Chapter 8: Dude, Where's My Clone?
DOMINIC
Dominic ran his fingers through Brazen's hair, admiring his clone. His hand reached the nape, then began retracing its path back to the base of the horns before following one of those up to the tip. Brazen's head lay on Dom's other arm, in the crux of the elbow so that his left hand was pinned to the floor. Brazen's blue eye fluttered open and stared into Dom's.
"Good morning," he whispered groggily as he took in the darkness of the room.
"Ready for another day?" Dom asked himself-but-not.
Brazen turned his head and stared at the ceiling. "I have to find Cinder. What are your plans for the day now that you have tickets for the ship to Vacuo?"
Dominic pondered the issue. While he could afford idleness, that would demean the gift of having three of himself at once. "There are things I can do while I wait for the ship to arrive, if it even arrives on schedule. It is a long trip from Vacuo that it is coming in from, and it is not like they have any way of communicating their progress." Dom considered getting up, but for now he was comfortable in Brazen's proximity so he remained still. "I could go investigate Ghira..."
"Make him suffer, make Blake know misery..." Bedlam muttered from above them where he lay in the room's single bed, "turn Ghira into an example of what happens to those who turn on us, make the Fang follow you out of pure fear, bring Blake crawling back like the mewling coward she is so that nobody else has to die for her sins."
"Stay away from Ghira, Bedlam," Dominic ordered, "your task is Blake. Just Blake, now. Right? We tried killing Ghira already and that did nothing for us. We don't need him becoming a martyr." Killing the faunus, even race-traitors, would do nothing for his cause now; he needed them to be converted to his way of thinking.
"I'm just saying, you could make my job easier for me and your job easier for you..."
"Faunus killing faunus is not much of a solution to anything, I think we should all agree on that for now. Between Menagerie, Haven and what happened in our throne room, that lesson has been reinforced pretty hard." Dom interrupted, "I was saying that I could investigate Ghira. Just to scout out what became of my forces captured during the battle, rather than as a means to bring him harm." He tapped his chin thoughtfully. "I'm pretty sure we know where they would be keeping them, so I will check there first, but if they are not there then Ghira is probably somehow connected to their detainment. It is a bit of a walk, but still technically in the city limits."
"Military base?" Brazen asked rhetorically. "I agree that Ghira is untouchable for now. We can't afford any more blood on our hands."
Dominic understood that his clone meant faunus blood, of course. Human blood didn't count. I've already killed enough of my own people because of my focus on the Belladonna family.
"Blake will come back with me." Bedlam muttered to himself, voicing their synchronized thoughts. Blake was still an ass-et that they didn't want to give up if they had alternatives.
"Sun has nothing on us, Bedlam." Dom gestured at his own nude body, flaunting his toned chest and his available bicep. "I'm confident that you'll succeed," he said to the elevated brother who had sunk back underneath the blankets he claimed through the night. "If it makes you feel better, if he is on the ship with me he won't be an obstacle for you."
A perturbed growl came out from the blankets. "What if Blake goes on the ship with him? What if she wants to go to Vacuo, too? We have no idea what she and her team are going to do next!"
"Then it will be an easy fight? We can do it so that Blake is with one of me when anything unsettling occurs: we'll have an alibi."
Brazen chimed in. "We can use this duplication bit to the fullest!"
The thought of confusing the cat made Dominic grin, and he assumed Bedlam was probably smiling at the thought of team tactics, too. "Anyways, if that's settled, yeah, I'll see what is going on with our imprisoned brothers from the night at Haven."
Bedlam grumbled to himself, but seemed to have no further objections worthy of being given voice.
"If our messenger is still there he might have some idea where Hazel holed up while he waited for the attack on Haven!" Brazen realized, "that would help me out! Even if Hazel does not still use the same place, Cinder might go there or there might be clues about where she would go."
"Yeah, that is what I was thinking."
"So you'll help him, but not me?"
"Ghira might get caught in the crossfire, but I am not planning on making a martyr of him. Besides, we're each still the same – we don't need help. It's just something we may have access to from each other." Dominic explained. "I feel like I could put some feelers out to see what the consequences of the Haven incident were here. You know, socially."
Brazen lifted up his upper body, his legs still cuddled up to Dom's, "alright, so I guess that covers what each of us is doing today."
Bedlam got out of his luxury of blankets and strode over to the dresser, snatching up his clothes and disguise and donning them. He tossed the other sets of clothes to the pair on the floor.
"So, Salem?" Dom began looking at Brazen meaningfully. It was time they talk about that.
"She looked like a human grimm. Not like how Cinder was. She was completely pale, with black-red eyes and dark veins. Wore clothes like a person. She can control the grimm at a distance somehow."
"Maybe it is a semblance?" Bedlam suggested, "there are some strange ones out there. Maybe one that lets someone control the grimm is possible. Or technology..."
Brazen nodded in agreement.
"If I could control the grimm, I'd probably identify myself as one of them if humanity cast me out. Looks like that might be what happened to her?"
"Do we know what her end-game is?"
The trio looked between one another silently.
"Well, if she is out for revenge then we should be fine so long as we are helping her get it and don't become targets for her wrath ourselves. She seems to have it out for humanity, so we have a head-start in that racial race," Brazen stated jovially, "Bedlam, anything important to our missions that you picked up while observing Blake?"
"Not beyond the picture of Ghira and the Schnee cozying up." Bedlam finished getting dressed. "Do you want me to make a full profile of each of her allies?"
Brazen shrugged. Dominic nodded, "if you are going to be watching them around her anyways, you may as well."
"I'll be busy looking for Cinder, but did you think that instead of going out to check on the folks in lock-up you could head out to Hazel's ship where he left the kids?" Brazen said to Dom. Bedlam slipped out the window, giving them a quick wave goodbye before disappearing into the dark rooftops.
"I could, yes. But checking on White Fang prisoners actually plays into my goals more than helping you with yours like that. If there is a chance of learning something about why they failed me, I will find it there. Not out in the wilderness."
Brazen's body sagged. "Yeah, that makes sense I guess."
Attuned as he was to his own emotions, Dom relented a little. "If you haven't found Cinder by tomorrow morning and if I have nothing better going on, I'll head out that way then," Dom responded, "but they might move the prisoners just as much as Hazel might get back to his ship early. Besides, maybe he knew we were listening."
"We doubt that." Brazen said.
"Hey, I'm trying to lie to myself. Cut me a break," Dom gave a toothy smile, "but is it my fault that Adam Taurus is a master of the art of stealth to the extent that Hazel did not notice us tailing him?" Now it is our fault, not just mine, that I'm so damn good.
Brazen and Dom got dressed and headed out into the morning.
Dominic dropped down from an eavestrough to join Brazen after he left their hideout through the front door for appearances' sake, "what say we go find a place that serves breakfast?"
Brazen nodded, "I know a place nearby that should be open. Went there yesterday."
The pair found themselves eating a cheap breakfast at the tavern. They ate in silence, Brazen having grabbed a newspaper from a table and shared half of it with Dom. Dom's half seemed to be dedicated to sports and entertainment, which was a rather large business in Mistral. Operas, fighting tournaments, anything where human nobility could sit crowded around a stage or arena and watch others was considered high culture. In other kingdoms, such venues were used as vectors for charity campaigns: raising awareness, fighting social ills, promoting some political agenda. Not so in Mistral. The humans here adored pleasure for the sake of hedonism, and felt no shame in having no thin veneer of altruism to veil their indulgences.
Dom spent the requisite amount of time required to actually read a few articles, which were for the most part arguments against diverting funding from cultural endeavours towards military R&D or levies to defend their vast territories in the wake of the kingdom's shortage of huntsmen. Dom slowly shook his head at the eloquently crafted claims of the articles' authors: anyone who had confronted a grimm face-to-face, or actually understood life on the Mistral frontier, would never have their reason swept away by such spurious assertions. For that reason, the article was targeted towards the urbane populations of the city, that never left their protected streets and had been reassured of their safety and stability after their police force had been present to stymie Adam's efforts to destroy Haven Academy.
Dominic was not sure whether to feel bemused or ashamed that his defeat had somehow contributed to a verbose case defending Mistralian clown-operas. It would on one hand make the kingdom that much easier to conquer for his faunus forces on some future day, certainly.
Clowns, though. He shuddered, causing Brazen to look up at him from whatever his twin was reading.
"Something wrong with your parfait?" He asked, concerned, "I'm not actually sure what sort of milk was used in that parfait..."
Dom looked at the cup of yogurt, cereal and berries. He held it up and gave it a sniff. "I hope that's regular dairy."
Brazen held up his own parfait and sniffed it.
They muttered together. "As long as it is not bat-faunus milk..."
"Anything interesting in your section of the paper? Mine is just stupid stuff about theatre and sports betting results."
"No, it looks like it was written the day after the attack on Haven. Mostly just uninformed opinion pieces on what may have happened at the city summit, vague descriptions of a conflict. The comics section..."
"Comics?" Dominic gasped. "Give it here!"
Brazen tossed him the funny pictures; much easier for his eye to digest than the block of words he'd been slugging through.
"Seems like the Fang attacked Mistral during a slow news week," Dom assessed, after getting through the colourful panels. "You would think the media would show a bit more gratitude." He punctuated the remark with a jerk of his head towards the window, where across the street was a prominently lit wanted poster featuring his face crowded in with those of Cinder, Hazel, Emerald and Mercury's. "Honestly, these people appreciate a good fight and drama more than common sense. We should have marketed the attack better, gotten a crowd, made a spectacle of it. It would have ended up making us some lien and good publicity."
"Come for the demolition of your social institution, stay for the fight between Cinder and Blake's huntress team?"
"There's our tagline right there." Dom spooned some parfait into his mouth, "lets go ask if we can have a do-over? I spent all day yesterday trying to buy tickets, might as well use what I learned trying to sell some."
Brazen laughed, loudly enough that the elderly human standing behind the bar snapped to attention for a moment and glared over at them. Brazen and Dominic hunched over, hiding their faces from his stare and behaving themselves quietly. The man made a decent parfait, there was no need for him to die today.
Brazen finished his breakfast and sighed, "maybe I should just head back out to check on Hazel's camp myself."
Dominic sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest, "I thought you were figuring out where our missing friend was?" With the nearby human showing signs of being awake, he avoided saying the name of public enemy number two.
"Yeah, I thought that would be best, too. If the boss can see through one of her minions, I was sort of worried that her eyes would be everywhere, watching my progress. But if she does, then she either already knows where the girl is or even that has not gleaned the location. If she doesn't have eyes everywhere, then it gives us that much more leeway. So I've thought about it. I think I'll assume the latter, that she would not waste our talents on a test quest or a folly. If her semblance is what we think it is, then she can only see through her minions; not many of those just hanging about in the city. So since I don't know where the girl is, and since you are staying in town to do the things you've mentioned, I'll take off for a bit and retrace our steps to the ship. See how the kids and the big man are doing, though I bet he won't show up immediately."
Dom leaned in close, "what are you going to tell them? About her?"
"None of them ever told us the name of their boss, so I'll play it real cool," Brazen replied, "act aloof, treat it like I'm just looking for my paycheque now that the job is done and wondering if there is more work coming. Play up that I felt that the girl was in charge, unless Hazel is there. Then I'll just act like she was the one who hired me for the bit."
"Remember when he got blasted through the door? What he said to us?"
Each Adam recalled the awe, watching Hazel jam pure dust crystals into his arms. Blake's sudden, unexpected appearance.
The way the tide turned against him.
"He told us that it was our business, not his." Brazen put his chin in his hand, "so if I see him, I think that might come up in the conversation. I'll make it clear that I'm still allied to their cause, but that my business is with the girl, not him or her attendants unless I decide it is. I'll see if they know anything about the girl's fate. See what I can learn from them, but at the end of the day the girl is still our most powerful... ally? Associate? Whatever. We want to ensure that relationship is one that will continue, and the profit we were promised is realized despite her failure at the school."
"If you are gone for more than a week and my ship is late, I'll visit the place you left the jelly and take it on a cruise. I doubt Bedlam would care too much about maintaining that line of communication."
"Fair enough; at least you could use it as a makeshift life-preserver if the ship sinks. I should be back long before then." Brazen stood up, straightened his cloak over the bulge on his back to conceal the weapon, and began to walk out of the tavern, "see you soon."
Dom nodded and watched himself-in-disguise leave the tavern. He wolfed down the rest of his breakfast and shortly followed suit, walking back out into the streets of Mistral. He turned on his scroll and found directions to Mistral's most heavily-fortified detention facility within the city limits where his men were more than likely being held after being captured by the Menagerie militia and local police.
Dominic looked at the military police facility. High painted-white cement walls, roofed watchtowers with spotlights. Guards at the entrance and on the walls. All human, but in the light of day that did not make much of a difference. An attached building operated as a dispatch building for local police operations, and an airfield beside that lay empty; though it could easily hold a half dozen parked airships. It occured to Dominic that this was probably where the ships that had descended upon him at the academy had been launched from. Where were they now? A quick scan of the skies didn't reveal them.
If Sienna had cooperated, if her loyalists hadn't gone to ground after her demise, the White Fang could have attacked several locations – places like this – at the same time as we were attacking the school. It would have been like Vale, breaking open the prisons and freeing out best and brightest from unfair detainment.
He continued to observe the facility and it seemed that while there were guards manning the key locations of the walls and doors, overall the entire complex seemed underpopulated. He took out his scroll and used it to zoom in on the attached dispatch building. He was not surprised to see that most offices were empty. The authorities were somewhere else, and he felt like it would be in his best interests to find out where and why.
He checked his reflection in a nearby window, ensuring that his disguise was adequate for the task, before making his way to a nearby hardware store where he began walking through the aisles. When a clerk asked him if he needed any assistance, he politely declined, "I'm just looking for a bit of inspiration about what to do with my kitchen, figured while I was up here I could think about some other things I've got planned as well. I'm happy I managed to get here when there aren't that many other customers, gives me more space to think."
"Oh yeah, normally we're busier than this. Almost all the folks in the neighbourhood here work for the military, but they've all been sent out to maintain the border to help all of our huntsmen out there. Hard to argue against that, after what we all saw took place at Beacon, but now with Haven getting attacked you would think they would concentrate a bit more on city affairs. I've seen the posters plastered around town, some of those terrorists and maniacs still aren't caught!" The clerk confided in Dom, unaware of the irony of what he was saying, "but those that were get to rot across the way in the detention facility. Even with most local police sent out to protect that hick village that had a grimm attack, there's still lots of guards to keep them where they deserve to be."
"Hick village?"
"Oh yeah, it's all over the local news! Don't tell me you haven't seen any of it?"
A convenient lie came quickly to Dominic's mind. "Well, with the stuff I'm doing in my kitchen I had to pack up my television, and I never really got the hang of getting news on my scroll," Dom said offhandedly, flashing his powered-down scroll as proof "I guess I'm just a bit of an old relic that way."
"Oh, well then a couple days ago a cargo train rolled into town full of the women and children of Kuchinashi. The train barely made it into the city. They all said that Kuchinashi was under attack, and had some videos to prove it, so the military flew out there in all the airships they had on hand. I don't want to say bad things about faunus or nothing, but they essentially deputized that ex-terrorist from Menagerie and his mangy militia. Sure, they saved Haven but can we really trust them to help keep the peace here in our city?"
"Ghira Belladonna is in charge of Mistral's security?"
"Well, he's helping." The clerk muttered grouchily, "while he is in town with his animals waiting for voyage home, he's dealing with the Crown Prince to make 'lasting peaceful ties' with the people of Mistral."
"Strange bedfellows, eh?"
"If you think that's odd, you should hear who they're saying saved the train from Kuchinashi during its run into the city."
Dom took a step away and began idly massaging his back, his hand coming to rest on Blush's trigger, preparing to launch Wilt out from where it hid in his trench coat.
"Raven Branwen." The clerk misread Dom's surprised relief as scornful disbelief, "yeah, I know, right? Who wudda thunk a crazy murderer like that would do a half-decent thing like that outta the blue?"
They're giving the credit for saving the train to that bandit rather than me? Dom raged internally. Wait, did I even want that kind of publicity? At least they don't have any idea where I am. Where we are.
"...The bandit from the hinterlands?"
"I know, right? What is she doing on the city outskirts on her own? There's a picture of her killing some big nevermore grimm. I think there are some papers lying around up at the cashier with her featured if you haven't seen 'em yet."
Dom had learned enough, and after getting some quotes on some kitchen upgrade packages, he took a look at the newspaper lying on the cashier counter. Visible on the front page, under the title Government Reinforces Kuchinashi, was an image of himself slicing through the body of the alpha nevermore juxtaposed with an image of Raven Branwen taken from an Atlas security drone at an earlier date. With the black feathers of a smaller nevermore clinging to his uncovered head and his dyed hair, coupled with the gleaming red blade (which he would admit seemed to be the same style as that brandished by the bandit woman in the smaller photo) and overall poor quality of the picture plus the large distance between the camera and the death of the nevermore, Dom could see how the people on the train could have confused him for her.
And here I was, laughing with Bedlam at Brazen about his clothes getting him mistaken for being a girl back at Ilhari. This is karma. This is me, getting what I deserve, for mocking myself in good fun. Brazen must never see this headline.
Dom left the hardware store, pouting and confused after witnessing this erosion of what little remained of his identity after being split into a triad, and went back to observing the detention centre. Come on, focus on the task at hand! What did he know so far?
The place was understaffed because of Kuchinashi. He would have an easier time infiltrating the building if there were fewer guards.
Ghira Belladonna's new Menagerie Militia was filling in for the local military police in the absence of human officers and local huntsmen. If they have faunus helping guard the prison at night, it would be harder to infiltrate and his brethren would have a special interest in keeping watch for him.
A plan began to form in Dom's mind. He was a master of disguise, right? He would tail one of the humans who worked at the facility and just assume their position, walking into the place in broad daylight. All he would need is their uniform and badge, maybe some access codes. It was rather helpful that the uniform used by the Mistral military police was so concealing of identifying facial features, with its large hat and mouth-covering mask. His branded eye would pose a bit of a problem, though. Why did I never get the Fang to wear air-filtration gear? Sienna and I even had to run through a cloud of knock-out gas that one time...
A lanky fellow left the detention centre, evidently on his way home from work. As tempting as it would be to grab the first one he saw, Dom knew he would have to wait. If he wanted to do this right, he would need someone whose shift started now, not ended. Which meant waiting for the current shift to end and doing this entire bit the following day. He sighed. Hopefully the grimm at Kuchinashi would put up enough of a fight for the troops to remain away from the station for that long. Or maybe they would stay around for the good publicity? Hours passed and he made himself nondescript and comfortable, or as comfortable as he could be. The prison was far away from the prestige of the twin-mountain city's higher reaches, but on the far side of the city from the neglected faunus district and so few of his people were seen on the streets here. Those that he did see seemed to be servants serving humans in some capacity. When two faunus emerged from the front doors of the dispatch building attached to the prison he was watching Dominic took notice. Their civilian clothes and cheerful (and loud) chatter indicated that they were something other than minor convicts freshly released from their terms. Dom positioned himself on an intercept course with them, trying to not appear overtly interested in their affairs but ensuring he was close enough to overhear snippets of their conversation with his keen ears.
"...wants us to go home, why does he think we should help the Mistral military investigate the White Fang headquarters?"
"It's not like we knew where the place was until a few hours ago, Barnes." Dom shook his head at hearing that; it seemed like his captured soldiers' loose lips were giving away the Fang's secrets. I did suspect them of such when the grimm were storming the base, though, so I guess they actually held out longer than I thought they would? Fortunately Ghira and the Mistral government would walk into a ruin, but he was still a bit upset at the principle of being betrayed. If they had not surrendered so quickly, if they had gone down fighting or gotten away from the melee, perhaps the state of the headquarters would have remained a mystery indefinitely. Maybe he would have some extra eyes and ears, rather than having to do all this legwork himselves.
I wonder if any of the grimm are still in there, he pondered hopefully. It would be nice if his enemies suffered at least some casualties getting to his throne room.
"I know, but I mean when we signed up for this bit I was under the impression that our goal was to save the huntsmen school from Taurus' extremists, prevent him from giving faunus a bad name abroad and get back home. What's next? Helping them with bandits?"
They didn't care so much about their international reputation when I was breaking them out of human cages, the ingrates!
"Have we really done the second part yet if he is still at large?" not-Barnes asked, "if there's a chance of him rallying whatever is left at his base, we need to put out that fire before it spreads. If the New Fang has any chance of success, it has to be built on a new foundation. It has to be built on humanity trusting that Adam's message of hate is not one we accept or turn a blind eye to anymore."
"Okay okay, don't get into a whole spiel about the New Fang. You know I don't want to get that involved in this mess. I just came because the wife did and I wanted to make sure the tower didn't go down like at Beacon."
"Well if it is any consolation, we'll be heading back to Menagerie after Adam's base is cleared out and Ghira comes to an agreement with the government here about what to do with the Fang they captured at Haven," the second faunus stated.
Barnes gave a derisive snort, "like any of them are actually contrite about what they've done. They're just trying to weasel out of getting punished by the human courts and are hoping that Ghira will be more lenient with them if they make it to Menagerie." Barnes thought about it for a moment, then continued, "and they're probably right to think so. That Ilia girl got off spotless despite helping the Albains try to kill his family and burn his house. If she can get away with that, they're futures are looking pretty rosy."
"You're really not one to talk about weaseling out of things..."
"Man, that's straight up racist."
"You're the one who said it, and don't think I missed that spotless bit either." Dominic wondered what Ilia would think of her fellow race-traitors joking about her faunus freckles.
"It's a common turn of phrase." Barnes retorted, "besides these ears are pure vole and you know it."
The pair continued walking and Dominic turned away from them. He had heard enough. It seemed like the expedition to Kuchinashi was going to be extended out past Ilhari to scout out his old base. Ghira was reforming his original faunus rights movement, using Adam's defeat as a springboard. His own species wanted him captured as much as the humans wanted him put down. His people detained in the prison seemed to be hopeful (rightfully so) of getting released to Menagerie custody. If that happened...
He closed his eyes and thought for a moment.
If that happened, Dom felt it would probably be in all of their best interests to let that happen the way Ghira wanted. Dom could use his minions, yes, but they would not willingly follow him if he messed up a rather cozy plea deal they had set up. They would resent him for ruining their chances of living happily ever after in the garbage continent that the humans had bequeathed them as a means of preventing the faunus uprising from completely toppling their wretched societies. The only way his people in the prison would be of any use to him would be if Ghira somehow failed to get custody of them, leaving them free to be freed from human captors by Dom.
Ghira was very persuasive when he wanted to be, when people gave him time to speak rather than shooting at him. Dominic expected his captured forces to be doing community service in Menagerie before the end of the year.
Alright, so I think I've achieved what I wanted to here. The only reason for breaking into the prison now is to see if my messenger is still in there, to see if he will tell me where Hazel holed up. That info is only useful to Brazen, though. Probably not even useful to him, if the way they're spilling secrets is any indication. If I was Hazel, I would not go back to the same safe-house or hideout as before. He has no reason to trust the White Fang right now.
Dominic pursed his lips.
I have no reason to trust the White Fang right now, either.
He considered whether or not going back to Vale would even accomplish anything. The doubts faded slowly, lingering with him as he made his way back through the sunset-shadowed backstreets of Mistral on his way back to Lichen's, which he would probably not reach until the early morning. Every kingdom's branch of the White Fang operated differently. Mistral's had been ambitious but unprepared. Sienna had spoiled them, made them soft and pliable. Easy to turn to his message, but when push came to shove they buckled. The Fang in Vale was covert, patient, and willing to do what needed to be done for the cause. They had tasted victory, too, and knew that it was Adam who had given them that delicacy. Vacuo... what existed as the White Fang there was probably the closest thing to Ghira's original ideal as anything: faunus being treated equally before the lack of law, fully able to live or die in the scorched paradise as any other sentient being.
Adam had grown up in Atlas, of course. The Fang in Atlas had been insidious like the one in Vale, militaristic and aggressive like the Mistralian branch, and a prevalent part of faunus culture like the Menagerie branch had been. As tempting as it was to return to Atlas, the Fang there had a capable leader and he had grown tired of fighting other faunus of late; even if Ghira took control of the Menagerie and Mistralian-based faunus with his new White Fang movement, the Atlas branch would maintain its present course. The leader in Atlas had easily gained traction with Atlesian faunus against the backdrop of Jacques Schnee's SDC, even while the same organization ruthlessly pushed to exterminate each vestige of the rights movement it exposed. It was a difficult fight for the SDC, because it is hard to destroy a foe you also want to keep alive to fill your workforce.
Dominic hated the fact that, no matter how much damage the White Fang did to the SDC or the Schnee family, they still managed to be profitable. It nearly made him want to go find the Schnee girl that Bedlam had documented Ghira talking to and...
Dominic's aura shattered.
The handful of bystanders who happened to be out so late into the night looked at him in alarm. He stood motionless for a moment, awestruck by what had just happened.
Adrenaline surged into his veins and he dodged to the side.
What had hit him?
His senses had not alerted him to any threat, to anything nearby. He had not even seen what had hit him!
He rolled into a crouch and launched Wilt out of his back, catching it before it could blast away across the street.
He might not have aura, but he could still deflect incoming shots! The scattered bystanders had already begun putting distance between him and themselves, so that only one actually saw his weapon drawn. Dominic locked eyes with the man, a middle-aged human, but found only confusion and terror there. Was it a ruse? Or was the man just shocked at what he saw? Dominic scanned the street with his night-vision for anything else. The rooftops: clear. The windows: clear. The remaining man began to jog away, frightened. It was quiet.
"What the hell was that?" Dom stalked out into the middle of the street, holding Wilt up defensively, ready for anything. Whatever had hit him had taken out his aura in a single blow.
My aura that I had not even had up.
How could his defensive aura shatter if he was not concentrating on maintaining it? It defied everything he knew, everything he had ever been taught about how aura functioned. He quickly pulled out his scroll and turned it on, his bad eye watching the loading screen while the rest of his senses maintained a wary awareness of his surroundings.
AURA: 0%
Nothing had hit him. Dominic understood what had happened before he saw the reading. It was like on the train. Their aura was shared between them. He had not noticed the degeneration of his aura because he had not been concentrating on it, had not realized it was being whittled away, had not had his scroll on to monitor it.
He was not in danger, but somewhere an Adam Taurus was.
Someone had hurt one of his brothers.
Who that someone could be was not a short list. Dominic continued to make his way back to Lichen's house, wary of the strong possibility that he would be walking into an ambush in a few minutes. If Bedlam had been the first to arrive at their hideout, maybe Lichen and Salt had betrayed him. He considered avoiding the house entirely, before eschewing the idea: he had to know if he could trust them. If they had betrayed him, they would not be expecting him to come home again. Their reactions to his arrival would tell him everything he needed to know. If they were shocked, then their treachery would be evident.
That would really make the quotes he got for renovating her kitchen a complete waste of his time. Dammit, and I really liked that dark granite counter-top option!
BRAZEN
The forest was raucous with the cries of wildlife. Squirrels screamed at each other, fighting over acorns. Insects gathered in swarms to mate, then again to pester him. Gnats. Blackflies. Brazen tried to swat them away, careful not to make too much sound in doing so. He had been running for hours, covering a lot of ground, but it would still be a long hike until he reached the place where he had parted from his allies and their bullhead transport.
Bullhead, he thought. He had always found himself equally attracted to the vehicles and put-off. Their utility aside, the naming of the vehicle always gave Adam pause to think. When he had first learned how to operate vehicles, the instructors had started him with the bullhead because of his minotaur moniker. They had figured that it was a solid joke. Oh, but how Adam had loved rising into the sky, high above everything. The metal wings gleaming in the light of the day and in the albedo from the snow below as he left the mining camp behind. The joke had been on them: Adam had fallen in love that day. He had surprised the taskmaster with his rapidly developed skill at the controls of the transport, and from then on his life had begun to change.
Now here he was, alone in the woods of Mistral, far from the mines of Mantle, sweaty and covered in bugs, heading unerringly towards a camp of humans. What a life.
The sun was still a while from setting. He was not sure how long it would take him to reach the camp, or whether it would be more appropriate to find them in the dark or in the light of day. Brazen kept walking forward. The sooner he got to their camp the better. His position of strength would be established by what he had to offer them, by how much they still needed him, not by their inability to see in the dark.
He came upon a small house in the woods. An unprotected bicycle lay against a shed.
What a great way of getting around, he thought. He appropriated the device in the name of faunus supremacy. It was no bullhead, but it was still a means of travel. Between this thing and not having to slowly stalk a group of wounded humans carrying one another through the dark around military checkpoints set up to catch them, I might actually make it to their camp before the end of the day. His mind fell back to the delirium of wandering through these same woods, lost and full of doubt, that he had experienced just slightly less than a week earlier. It seemed like it had been a longer time. Maybe it is because I am sleeping less now.
After several more hours of pedalling along the forest trails, he knew he was getting close. He didn't question how he knew, maybe it was instinct, maybe he just had a better memory. His sense of direction, like his hearing, was just better than others', which had always suited him just fine. My coworkers had named me after the mythical beast of the labyrinth for a reason. I never got lost in the mines, just trapped. Just left behind. He stashed the stolen bicycle under a fallen tree trunk, and removed the white cloak as well. He would come back to get it later.
He took out his White Fang mask and put it on. It almost felt strange, wearing the mask again after abrubtly ceasing to wear it all the time. Putting it back on stirred up a mix of emotions within him that he compartmentalized to deal with later. Later, when he was not dealing with his human contacts. He put Wilt and Blush at his hip, which was certainly much more accessible and comfortable than having them shoved down the back of his shirt.
The sun had nested behind the hills in the distance, casting an orange glow through the forest and stretching the shadows of trees across the ground. He saw a flickering light in the distance ahead and recognized the area. Approaching closer, he heard the sound of the fire and the voice of Mercury Black bouncing through the trees.
"...first watch yesterday so how about you take first watch tonight? I've been exercising all afternoon, I need a break."
"As you desire, Master Black," responded a masculine, monotone voice. Brazen assumed that would be the voice of the bullhead's pilot. "Master Black, someone is approaching the camp."
"Is it Hazel?" Mercury inquired before shouting into the woods, "HAZEL?" The shout was followed by the sound of him cocking his legs. Because each one is also a gun.
"It is not Hazel." Brazen responded at equal volume, "it is Taurus."
"Adam?" Mercury seemed a bit dumbfounded by the unexpected arrival, "the leader of the White Fang?"
"Some would say that. After Haven, some would not," he replied curtly, not really wanting to talk too much about the state of the White Fang at this meeting, "I followed your group here after the attack went sideways at Haven, so I knew you were holed up here with Emerald while Hazel went back into town. I take it that you have not heard from him since he backtracked if your shouting is proper indication? Also, how many other people named Taurus do you know?"
"No... nothing from Hazel yet, just us and the wildlife for days. It's not a big deal, Hazel will come back eventually. And if he doesn't, we'll just head out without him. He is a big boy and can take care of himself."
"I concur. I have been in Mistral, nothing about any of us being captured aside from my forces."
"How many did you lose at Haven?"
Brazen sighed. The first test of whether they value me or my troops, "the Menagerie Militia captured all of my people who participated in the attack on the school." If Mercury had asked Dom that question, his clone would probably have had more to say about whose fault it was for his forces being unsupported by his allies inside the school. Fortunately, Brazen only cared about getting as much utility out of his allies as possible. The benefit of a focused mindset, courtesy of my choice, he thought.
"I'm going to guess you don't really want to talk about that, then."
Brazen stepped into the clearing now and saw the rifle-wielding pilot and Mercury both in defensive stances while the green-haired Emerald lay motionless in a sleeping bag, her forehead covered in a wet towel. He had to admire Mercury's apparent civil diplomacy in moving the conversation away from the failure at Haven, though the desire might be shared by the metal-themed lackey for his party's own failure that dreadful evening.
"So what did you come out here for?"
"Oh, just thought I would take a late night stroll," Brazen joked, though it failed to ease the tension between them; "Looking for Hazel in town, but figured this might be the more direct way of finding him. The people I had liaising with him while we organized the attack were... they aren't around to tell me where you guys stay in the city." They were in a Mistral prison or their corpses were lying in his throne room, but Mercury didn't need to know the specifics. "What is your plan for when he returns?"
"We head back to the boss, tell her what happened, get new orders."
"I was hoping to find Hazel in order to get some direction towards Cinder." He paused, then asked the big question. "Where is Cinder?"
Mercury looked at Emerald, crouched beside his comrade and checked her vitals. He seemed satisfied with that and stood up before stage-whispering, "Cinder failed. She lost the fight. There's no way she would have run away with everything on the line, so that means... Emerald is a bit... Em's a mess because of that."
"I see." Cinder was dead, then, according to Mercury. "Military posted a reward for her capture, so they don't have her. Did you see her fall? Not a pun on her name, I just need to talk with her about our business arrangement."
Mercury huffed, then rolled his eyes when Brazen kept staring at him. "Can't say I did. I was preoccupied fighting the little huntresses. She went down into the vault with the bandit we needed, the bandit's leader Raven Branwen, then Branwen's daughter Yang got in there, too, because she came with her sister Ruby and got past us when Blake joined the fight from outside."
Brazen tactfully ignored the subtle jab Mercury made at the White Fang for not being able to prevent intruders from getting inside. "Which one was Yang?" Brazen had to know for sure, even though he suspected the answer.
"Blonde one from Ruby's team. Or Blake's team, I guess you would say. Blake's partner at Beacon." Mercury sat back down, and the pilot lowered his weapon and moved to the perimeter to keep watch for more unexpected incursions to the camp.
Before Brazen could make a jab at Mercury about how a one-armed woman had outmaneuvered him, the pilot decided to speak up. "Adam Taurus, did you come alone?"
"Yeah, just me. What's your deal?"
"I serve."
"Don't mind him, he's more machine and grimm than human." Mercury whispered, "one of our associate's work. Kind of messed up if you think too much about it, so I try not to. He still knows how to fly a bullhead and is an extra set of senses that lets me get some sleep out here, among other things."
"So Blake's partner Yang, or Yang's mother, or both of them, went into a vault to fight Cinder?" Brazen asked.
"Yeah, there was definitely a fight down there from the rumbling and explosions we heard. Only Yang came out with the objective we wanted from the entire effort, looking all calm and composed about it. No way Cinder would have let her get back up if she could still move."
"Yang killed her own mother?" That doesn't really seem like something that huntresses would do. Or something that most people would do. Taurus was an exception to that rule, of course: his mother had abandoned him, leaving him to the mercy of the mining crew. He could appreciate Yang's capacity for a bit of matricide.
Mercury made a long, exaggerated shrug. "Branwen's semblance lets her teleport, make portals. That's how we all got into the building." Brazen nodded; that answers that mystery; here I thought my troops' perimeter was more porous than it actually was, but it seems that my friends got in using an unexpected entrance.
"So maybe Branwen and Cinder took a portal out of there?"
Mercury laughed, "I doubt it. The plan was to lure Branwen and her goon to the vault and kill them there after they opened the door, since we could not trust them to not take the objective for themselves."
He wondered for a moment why they would have need for the random bandit to open a door beneath a huntsmen academy, but he could not spare much thought on that when the former bit commanded more concern. It seemed that Lionheart was not the only casualty that night of allying with Salem. Brazen tilted his head to the side, "is that how you treat all your allies, human? Lionheart is also dead. It tarnishes your trustworthiness."
Mercury's eyes darted to where Brazen's hand sat on the hilt of Wilt at his hip. "Simmer down, man. Branwen wasn't a friend. More like... coerced to our cause. She had nothing to gain from working with us, so we had to really sweeten the pot to get her onboard. That is why we had to bring Blake's team to the school, so that she could have a shot at killing her twin brother. With you we just had to show you that we were on the same side after a few early miscommunications!"
Brazen digested that quickly: internecine drama of the Branwen family aside, it was somewhat comforting to know that Salem considered him better than the human bandit.
Mercury continued, "Cinder never made any plans against you. None that I knew of, anyways, and I think that counts for a bit. In fact, if you're interested, I'm sure Hazel would agree that you should come back with us to meet the boss, become a member of the inner circle now that Cinder's seat is..." he trailed off at the end, not wanting to complete the statement.
"A tempting offer, but if there is a chance that Cinder is still alive here I need to pursue that lead. Like I mentioned before, there are no reports of any of us being captured besides my forces; the town is plastered wall to wall with images of Cinder and the rest of us as wanted criminals, so that means Yang didn't know what happened to Cinder, either. If your new orders need you to find me, I'll probably still be in the city until I've found Cinder or what is left of her." Brazen said, "but I've got an uncanny feeling your boss could track me down even if I'm elsewhere."
Mercury nodded. "So what else do you want to chat about? I was going to take a break to sleep, but having fresh company is cool. That thing is not much for conversation, and Emerald isn't much better lately. Which is a shame. We got along so well."
"What are the odds that Branwen forced your hand, made you get Blake's team to the school so that the plan would fail at your end? The original plan was foolproof, as far as I understood it." Not knowing the bandit beyond her reputation and what Mercury had told him tonight, Brazen was suspicious that she had played Cinder like a cheap banjo. He did wonder for a moment why Branwen's face was not sharing space with his on the wanted posters throughout the city: it did seem to implicate her as being allied to Blake's team. He tried not to think about how the night would have still gone smoothly had Menagerie not intervened as they had. I can't start blaming myself for what Blake does. If anyone should be doing that, it's Bedlam, and he can channel those feelings into dealing with her personally.
"She's didn't seem the type to be able to concoct a plan like that with the short notice we gave her; we did sort of show up uninvited to her doorstep." Brazen could relate to the bandit on how that usually felt. Mercury looked away, "but things did sort of spin out of control the moment we got in touch with her. Maybe she did somehow orchestrate the entire thing without me seeing it? Doesn't matter now, the past is done and gone. If we see Branwen again, none of us are going to be showing her any mercy and she has no chips left to bargain with us."
"Okay, so if Raven wasn't playing you for fools, what if her and Cinder had a secret arrangement? What're the odds that Cinder and Branwen schemed to run away together, using the portals?" Brazen, having seen the thing Cinder was working for, could understand a desire to flee to the hills rather than continue a relationship with Salem. If he didn't have the fate of the faunus people on his shoulders, if he didn't stand to benefit from working with Salem, there'd be no chance he'd have stuck around this long. It's almost as unsettling as having to work with humans.
"No, no way." Mercury vigorously shook his head. "I wouldn't believe it. I have a bit of insight into what Cinder wants, and there is no way she'd not have tried to kill Raven's ward. Long story short, Raven had a thing that Cinder wants – a power – and there's no way for them to share nicely. Raven is our enemy. Raven is Cinder's enemy, because she has what Cinder wants."
It was not like Brazen cared overly much for the welfare of a human bandit he had never met, so he nodded in agreement with what Mercury said. He hoped that it was true – finding Cinder in the city would be hard enough; he couldn't begin to think of where to start looking for her if she'd been whisked away by a portal to anywhere.
Brazen gave serious consideration to just tagging along with Hazel. The only problem with that is that Salem wants me to find Cinder, first. Finding that Seer in the headmaster's office had been a mixed blessing.
He didn't care much about Emerald, either, but he still asked "what is Emerald's present condition?" for the sake of knowing as much as he could about his allies.
"Dear old Em here busted her brain up pretty fierce at the end of the fight at the school. When she saw Yang come back up with the rel... with the treasure, she figured that Cinder was dead. She poured all her remaining power into a big phantasm that stunned Blake's teammates, which let Hazel and I leg it out of there. Now she's pretty much sleeping it off. The bullhead had some medical stuff onboard that is helping, but she just needs some time to recuperate."
Mercury's little slip-up, and Brazen's own secret possession of the treasure of Beacon, told the clever faunus volumes. Most importantly it confirmed a worry he'd had. My allies want the Relic of Choice. I have a dangerous trump card in my hand. Well, on my hand. Brazen crouched next to the fire across from Emerald and Mercury. Yang has a relic, like the one from Beacon, and Blake is back with her team which makes Bedlam's observations more crucial to my own goals. Brazen imagined the pair of them crouched on a rooftop, stalking team RWBY together. Bedlam after Blake, me after the relic they have. I couldn't ask for better company, at least. He yearned to ask about the relic under Haven that they had been after, but if he did so now it would expose that he knew of the relic that had waited under Beacon. That was a can of worms he could not open.
"So what 's next for the White Fang now?" Mercury asked, breaking Brazen out of his thoughts.
"Blake's father is reorganizing it into a peaceful faunus rights movement. He is working with the human officials in Mistral. I saw him spending time with Blake's team, including the Schnee." Brazen pulled out his scroll and showed the picture of Ghira, Blake, and Weiss to Mercury.
Mercury looked at the picture and hummed while nodding his head. Brazen put the scroll away and they sat silently for a spell, neither one looking away from the other.
With a fair amount of trepidation in his voice, Mercury blurted out, "just so we're clear, you know I was never really cool with the whole 'humans should serve the faunus' message you were selling, right? Not that I'm on board with the present racism stuff, but swinging it to the other side just seemed like a step sideways."
Brazen could understand why, given what species the boy across the flames was. "What is your boss?"
"She's not faunus."
"Is she human?"
He stared at the fire for a minute without answering. Just as Brazen began to feel like he would not get anything else on the subject, "she's not faunus, but I think she hates humans more than you do."
"That's a pretty high bar." He had evaded the question, which implied that perhaps he did not know what he served. Mercury seemed uncomfortable. Good. "To answer the question, though, you can expect the new White Fang to be a wellspring of stability and understanding between the populations of Mistral and Menagerie. That is what Ghira Belladonna would want it to be. He is a natural politician, held back only by the fact that no human has ever willingly given him a platform to speak from."
"Hazel should be back tomorrow. He left four days ago in the early morning, said he would be back in five..." Mercury is afraid I'm here to fight him. He thinks I'll stand down if Hazel would become involved.
"He'll find the four of us waiting for him, then." Brazen promised, which made Mercury relax a bit. The human was getting a bit too worried about whether or not he and the pilot could take Taurus in a fight in their current states. "In the meantime, I think you know how I came to associate with Miss Fall, but what made you follow her? Did she show up at your house, burn it down and offer you money and supplies if you agreed to tag along?"
"No, I'd already burnt my house down when she showed up." Mercury gave a wry snicker, which quickly became a chuckle before evolving into full-blown laughter. "She shows up, looking for my fucking dad, piece of shit murderer-for-hire that he was, only to find me crawling away from our burning house with his corpse on the lawn."
"Who killed him?"
Mercury smiled darkly. Brazen reconsidered his view on the Branwen family: maybe they were not the outliers he had thought they were. Maybe, just maybe, it was the Belladonnas were the strange ones for not trying to kill one another at every opportunity. Certainly his own family had done just as poorly by him, letting him grow up under the care of the SDC.
"So she asked me if I was anything like my father. A killer, an assassin."
"Are you?"
"Trained my entire life to live up to his expectations. Then, right after I kill him, Cinder shows up with a job. Perfect timing, really."
They stared at the fire.
"Do you believe in fate?" Mercury asked, "because I believe in winning. Living. Playing the hand life deals me to the fullest. Life has dealt me some poor cards for a long time, but I think I've finally got a set I can win with. The boss has promised those who follow orders top billing in the new world that is coming. Human, faunus, none of that will matter anymore. If you're still someone who wants that..."
"Sienna Khan, the leader of the White Fang before me, believed in extorting rights and liberty for the faunus from humanity at gunpoint. I wanted more than that." Brazen muttered, "but no matter what happened, I wanted to be the one that the faunus saw as the one to win the world for them."
"You want your people to be safe, but reckon you deserve some credit for seeing it happen?"
"Is it so much to ask? Getting what I deserve after a lifetime of strife?"
"Not if you ask me. This world is properly fucked up. Monsters eating children, kingdoms sending soldiers to die for causes that nobody understands, fighting for land when most of the planet is uninhabited."
"A lack of ethically produced carbonated beverages..."
"I guess?" Mercury shrugged, "whatever it is, this entire society is not working for anyone except a select few at the top. If it were up to me, if I were at the top, I would try to make sure the people at the bottom weren't so bad off. Everyone should get a few good cards from time to time."
"M..merc...mercury?" Emerald stirred where she lay, her hand coming up to her face to grasp the towel.
"Em! You're awake!" Mercury spun around, turning his back to Brazen, and began helping his companion.
"My head hurts..."
"Just rest, keep lying still. You're safe here, we're okay." The boy held his injured teammate with a tenderness and delicacy that surprised Brazen, who would have expected the human to relish Emerald's infirmity.
"Cinder?"
Mercury looked away.
Emerald began to have dry heaves, trying to cry but too dehydrated and tired to do it right. Mercury eased her back down onto her headrest.
"I'll find out what happened to her." Brazen said.
"Who?"
"Adam's here, too, Emerald. He is going to keep looking for Cinder. He thinks there might still be a chance that he can track her down, but we have to get back to the tower. We need to make sure you're safe in case... in case you're feeling more seasoned after that fight."
Emerald nodded before she began trying to cry again. Brazen knew that he was missing something in the conversation, but couldn't figure out what it was. Clearly there were still some secrets between himself and them.
Or, more accurately, he should say between himselves and them.
Keep your secrets, then, Brazen thought, I know at least some of yours: Salem. Relics. Coming out this way had not been unproductive so far.
Brazen and the pilot watched as Emerald and Mercury fell back into slumber, as the fire died out, as the stars peeked out from between the overcast sky. The waning half-moon illuminated a cloud, but was itself concealed. Its tail extended long enough to emerge at times, but otherwise remained hidden.
He moved up and approached the pilot. "So, you are human?"
"Was. Was improved. Now serve in whatever capacities are required," the creature responded while slowly patrolling around the edge of the camp. Suddenly it stopped and pointed its rifle towards where Brazen sat. "Someone is approaching the camp."
Brazen spun around and out in the distance he saw the flickering of a light meandering towards them through the forest: whoever it was, they lacked the stealth that Brazen possessed, allowing the pilot to detect them from a much greater distance. Brazen poked Mercury with his boot a couple times.
"Wassit?" Mercury slurred out groggily as his eyes fluttered open.
"Someone else is coming. Get up."
Mercury got up, "yea, more visitors. Great." He yawned loudly, stretched his arms, then shouted towards the distant speck of light "HAZEL?"
The light blinked on and off. Brazen turned to Mercury, "is that some sort of signal?"
Mercury raised his hands in an 'I-don't-know' gesture, "maybe?" Brazen drew Wilt.
The trio watched the light get closer to their camp until eventually Hazel's voice reverbrated through the gaps of the trees, "don't go yelling my name like that, boy. We're not the only ones in these woods." The giant man burst through the foliage into the clearing, where his eyes quickly focused on Brazen.
"Taurus."
"Hazel. I was wondering if you would make it back here."
"What is he doing here?"
"He came looking for you. Hasn't been here that long. Did you find what you were looking for back in the city?"
Hazel shot Mercury a withering glower, which shut the steel-headed youth up straight away.
"What are you doing here, Taurus?"
"I'm tracking down Cinder. I did have some agreements with her, regarding my services being used again in Mistral."
"Cinder's dead."
"Did she die, or is she just dead to you?" Brazen asked, idly spinning Wilt in small circles aimed at the ground, "Branwen could have given her an opportunity to get out of the school, from what Mercury tells me of the bandit's semblance."
Hazel shot Mercury another fierce look, which made the young assassin shrink back into his clothes like a turtle shell. "Cinder is not here."
"I am fully capable of seeing that," Brazen said, "but there is also the entire issue of Haven itself and how that did not go as planned. Your last minute changes to the agreed-upon scheme brought everything crashing down around us. Around me. The White Fang is ruined in Mistral. Was this your plan all along, to undermine our strength? Does that serve your master's grand scheme?"
"You are angry, Taurus. We do not need to fight here. We still stand on the same side."
They stared each other down. Brazen was not particularly upset about the state of the White Fang – it was only a part of the push for faunus empowerment – but he was concerned that Cinder and Hazel didn't share his vision for the future of the faunus.
"If you weren't looking for Cinder in the city, why did you leave these three out here to return?"
Hazel narrowed his eyes, then growled. "You ask a lot, Taurus. You ask a lot and offer little. I could say that it was your own people who brought you low that night. What are you to us without your people behind you? What good is a single faunus with a sword to our cause now? I warned you that your violent seizure of power was unnecessary."
"What were you looking for in Mistral?" Brazen challenged him again. Wilt slowly rose to become perpendicular with the ground. Mercury looked back and forth between the faunus and the giant, slowly backing away from the former. "If you still consider me an ally, we need to have some level of trust. It's not like I can turn you in for your bounties to the authorities." Brazen's ears noted Mercury moving further, trying to flank him.
The pilot walked in between them and stowed its weapon, "this conflict does not serve. Stand down."
Brazen's aura shattered. Brazen rolled to the side, springing back up to his feet and moving into the underbrush.
"Emerald, what did you do?" he heard Mercury shout, spinning around. Hazel roared.
"Adam Taurus, your aura has broken," the pilot loudly stated, as if it was not obvious to all present.
Brazen sprinted into the treeline and became one with the shadows as Hazel clumsily tore through the underbrush after him. Brazen pulled out his scroll and turned it on, letting it load up FlamingOS as he moved erratically through the trees.
"Taurus!" Hazel bellowed.
He looked at his aura tracker application on his scroll, hardly believing that his aura had been taken out so quickly. He had not even sensed the danger, which made him surmise that the aura shatter had merely been one of Emerald's illusions.
AURA: 0%
Out of sight of Emerald, he had no choice to trust the device. His aura was gone. Had Mercury managed to strike him so stealthily? Maybe the pilot had been responsible; it was an unknown factor.
"Taurus!" Hazel shouted again, emerging from the bushes in front of him while he had been distracted by his scroll's readings. Hazel grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off the ground. "What's happening?" Hazel dropped him, letting him fall a foot and a half back to the ground, "why did your aura break?"
If Hazel wasn't fighting him, and Emerald or Mercury hadn't shot him in the back... I wasn't even maintaining a defensive aura when it shattered. If someone had hurt him, he would simply have taken the blow as if he had no aura. Brazen's mind raced and eventually settled on the memory of Hazel flying out into the courtyard of Haven in front of all of the assembled White Fang. With a hint of spite in his voice, he responded. "None of your concern."
One possibility remained, learned from the fight on the train and his memory of Dai's quick tutorial on his new condition: someone had hurt him, just not this him. Bedlam or Dominic were in peril back in the city.
So am I, he thought bitterly as Hazel stood in front of him waiting for an explanation. Time for a good lie.
"I need to meditate and relax. My aura has changed since Haven. I've been working on getting it back to normal."
Hazel's face remained ripe with suspicion, but he nodded. "I am not your enemy, Adam Taurus. Despite the stress from our defeat, our goals are yet aligned with one another's." The pair of them headed back to the camp, where Mercury and the pilot had gotten the fire going again. "We both seek better futures for the children of this world. They deserve better than what we've suffered."
Upon their approach, Mercury yelled out in a panic. "Emerald's still passed out. She didn't do anything! Neither did I! What happened? Why did his shield just break like that?"
"Not sure. He needs to rest, certainly." Hazel sat down by the fire. "When your identity is changed suddenly, it can have negative effects on your ability to control your aura. Perhaps the defeat at Haven hurt you in ways you did not consider, Taurus. Meditation and introspection are good ways to overcome such psychological adversities."
Brazen sat by the fire for a few minutes and cleared his mind of thought, which was understandably difficult. After a few minutes of this, he looked at his scroll.
AURA: 3%
Progress, at least, Brazen thought, noting that his aura was regenerating faster than it did before his split. He quieted his thoughts again. If one of his brothers was in a dire situation, his ability to help regenerate their shared aura might mean the difference between life and death.
His aura shattered again. AURA: 0%. Mercury shouted out a string of profanity, while Hazel just raised an eyebrow curiously.
Brazen continued to try to meditate, but his aura now stuck at 0%. Did both of his brothers suffer massive injuries? He had to get back to Mistral. Something was terribly wrong. Someone was preventing his aura from regenerating, and that just would not do at all.
He stood up. "I'll be in the city. I still have business there. What are your plans?"
"I was checking in with Mercury and Emerald as I had promised them I would. I still have not found what I needed in the city." Hazel turned to Mercury, "I'll be in town for another five days looking for answers. We can't go back to her without something to show for our time here."
Brazen began to walk back towards the city. Hazel's footsteps followed.
After a while, they arrived at the stolen bicycle and his disguise. Brazen took a quick selfie of himself in his disguise and set it as his scroll's background image.
"I guess I won't be returning this bicycle," he mused. He and Hazel would have to return to the city on foot together, which suited him and his lack of aura just fine. Whatever state his copies were in, without aura and a plan he wasn't much use to them.
"Salem," Hazel said after they had walked through the forest for a few hours.
Brazen stopped and looked at his human companion.
"The one we serve. Her name is Salem," Hazel continued, "you wanted a demonstration of trust. That is something I can offer you towards that."
Brazen nodded, appreciating the revelation. "I'm sure Cinder will tell me the rest when I find her." This elicited a grunt from Hazel, a noncommittal sound that expressed his neutrality in the consideration of her present status.
They resumed their silent return to the city.
