Chapter 6: Railing Against the Odds

Disclaimer: The author of this chapter would like to express their full support of the railway industry, and does not condone violence against such companies' employees or property. This is a work of fiction. The subject matter contained in this writing is not based on any negative real-life train experience. Any resemblance of the characters of this chapter to real persons or vehicles is unintentional and coincidental.


DOMINIC

The rails groaned under the weight of the train as it slid into a stop. Men leapt to work, some having been aboard the train and some waiting for its arrival on the platform, removing supplies from cargo cars. On the other side, a similar situation took place in reverse as labourers put the raw materials harvested from the region aboard the emptying cargo cars. Finished products coming out to the backwater hamlet, fresh resources going into the city. Not an SDC logo in sight.

Dominic and his brothers kept their distance, melding into the sparse group of people waiting to get seated on the single passenger car unit of the train. None of the prospective passengers appeared to be heavily armed, although Dominic could have included himself in that assessment. Appearances aside, I can't just assume nobody else on this platform has concealed weapons, too. Or possessed of dangerous semblances. His brothers kept their faces in shadow, limiting their ability to watch the proceedings. Not a problem for Adam Taurus, of course, who had long ago honed his other senses after his branding had ruined his left eye. The SDC's lighting bill was a minimal expense for the company, forcing young faunus to adapt to a life in the shadows.

A stately looking train employee with a balding head followed the last of the passengers off the train before shouting at high volume, "Mistral Train! All aboard for Mistral! Present tickets as you board! Mistral!" Dominic ended up seated at the front of the car with the window to his left, while Bedlam and Brazen sat in the seats of the row behind him. He was cut off from himselves by the train manufacturer's decision to make two seats on either side of the aisle rather than providing passengers with cozy cabins as found on trains intended to travel further distances.

Unavoidable really, something that he would have to get used to sooner rather than later. The past day together had been... the past day had been one of the nicest in Adam's life, and it felt like it had been so much longer, but eventually it would have to end. They would leave one another to follow the goals they were created to pursue, the goals that their other selves were depending on them to see completed as only Adam Taurus was able to do.

Since there were more seats than passengers getting aboard at Ilhari, Dominic was blessedly not forced to deal with some random stranger during the trip to Kuchinashi, so his makeshift disguise was not tested beyond having to endure the scowls of the humans who passed by him. In fact, most of the other passengers seemed to congregate at the other end of the train from him. Maybe they knew some local custom he was unaware of, like that it was considered courtesy for earlier passengers to take the back seats so that new passengers did not have to walk over the excess luggage they left in the aisle. The train needed some sort of overhead luggage compartment. The train needed a lot of things, in Adam's opinion.

He had blown up trains and left them looking nicer than this one.

Why are the humans scowling at me when they pass by? I've not done anything to them... today... yet.

Despite its lack of conveniences and storage, the train managed to still be a moving platform which transported him and his clones quickly back towards Mistral, so Dominic relaxed his anxiety and watched the countryside begin to blur by.

The silence in the seat behind him brought him out of his reverie. "You two are awful silent back there."

"Oh, we're just considering our plans in detail for Mistral," one of them responded.

Ah, so they're using sign language behind my back. That's fair. Dominic returned to watching the view. No sense in letting any of the humans in the back of the car overhear our plots, and their courses require locating people rather than a means to get to Vale, so naturally they'd coordinate. Dominic barely felt left-out at all.

It was not like he was a closer clone to Brazen than Bedlam was or anything. It wasn't like Bedlam was the coolest of the three of them just because he was rockin' those awesome shades, or that Dominic had felt like sitting with him would have, by extension, made him feel cool, too. He was not jealous of himselves because he had to sit alone.

That would be petty.

His lack of seating partner-based distractions and overall boredom ensured he was the first one to notice the jet black wings of the nevermore that rose out of the forest to fly along parallel to the railroad. Dominic shifted in his seat to make sure Wilt was accessible from where it was on his back, barely concealed by the upturned collar of his trenchcoat; the handle sat awkwardly between his neck and the seat when his body was not turned sideways to look out the window with his uncovered eye. He checked his scroll, calmly waiting for it to turn on before ensuring that his aura was at 100%. Dominic had no doubt about what the small avian monster was drawn inexorably towards. The train kept on at a steady pace, no alarm or concern noticeable. It was just a single black dot on the horizon.

Adam might have done things that caused a variety of regrets in his life, he may have made many mistakes, but there was one thing above all else that he would always be thankful for.

A second dot joined the first, flapping with energy borne from the need to destroy.

Even if Adam accomplished nothing else in life, he would be able to consider himself better than those that made one inexcusably ridiculous error of judgment.

A third dot joined the other two, coasting over the summer-green treeline.

Dominic rubbed the middle finger on his left hand. He only felt the glove over his flesh.

Seven dots now, all parallel.

Adam would never have to regret having been stupid enough to operate a railroad company on Remnant.

Damn things were cursed.


BRAZEN

Their brief stop at the more impressive town of Kuchinashi was made aggravating for the trio of wanted terrorists by the slight edge of panic among the humans. Nobody wasted time checking identification cards, few showed any concern about anything more than getting aboard the train in the hopes of it departing with enough speed to outrun the now-massive blot of nevermores that had slowly aggregated beside the train as it sped through the Mistral woodlands from Ilhari. Brazen hadn't seen so many grimm in a single place since Beacon. The town was at full alert: armed human soldiers watched with trepidation as the sky was filled with monsters.

The monsters circled high over the town, their wings scraping along the bellies of the lowest clouds.

They were waiting, not in a full frenzy like last night when the Relic had been used, yet the grimm were inexplicably drawn to Adam's aura; the grimm birds seemingly retained some measure of cunning and concern for their own existence and would not attack the town immediately. They wanted the Relic, but knew that attacking the town was too large a risk.

But the locals didn't know what the grimm were thinking. With a mass of grimm in the sky, price-inflated tickets quickly sold out for the train even after an additional five cars were attached (a process that took ten minutes in and of itself, to Adam's chagrin). The cargo dutifully loaded in Ilhari was dumped unceremoniously on the platform and turned into additional space for terrified non-combatants desperate to get away from the impending mayhem.

In the chaos, the seats occupied by three adult males were viewed with envy by those who had struggled to get aboard. He had firmly refused an attendant's request that he relinquish his seat to "the women and children of Kuchinashi".

The time spent attaching additional passenger cars gave Brazen time to think about his goal. His understanding of why the grimm were suddenly coming out of the woodwork did little to comfort him. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. When the birds came, they would not have the protection of the town's armed guards to buffer the onslaught. If he got off the train and waited for the birds to decide to attack the town, he would lose his chance to get back in contact with Hazel. Who is sometimes easier to work with than Cinder ever was. On the platform outside, he saw soldiers ensuring that priority boarding was given to women and children.

Fools. Gallant fools. They thought the train would speed their weakest from danger. The train would see the worst of what is coming as long as Adam was onboard, and onboard he would remain. Getting to the city fast would save the most faunus: his alliance with Cinder's master, his goal of learning more of the secrets of Remnant, would protect the faunus more reliably than the chivalrous action of helping to defend the human settlement and whatever disparate faunus scavenged at its edges today.

Brazen looked up at the sky, peering over Bedlam's shoulder. The birds were flying too quickly to count easily, but he estimated at least a hundred small nevermores in the sky. Fodder, but in quantities that large they would pose a threat to the town due to their quickness and mobility. Those were just the grimm he could see from his seat on a train in the middle of town; certainly by now any terrestrial grimm had closed in as well: if not drawn to the Relic than to the fear of the people created by the flock. Brazen weighed his chances of being able to fight them on his own, before catching himself... Brazen weighed his chances of fighting them off with his brothers' aid.

If I told the townsfolk that the grimm are after my aura, would they detach the train to get me away from town faster? He pondered the idea, doubtful. They'd just toss me out the gates and watch in the hope that after having their way with me the surviving party would just leave their settlement alone. He didn't owe the human town anything, so why should he go out of his way to protect them? If I go telling the train workers that if they give me a private shuttle at full speed from their wretched town it will protect them from the grimm, they'll just think I'm a coward who wants to ensure my own survival.

A nevermore alpha circled the town, low above the treeline. It let out constant screeches, making him wonder if the birds communicated vocally.

[The alpha is largest problem], Dominic signed to him from the seat ahead as he sat backwards in a kneeling posture. A small girl with brown curly hair was seated next to him now, though she was demure enough to not be an irritant to their communication. Other passengers, all of which Brazen had quickly noted without surprise were humans as they passed by his seat, adorned with expensive jewellery, shot the trio deprecating scowls. They imagine me a coward, discourteous for not relinquishing my seats to one like them. [Little ones will distract, alpha kills]

[Head of the beast], Brazen replied. If someone kills the alpha, the rest will become weaker and disorganized. Rabble, easier to deal with by intelligent opponents. Perhaps even by humans.

[Like the White Fang], Dominic signed, demonstrating that their thoughts were still well in-sync with one another despite spending most of a day in separate bodies.

Brazen nodded. Bedlam paid minimal attention to the conversation.

After the passenger car had been filled to capacity and the doors sealed, one of the women nearby seemed to find some nerve and stood up to tower over them before laying into Dominic, who was clearly male and dressed like a huntsman-wannabe. "How can you just sit there like that, stinking up the entire car with your rank odour, playing with your hands, when your seats could hold more innocent souls like hers?" She gestured to the small curly-haired girl as she spoke; the child seemed to resent being used as a conversation-piece, and tried to be melt into the firm material of her seat to evade further objectification.

Oh, right. Brazen thought, I haven't really bathed in... when was the attack on Haven? His nose must have just acclimated to the smell after a few days running through the forest. That explains why everyone had been sitting at the back of the train before we rolled into town.

Brazen felt no shame about it. Necessity had seen him go much longer without worrying about neatness.

Dominic sat back down in his seat and turned his head to regard the vehement creature, but said nothing. His mouth was a thin line that gave away no emotion, and the side visible to Brazen was concealed by his eye-patch. Brazen kept his gaze at the back of the little girl's seat while Bedlam continued to look out their window. The grimm alpha made another pass over the town; its screech made the nearby humans shudder with primordial terror.

"Monsters descending upon the town, preparing to wipe out yet another bastion of civilization! We've lost so many settlements in the past decade already! Kuroyuri! Shion! If your vision has already been ruined why take up the spot of someone who can still be a productive member of society? Maybe you'd take out some grimm if you stayed. Maybe that would make the difference! Yet you would condemn those healthy innocents with so much potential!" She gestured to the throng of people beyond the window clamouring to board the train, pushing and shoving against one another on the platform.

"A bastion of human civilization."

The woman's face turned from an angry scowl to a disgusted grimace, now directed at Brazen.

Oh.

I said that out loud. Or did Dom and I say it together?

"I guess faunus have to live in Menagerie to have decent character, after all," she sneered, "or to know how to clean the stench off themselves so as not to subject everyone within a city block to the gagging stench clinging to-" the train lurched and began moving forward, causing the woman to stumble in the aisle. After regaining her equilibrium she spun about and sat her pompous butt back in her seat, her eyes shooting daggers at the trio. Murmurs rose up from the rest of the crowd, which faunus hearing let the Adams know that they were not the most popular patrons aboard. The woman's tirade had not been a private conversation, even by human standards.

His faunus hearing also let him hear the forlorn cries of dismay from those left on the platform, and the shouts of the crew in the locomotive ahead of their car. Apparently they were going to try to give it "all they've got" to make their way to Mistral, in the hopes of alerting the Council to send aerially transported military support to the threat.

"Passengers, this is your conductor speaking. We will be diverting all power to speed, ensuring that our precious cargo, you, will arrive safely in Mistral City. For your own safety and for the safety of those around you, please remain seated until the train comes to a complete and total stop."

"You have a big tail," whispered the little girl beside Dominic as the speakers went silent.

"And you, little one, must save a lot of money on shoes." Dominic indiscreetly patted the girl on the head. Brazen tried to recall what the girl in front of Bedlam's seat looked like, but he had paid more attention to those going past him.

[Hooves], Bedlam supplied. Apparently he had been taking in the scene after all. Or his seat had a better view of the girl's feet.

"Momma is still in the station. She told me to go first. Daddy's on the wall. Daddy has a gun for work and drives the white van. You smell like the men in the gutter after they go to the bar that I see on the way to school, but also like daddy's gun. Is Daddy going to be okay?"

"I guarantee that your mother and father will be more worried about your safety today. You have to be strong for them, now." Brazen was not sure whether or not he should be relieved that at least some faunus were being given the chance to board the train when it seemed like the only way to stay safe, or concerned that the victims of the beasts lured in by his aura would not be solely human.

"Momma's a faunus, too, though. They wouldn't let her on the train. They listen to Daddy because he has no animal parts, but he wasn't there to tell them to let Momma on." So her father is human? Slightly atypical despite such pairings not being impractical, as evidenced by this girl.

The train whisked through the gates of town, opened to let the train pass through. Brazen rolled his eyes at the futility of the wall against winged terrors. Fighting the grimm is often as much about creating the sense of safety as it is creating actual defences.

Dominic and Bedlam looked up at the sky and made 'tsssk' sounds of displeasure. Brazen mirrored the action and saw for himself the black blob in the sky begin to shift to pursue them. Even if the town sent the train a message to warn them of the change in the grimm behaviour, the creatures were now between the vehicle and the meagre shield offered by the town's militia. They were alone in the wilderness, all the passengers' hope would lie in outrunning the things chasing them.

Full steam ahead, Mr Conductor, all these people depend on you! Brazen thought to himself darkly.

The alpha burst back out of the foliage a mere five hundred or so meters from where the Adams sat, screeching loudly. That was enough to warrant the attention of the passengers, who handled it as well as a train of aura-less non-combatants could be expected to.

Shrill, Brazen thought. That's the word for this. It is loud and shrill and making me regret so much being on this vehicle and having faunus hearing.

The little girl began to cry, her body shaking as she sobbed.

Dominic rubbed his neck, running his fingers along the hilt of his "tail".


Whosoever had designed the railway's route deserved some praise: the lack of twists and hills allowed the engineers to literally burn as much fuel as they could to increase the train's speed to phenomenal speeds without concern for flying off the tracks. While inertia did little to endanger the train, the passengers found themselves pressed into their seats from the force.

Wilt and Blush jabbed into his back, somewhat painfully, but Adam was accustomed to the sensation after twenty-some years of living.

The little faunus girl beside Dominic continued to cry softly, commendably less noisy than many aboard the car. Brazen wondered how bad those who had taken refuge in the freight car were faring. They had already been packed in like sardines without seating, now they were probably relating to grapes being pressed into wine.

Small nevermores had managed to catch up before they had reached their current velocity and clung to the train, their talons gripping the metal and struggling not to be torn off. The alpha had faded into the distance, and Brazen started feeling like the train might actually make it to Mistral city without further issue. It would be so nice to make some progress on his desire to track down Hazel.

Then the train began slowing down. Were they approaching the city so soon?

Brazen leaned over his brother and looked along the side of the train. The nevermores, clinging to the side of the car like barnacles on a boat's hull, had spread their wings open in tandem to increase drag on the train. Singularly they did little to impede the motion of the train, but by the dozen? By the hundred?

Clever trash.

"What do you mean the idiots threw out the raw fuel crystals to make room for more passengers!" Someone was shouting at someone else in the front of the train. Amid the din of the passenger car's occupants' worried muttering, Brazen doubted that anyone heard the shouting save for himselves. And perhaps the child, but her emotional state could not get much worse.

There was a response to the shout, but at a lower decibel that prevented Adams from hearing it.

"Well that would have been a jolly-fucking-nice thing to have known before we dumped all the regular route fuel into the firebox! This engine is meant to burnt slow and efficient, not hard and fast, but I figured we still had the dust culm we took on at Ilhari!"

Another response, too soft for Brazen to hear. In any event, it seemed like fate wouldn't let him escape the monsters at his heels so easily.

"Well it wouldn't matter that the bloody things are acting as parachutes, slowing us down, if we still had the fuel we should have had tucked away!"

"We had to dump it to take on more passengers! We were the only way out of town!" responded the second voice hotly. At least the man's heart had been in the right place, Brazen thought. He blamed human incompetence for what seemed to quickly be turning into yet another train disaster.

Man, what is it about me and trains that just always leads to this sort of situation? In another reality, a worse-off Adam Taurus is an impoverished railroad operator and dreams of living my life.

He looked to his left, and saw Bedlam's hand tighten into a fist. Brazen felt the satchel of dust tied to his waist and began strategizing how to use it on the mass of grimm that would descend upon them. Chucking it at the alpha and discharging Blush to explode it all at once seemed like it might be a quick win, but he wondered if the strategy would work better on the smaller ones. Choices, choices.

"I need to get up for a minute, child," said Dominic softly so that only faunus could hear. The little girl obliged, neatly tucking her legs underneath her, and Dominic stood up in aisle and moved to the door to the engine room. The steward blustered at him to sit down, that the train would begin accelerating again shortly and that the passengers had nothing to fear.

Dominic hit him with a quick strike, his elbow connecting with the balding human's gut. Surprised by the blow, the man bent over and made an easy target for Dom's follow-up blow to the back of his head. The physical assault silenced the entire car, which was now quiet save for the distant cawing of the alpha nevermore and the metallic screeching of the wheels against the rails.

Brazen chose to follow his clone, but Dominic had already moved through the connecting compartment where he opened the adjoining door to the engine room. Brazen vaulted over the unconscious body of the steward.

"Who're you, then?" a man wearing a stereotypical conductors striped-hat and holding a walking stick aggressively against a man prostrate at his feet (presumably the coworker who had indicated a fuel issue) asked, clearly bewildered by the intrusion while his face was still red from anger towards his subordinate.

Dominic tossed the man a satchel that Brazen knew held the same amount of dust as his own.

"We need that more than the humans do!" Brazen shouted, condemning the sudden charity of his clone.

[White Fang protects faunus] Dominic motioned, [will not abandon girl].

Human-loving bastard, he's going to do it like that, then? Dominic opened the door of the train and the wind whisked away his hat and blew his hair upwards. Of course in the wind he looks even more bad-ass. Without any further explanation, Dom climbed aboard the exterior of the slowing train to make a stand against the grimm until the train could outpace them again.

Brazen looked back at Bedlam. Bedlam shrugged. [I have no dust], he signed. He looked up and grinned, [or concern about life minus the three of us on this train, but his life is his own].

Brazen found himself between the two, both physically and emotionally. He did not want to die for humans. He did not need to save the few faunus that had managed to get passage on the train, when his mission would better the lives of all faunus. He did not want Dominic to die up there. He just wanted to find Hazel in the city before the burly human escaped back to his waiting airship, taking away his best clue to finding Cinder. Lionheart was in the city, too, and might prove an unexpected boon.

[Come up with us], he beseeched Bedlam.

Bedlam did not move.

Brazen could imagine Bedlam rolling his eyes with annoyance behind those reflective sunglasses, even though he couldn't see it.

"I'll help clear those things off the outside of the train, you get it moving fast again." Brazen stated to the conductor and engineer. "Don't waste time, and check the rest of the passengers for any more dust before you run out again." He tossed his satchel of dust to the conductor. He seriously doubted that anyone had been packing as much dust as Dominic and himself had been holding on a train fleeing an apparent battleground; most dust probably would have been confiscated or given willingly to Kuchinashi's defenders. Still, any bit might mean the difference between Dominic's strangely noble gesture being worth something and it just being a prolonging of the inevitable death of all aboard.

Brazen stuck his head out the door and estimated the train was moving at a mere 30 klicks, not even half the speed they had been at to keep some distance from the grimm prior to the clinging nevermore's little trick, and decelerating quickly.

"How long to the city?" Brazen asked, the interest in his tone belying his recalcitrance at being drawn into the debacle by Dominic's blossoming hero complex.

"If we weren't slowing down, we would have made it in a quarter hour," reported the engineer hastily as he passed by to extort more dust from the rest of the passengers, "but without fuel we would have come to a stop in ten, still far from the tunnel into the city. If he doesn't mismanage that and the birds get removed from the hull, we should be there in thirty or so minutes. The engine is not designed to process raw dust crystals like those, it is supposed to use by-product dust culm, but raw dust will still work well enough to get us to the city. Engine will probably need to be replaced afterwards. They'll probably fire me for this, or take the repair costs out of my pay." The engineer grumbled, then turned his full attention to pleading with the frightened passengers for extra energy crystals "to ensure our timely escape from the pursuing grimm."

Brazen looked at the sun, hanging low in the sky. He climbed up onto the roof of the train and saw Dominic's silhouette walking calmly along the top to the back of the tethered cars.

The smaller nevermores that had clung to the train had begun to notice the train was slowing down, some began unlatching their talons' grip to fly up over the train; squawking in a cacophony as they watched the faunus moving along the metal roof, while others caught up to the train to join their raucous flight. They were young, but nevermores were cleverer than many other grimm. Brazen was certain now that they were communicating with one another, formulating a plan of attack. He wasn't just paranoid. With the alpha still working on catching up enough to perceive the pair of Adams, the wretched beasts lacked stimulus to follow a singular strategy to assault the interloping faunus. Their job was to just hinder the train until their elder could catch up to finish the train off.

"You're going to get us killed with stunts like this!" Brazen shouted. "We can just use the emotions of the passengers to mask our escape! None of us have to die here today, Dom!"

His brother regarded Brazen cheerlessly, having heard his voice shouting over the din, before turning around again to continue towards the back of the train. Dominic lifted his arm with only the finger that they had worn the Relic on raised upwards.

While the gesture had a well-documented universal profane meaning, Brazen understood that for the three Adams it held a hidden second meaning.

[Make your choice. I've made mine.]


DOMINIC

After flipping off Brazen, who seemed hesitant to defend the train despite the evidence of helpless faunus passengers within, Dominic moved to the side of the train and began clearing off those wily grimm who had slowed the train down. Blush's retorts echoed through the surrounding woods, reverberating and resounding back until his quick rate of fire made the din of a machine-gun.

I could abandon this train like Brazen and Bedlam would suggest, but not with any faunus aboard. Leading the faunus to protect the faunus who cannot defend themselves. How could I deserve to take back leadership in Vale if I tossed those ideals aside here today? Plus, this might be good publicity for me. Restoring my image as a hero of the faunus, rather than a renegade bent on revenge. The fiasco at Haven may have ruined my reputation, but that does not mean it is beyond restoration if I set my mind to it.

The beasts clued in quick to what he was doing, and before long the sides of the train were clear. Brazen even started to help towards the end, when the birds tried to maintain their stranglehold on parts of the train opposite from where he could shoot. The two of them managed to blast or scare the birds all up into the air.

The train stopped decelerating, but they had not won yet.

The alpha nevermore was not impressed in the renewed motion of its target: it began screaming orders to its minions, who began flowing down in droves to attack the faunus twins. Fighting back-to-back like in the cave the night before, their Wilts formed a blurred red decimating whirlwind that tore apart dozens of the creatures.

A dozen came at the pair from the west, using the dissipating smoke of their comrades to conceal their approach. Never relying on sight, Blushes' shots continued to find their marks unerringly.

Twenty dived at them from above while others attempted to distract the brothers by flying around them just out of reach of Wilt. Dominic swung Brazen around like a dancer while he fired his rifle up at the attacking force; Brazen's red blade kept the distracting grimm at bay.

They fired their small, dart-like feathers at the pair, but they deflected the flurry of splinters with their swords. "There's not enough force in these little one's feathers to charge Moonslice!" Dominic called out, and they realized that the feathers had been a diversion from a group of nevermores that had crawled down along the side of the train to crawl up from the space between cars to try to get them by surprise. Taurus' ears had heard their talons scuffing along the metal, though, and Dominic had been ready to meet their feint's purpose with Wilt.

Their rifles kept firing. At one point he could not even tell which retorts were from his gun or from Brazen's; it was almost like there were dozens of Blushes firing off into the enemy because of the acoustics of the thick trees that hedged around the railway.

The alpha kept its distance, well beyond the range of Blush, and seemed unperturbed at the display of swordsmanship and firearm skill each wave allowed the Adams. It had many in its black-winged clutch to batter them with until it could discover a weakness: while they fought to defend themselves against those that rushed in at them, others went back to digging into the sides of the train to slow it down again.

Even if they killed all the nevermores, if the train burned out of fuel again it would all have been for naught: Dominic did not doubt that the nevermores were the fastest grimm that had managed to catch up to them since their departure from Kuchinashi, but more would come.

"We have to kill that alpha!" Brazen said, his breathing becoming forced and making it difficult for him to speak.

"She's too far away!" Dominic replied, gauging the distance between the end of the train and the spectre hovering behind a wall of smaller nevermores, "even for Moonslice! Even if that wasn't the case she has a wall of little ones between her and us and we have no way of charging up our semblance!"

They sliced through another five nevermores that tested their weariness and kept them from prying the others off the side of the train.

"That's not entirely true..." Brazen stated slowly. "I might have a plan."

Dominic allowed a pregnant pause before Brazen continued, the air whipping past them as the train crawled forward. 20 klicks, maximum. We need to fix this situation, and soon, or all is for naught. My reputation! My honour! That little girl is depending on me! On us!

"We can charge Moonslice ourselves." Brazen yelled out like it was not a crazy statement at all, "come at me like we're sparring against a training dummy. Our attacks should be parallel enough that we will block every strike, no matter how fast we execute it, and the force of that should charge us up in no time at all."

"We can't afford that chance! If one of us is out-of-sync, we'll damage our aura or wound one another! There has to be another way to finish this quickly."

"Dammit, Dom! I trust you with my life enough for this. I followed you up here! If we don't do it like this, then we might as well just run into the forest now. So trust me with this. Or if you have a better plan, I'm ready to hear it." He punctuated his ultimatum with the unloading of his rifle into a gang of nevermores that thought they could take advantage of the twin's verbal exchange to get close enough to peck one of them. The nevermores withdrew back to their alpha.

"Fine. Let's try your idea." Dominic conceded the necessity of the plan, risky as it was. As he pointed Wilt at Brazen, a harsh truth came to him: even with Moonslice charged, one of them would have to leave the train to deliver the blow to the grimm's leader. He looked at his brother. Their minds in-sync, he knew that both of them understood the sacrifice hanging over them darker than the wings of any monster. "This was all my fault anyways."

Their blades met, the clanging of metal ringing out and echoing back from the woods. The alpha cocked its head to the side, confused by the sudden internecine conflict occurring on the top of the end of the train. It gave a shriek and the birds that were not attached to the edges of the train withdrew from the 'battle' between the two faunus.

"Our aura drew them to the train. This burden is shared." Brazen's attack picked up speed, his teeth gritted in concentration.

"We could have run. We could have done things like you and Bedlam wanted to," screamed Dominic as he felt his own mouth clench shut, his tired arms moving his sword in elegant harmony with Brazen's. The sword began to shine a dull red.

It was working! Together, they could charge up their shared semblance!

Brazen gave a bleak chuckle. "Bedlam's probably got a good headstart now. He should make it to the city easily enough with this to distract the grimm, even if we fail. At least he will get a chance to have a showdown with the traitor." Adam Taurus continued to dance with himself on top of a train, the only way he had ever been taught: lethally. Every blow aimed at one another was launched with killing intent, with the full strength of his training, because both Brazen and Dominic understood that their time was growing short. To make full advantage of the confusion their sudden infighting created among their foes, they had to charge Moonslice as fast as they could. That meant going at each other at maximum power.

"You'll make it, too." Dominic growled, "because I'll be the one to kill that alpha. You launch me towards it once Moonslice is charged."

"I chose to come up here. Using Moonslice was my suggestion!" The swords gleamed red, now. Not a movement was wasted, each sword met its twin perfectly, absorbing the energy completely. It was like fighting his own reflection in the mirror.

"Be that as it may, this is my fight." Dominic's black-dyed hair was now streaked with red highlights. He felt his semblance bubbling underneath his skin, begging for release. For the satisfaction of the kill. "So I'll be the one who goes through with this plan, brother." If he died to restore the honour of Adam Taurus, to repair his reputation, than so be it. Better to be seen willing to die to save the faunus on this train than be remembered as the one willing to kill himself and his minions to kill Blake and some faunus dissidents. Not the perfect end to his story that he had desired, but he accepted its necessity.

Brazen repositioned himself to the end of the train, breaking out of their duel, and readied himself to launch Dominic through the wall of grimm to their target. "Get a running start!"

Dominic stared his brother in the eye. The white robe flapped in the wind of the slow-moving train. "Promise me that whatever path your choice takes you down, whatever power you find there, promise me that you'll use it to free the faunus and make ourselves a legend that will never be forgotten by our liberated people."

Brazen nodded.

The nevermore alpha screamed, its bird-brain still struggling to put the pieces together but suspecting the threat the swordsmen could pose to its longevity. Its instincts for self-preservation grappled with its overriding need to extinguish the sources of negative emotion on the train. It thought it was safe. It had never met Adam before, though.

Dominic's legs tensed as he prepared to sprint forward towards the end of his path, but then everything went red and black as Moonslice tore up through the middle of the caboose, wrenching the metal roof apart and sending jagged strips of metal flying out into the forest or into the mass of grimm. Brazen had quick enough reflexes to drop prone to avoid being smacked in the front by a spinning strip of steel.

Wilt in Dominic's hand had lost its red shine. Brazen and Dominic proceeded to shout out a chorus of profanity of such a vulgar nature that Dominic was thankful the faunus girl for whom he had gone through all this effort was at the other end of the train (and hopefully unable to hear the obscenities).

Bedlam leapt up onto the tattered remnants of the roof; at least some of it had not been annihilated by his greedy expenditure of their semblance. Yet worse than his poorly-timed discharge of their energy was the fact that the smarmy bastard had the gall to have a fat toothy grin on his face.

Dominic was amazed at how much he wanted to punch himself in the face.


B̛e̴DLAM

They're selfish. Running straight into danger. For what?

Why were the versions of him that weren't focused on Blake so quick to throw themselves between the grimm and the passengers, when he could not even bring himself to get out of his seat? Even if the train was the fastest way to the city, the risk they were taking in fighting the grimm seemed foolish. It would be much safer to simply use the train as a buffer to give them time to make it to the town safely on foot.

A nevermore impaled its talons into the shatter-resistant glass by his face, creating a spiderweb pattern of cracks. It's eye regarded him. It mocked him.

You're in there. I'm out here, the bird seemed to say as it tilted its head at him. What are you going to do about that?

Its feathers were the darkest black, like Blake's hair. Damn thing.

Bedlam looked at the other passengers, who were all occupying a scale between crying and cowering. Some had noticed the bird by his window. Some ignored the world around them as they prayed for salvation. Some had windows with avian attachments of their own to deal with.

The engineer who was collecting dust from the occupants was one of the former: he glared at the beast as it opened its wings to increase the drag on the train. Then the man glared at Bedlam.

Bedlam shrugged.

Bedlam stood and walked up to the engineer. "Someone should fix that human on the ground," he snarled, indicating with his hand the man still lying unconscious after getting sucker-punched by Dominic. That was a memory he would savour.

One of the passengers got up to do so, either eager to help the man or to be away from the bird pecking at the glass of her window.

Bedlam moved past the engineer. His legs were stiff. If he was going to make a run for it while the monsters killed everyone on the train, he may as well have a stretch first. Once the train comes to a stop, I'll consider it time to get off. Until then, it is still moving towards the city.

Gunfire boomed from above. His siblings were busy up there. He saw black smoke drifting along the sides of the train as the beasts were destroyed by Blush's familiar firing pattern.

He walked into another passenger car. Much like the one he had been seated in, the passengers were all terrified but as he entered a scattering of them looked at him with sudden hope.

"Mom, look, a huntsman!"

"Thank the gods!"

"We're saved!"

Bedlam walked past them, stepping over the luggage strewn in the middle. The engineer entered the car and declared the necessity of appropriating any dust the passengers might have on them to get the train going again after it had been slowed by the nevermore. To Bedlam surprise, some of the humans recognized the logic in sacrificing their elegant dust-infused jewellery and even in some cases their clothes to save their lives. Their hushed whispers turned from Bedlam's appearance to convincing one another to part with anything that would help the train keep moving. A short girl with blonde hair and a lacy pink umbrella stood up and offered a trio of red dust crystals the size of Adam's index fingers. As he passed by where she was her stature gave her heterochromatic eyes a clear view of his shadowed visage.

She smiled wickedly, not taking her eyes off of his face. It was unnerving, and Adam was glad to pass by her to to investigate the next car.

Through the other four additional passenger cars the scene was much the same as the first: scared humans and the occasional faunus that gazed at him with relief as the sound of combat thundered through the reinforced metal that divided their mobile sanctuary from the battle taking place overhead.

As he got to the last car that had been built for the purpose of human passengers, Bedlam told a couple to vacate their seats. He moved to the window, unhitched it and stuck his head out.

The train was still going along, but slowly. He brought out his Blush and fired up and down along the side of the train, smoking a half dozen creatures that insisted on ruining the streamlined shape of the train with their outstretched wings. He brought himself back into the train and locked the window. There. I helped.

Bedlam came to the first freight car. Strewn all over the floor were the bodies of obviously less well-off civilians. They had tumbled around during the chase, and many were nursing injuries. A few had had the wherewithal to grab hold of the bungee cords attached to the walls that had been installed to hold crates in place during transit, which the passengers had clung to in order to keep themselves upright and out of the pile of flesh at the back of the car when the train had been at full speed. Optimistic that the train would accelerate again soon, they continued to hold the cords.

Human cargo, he thought as he remembered the life of an Atlesian faunus: being shipped from mine to mine in conditions much the same as this. The car felt downright homey to him.

"We can charge Moonslice ourselves!" Bedlam heard one of his siblings shout from above, the metal of the cargo car strong enough to protect against the feeblest of grimm foes but not being much for soundproofing. Bedlam listened to the half-baked plan of his brothers, and grew ashamed. Here he was, thinking only of himself and his need to get to Blake, when he was little better than Blake himself. Running away from problems, abandoning himself.

They're right. Keeping the train operational is best for the passengers and us. It is still our fastest means of getting to Mistral. Mistral is where Blake is. If Blake gets too far away for me to find because I chose to walk away from this trainwreck rather than staying to help it get to the city in time, I will have nobody but myself to blame for the increased difficulty associated with my path.

Bedlam felt the need for release as his semblance charged, which made him realize what Brazen had figured out: his semblance was tied to his aura! Bedlam heard Dominic's suicidal plan emerge in full as their blades sang to charge Moonslice. His aura was part of each body! Not just the bodies that actively charged it, but all three!

Bedlam shoved some helpless civilians out of his way and hacked a length of bungee cord from the wall, then quickly sprinted through each cargo car to gather more. Then he followed the shouts and sound of swordfighting to the final car in the train and drew Wilt.

He summoned the power that roiled in his soul and tore through the metal of the roof, disintegrating much of it and scattering chunks of molten metal into the train's tailwind. With a big smile he leapt up in the aftermath of the destruction and landed on a remnant of the ceiling.

They greeted his arrival with angry looks and rather coarse language, not suitable for television anywhere outside Vacuo (and even then, only on late-night programming).

"If you two are done being melodramatic, I think I have a way of doing this without one of you... running off the rails."

Despite the presence of innumerable grimm, despite the loss of all their stored up semblance, despite the fact that he had let them do the job alone until then, both Dominic and Brazen found it funny and laughed.

Brazen walked over to Bedlam and slapped him with a quick backhand to his now-exposed head. "You idiot, what took you so long?"

"If I'm an idiot, we're all idiots! But I'm not the one who forgot the first rule of adventuring: always bring rope!" With that, he brandished the length of bungee cord he had appropriated from the train.

"None of us can argue against our own idiocy." Dominic came over, the whimsically stretched metal whining under their combined weight, "but it is good to see that you did not run off just yet."

The brothers touched their blades together as the alpha began to put some distance between itself and the brothers.

"Now what is this about a plan that doesn't involve me leaping to my death?"

Bedlam held out the tied lengths of bungee cord to Dom, stretching them to demonstrate his plan while looking at the distant grimm.

With Bedlam there to set up the cord and hold off the renewed attack by the grimm, Brazen and Dominic were able to quickly recharge Moonslice. The alpha had put two hundred metres between it and the trio on the end of the train.

Plans sure are easier to explain to people who think nearly identically to myself, Bedlam mused.

The alpha called for all its miniature minions to fall back to defend it from whatever was coming. It had seen Moonslice in action, but did not fully understand where it had come from or what it represented.

A shame I didn't realize the power of the Relic before Haven. Blake's little shadow-clones and her monkey-boy's copies have nothing on this.

He could have kept running the Vale Brotherhood, overthrown Sienna – perhaps even without having to kill her, and gone to Menagerie to personally deal with Blake. Bedlam shook the regret from his mind; now was not the time for regret. Now was the time for action.

Moonslice was retribution. Moonslice was death.

Dominic ran towards Brazen while Bedlam shot at the birds still clinging to the train and loudly goading the alpha to 'come have a taste'.

Dominic flew towards the host of grimm as Brazen and Bedlam blasted a hole through the swarm between them and the alpha; then he came within range to use Moonslice. It screeched in fear. The smaller grimm clawed at Dominic, but his aura withstood the assault.

Dominic once again discharged his soul's essence, bisecting their foe from beak to tail. The alpha nevermore execution resulted in the remainder of the flock beginning to swoop at the faunus heroes, heedless of the danger, no longer commanded by a stronger intelligence. They covered Dominic and tore at him, but then gravity brought him to hit the ground and shook all but one with the impact. The last nevermore clung to the back of his head and had been spared the rudeness of being dislodged by Dominic's protection of his skull. The bungee then yanked him back towards the train, which gave him the appearance of flying towards the train: spread-eagle with a trail of black feathers like long hair flowing out behind him and his red sword held askew, as he was dragged along behind the train. Bedlam and Brazen worked as quickly as they could to reel him in, but their efforts were hampered by the grimm coming at them. Eventually the three of them sat on the back of the train, exhausted.

"Nice work."

"Ditto."

"We make a great team, me myself and I."

They had a laugh. Triplet jokes were the height of the fall's fashion.

The train blew its whistle, making the three of them turn around to look towards the locomotive at the front.

"OH SHIT" the three screamed as they saw the approaching gated tunnel, too low for them to pass through while on top of the train.

With absolutely no dignity the three of them rolled off the back of the train like homeless vagabonds riding the rails, moments before they would have slammed into the wall of the cliff through which the train would access the city. As they lay in the dirt, staggered from their tumble, the railroad entrance gate automatically sealed shut with a solid metal thud.

"Well then."

"I guess we'll have a bit more walking after all."

"Has anyone seen my hat?" Dominic asked, yanking off the nevermore than had somehow managed to stay on his head until then. "This is not my hat."

Bedlam shot it with his rifle. "Woah. That was a terrible wig."

"Nonetheless, we made it." Brazen declared, "we made it back to Mistral: the city that hates us almost as much as we hate it."

They began walking to the nearest roadway entrance to the city.

"That woman on the train was right." Brazen muttered as he smelled the air, "we really do need to get this stank off of us."

"We smell like garbage." Dominic granted, "hot, sweaty garbage." He threw an arm over Brazen, bringing him in for a hug. Brazen accepted the gesture, and offered his other side to Bedlam.

Bedlam rolled his eyes as he joined the hug. "Shower first, then revenge. Got it."


ELSEWHERE...

Cammy Obscura huddled in the back of the train with the others, most of whom were still in shock from their shared near-death experience. Thanks to those fighters, the train had made it safely into Mistral and it would only be a matter of time before they could get out of the urine-soaked freight car and into a clean set of clothes and a secure shelter.

She hoped her grandparents back in town were safe. The grimm had all seemed to come after the train when it left. Either the intelligent corvid monsters wanted nobody to escape the destruction of the settlement, or they had targeted the train as being full of Kuchinashi's weakest inhabitants.

Cammy wrung her head in her hands. It was beyond her capabilities to understand the reasoning of grimm, if they acted on anything above instinct and cruelty at all. She had never seen any evidence to support such a thesis: schoolbooks had taught her that the grimm were defined only by their destructiveness, their ruthless pursuit of the eradication of all people on Remnant.

She looked around at the other refugees. All were haggard, all seemed to be zoned out of the world and shrunken into their own thoughts, their faces illuminated by the lights of buildings they passed since the car's lighting had been obliterated by that red blast that tore off the roof. Cammy took out her scroll and checked the signal. She was soon connected to the city's source, but that wouldn't let her communicate with the now-distant settlement where her beloved relatives waited. They were depending on the train to get word to the capital, so that reinforcements could be sent.

She sent a abbreviated message to her boss at the news studio. He was the person with the most political clout that she knew. Her scroll vibrating as a call came through. Apparently the boss was working late and her text had been interesting enough to warrant the full attention of a call.

"Yeah, boss. Hi! Kuchinashi just got swarmed by all sorts of grimm. I made it back on the train, but it was a close call. The train was covered in nevermores for a bit there, but some passengers managed to break them off and get us here safely," she blurted, her words coming out like chunky vomit, "but enough about that: get word to the military that they need help out there. Anything that can fly or drive should be getting out there to help. I've not seen grimm like that since the images from the Battle of Beacon, before the feed was cut and the tower crashed."

Her boss immediately opened up another call to his friends in the military. Cammy prayed that that would be enough to get aid to her family and their fellow settlers, and that his call wasn't the first word of the attack they'd gotten.

"The train's coming to a stop, I'll head over as soon as I can." Cammy continued, "don't worry, boss. I've got something good, too. I had my scroll and managed to get a shot of one of the passengers killing the alpha nevermore that was leading the attack on the train. You'll never guess who it looks like! There was at least one other one, too..."

Later that night, sitting in the spartan apartment he owned in Mistral, awaiting teams RWBY and JNR-O to recover from injuries sustained at Haven (Oscar might have the mind of old man Oz stuck in his cranium, but his little boy bod couldn't handle the strain that fighting Hazel and Lionheart had forced it through), Qrow spit out his whiskey as he watched an unexpected headline come up on the local news.

BANDIT RAVEN BRANWEN SAVES TRAIN, KUCHINASHI FROM MAJOR GRIMM ASSAULT: MORE AT ELEVEN

There was an image of what, if he squinted a bit, may have been his treacherous sister. Dressed in black with hair that matched the nevermore grimm swirling angrily around her as her red blade tore through the monstrous form of an alpha beast. The photo was not the best quality, and whoever had taken the image had been a fair distance from the fight and had been standing behind a glass window, but it was certainly long black hair and red sword. She seemed to be flying, too, so she must have just transformed. Good thing the photograph didn't capture the transformation... that would have just made life so much harder for me.

In shock at the image, he dropped his whiskey mug and it shattered.

Fuck my luck!

Forced to drink from the bottle, he earned a reproachful glower from Ruby as she came back from a late training session with Blake, who followed her team leader while talking on her scroll; probably with her father. Qrow sighed. Rubes didn't understand what it was like to be him. Few people did. Oz had understood, given him jobs that complimented his abilities and let him avoid the usual pitfalls his cursed semblance often drove him into.

He should talk to Yang about her mother. Something about Raven having just disappeared from the Vault of the Spring Maiden was just wrong. She had not bothered to steal away with the Relic, Spring was dead, and now Raven was apparently out saving trains in the middle of nowhere from grimm attacks? Was she trying to get back at Salem? Was this a feint, to make him pay attention to Mistral instead of somewhere else she could teleport to?

He found himself outside team RWBY's door. He raised his hand to knock, but then overheard their conversation. They were talking about their adventures while apart. Catching up. Team bonding.

It wasn't his place to interfere with that.

It wasn't the time to interrogate his own beloved kin about his own forsaken kin.

Qrow slouched back into the couch with a full bottle of Mistral's worst, and waited for the news at eleven. It had been a long day, and they still had a ways to go. He had spoken with Oscar-as-Ozpin, and they had agreed that getting Knowledge to Atlas was the best course of action. While Qrow may have not appreciated Jimmy's use of heavy-handed tactics and technological marvels, Atlas was in far better shape than Vale or Mistral.

Vacuo, you ask? Qrow regarded the bottle as if it had made the query. Vacuo is a wasteland surrounded by a desolate deathtrap of sand and storms.

It wasn't like he just hated how sand always got into his feathers.

Atlas it would be, but Atlas might be a hard place to get to and get into. Word was that they'd shut off their borders. Qrow had gotten into more difficult places, though.

There was this barmaid in a small village in the swamps on the edge of Mistral...with a skirt as short as her temper and a bed as soft as her breasts...


ADAM TAURUS

"So there's three of me, now?"

It would appear so, Dai said, stretching so that her stomach was raised, her back arching up as her chair reclined.

A third Relic-Eye had opened up when 'Revolution' and 'Revelation' had awoken in the cave after a few minutes passed out; Adam had paid rapt attention to 'Resolution's solitary stand against waves of grimm. Things had seemed dire for a moment or two.

"I have to admit I am pretty proud of how well I seem to work with myself. I wish I had always had such reliable assistance in my life." The two newly-formed Adams tore through the creeper grimm in a remarkable display of prowess despite their exhaustion, eventually leading up to a climatic fight against a massive walrus-rat lavel alpha fight.

You demonstrate a great tenacity, Adam. Rarely have I ever seen a mortal dispatch grimm with such ease without the use of magic. Dai pushed her hair out of her face, behind her ear with one hand while smiling at him.

"Just wait until they get some sleep and food. I'm in pretty poor form right now."

I have been with you since Beacon. I have seen you at your prime. She hummed out the last word through her smile.

"Yeah... that still seems strange to me. How should I feel about having an invisible stalker tied to my soul for so long without knowing it?" With the way she kept admiring his body, he felt like he had been violated.

Nothing about my presence was odd. I did find some of your mannerisms strange. Do you find females attractive, or just Blake? I noticed that during my time with you from Beacon you never-

"Blake was my partner." Adam interjected, not wanting her to discuss what she saw him doing (or not doing), while he was enjoying nobody's company but his own. "Always was, since I was old enough to consider such things. She always told me she wanted to wait until the world was a better place, I wanted to wait until the world was safe for faunus before we... before we engaged in any of that." Adam's face was beet red. There is nothing wrong with having tried to save myself for Blake!

More time passed in the Relic-Eyes: they watched the three Adams make camp and rest for the night, keeping watch and continuing to impress the daemon with their ability to slaughter the hordes of beasts that the Relic drew towards them.

"So, what is the deal with the sleep thing?"

Your soul only needs so much rest to recharge your aura. Since you have multiple bodies, each one has a proportionate need to your original's sleep requirement. Each body needs to sleep less, but you still need to sleep.

"Do I need to sleep here? Can I sleep here?"

Nope, Dai chirped as she began sliding her chair closer to his. When the chairs touched, they melted together into a two-seated couch. We do not have to sleep at all, Adam Taurus. We can be together all night long. Her head came to rest on his shoulder.

Adam tried to change the ambit of the conversation: "which name do you like the most, Dai?"

Oh, I think Bedlam is my favourite so far as names are concerned. Dai's leathery wing stretched over Adam's chest as she reached for a can of People Like Grapes, before dragging the cold container across his body so that it left a trail of condensation droplets over his heart. It does make it easier to keep track of them at times, even if they still look identical.

Adam shrugged. He sort of liked Dominic Tyraus or something that blended his long-ago self-chosen last name with Tyrant: he didn't mind people knowing that he wanted to be in charge. Cinder probably had named herself after her semblance, and that seemed to be working well for her. Or maybe her semblance had developed out of her own self-image of herself as a smouldering seductress?

Dai cooed as she watched the Adams tear apart the human scouts. Ooooh, so ruthless! The pathetic humans mewled like fairies when they died!

Adam shook his head slowly with disdain. "Those humans did not stand a chance. They should have chosen to surrender before the fight began, or turn around when they realized who they were up against." Adam didn't flinch as he watched from three angles as a red sword ended the female captive's life.

That is the problem with choice. Being free to choose means that many people choose to do stupid, often self-destructive things. If they are lucky, they live long enough to regret their choices and hopefully make better ones. Alpha grimm are the same way: if they survive long enough, they learn to stay away from civilized areas until they are certain of victory.

Adam was silent for a while as he watched himselves walk up to the homestead the prisoner had mentioned.

"Dai, do you think the choices I made, the ones I've used the Relic for pursuing... do you think that those were the 'right' choices to make?" It was a subject he had been mulling over while watching himself go about his business in reality. Should he have used the Relic right away like he had? Would he have even been able to live through the night on his own? It would have been a much harder fight alone, tired.

Maybe I should stop thinking so much about my choices and just sit back and relax. Enjoy the show. Have some optimism that things will turn out well, or at the very least, interesting for us to watch.

Maybe. Time will tell, and you will tell, and others may tell. There are many versions of right and wrong, all a matter of perspective. I always felt best doing what felt best. So do not ask 'what is right and wrong', ask 'are you pleased so far'?

Adam had to admit he seemed to be doing well so far, but he would feel reassured with a second opinion that was still so suspect. Did he have to wait until he expired before someone reviewed his life and told him whether it was good or bad?

The eyepatch makes Dominic look like a pirate. Dai squealed as she saw him trying out the accessory with Bedlam in the homestead's master bedroom. Maybe he is planning to plunder some booty? Or is that more Bedlam's area of expertise?

Adam sighed, trying to ignore the way Dai was rubbing her posterior suggestively.

He tossed some more popcorn into his mouth. He was playing nice, by Dai's rules. Hopefully she would let him interact with one of the portals soon, to try that out.

Adam would settle for pants, though.