Chapter 3: Say My Name
Do you know what choice is, Adam Taurus?
Adam made a lacklustre shrug, a gesture which Dai seemed to accept without judgment.
Choice permeates every action you take. Every decision you make. Every living soul on Remnant is blessed with the innate ability to choose what path they will follow. Every living soul on Remnant is cursed to be constrained by the choices they have made. Do you see the paradox of it? If a man walks down a forest path and finds it to split into two, he must make a choice in order to continue forward. He can take the left path or the right path. He can spend his life debating between the two. He can turn around and try to retrace the way he came. He is free to choose. He is not a slave to fate. He is bound to himself and his own free will.
The paradox of choice is that it gives freedom and bondage with the same act.
If he follows the left path, he will not experience the right. If he follows the right, he may wonder forever what lay down the left. For every action taken, there are actions not taken. Actions that can never be taken, because the moment of choice has passed.
Okay, so being able to choose gives the man freedom, but also restrains him to the path he has chosen. What does that have to do with me? Adam tried to keep his attention on her, but even with time seemingly halted his migraine and gnawing hunger pangs made it hard for him to focus; that the subject so far was so much more academic than practical did him and his limited philosophical education no favours.
You called my name, and in you I sense a soul at the crossroads. Adam Taurus, as the bearer of the Relic of Choice, you are truly free. Free to choose unlike any other living soul on Remnant, unfettered by the curse inherent to the paradox.
The power of the Relic of Choice is that it lets you walk multiple paths on the road. The left and the right are both within your grasp to achieve, without sacrifice of the other.
"So what, it lets me travel back in time so that I can avoid mistakes and live without regrets for choices I didn't make?" Adam piqued up, thinking about several moments in his past that he would not mind having a mulligan on. A girl he should have listened to more and trusted less. A mine shaft where his friends had chosen their bounty of dust over him and left him behind. A zig when he should have zagged.
Someone travelling backwards in time is impossible, even for the Gods. Better to leave rewriting history to historians.
Adam slouched a bit at that.
So much for those impromptu plans to fix his life. Dai is not helping me at all with this so far. This was just like when Blake was trying to teach him to be literate. Why would a word have more than one meaning even if it was spelled the same? It had been so confusing, and just when he thought he understood the meaning of the word. It was at that moment that Adam had convinced himself that when humanity fell at his hands, one of his first edicts would be to have the faunus create their own language, perhaps similar to the sign-language the mine slaves had taught one another to talk without alerting grimm or angry humans to their presence. A sensible language. A language that would let him be content with its content.
Despite not allowing you to traverse the fabric of time at your leisure, the power of the relic is still a magnificent gift. Activation of the relic splits the wielder's soul into two separate bodies, each identical and having the same vital statistics and physical capabilities, but driven to achieve one of the decisions of the original without being distracted by the draws and desires necessary for the fulfillment of the other. The activation results in a localized surge of divine energy, which some attuned creatures may respond to. The bodies each represent a slice of your psyche, dedicated to the pursuit of one of your diverging aims.
No matter how many versions of you exist simultaneously, they still share a single soul. Each body can be destroyed in the same ways as you could be now, although they are each protected by the extension of your soul humans refer to as aura; the extension of the soul across several bodies may also confer additional benefits.
There is no guarantee that either of the decisions will end in success, or that you are making proper choices. Each version lasts until it is destroyed or until it willingly merges back into its partner; in the latter scenario the resultant being has the combined memories of each psyche slice and the choice no longer counts against the century limit of the relic, but the reformed soul can not use the Relic of Choice again that century if that would put it over its personal limit.
So this relic can split me into multiple bodies that are each as strong as the original, but are focused on a particular task representing a defined choice that requires being in a place which would prevent the other option from being viable.
"There are no limits to what the task can be?" Adam asked, getting a sense of what Dai was telling him now. "Does it matter what the choice is about? Could I use the power of the relic to try two different kinds of soup at a restaurant, or does it have to be something more meaningful?"
The relative importance of the situation does not alter the enormity of the gift. While the original intention of the relic was to underline the magnanimity of the Gods in allowing mortals to have free will to choose between good and evil, it is not a requirement of your usage. If one of the soups would lead you to a different fate than the other, then who is to say the choice taken there is more important than a choice to do good or evil in any other hypothetical situation? You are the bearer of the relic, and it is your gift to use when you see fit.
Adam thought about the needs which tormented him the most, the conflicting emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. He had a pretty good idea of what he would use such a power for, but before he leapt at the carrot dangling in front of him caution begged him to inquire further into the nature of the process.
"Which one will be the real Adam? If I use the relic, which Adam is in charge? How do we tell which of us is the original?"
Each one is the real Adam Taurus. Each one shares your soul, with all its aura and semblance. One soul, two bodies. All your memories and mannerisms... each one will be the same at the start except that they will not feel any inclination to follow the other path.
"So can I just use the relic to choose between random choices over and over again to make an army of myself?"
You are being clever. That is why I have enjoyed my time riding around on your hand these past few months. Well, one reason why I liked it.
Dai's chelipeds snapped quickly shut before she began gently rubbing the serrated grooves on their inside edge to make a locust-like droning noise that barely registered to his faunus senses; Adam had a moment to wonder silently what the strange gesture could mean from a being foreign as her.
He suddenly noticed that she had begun drawing slightly closer to him during their conversation, reducing her size to be more on par with his own while floating forwards nigh imperceptibly: farther away she had been large, closer she was smaller, but from his point of view she had stayed the same size.
He doubted she had gone through all this trouble to make him feel at ease before attacking him. Still a possibility, though. He let his left hand fall back down to lay on Blush, a defensive posture which she seemed to understand. The question left to Adam was whether she stopped her serene approach because she feared his weapon, or because she genuinely wanted to continue the conversation without making him feel imperilled?
I'm afraid that the Relic of Choice is limited to activating its power three times a century for an individual soul, and can maintain a maximum of three choices at any instant. Even if your choice clones merge back together, that does not allow you to make new choices that would put you over that limit. Merging back together simply lets someone else use the relic's power in a century when it would otherwise have been expended, without having to destroy one of the existing users.
"Alright. So three charges, which would mean there could be four of me made from three choices?"
Indeed.
Adam sat down on the ground, cross-legged, and thought about the situation. He would be able to think more clearly if his tired everything wasn't distracting him, and standing tall to intimidate Dai was not going anywhere constructive. If she could change her size at will, he doubted he could match her in a test of might, especially considering his current fatigue.
"Tell me more about the relic itself. What is it?"
You presently bear the Relic of Choice in its shrunken form as a ring on your hand; I have been silently observing you since you retrieved me at Beacon after the Maiden activated the vault and the Wizard's wand dismissed the seal. Then you deftly passed the Wizard's riddle and secured me as your prize. I was impressed at how you managed to get through the layers of intricate protections the old man had put around me; I am not sure how much research it took and how many resources you had to expend to obtain the relic's power for yourself, but I am grateful you did and I promise to make it worth the cost. I was worried that after the last use, he would keep me from functioning or being out in the open ever again.
Whelp. Now is probably not the best time to admit that I found it by complete accident without knowing anything about what it was. Adam pulled the supple black leather glove from his hand and examined the bronze ring, now a radiant green hue. Adam nodded. So that's how it was. A magic ring.
With a sudden suspicion he queried her. "How have you been observing me?"
Once you held the relic and perceived it as belonging to you, I was able to share your sensory input. It was a harmless effect, meant only to allow me to be aware of an attempt to summon me forth from the confines of the device.
He'd been under near-constant surveillance while he'd been an employee of the SDC, and the memory of that irritated him a bit. He hadn't done anything shameful or regretful in that period – minus losing a fight against Blake at Haven – so it wasn't like he had cause to feel particularly violated. And yet, I sort of do. Not to mention she would have seen him naked. A lot.
Her chelipeds continued to drone a little.
"Do I have to do anything for the relic? Do I need to clean it or power it? Is it fragile, does it melt?"
The relic itself is indestructible; no mortal undertaking could destroy it.
"That's good. I would hate to get in a fight and accidentally sunder something so confusing." Adam snarled as he spoke, his mind filing fact away. "If I use this relic to make a choice copy of myself, which one has the relic afterwards? If we both have the same hands, which hand wears the ring? Wouldn't that Adam be the real one?"
It is a matter of personal preference. By default, the relic is tied to your aura. To use it a second time after it has been used by a still-living pair typically requires the pair to be physically touching. There have been instances in the past of the clones requesting to have the relic materialize as a physical object again for a single one of them to bear, tied to a single body. Such an act has advantages and disadvantages, I would suppose. If the relic is used and one of the pair is destroyed, the ring takes physical form on the remaining choice clone.
Adam sat in quiet contemplation of what he had learned. So far the chances of this all being a trick were about fifty-fifty evenly. He could name several people who would relish a chance to get his hopes up like this, just to screw him over that much more. He could think of at least one person who had the ability to: but he had left Emerald back with Mercury at the bullhead, and she had not seemed to be in any sort of shape to pursue him, much less pull off a stunt such as this spectacle.
While he was hesitant to admit it, there was also the increasingly strong chance that, having gone without real rest or food beyond what he could scrounge from the forest as he ran through it, Adam had simply gone entirely insane.
Not that I was the picture of mental health before, he thought to himself. I spent too much effort focused on Blake when I could have just left well enough alone until an opportunity fell in my lap like it did at Beacon.
His eyes gave the dead Fang lieutenants on the floor a quick glance.
Yeah, not really feeling like I'm the poster child for mental health at the moment.
Can a crazy person realize that they've gone crazy? If I know I'm crazy, am I really crazy? He locked his eyes on Dai. How does one go about investigating someone of being a figment of the imagination? If it was an illusion, maybe it was limited to sight and sound. Perhaps his other senses could pierce the deceit? "Dai, can I touch your..." Adam quickly tried to figure out what part of Dai was the least controversial thing to ask to feel, before deciding upon her hands. "...hand? I need some way to prove to my other senses that what I am seeing, what I am hearing, is real."
Dai angled her head in a quizzical sort of way, and Adam's ears detected the soft rasp of her dangling claws quicken.
Our first encounter and you already want to hold my hand? So bold, Adam Taurus. Dai took a moment to fan her face with her hand as the glowing green cheeks darkened. Of course, I shall let you inspect the perfection of my hand.
Dai rapidly shrunk until she was a solid head shorter than Adam as he sat, and hovered up the dais before him holding forward her winged arm in a pose Adam could only describe as bashfully dainty. He had to admit, now that she was not towering over him he noticed that her face was perfectly symmetrical and rather cute in an impish sort of way.
Her palm facing down and her fingers forming an arch, Adam slowly reached out and took her hand in his right. Upon finding her hand completely enveloped in his, Dai let out a low gasp. Adam massaged his thumb across her palm, his rough sinewy digit caressing her flawless skin before gently pressing her hand between his thumb and index finger to assure himself of the reality of what was happening, the reality of Dai's physical presence in the room. He felt her. He moved his face to their joined hands and gently inspected the smell: surprisingly minty. Almost too minty, like it was covering up another smell like a perfume, but so strong that any underlying scent was undetectable. If he had inherited a bestial nose rather than his stubby horns perhaps he would have gleaned something more from the act.
Meanwhile, Dai's face began emitting a slightly brighter glow, and she turned her head away from him while closing her reptilian eyes. Her mouth was closed so tightly that her teeth had been concealed behind her plump lips. He drew his head back.
"So it lets me really be in more than one place at once. It lets me pursue my goals if they take me in different directions. And I can use it for four paths, using the three charges." Adam listed the facts as best he had heard them, "do I have to choose now?"
Dai was unresponsive to the question, her eyes closed and the purring drone coming from her claw-feet. Adam spared her a concerned glance before tapping a few times along the top of her hand with the nail of his little finger to get her attention. Dai stirred herself from her brief reverie and looked straightly at him once more, though her eyes did dart down quickly to see where their bodies were still connected.
"Can I sleep before I use the gift?"
In this demiplane of existence, we are cut off from the astral plane where your soul must return to recalibrate itself. You cannot sleep in this non-time, Adam. Here is now, and in the now there is only us.
Adam struggled in vain to understand what any of that meant. His mind filled with a sudden burst of rage at Atlas; if they had provided him with an actual childhood, proper education like any of their human citizens, then perhaps he might possess some insight into what she meant by that. Instead, they had thrown him into a dark pit and told him to get crystals to power their technological comforts and not die, in that order of priority.
Oh, how he longed to give them their due.
Adam realized that he was still holding Dai's hand, and that it had surreptitiously wound its way into clutching onto his. He unbuckled her hand from his own, releasing her one finger at a time until finally sliding his thumb out of her grip. Dai brought the relinquished arm back to her side, and the hand disappeared under her chasuble.
My apologies for the obfuscation, Adam. You do not have to make a choice now if you do not want to, since the Gods in their foresight permit me to simply explain the nature of the relic to a new bearer while applying the chronoprohibitor field. However, the next time you call my name and desire to use the Relic's power to make a choice, a choice must be made immediately. Although the sense of the term 'immediately' suffers somewhat, since the field will allow you to make your decision with a generous amount of relative time.
"I think I know exactly what choices I want to use the power of this relic for, Dai." Adam said as he stood up.
"I want to choose both hunting down Blake and fighting for the faunus, rather than between the two. I cannot keep letting my personal attachment to Blake get in the way of my revenge against humanity. I cannot trust taking care of Blake to anyone else. The disaster in Menagerie is proof enough of that. My relationship with her has brought me nothing but grief. Now it is bringing me defeat after defeat. I need it dealt with, but I will not let it dominate my actions. Not if I can choose not to, not if I can trust it to be done by the only person left I can rely on." Adam stepped down the dais, past where she floated, and knelt beside the body of Luro. He pinched the drop of suspended blood falling from his chest and stood up. He let go of the drop of blood at eye level, where it remained for a moment before disappearing, reappearing at its original location.
Even at Beacon I had to face my own kind. They will see in time that I am doing what is best for them. I am doing what is right for the faunus.
"His name was Luro. When he was a child, he escaped the circus where his parents gave birth to him. He made his way to the big city, Mistral. He thought things would be better there, away from the cruel lash of the ringleader." Adam walked across the room to Luro's wife, continuing as he went, "Luro didn't find anything better there. There are so few opportunities for faunus to succeed, to do anything better than scavenge off humanity's scraps. They call it charity, equalization processes, affirmative action, but in their minds they still think us beasts. Monsters." He touched his grimm mask.
Dai watched him move about the room as she moved up the dais, eventually coming to float above the toppled throne.
"I will keep fighting. What else do I know how to do?" Adam looked at Luro's wife, regarding the scorches left by Blush on her back and the slushy gash where he had impaled her with Wilt. "I don't know which way of fighting is better, though. I can fight with the Fang, with my people, as their leader. It is what I always wanted, almost as much as I wanted to bring humanity to its knees. For all that, I've come to see that there are powers in this world I don't understand. This," Adam proclaimed, waving his hand at the unchanging room, at Dai, and at his glowing ring, "Relic of Choice, you. Cinder. Cinder's master. There are powers that I didn't know existed. Powers that could certainly be used to further my aims for this world and myself. Before I called you, I could not figure out whether I should trust in my adopted family or in whatever Cinder represents."
Adam plucked a lightning dust crystal from the corpse, then noticed a satchel on her leg with a rainbow bounty. He examined them as the first crystal returned to its original location.
"I choose to fix the world, by going to Vale to reform my White Fang so that we can conquer the kingdom and impose my will on everyone, human and faunus, as their master, while also joining Cinder and Hazel's master in their attempt to tear down the societies of man while ensuring that the faunus benefit from that revolution."
Adam walked back to Dai.
"How do I activate the power of the relic?"
Take my hands in yours.
Dai held forth her hands, and without hesitation Adam reached for them. Dai smiled, her needle-like teeth reflecting the frozen torchlight as much as radiating her own glow.
Tell me what crossroads you face, and what two directions you would follow where a mortal would be constrained to one.
"I face diverging paths, leading to resolution or to retribution: I can track my partner Blake wherever she runs or continue to fight against humanity's mistreatment of the faunus. I would follow her relentlessly to punish her like I promised her I would and I would let my attachment to her fade so that I can champion our people's salvation from humanity's control.
Do you accept the gift of the Relic of Choice?
Adam nodded.
I need to hear you say it.
"Yes"
Dai's face lit up with her Cheshire grin once more. She raised her clawed legs and grabbed him on his sides of his firm stomach.
One more thing that I forgot to mention, Adam Taurus.
The actual action of having your soul divided into two bodies?
It hurts.
Dai's words had barely left her mouth when her legs split away from one another while firmly fastened to his shimmering aura.
As his soul was rent asunder by the ancient daemon, Adam seemed inclined to agree. It hurt a lot.
AN ADAM TAURUS
Adam woke from unconsciousness, his head dizzy and his body aching.
"I think I'd rate that a solid nine-point-six on the Adam scale of pain." Two identical voices said together. Lying on the floor beside Adam was either the most seamless mirror ever to be crafted by a gaffer, his long-lost twin brother, or the product of accepting the gift offered to him by the green not-a-hallucination. Noticing one another simultaneously, they rolled away from each other to opposite sides of the throne platform before springing to their feet and drawing Wilt in a bizarre mirror of one another.
"Oh, right. The relic duplication thing. Well I guess that worked." The twins stated nonchalantly. Each one sheathed their weapons.
"We should take inventory of the situation." They said. "Also need to figure out a way to stop speaking in tandem. This is. This is no. Stop saying what I am. About to. Say. Swimming dotted xylophone wax!"
The Adams watched one another warily.
"This would be hilarious if it didn't seem like we are now back on the clock. How long were we out?"
Both moved to the body of Perac, and judging by the congealment of his fluids it had not been that long. "At least we managed to get a bit of sleep, right?"
"So what are your thoughts on all this?"
"I think we're wasting time when Blake is getting away." Said the other Adam, while Adam responded with "I think our luck is finally taking an upward swing."
"Well I guess that answers the question of who is pursuing which choice." Adam said, while the other Adam moved away from Perac and began opening a secret passage that led out the back of the throne room; thankfully the only people who would have known about its existence were in prison, had been killed in this room, were Adam, or possessed of the Belladonna last name.
His thoughts following a parallel process the other Adam grumbled, "Blake would know about the tunnel, but she won't have to worry about it as much as she will have to worry about me coming for her."
"If you can deal with that treacherous tease, I'll make sure our mission stays on track. That's this whole thing's deal, after all."
"I've always said it is so hard to find reliable help. This is a welcome change of pace." They said together.
"So how do you feel?" Adam asked the other Adam. "Are you still me? I don't feel concerned about chasing Blake. It is a nice feeling, just being able to let someone else handle it without worrying that the job would be better done if I did it, because I am doing it." He continued, "there is certainly something to be said for this."
"Okay, it is similar with me. I remember my life before Dai split us, being constantly alone at the top, but now I can make sure Blake is as alone as she left me instead of having to worry about... everything." Other-Adam told his new partner. "With that said, and as much as I enjoy your incomparable company, we'll have to use the relic again on you, so that you can follow Cinder and Hazel without sacrificing our authority in the Vale Fang. When are we doing that? I'm sort of glad I don't have to feel all of that again. She did not lie. That was painful."
"Ah, it was only pain. I think we've become accustomed to the one constant in life by now."
"What did I do to deserve a life like this?" Both wondered aloud.
There was a sudden klaxon sound from the other side of the large wooden doors. The alarm had been sounded! The Adams looked at each other, their minds considering the possibilities of why the base was now on full alert. Did they know what had just happened in the throne room? Had the men captured at Haven sold out the base so quickly, was Ghira's militia or the Mistral army at his doorstep?
"We need to do it now." They said in unison.
"Come over here." Adam called, and his reflection moved away from the secret egress he had revealed in the wall. While he moved towards Adam, both of their hands suddenly went to their belts and back pocket. Together, they looked at their matching versions of Wilt and Blush, then stared at each other as they lifted wallets from their copied clothing. They both opened the wallets and took out the lien and fake ID's stored therein.
"I have a proposition related to the abuse of the relic's power." Both Adams exclaimed as the evidence of an unconsidered benefit became evident. The other Adam tossed his wallet to Adam, who caught it before hurrying over to grab the satchel of dust crystals from Luro's wife; the other Adam rifled through the clothes of the rest of the lieutenants and within a minute they had shoved all the various lien in the room into a single wallet in Adam's pocket, while from his belt hung the satchel stuffed with dust crystals. Not a fortune, but at the same time not a bad haul of ill-gotten gains.
"Thanks." Adam said as he accepted the items. If Dai's power duplicated any items they carried, then they would complete morons to not make as much use of it as they could. Getting to Vale, hunting down Blake and Cinder, the tasks he had set himself to would require resources. While he was confident that even penniless and hungry he could manage, he would not look the gift horse in the mouth.
"I never thought that, after Blake, I would ever feel comfortable with another person like this again."
Adam pulled himself into an attempt at a hug, but the other Adam recoiled.
"What are you doing?"
"I was giving you a hug. That's what Blake used to do. I remember liking it." Adam whispered, his eyes aimed at the ground in disappointment, "I thought that we could hug."
"I'm sorry. It's just been so long. All this time, waiting for Blake to open up more, trying to make the world safe so that she wouldn't have to spend her time worrying about others and could spend time with me. Waiting for Blake to come back for so long, finding that she moved on and left me."
"She left us, now. You and me, we're the same."
"I don't know that I can trust another person after what she did to us."
"That's okay, then." Adam looked up and wrapped his arms around his grief-stricken brother, "I'm not another person. I'm just another you."
The other Adam tensed up and grabbed onto Adam's shoulders with his hands and reared up to push him away again, but then stopped mid-motion.
"You're right." He uttered softly, and leaned into the embrace so that his mouth was beside Adam's ear, "we're just two bodies with one soul. I can't bear to be close to another person until my feelings for Blake are resolved. But I can at least be honest with myself." His arms drew around Adam and returned the hug in full, and for a moment the pair stood there enjoying the nearly forgotten comfort of physical contact. Before Blake had come into his life and after Blake had left it, nobody had provided him with anything of the sort. His parents had abandoned him before he could remember. His coworkers had avoided him. His followers had feared him.
Then an explosion made the ground shake. Each of them recognized the sound and understood that someone, or something, had just detonated one of the armouries. Together they released their grip on each other's backs and diminished their contact to holding hands so that the fragmented relic could be called upon once again.
"Alright, so you keep watch and I'll summon Dai again. I imagine I'll get knocked out again, so you cover my split until we wake up." Adam stated, "under no circumstances are you to leave me lying in this room to chase after Blake solo. For now, we're all heading back to Mistral anyways so our paths haven't really diverged noticeably yet. So sit tight, hold my hands, let's summon the monster-girl and cut my soul up some more."
"It sounds really weird when you say it out loud like that." Other Adam sneered, taking off his gloves.
After taking off his gloves Adam grabbed hold of his copy's hands again. "Shush, you handsome devil you. Dai! I need to make a choice!"
Each of their hands began to glow, and a ghostly green ring materialized on each of their left hand's middle fingers; the green glow grew as vapour poured out of the ring and gathered itself on the floor, slowly taking the still-unfamiliar shape of Dai.
Adam Taurus. Tell me the paths you wish to walk together.
The other Adam stepped back from Adam and asked Dai, "will I go unconscious when you split him up?"
You will be unaffected. The only reason you are in the field is because you contributed to the activation of the relic, tied to your aura as it currently is. Dai turned back to regard Adam, holding out her hands. With only a hint of trepidation, Adam took hold of them in a fierce grip. He bowed his head for a moment.
"Dai, I am set on a path of justice against humanity, but my path splits into one of revolution and one of revelation. Let me pursue both, by going to Vale to rejoin my loyal followers there to lead them to victory once again while simultaneously seeking out Cinder's faction to discover what secrets they hold. I cannot do both at the same time without the power of the Relic of Choice. Grant me its gift once more, that my goals can be fulfilled without sacrifice of one for the other.
Do you accept the gift of the Relic of Choice?
"Yes."
Dai's claw grabbed him once more on his sides, and he tried to prepare himself for the coming agony.
No preparation could protect him from the pain of the gift, it seemed. He screamed and the world went dark.
ANOTHER ADAM TAURUS
Dai's glow began to fade, but as she disappeared she turned her face towards him. Do take care of yourselves, Adam. This is the most fun I have had in a long time.
He drew his sword and checked Blush's ammunition, and time started moving forward once more. He inspected his new brothers, took back a copy of his wallet while leaving their disproportionately larger bounty of valuables untouched, then moved them into a less 'we-just-fell-on-the-ground-awkwardly' position. From outside came sounds of gunfire and screaming. That did not imply that the remnants of his forces outside the doors had figured out that something was amiss in the throne room. The base was definitely under attack.
It sounded like the base was losing the fight if they had been pushed back this deep.
Screw it, we need to hustle if this is going to work for any of us. Adam thought to himself. I'm not going to lose track of Blake because of a little pain. He slung his brother over his shoulders, ensured that he had not dropped anything, then began shuffling towards the escape route. If this is what I have to put up with for myselves, their appreciation was going to take the form of letting me be the first one to get some sleep, he thought to himself as he closed the door behind him. On the other side was a hewn rock passage, which if he remembered correctly led to some underground river? He had never used the passage before. Ah, just Adam alone in an underground tunnel. The more things change, the more things stay the same. He felt the weight on his shoulders. Well, at least it has changed a bit for the better since thirteen years ago.
Whoever was attacking the base, Mistral or Menagerie, he hoped that they did not think to cover wherever the secret passage led out to. Moving forward into the lightless cave, he almost immediately stubbed his toe on a protruding rock and nearly toppled over.
"Well I'm happy neither one of you were awake to see that one." He whispered to them as he gently lay them down on the cave floor. He reached into his pocket and retrieved his scroll. After fumbling to find the power switch on it, he waited in its dim glow as he watched the White Fang's private operating system load up. He sighed at the logo, which was a flame-covered bird over the title FlamingOS. The avian-faunus who had pirated, jury-rigged, and reverse-engineered scroll tech so that their terrorist organization had a secure means of communication using the human's network had been a genius. Perhaps a bit too egotistical and flamboyant at times. It had gotten him caught by Atlas security, after all. He had been dedicated, though. When the specialists had breached his lab, he had fail-safes in place.
Atlas' forensics teams had not been able to recover any of his hardware, or much of the specialists that had gone in. Adam wondered if his comrade had managed to make it out of the conflagration alive somehow. If he had, all the more power to him. His duty had been done: not a fighter but a tinker, he had passed the torch to Adam. The conflict became one of acting on their ideology, seeing them rise out from the shadows to oppose their human oppressors directly.
Blake had preferred the shadows. Easier to hide there, to run away from her problems. Adam had spent long enough in the dark. He yearned for the light, craved to bask in it. But Blake wanted to prevent him from reaching his destiny, from getting what he deserved, and for that she would pay a hefty price that he would collect from her. He would not let her deny his feelings anymore.
A noise from the darkness that spanned before him. A rock crumbling down, a distant scraping. Adam held Wilt forward with the hand not holding his scroll.
The scroll finished loading, and Adam pressed a button to maximize the screen's illumination to function as a flashlight.
Slithering towards him, across damp rocks, around columns of stalactites, from crevices and cavities, dozens of grimm had been advancing. Creep grimm, little more than clawed arms with maws and tails. Weak fodder at best, but conditions were cramped in the passageway and he was physically spent. He stepped forward, putting himself between his unconscious brothers and the swelling black tide.
"It's always the hard way." Adam growled as he put his scroll light-up on the ground so that he could take hold of Blush, casting his shadow on the jagged ceiling. "Here's hoping the rifle's melody can wake me up quicker, because I am going to seriously earn some shut-eye if I have to do this all on my own."
YET ANOTHER VERSION OF ADAM
They spun, back to back, through the mass of frenzied monsters like a tornado of red destruction; their blades finding easy purchase in the gaps between the armoured bone plates adorning the creatures' black hides. As they finished their decimation of the group of lesser grimm, a roar reverberated from further down the passageway.
"That sounded like something big." Adam stated calmly.
"That sounded like something angry." Adam replied from behind them as he knelt on the ground, exhausted from dealing with several groups on his own while Adam and Adam had recovered from their separation.
"Let's kill it and get some proper rest." They said together.
"Yeah, I'm so tired I'm seeing double!" snarked Adam.
"Laugh it up but you at least got to lay down a bit while I had to deal with all these," Adam wheezed out from the rear, gesturing weakly at the remaining smoking bodies from his solitary slaughter of the beasts.
"So how long were we out for this time?" Adam asked, his tone full of concern for their staggered triplet.
"I was. Not really. Watching. The clock." Adam replied while sucking in deep gasps of air, "but you could check the log of when I turned the scroll on. I got that thing going right before they all pounced at me."
Adam walked back and picked up the device, fiddled with it for a moment, then recited that they'd probably been out of it for ten minutes or so. The two newest Adams turned on their own scrolls and set them to their flashlight function.
"Enough worrying about that, let's go finish off whatever is still down there. I'm betting some sort of alpha."
"Ugh, sometimes I hate being right all the time." Sighed the other two. "We all know I am."
They surged forward down the natural hall in the light of Adams' scrolls and came to a large conflux cavern, strewn with larger stalactites and columns, with a large pool of dark water shaking at its centre being fed by a number of gullies full of listless sludge water. In the centre, roaring loudly at the intruders, was a massive grimm the length of six horses. It had the face of a deformed walrus, with massive tusks protruding from its maw to hang down like sharp daggers, while the rest of its body was like that of a lumpy black rat with raw white patches scattered in an asymmetrical splatter. Each limb ended with a trio of fingers tipped with deadly hooked claws, and its spindly tail was at least twenty metres in length. It was so large it was unable to get into the passage they had come through, but was between them and the various other passages leading from the area.
"Lavel grimm. Alpha, of course." Adam said, which earned a tired sigh from his following brothers as they came into view of the creature. He had fought a few of these before, though maybe not so large as this one, and he tried to remember the lessons he had learned from those prior encounters: mind the venom in their teeth, best to not get hit at all since they were always rife with filth.
"That tail gives it a reach advantage in a melee, we've got bullets to spare if it means not getting sick." In unison they each produced their version of Blush and took aim at the creature's face.
It's hide is thick. Aim for its brain through its open mouth when it roars or tries to bite.
The creature roared again, and even as their rifles began blazing in harmony its bellow was all they could hear. Adam was forced to dive down the smooth slope towards its pool when its tail streaked towards him; missing him the tail gave one of his doubles a glancing shove that was more than enough to push him, causing him to stumble backwards.
Adam turned his dive into a roll down the erosion-polished stone since he failed to get enough friction to halt his momentum, drawing Wilt while the creature pulled its tail back in preparation for another lash. He heard his twin recover his footing and start joining another volley that their third had started, which distracted the creature long enough for Adam to evade a swipe from its foreclaws. He jabbed at its underbelly with Wilt, but the hide was too thick and he could not penetrate it. The lavel's knees crouched, making Adam think it was simply going to flatten him, but it surprised him and attempted an ungainly leap straight into the air. Clearly the creature wanted to make a bigger impact on him, but it gave him time to dodge out from underneath. As it landed, with its four shrewish legs askew, it found itself poorly defended against his melee assault.
"Get out of there, you're going to get yourself killed!" One of him shouted, and it took him a moment that the command was not being directed at him but at his split-self, who had decided to join him in the water as they both brandished their gleaming red blades at the beast.
Both Adams leapt onto its back from opposite sides and raced up to the crook of its neck, Adam slung Wilt around its face and hooked through behind its tusks. His brother grabbed the end of Adam's Wilt and together they pulled back and wrenched the thing's jaw down, giving their most drained duplicate a clear line of fire at its mouth's exposed roof. The creature's tail whipped towards them, but his partner deflected the blow with his blade and it went crashing into a nearby column.
In the dim illumination provided by the scroll that Adam had dropped somewhere during his roll down the slope, he saw his third sibling grin maliciously as he took aim at the target the two had made for him.
Bang-bang-bang!
The sheath-that-was-also-a-gun fired a trio of shots directly into the creature's brain, and Adam had a front-row seat to watch the red glow fade from its eyes as black smoke began to gush out of its mouth. For good measure, and to not be outdone, Adam intensified his pull on his sword and began cutting through it from jaw to spine. His companion on the creature's back had the same idea, and together they began to slice through the ebon flesh.
As they completed the coup de grâce, their still-elevated brother fetched the fallen scroll and then slid down the rocks to wait for them at the edge of the pond. The cavern was silent.
"There." Adam said, pointing towards a side-tunnel, "a waysign." Indeed, there was a White Fang symbol carved into the rock of the passage. The Adams nodded, recognizing the way to get out of the cave system.
After another twenty-odd minutes of a combination of crawling, leaping, bounding and climbing, the trio emerged into the forest of Mistral's countryside once again. The newly risen moon cast a pale glow over the terrain, cutting through the sparse leaves of the dead trees surrounding the grimm-uninfested cave.
"So it seems probable that those things were drawn into the cave by the negativity of the Fang. That's the only explanation for why there were so many grimm gathered up like that." Adam said. He admired his companions for a moment. Even tired, beaten, and run ragged for days on end, they were still a force to be reckoned with. Unlike every other person he had ever fought beside, they had no need of his inherent leadership talents; instinctively they knew the best way to do things. His way of doing things. "What they were saying as we walked into the base..."
"Yeah, there was not much positive feelings in that place." Interrupted an Adam, "but so what. They can sort out their own lives if they aren't going to stay on the path I set out for them."
I'll make sure they get back on that path, Adam thought sourly.
They scouted the area and found a clearing suitable for a rudimentary campsite, taking some time to gather some edible roots and berries that had grown ripe with the wilderness' summer season.
"So what are you thinking right now?" Asked Adam as they sat down to eat the meagre meal they had foraged.
"Just thinking of what Blake is doing right now. Probably surrounded by her friends and family in some cozy little place in the city, glorying in how she beat us. She'll be feeling on top of the world."
"Out of curiosity, how often does your mind not focus on getting Blake?"
"Less than it did before the split. Now that I have you and you, I don't have to worry about anything else. Now I have all the time I need to draw up my plans for her. What are you thinking about? I presume Blake does not factor into your thoughts."
"Not at all. I still hold all my memories of what she did to us, and what she didn't do to us, but I've sort of come to terms with that. It is out of my hands, now, and knowing that you are dealing with that is the reason why I'm so relaxed about the subject now." Adam responded in sync with his most recent psyche slice brother.
"I just want to get back to making good on the promise we made to myself in those mines. Making sure that humanity never has the power to hurt another child again, by any means at my disposal. That's why I have to find those means, even if that means cozying up to human dissidents like Cinder." Adam's purpose twin continued.
"I just can't wait to get back to Vale. I know our forces there will fall in line once I return and promise them more victories like Beacon. We were doing fine there without Cinder, I can make them see that and capitalize on our gains in Vale." Adam supplied. "So I guess we know where we are each heading, sort of."
The three of them sat there around their dimly flickering campfire for a minute in silence. Adam broke the silence, "I was thinking something else, too."
"Which one of us is Adam?"
"Yeah. If none of us is not Adam, then none of us is really Adam, right?"
"I guess. You know what we need?" The other two replied in chorus, smiles growing on their faces.
"Of course you know I know what you know we need!"
"Codenames!" They all shouted gleefully.
"Alright, what is your codename going to be?"
"I'm thinking 'Night Striker'. It's totally badass."
"Yeah, it is totally badass but has nothing to do with what you're doing, does it?" Replied Adam's twin, "also are we going with titles or code words or aliases? I'd prefer a solid nom de guerre that we can use to talk to one another while infiltrating Mistral. Not something so dry as 'Joe' 'Pat' and 'Steve', but something we can call each other when other people are around that won't sound suspicious."
"I mean, Blake's hair is black, like the night sky. And my goal is to strike out at her."
"That's really a stretch."
"Okay, fine. If you don't like my idea, then tell me what you have for me."
"Well, I was thinking that you're the version of Adam that is focused on hunting down the Belladonna family, not just Blake. So you're the Belladonna-Adam, so we can shorten that to Belladam."
"That's not much of a codename, but I guess it is less odd to say in public than Night Striker," he returned, "but Belladam sounds a bit awkward."
"Wouldn't it flow better as Bedlam? Such as in "I want to get to bed, because we're on the lam?"
"Doesn't Bedlam mean crazy?"
"So you're saying it suits us all a bit too well?"
The three of them laughed and shook their heads as they said "it has been quite a strange day." They went quiet for a bit and got comfortable, finishing up the last of their meals.
"Alright, Bedlam then. You can have first sleep and we'll watch over you in the meantime since you watched us get born."
Bedlam shrugged. "Is it aggrandizement to thank myself like this all the time? I don't even care. I'm going to thank you, and you're me, and I'm falling asleep now."
Adam and his twin watched Bedlam fall asleep with his head resting against a flat stone, keeping their ears preened for sounds of grimm approaching.
"It is an odd thing, to be certain, watching myself sleep like this. Never in all our years did I think I would see something like this."
"We've been thrown a very strange hand here. I think it might work, though." Adam replied.
"So just so we're sure, me myself and I are on the same side, right? I'm sort of done with being betrayed at this point. Dai never said whether or not there was anything the prevented us from fighting one another. I feel like that is something that I don't want to concern me in the future."
Adam had been thinking the same thing. "She did say that we both share the same soul, the same aura. Apparently our clothes and weapons are so much a part of our identity that they were also duplicated with us. Even the dust satchel we took off Luro's wife."
"Yeah, it looks like we doubled our dust, too. That's handy."
"So I guess we could fight one another, but it would be a bit of a meaningless endeavour since each blow would only harm ourselves."
So it would just come down to the last blow, Adam concluded silently.
"Okay, so we won't have to worry about directly fighting one another. How about a pact to not get in the way of each others' directives, or gank each other in the night?" His brother continued, his face a literal mask so that Adam couldn't read what he was thinking from his facial expression. If their minds were the same though, his brother had come to the same conclusion as he had.
Adam leaned into the light of the fire, illuminating his face, and took off his mask. His copy followed his lead. Adam looked meaningfully into his copy's eyes.
"No matter what, from here on in I can only rely on us, Adam Taurus. The point of this entire gift is cooperation. Where one of us can only achieve one goal, three of us can achieve them all. I make a pact here, today, that under no circumstances will I intentionally hurt any one of me. I can count on each of me to be true to myself, we have to be able to count on each other. If on some dark day it seems that one of me has turned against my cause, I will remember this moment and doubt whatever has led me to think such a thing. If I can't trust myself, then what kind of world is it? When all of our goals are reached and we stand above everyone else, praised for our commitment, for our strength, for our unwavering vision..."
"Then we will stand above everyone else together. One soul."
"One for all, and all for me."
They clasped their hands together above the embers of the campfire, their features glowing bright red as they reflected the ashen cinders.
?
Green mist stretched in every direction. No ground existed here. No sky. Just the infinite green illuminated by its own luminescence. His eyes were stretched open, as if the mist itself was refusing to let him close his eyes. Adam tried to move but his limbs were numb. He tried to speak but his mouth was sealed shut.
Dai floated forward to appear in front of him; her wide smile and gleaming eyes somehow still unsettling even in the strange realm.
I have watched you, Adam Taurus. I have watched as all you struggled to build came crumbling down around you. I have watched as you have endured pain and suffering, and it broke my heart knowing I could not aid you.
I am like you, Adam. I have known pain unbearable by my peers, and through suffering I have sustained and survived.
I am not like you, Adam. I am not blessed or cursed with choice. Before the first dawn marvelled at by your people I was bound to the relic by the Gods, a memory of what was, a testament to their failure. I am bound by the inscrutable will of the Gods to my duty, and my chains have no regard to my desire.
So I watched you struggle, and could do nothing until now, when you sweetly called out my name.
My name is Dai, and I am the last of my kind.
