipping motion. A puff of scarlet mist coughed into the air, spattering the wall next to him.

"You know, I think I changed my mind. After I'm done with you, I'm gonna sell your ass cheap." He laughed despicably. His comrades joined in, looking on with vengeful gratification of her plight.

Adam could just see her raise her head up one last time in protest, "I'll fucking kill you!" She bellowed with tearful scorn, before her face was forced back down..

"Tell me …" The man paused, kneeling down, then moved his hand off her head to show her something in his hand. "You ever been fucked by a knife?" Engaging the release, a curved dagger flipped out of the black hilt to the girl's obvious horror.

"Fuck you!" She screamed again, succumbing to her fear as the man moved behind the chair and out of her sight.

He hovered the blade over her backside, then thrusted the razor edge underneath her firehose belt, slicing in two with ease.

For the briefest moment, Adam wondered if the man was serious.

He was. The girl had suddenly gone very quiet and still. Her eyes pleaded.

"Start with the little finger. Then we ll work one at a time towards her thumb."

Tears formed in the girl's eyes. She couldn't hide her terror.

"No…!"

A long, quavering whimper that echoed through Adam's mind, making something snap and tear deep inside him and he found himself moving before he even had a chance to think. The first few didn't realize what was happening until three of them were dead. By the time they registered Adam, or saw past the flying splintering plywood chunks of the wall that exploded into the room. another two had been killed. By the time they started reacting, another two were dead until it was only one.

The man panicked, quickly running his arm around the girl's neck to lift her back to her feet, extorting a high-pitch cry from her now frayed vocal cords. "I'll kill her!" He threatened, bringing the knife to her throat.

He moved the knife upwards, running the tapered edge menacingly across her face.

Neither of them were expecting the girl to rip herself free of her tape bindings. Using what must have been what little strength she had left, she braced against her bound wrists and kicked forward both of her heels square into his crotch, then feeling his grips loosen, her whole body lunged forward.

The man tumbled, tripping over his own feet in surprise onto the floor, but by then, it was too late. She was already straddling him, his knife in hand.

W-Wait, wait!" he screamed, looking up at her desperately, "D-D-Don't kill me, don't kill me! Just-Just wait!" He tried to crawl back, put some distance between her and him, "I-I can give you anything want! You want money? I got thousands in the safe! Drugs? I know people, best cut of stuff anywhere in the neighborhood!" She again, this time just inches from his head, "J-Just tell me what you want! I'll give you anything! Please!"

Anger rushed to her heart, to her legs and arms and a river of adrenalin flooded her whole. With a pained, fortifying cry, she brought the knife down into the man's chest. Again. And again .Hot blood ran over her hand as she tried to free the knife, but the handle was slippery and it wouldn't budge.

Adam paid neither of them any mind. Instead he knelt down and picked up the machine pistol attached to the man's belt, inspecting the weapon in his left hand before jamming it into his empty thigh holster. He wasn't familiar with the type, but it looked like it was ready to shoot, and he didn't need to know more than that. No use in throwing away perfectly good guns, and it wasn't as though he had the ammo of his own to spare.

He turned his glare on her – not out of any real ire, but it was easy to find a target and pin his frustration on it. Easier than remembering the smell of her terror and the sound of her pleas, the rapid beat of her heart under her chest. Or the fact that despite his better judgement, he had gotten himself involved. Again.

The realization of what he had done, and a major dose of hatred for himself flooded his senses, almost to the point of making him sick.

Idiot.

Bloody handprints on walls, stained clothes, plastic cable ties, a bloody machete propped against the wall. And several fresh corpses, he noted as an afterthought. Hell, he was getting far too used to this.

The knife was buried in her victim's stomach right to the hilt. She looked at his stupid vacant surprised eyes and gave it a twist for good measure. She barely even noticed Adam was there.

Adam ignored her in turn, reaching for the door. Oddly, this one was unlocked. Whether by arrogance or stupidity, he didn't know, and didn't especially care. He needed to get moving. On one level, Adam was at least tangentially aware that being pleased about what likely amounted to several counts of murder was probably not one of his better moments, at least according to any conventional moral standards. But he couldn't lie to himself. This was miles better than sneaking around. It was an outlet. It gave him someone to hunt, someone to hurt.

He wasn't going to feel guilty over it. He knew that already. Shame was for actions, and it was hardly his fault that the Spiders had decided to start torturing their own employees for their customers to get off on. He couldn't have changed that. He could, however, make them regret it. Though why he felt wrong about it, he didn't know. It wasn't his problem. He was supposed to be beyond that kind of thing.

He was supposed to know better,

Three startled girls and one middle-aged man had stepped out of their rooms to investigate the commotion.

"What the fuck are you doing in here, you useless sack of shit? Who let you in here?"

They spotted him. Well, fine – he wasn't exactly trying to hide. The outcome would be the same either way.

Adam's eye flashed briefly a blazing red. His blade became a line of trailing scarlet vapours, like a bolt of scarlet lightning, the slender katana tore out of its sheath, ripping through them like a razor running through a thin layer of skin.

That was all it took.

Someone screamed, which was quickly followed by most of the others coming out to investigate and either rushing past back into their rooms or running to the stairs to try and get through the other exit. A few were frozen inside; about three thugs, a handful of held onto each other tightly, looking at him like he was the one who did something wrong, 'They would've been next if he got his hands on them,' Adam thought with a scowl. People didn't care about them; their 'owners' would let them all die if it meant they lived to breathe another day.

Spineless. He supposed that was typical of faunus. If all they could do was cry and whimper… then maybe they were better off dead too.

At least they'd make good fodder if nothing else. Or at least serve as a distraction.

Though perhaps, it worked a little too well. The screams and cries steadily growing distant behind him had masked something far more insidious.

He heard behind him the squeak of a floorboard that told him he was no longer alone. He stopped, whipping out Wilt to catch the blade of a knife that would have caught him just above the shoulder blades. Adam realized immediately that she had tried to sneak up on him.

There she stood, the girl with blue hair matted in blood, clad in the remains of some kind of leather outfit, in with an impressive shiner over her eye.

"You know, lady," he started, pressing the tip of his blade into her throat. "You are topping off what was already shaping up to be a wonderful evening. So I suggest you start explaining yourself. Before things get ug-"

'What the hell?!' His mind roared, his voice cut off as he realized with a jolt, that she was now staring at him with recognition.

What were the odds?

He never thought he'd know that face, either. That quiet girl from what felt like ages ago, grinning from ear to ear, despite having a mouth full of blood. Adam was frozen to the spot momentarily, speechless. This was not good.

Instead of saying anything else, he sheathed Wilt, and stalked along the dimly lit corridor. He didn't need the sound of her light footsteps near his side to know she was following him.

"I know you..., Don't I?" She asked at last, when they reached an area where the ground sloped upwards in the form of a wider corridor.

'Get a hold of yourself man. Act casual. She has no idea.'

"No."

She could see him grow wary, his fingers digging impatiently into the black hilt of his sword. Suddenly, he started with longer strides, taking two steps at a time. It was more tiring this way, but he didn't have a lot of time to waste.

A wave of panic rolled over her as he began to disappear.

"Hey! Wait!"

He heard something heavy hit the ground behind him, and knew she had fallen to the ground. He didn't slow down.

" Please…. don't leave me here...Adam."

His heart grew heavy as her whispered words reminded him of- No, he refused to think about it. The only past that mattered was the one he created for himself. The boy who would have been fooled into feeling remorse or pity was dead.

"Well, it would look a little stupid of me to run around in a place like this with dead weight holding me back." Adam's lips stretched a cold smile that was entirely devoid of compassion without turning around. Only the weak and soft-hearted let the pathetic and needy slow them down, especially when it was in their double-dealing nature to stab you in the neck for sticking it out. And Adam was neither. Not anymore.

But then…

He stopped.

He couldn't just leave her there.

It had taken leaving one man. One man, knowing his face to kickstart this entire disaster. She not only knew his face, she knew his name, and gods only knew what else. He'd already made a mess of things. Let them get far out of hand. He didn't want to think about what might happen, if she gave that knowledge to the rest of her former associates. Adam might not put much stock in his own life anymore, but he'd only gotten involved in this mess to protect Charlotte. If word got back to Kuchinashi and he wasn't there…

He couldn't let that happen.

He turned, walking over to the girl, who was still on the floor, staring up at him. His face betrayed no sign of the conflict inside. The sight of her, frightened, lying in repose and caked in blood struck an unexpected chord within him. Memories of his slain mother came forth unbidden again, triggered themselves by the blue haired girl's pleas.

It surprised Adam to realize that in this instance, he didn't like being the killer any more than he liked being the bystander. More than that, the revelation bothered him. This wasn't the first time. It had happened with that old woman back in Kuchinashi. Again, with that Valkyrie girl. And again now. All he had to do was draw a weapon and finish the job her former captors had started. There was no reason not to. She couldn't talk if she was dead, and after what had happened, the Spiders were probably going to kill her anyway. This was a kinder fate.

He'd make it quick.

Adam drew the machine pistol and aimed directly at her chest.

She seemed to realize what he intended by then; her pupils dilated, and she tried to move away, despite knowing it was useless. "Please..."

But for whatever reason..., he couldn't pull the trigger.

Trifa. That was her name. It finally came to him. His mind provided the name with difficulty, like prying a nail free from a board. Another shadow of his past.

Three eyes locked; two aquamarine, and one sparking scarlet. Red and blue. A decision was made.

It felt like an eternity until he finally opened his mouth again, but when he did, the voice was unmistakably inhuman. Trifa had never heard anything like it before. The malevolent sound provoked a primal response of fear and despair. "Fine. I'll help you, woman." He leaned down, throwing her arm over one of his shoulders. "But so help me, if you cross me...there's going to be hell to pay."