Author Warning: Following work contains mature themes. Treat this as a blanket trigger warning for everything for which I won't apologize. Except for the jaywalking. If you're triggered by that, I'm so sorry, please forgive me.
Chapter 1: If You Like Adam Put a Ring on Him
Adam watched Blake Belladonna flee from the room, her blonde companion slung under her right arm. Blake's eyes briefly shot a last piercing glare at the man who claimed responsibility for Yang's inability to ever reciprocate the act; Yang's severed arm lay on the floor, testament to the strength of Moonslice, Adam's semblance. A rampaging grimm burst into the room but Adam decapitated it in one smooth motion of his red blade, Wilt. A waste of his talents: his forces had been the ones to transport and deploy the monsters into the school, so it was somewhat counterproductive to slay the creatures when there were so many humans left for them to prey upon. He could hear distant screams echoing across the campus grounds. Human screams.
Adam strode across the room to the hallway. Somewhere in the school was the human who had set the entire calamity in motion: Cinder Fall. He did not know what she was fit to gain from the chaos they had started, but she had certainly strong-armed him into letting her bribe his Vale cell of the White Fang into serving as core mechanism of her plans.
"Human filth."Adam sneered as he considered his tenuous ally.
While he was willing to admit the clear efficiency of humans fighting humans for his people's cause, it still irked him to have to work with the likes of Cinder and Roman Torchwick or any of their human flunkies. If he had had any choice in the matter he would have been perfectly content to let the humans slaughter one another without his direct involvement.
His keen faunus senses heard an explosion in the distance, from the central tower of Beacon Academy. The Academy taught humans (and maybe sometimes the occasional Faunus with the right connections and abundance of talent) to become heroic hunstmen (or huntresses) in the ongoing war between civilization and the grimm, with a minor degree in impeding the terrorist tendencies of his White Fang forces. The explosion was probably deserving of his investigation, considering the alternative was fighting the grimm since the local area was presently clear of humans or race-traitors; most were probably evacuated from the area by now.
He made his way to the tower, avoiding the grimm as much as he could, and walked inside. A gaping hole remained where there once was an elevator rising into the high reaches of the building, burnt and charred from his ally's powerful fire-based semblance. Cinder's plan must be in full motion here as she worked to disable the school and reach her mysterious goal. Adam may have had his doubts about her motives, but he had witnessed her semblance's capabilities firsthand.
He had sagely decided that his men's lives were not worth testing her abilities or patience when she had approached his camp a second time. It also helped that she had offered a generous amount of lien and dust to them while coercing his co-operation – enough so that he quickly rescinded his plans to return to Mistral.
He walked over to the elevator and peered down; his quick inspection revealed a trail of fire rising from the depths of the school to the pinnacle of the tower above him. Whatever Cinder had been after, it had been in the bowels revealed before him – but she wasn't there anymore. Something had drawn her up to the headmaster's office. The enormous grimm wyvern circled the tower menacingly, smaller grimm dripping from its body like viscous tar.
Adam took out his scroll and sent out a broadcast in the voice channel his allies had set up for the attack. "This is Wilt. Status confirm Sector Glass?"
In response, there was some chatter that nobody had heard from Torchwick for several minutes; his hijacked airship had gone down and the Atlesian machines had been deactivated without the corrupted command signal. Cinder and her people had also gone quiet. Adam sighed. I suppose that's what I get for relying on humans.
Then he received the text response from someone using the handle Green Eyes.
~Sector Glass secure. Massive alpha grimm at centre of sector, circling tower. Your forces moving to secure sectors Karma and Justice. Sector Vista overrun by grimm. All forces directed there have been reassigned. Request that this bullhead be sent to downed airship to reinforce Roman.~
Green Eyes wasn't one of his pilots, and their channel icon was a pink umbrella; Adam wasn't sure who was providing him with the intel. Nonetheless, Adam nodded, thankful that at least someone was still up in the air to tell him what was going on, despite the increasing number of flying grimm. Beacon had been subjugated according to plan and his brothers were pulling out to refocus efforts in the city of Vale proper. The hovering Amity Arena had already been removed from the tactical situation. The attack was essentially already over, their objectives all complete. Vale was defeated, the humans routed, the mistreatment of faunus within the walls of the city fortress avenged.
"This is Wilt. Staying in Sector Glass for now. Continue cementing our grip on the city, and..." He paused for a moment. "...and take the bullhead to pick through that airship to find the human crimelord." Torchwick may have been the worst kind of human, but he'd demonstrated some usefulness underneath the racist exterior. "Brothers, we have won a great victory today against the human tyrants. Remnant will never forget us. Over and out."
Adam peered down the hole. Darkness. Looking up was like looking up a rifle barrel, an apt comparison as he saw movement far up there. Flashes of light and hunks of metal flying as if tied to strings, muted reports of firearms being discharged. Cinder could be up there fighting one of the local huntresses. She might need his help.
Adam leapt down into the ruined elevator shaft. He was more interested in finding out what his intimidating business partner had been after in the hidden depths of a huntsman academy than ensuring that she stayed alive long enough to continue treating him like a domesticated animal; besides, the further away from that grimm wyvern he was the more likely it was that he would live long enough to reestablish his command over the Brotherhood. He stabbed his arm-length red blade into the elevator wall as he neared the bottom, arresting his momentum enough to let him roll out of the shaft's nadir without shattering his knees. At the end of his roll he came up with Wilt and Blush drawn, ready for combat.
The vaulted hallway was empty and dark, lit by the occasional wall sconce. He pressed forward and came to a concourse, but kept moving forward since it just seemed to be the right way to go. The way forward generally is. After a brisk sprint down the hallway, he came to an eerie sight: a dead woman in a metal pod labelled 001 with broken glass scattered around it, with tubes leading to a broken pod labelled 002 on the other side of a computer terminal. One of Cinder's arrows stuck in the corpse's chest. Adam grinned. Humans killing humans, a tale as old as time. Still, he'd like to know why.
"What were you after here, Cinder? Why were you fighting down here while my people were fighting outside?"
He was certain that she had not strong-armed him into accepting employment out of a sense of altruism or love of the faunus; as lovely as that thought may be, he was no fool. He investigated the empty pod, and determined that the glass had been destroyed from a pressurized force from within. So Cinder had killed the girl in the first pod, and whoever had been in the second pod had forced their way out. Maybe... Cinder had been in the second pod? It seemed plausible, but the lack of her semblance's signature cast doubt on the theory: the glass had been broken from the inside, not melted away. Moreover, the angle on the arrow in the first tube was pretty straight, too; Cinder would have had to have gotten out of the second tube and strolled into position to get the shot. His instincts told him that other people besides Cinder and the victim had been involved here.
Past the dead tube-girl was a larger foyer which seemed to have been the site of a large dust battle; scorch marks covered the walls and ceiling, rubble cluttered the stone floor, and in the middle of the room lay a man with gray hair wearing the remnants of a green outfit. It looked like he had been stabbed through the torso, although the wound had been cauterized. Cinder's handiwork, since Adam recognized that she would have been one of the few people capable of defeating the headmaster. Perhaps this man had been the one in the second pod? Adam examined the man's weapon, a clockwork cane.
As he looked over the cane, his fingers accidentally found purchase on a hidden button on the shaft, which depressed inwards slightly. The gears on the handle started to whirl and Adam dropped it, leaping back from the device. After a tense moment punctuated by the hollow echo of the weapon hitting the ground resonating through the chamber, Adam lowered his guard and stepped further away from the dead man. He went back to the tube-girl and tried to figure out what had happened deep under the school while his forces above had gleefully unleashed chaos.
Clearly tube-girl and whatever had been in the other pod were supposed to be related somehow. Perhaps the headmaster and tube-girl had been trying to do something with the device to stop the disaster above, or perhaps they had merely been distracted by this when Cinder made her play. Maybe Cinder had known the headmaster would be here, distracted, making it an opportune time to strike? The devices all seemed very technologically advanced, beyond Adam's ken, and came with no instruction manual. Or if there was a manual, it was not here. Probably in some impossibly immaculate laboratory in Atlas. He shrugged. If it was important at all it still lacked importance to him. Whatever had been going on was more than likely moot now, since Cinder's arrow had cleanly pierced the girl's heart and the other tube was vacant, while the school's headmaster was cold on the floor of the adjacent foyer.
After ten minutes of further searching, Adam reached a conclusion: nothing in the room was worth anything to him, his cause, or his understanding of his human ally. He had searched the room for a more meaningful clue, for secret exits, for signs. A big book labelled "Cinder's Plans". Nothing. He checked his scroll for the time and realized that the depth of the chamber was blocking his scroll signal. His troops above were likely wondering what had become of him. He scowled and made his way back towards the elevator shaft, but stopped when he came again to the concourse. He saw a light at the end of one hallway. That had not been there before, had it? He chided himself for not paying more attention to the side hallways on his first pass by. Despite his desire to re-establish his scroll's connection to the local network, he made his way down the passage.
Wary of a trap, he instead came to a dead-end inhabited by a lonesome vending machine. Alone, unguarded, completely unnecessary and hidden in the bowels of an exclusive huntsman academy.
Adam was a man of decisive action, quick thinking and confident passion. Despite that, Adam stood there with his mouth agape at the sheer impossibility of it all. Who had chosen to install the feature? Who kept it stocked? What was the point of having a refrigerated beverage dispenser in the side corridor of the school's super-secret dungeon - which had been revealed only after the damage caused by Cinder's infernal wrath? Who could possibly have thought that it was a profitable place for a drink dispenser? It screamed of absolute lunacy. Lunacy!
On the other hand, Adam was thirsty - as active men often are. All his troops constantly remarked about how thirsty he seemed - when they thought he was out of earshot - but his ears were keener than many of his fellow faunus. A long day had been spent preparing for the attack, and he had been running himself dry trying to topple humanity's shining edifices glorifying their own vanity. Adam lived so fast he was always running the risk of becoming dehydrated. Who could fault him for getting a quick drink? The idea that someone had trapped a dead-end hallway in one of the most secure places on the planet with a fake vending machine was even more ridiculous than the idea of someone spending time keeping it stocked. He removed a lien from his wallet and examined his refreshment options.
There were four columns of choices labelled 1-4 by five rows labelled A-F, each promoting in-stock beverages with glowing neon buttons. He could not see inside the machine itself, only each button's depiction of the attached drink's stylized logo.
The top level, A-1 to A-4, were SDCola brand drinks: two classics, a diet, and a SDCola Zero. He grimaced. That stuff was made in Atlas, by slave faunus child labour from an energy propellant by-product. He could not stomach the thought of having to drink it again, as it had been forced upon his crew when he was SDC property. His hatred for the company was powerful enough to fight off the lingering pangs of withdrawal from the addictive sugar-dust infused temptress. The Zero variety held a special place of contempt in his heart: he still remembered the day they began pushing the substance on their faunus mining crews as a cheap means of product testing. So many of his friends had lost their sense of taste that week - some of them permanently. Tragedies like those were covered up and not reported by the human media, of course. The humans preferred light-hearted news about celebrity gossip and how great their civilization was, all on the presumption that ignoring a problem will make it better. That sort of no-negativity attitude might almost be functional against the creatures of grimm, but was so ingrained into the human mindset as to trap them in their own social decay. Human society was paralyzed in its own blindness to its flaws, and SDCola Zero epitomized this fact in Adam's mind.
Adam realized he had been getting sidetracked, and recomposed his thoughts to attend to his recently recognized thirst.
The second row advertised Portsi Brand soda, which was a fair approximation of what a beverage should be but always smelled vaguely of cabbages. Under that row was two sets of Dr. Piper, followed by two sets of People Like Grapes. The former was a insipid root-flavour, while the latter had been proven to contain no grapes or grape-related products long ago. In its favour, PLG was made by a company called "DeliciOz", which had made numerous contributions to education programs and other social improvements for citizens in Menagerie. Even if Adam could never see himself living in the faunus continent, he appreciated anything improving faunus lives. Upon closer inspection of the PLG display, however, Adam noticed that some incompetent had mislabelled the button labels as C-1, C-2, C-4, and C-3 instead of putting them in proper alphanumerical order. Not that it mattered, since the reversed plates stood in front of identical PLG product but the mistake was clearly fixable by anyone with the minimum level of attention to detail.
Under that was two sets of Ol' King Cold and TorchQuick Energy Drinks. The former was unflavoured carbonate, the latter offered a fast buzz but always left you feeling empty and wanting something longer lasting. Under that were three sets of Faunta Brand drinks. During the Great War, the Portsi company in Menagerie had been cut off from their supply network and instead of shutting down turned to the use of alternative ingredients-such that they offered Faunta carbonated milk that was sourced from local willing faunus. Faunta Cow, Faunta Goat, and Faunta Bat carbonated milk were all available. The hallway being full of dust (the regular kind), Adam figured that those ones were long-expired. He wasn't in the mood for batman cheese in a can. The fourth item on that line was SDC Lime. Given the choice between the two, he'd gladly become a cheese expert before putting a beverage into his mouth made by tundra people to taste like a fruit they had never seen. Under that was two options of Dead Ginger Ale, a Cranberry Dead Ginger Ale, and a milk branded as "Udder Satisfaction". The trio of death-flag-waving ales made his hair stand on end. Not today, death. Not today. Udder Satisfaction was probably as cheesy as its name.
Adam shook his head. He decided that with all that, the best choice was the mystery juice by the faunus-tolerant DeliciOz company. He didn't even care that it did not have any grapes in it; it had the distinction of not being made by enemies of the faunus, being cheese, being awful, or making him consider his own mortality.
He inserted his lien and pressed the button labelled C-4. The machine made a short buzzing sound, but nothing rolled down into the dispenser; the machine's display registered that C-4 had been pressed, even though the button should have been C-3, and still flashed the number of lien he had inserted.
Adam punched the C-3 labelled button. "Come on, stupid machine, I just want a stupid drink. I'm a busy man. I don't have all night!"
The machine glowed brightly and whirred, gears shifting and clanking inside. Something fell into the dispenser. Adam reached down to retrieve his prize, only to find to his displeasure that instead of his long-anticipated carbonated drink was a small bronze ring, like a miniature crown with three pointed tines arranged clustered together at one side. Seething, he was about to tear the vending machine apart in righteous fury, yet his scroll began to beep. He had been down in the depths of Beacon for an hour, and the alarm had been set to notify him about the scheduled evacuation of his forces from Vale back into the forest of Forever Fall.
Adam stabbed the vending machine for good measure, causing it to make a cacophony of whirring sounds as sparks shot out from the wound.
Take that, stupid vending machine!
Adam climbed up the elevator shaft, using his aura-shielded fists to beat handholds into the metal until he was close enough to the top to ninja-parkour the rest of the way. While his scroll reconnected, he surveyed the area. What was left of the destroyed tower above him was now encased in the enormous grimm wyvern that had broken out from a nearby mountain (a scene that had been awesome to watch, Adam savoured every moment of terrified screaming from the humans as they saw the monster descend upon their city). To Adam's puzzlement, the creature seemed to be dead. It certainly was not moving. He cursed Cinder for sharing so little of the plan with him after forcing him to join forces with her for the raid. At least the massive grimm being taken off the field would make his own escape from the school an easier endeavour, but he was left wondering what could have slain such a mighty beast. Even Adam wasn't sure if he could have felled the monster. Such a highly-skilled combatant would be a dire threat to his own forces.
His scroll reconnected. There was very little voice chatter now; what few forces were left in range weren't very talkative.
"This is Wilt. What's happening?"
"Sir, grimm have taken the city; more are streaming in from the hinterlands, drawn in by the chaos. Our forces are falling back to our prepared redoubts."
"What became of our human allies? Where is Cinder?" Adam demanded.
"Cinder was seen being carried from Sector Glass by her gray-haired associate after the massive grimm turned to stone."
Adam gazed up at the petrified creature. Yeah, it did seem to be a statue now. What an odd thing to happen. "How did we make out?"
"Casualties within acceptable parameters, minor injuries being treated en route to rendezvous."
Adam smiled. It had been a good night. He looked over the burning city. One last nagging question left his lips towards the scroll.
"She made it to the harbour, sir. Do you want us to capture her?"
"No. Let her run. I have plans and promises to keep."
He wondered how the High Leader and the rest of the faunus would react to news of his victory. Tonight he had firmly demonstrated that he was the saviour the faunus needed to bring them out from bondage, without bargaining with human societies that had oppressed them since time immemorial. My people have been downtrodden for ages. He wondered if this day would herald a new age, one of faunus supremacy over the human usurpers.
Would the grimm intervene to impede his vision of enslaving the feeble humans? Were Cinder and her wildcard faction working towards some incompatible goal? Despite Cinder's potency, Adam felt no fear about a showdown between their forces. She may have thought that attacking his camp unprovoked had made him submissive to her whims, but she didn't know the full strength of the White Fang. He wasn't afraid of a rematch with her. Adam had not known fear since the day he had first donned his signature Grimm Mask, so many years ago when he led his first raid on an SDC dust warehouse with some other disenfranchised faunus employees. Nor had he known defeat. His tactical brilliance and stellar swordsmanship had been why Cinder had used everything she had to convince him to join her side for the Battle of Beacon.
Next time, I'll be ready for her. Next time, I won't be caught off-guard.
When she had first attempted to secure his assistance, she had overplayed her hand. When she had entered his tent, his battle-hardened aura had itched like it did when he was being stalked by a creature of grimm. Humans and his recruits may not have noticed it, but his keen faunus senses and his memories from the pits of Mantle reminded him of rumours of people who experimented with the unthinkable: Grimm Science. He had quickly suspected that Cinder represented a faction that had involved itself with attempts at experimentation – or, given what he'd seen tonight at Beacon, perhaps even collaboration – with the creatures of grimm. They wanted a revolution against the established order; Adam believed it possible that their goal was to allow for new approaches, presently forbidden approaches, to dealing with grimm. He'd refused her offer. He knew from his childhood that when it came to those who dabbled in Grimm Science, it was the faunus that were used as test subjects more often than not. He remembered a prominent Atlesian scientist, Merlot, that had been cast out of society when his brutal, unethical experiments in that field had been brought to light by disfigured test-subject survivors.
Upon her return visit, she had forced him to accept her demands under duress. She'd taken out all of his guards with ease. Afterwards, those guards had begged for his forgiveness for their failure, claiming that the human woman had used strange abilities beyond the power of a semblance or dust. They'd whispered that she had used real magic, and were quickly subject to ridicule from their brothers. Adam was not so sure. The world of Remnant was full of mysteries, and he was hesitant to deny the possibilities of Cinder's power's source. He'd forgiven his followers, and told them that they would be joining their strength to Cinder's revolution.
Now he was left wondering.
A vending machine in a dungeon's side corridor. A dragon turned to stone. Was it so far-fetched to suspect Cinder of being another such anomaly? Perhaps her abilities were the result of her fusion with the soulless creatures of grimm... but Adam remembered a tale told to his crew in the dark mines of Mantle, by what they had all assumed was a senile mole faunus driven to a state of madness over the course of a life of brutal servitude and addiction to SDCola.
A tale of true magic, a gift to the faunus race by a goddess, meant to break them of their shackles and chains, meant to bring forth a new age of peace and prosperity. The Age of the Faunus.
The other faunus had laughed at the old long-snouted comrade, called him a fool. Adam may not have believed him at the time, but the story had given him hope that faunus could be better off than they were. It wasn't a moment of epiphany for him; he had gradually learned to throw off his own shackles. It had been part of that process, though. A memory from his past that shaped him into the man he was today – a flesh and bone gift to the faunus, someone real, destined to break not only their shackles but their corrupt human masters as well.
Was Cinder just the result of Grimm Science, or something else? Something more? It was a shame that he had found nothing in the basement of Beacon to answer that question one way or the other.
Adam ran on foot towards the cliffs overlooking the Emerald Forest, the bronze ring finding its way onto his left hand's middle finger, under his fine black glove. He would keep it as a trophy of his victory over humanity that day, a secret prize. A memento of his life's crowning achievement to date.
Far below in the depths of Beacon's ruins, a smoking vending machine marquee display read C4C3-BEST-CHOICE-ENJOY as the lights in the sconces began to dim, turning the monumental halls into a tomb for those who had lost their lives beneath the school.
