Chapter 9: Muted Sensations
Dominic ran his fingers through his hair, interposing his hand between his black locks and the pillow while he tried to decide what to do next. He was too worried to sleep, and he hadn't determined whether the house was safe to do so in. Neither Bedlam nor Brazen had returned to Lichen's house. Neither Lichen nor Salt had been awake to be aware of his return. There had been no signs of a fight at the house, nor any lingering military or militia presence. That doesn't mean there is not still a trap waiting for me, he considered. Lichen and Salt believed that Adam Taurus was staying at their house alone. Technically, they were right to assume that. There certainly was only one soul that currently thought of this room as theirs. If they had betrayed him to the authorities, they likely would not suspect that Adam would return to the house so soon. His stealthy return via the window merely prolonged his own uncertainty.
He picked up his scroll, turned it back on, and hoped to see a message in his inbox explaining the aura-shattering affair as a comedic mix-up and that all of his selves were doing well. With a start, he remembered that none of him could message himselves directly by their cloned scrolls. I should get another scroll or something, to get around that trifling obstacle. Of course, getting a new scroll was fraught with its own perils. Some random scroll would have tracking software installed on it, and he didn't know how to get that stuff off. I used to have people to do that sort of thing. It ate him up how much he'd lost recently after such tremendous gains.
As he lamented his lack of tech-savvy, he noticed that his scroll's background image was darker; it had changed from the standard FlamingOS logo to a picture.
There on his scroll was a selfie of Brazen in the woods. Alive. Dominic nodded with a bit of relief. Brazen was alright, then, if he had the ability to change their screen background; Brazen must be near enough to the city that he was able to connect to the city network. He walked into the bathroom, steamed the mirror with his breath and wrote his own name and Brazen's in the glass before taking a picture of it. He set it as his phone's new background.
"There, that is one way of messaging myself," he said. If Brazen was not the one who had been attacked, that meant that Bedlam was in danger somewhere. "Well, it was not like I had any other plans today. I cannot go breaking prisoners out of a prison they'd prefer to stay in, and my ship is still days from reaching port if it is on schedule. I guess I'll figure out what happened to Bedlam." He slipped out the window onto the rooftops into the crisp morning air.
He checked his aura. It was back to 100%. He paused to think about what that meant. His aura had broken twice in rapid succession last night, then had refused to regenerate for several hours. Brazen was alive out in the woods, and was close enough to the city for his scroll to have connected with Dominic's, so he was probably not taking any damage. So someone hurt Bedlam, but he was still alive afterwards so his aura regenerated since Brazen and I were not in combat, letting us heal our shared aura quickly. Whoever he was fighting broke his aura again, then kept constant pressure on his aura. Either Bedlam is dead now, or he is safe enough for his aura to heal.
Dominic spent the entire morning wandering the streets of Mistral. He started by heading to the house Blake was staying at, of course. Since anyone could have attacked an Adam, it might have been Blake or her friends. They were likely to prefer to capture Bedlam rather than outright kill him, fitting in with the series of aura shatters Dominic had experienced; hopefully they would be less attentive to a second stalker. They would not still be on the lookout for me if they think they've already dealt with me!
As a bitter afterthought: it's not like they think I have any friends left after Haven. If not for the relic, they'd probably be right in that assumption.
He purchased a set of binoculars, since Bedlam had kept the set they had shared, at a tacky tourist place that seemed to make itself profitable selling such items and related sight-seeing gear. Getting up onto the building that Bedlam had described as being an excellent vantage, Dominic found nothing amiss. There was no sign of a fight, and what he could spy of the huntresses made him think they all looked as healthy as he had expected them to. Maybe they had gotten the drop on Bedlam somehow? He dropped down from the rooftop. Blake and her human allies seemed to be going about the same activities as they had the other day, as described in agonizing detail by Bedlam.
If they'd captured Bedlam, they'd probably be a bit more excited. They'd probably not just be lounging around in their house looking bored.
Ghira came by and seemed to be giving his daughter a farewell hug at one point, before leaving with his armed escort. It looked like he might be heading to the prison. Maybe Bedlam was there? He added it to the list of places to search.
Dominic wandered through the area around RWBY's lodgings, gradually broadening the scope of his search. The upscale neighbourhood made him an oddity with his mismatched disguise, but most folks seemed to think he was a visiting huntsman. He even overheard one human couple walking a stroller containing their infant mention that they were happy to see that "a huntsman is back from Kuchinashi so soon".
As he walked along another street, considering giving up the meandering search and heading to the prison, he heard a familiar voice directed towards him: "Mister Big Tail!" The little faunus girl from the train emerged from a heap of refuse left outside a restaurant.
"What are you doing there, little friend?" Dominic asked, not actually knowing her name.
"The train got to the city but you never got off it. I asked the adults where you were but none of them knew."
Translation: none of them cared.
"I asked them where I should go but none of them knew. I asked the train people where I should go and they told me I couldn't stay there. So I came out here," she replied cheerfully as she pulled a half-eaten pasta noodle from the trash. Judging by the stains on her dress, she had slept in a gutter.
Dominic's mind forgot about his search for Bedlam. Bedlam was a grown man and, despite evidence to the contrary, should be able to take care of himself. The child crawling in refuse and litter in front of Dominic was not so capable and required immediate protection.
The White Fang's primary purpose was to protect the faunus.
"Okay, well, this is entirely awful and I'm putting a stop to it." He grabbed her out of the garbage, lifting her up by under her arms. Her eyes went wide and she began to pout, as if she thought – somehow – that she had done something wrong and was about to be reprimanded. Dominic quickly assuaged her worried face with a comforting smile. "If you don't have family or relatives in the city you can come with me. I'll make sure you're fed and tended to properly." Dominic's vision blurred a bit as his mind processed the injustice visited upon the kid, as his fury overwhelmed him, but he tried to keep his voice soothing and calm for her sake.
"That sounds nice! Momma was supposed to be with me, but she wasn't let on the train," the girl replied, "my name's Rothy!"
At least her parents had a sense of humour when they named her, if not much common sense in sending their child alone to the city, he thought angrily. Of course, they hadn't expected to be separated and there was limited time... Dominic forgave Rothy's parents.
"Call me Dominic. Let's go buy some food, talk about you a bit, and get you to the place where I'm staying. It's the most faunus-friendly place in town and there is another girl there your age."
Dom led her into the restaurant, where she got a salad, more of the pasta she had been eating out of the garbage outside, and a few queer glances from the staff that Dom returned with a one-eyed glare. "It's a lot tastier when it is like this!" Hearing that, Dominic wondered if it would be too much trouble to hunt down the train staff that had put the girl out onto the street for some quick justice before his ship came in.
I could just dump the bodies in a sewer or something.
What else was he going to do? Sleep? It took him until the end of the meal to remember why he had even come to this district. He wondered if he felt tired because his soul was split across two bodies or three. For all he knew, Bedlam could be dead. He had no proof yet that his brother was dead, so until he had that he would remain optimistic. Adam Taurus was a survivor! Until he had a solid lead on his brother, he would help the faunus in need in front of him.
That didn't mean his finding of the girl couldn't help him in his search for Bedlam; longshot thought it was. "Say, Rothy, you remember the others that were sitting behind us on the train? Do you remember the one who wore the blindfold? Have you seen him around here lately? I think he came up here yesterday, but he didn't come back to the house and I'm a bit worried about him."
Rothy finished drinking her glass of Dr Piper and shook her head from side to side while she swallowed.
Well, it was worth a try. Serendipity isn't reliable.
He finished off his stir-fried vegetable and rice with hot sauce, feeling oddly happy with the meal. It had been nice to eat in an upscale restaurant like this for once in his life, without having to have a weapon aimed at someone the entire time. When humanity falls, this shall be the norm for faunus as important as I.
"That's fine, I'll look for him some more tomorrow. Right now we had better start heading to that house before it gets too dark. Some parts of this city can be dangerous when the sun goes down." The human waitress came by and Dominic gave her lien for the meals. He stood up and readied himself to leave.
"Thanks for the meal, Mister Dominic!" Rothy got up and followed him out of the restaurant.
As the pair of them walked back to Lichen's, he noted that all of the digital wanted posters and bulletins still listed him as an active threat. Maybe going to the prison would have been a dead-end search, too. If Blake and her friends didn't catch Bedlam, and the authorities did not get ahold of him, then where did I end up? He looked off the side of the mountain city. Maybe Bedlam fell off? Is that a thing that happens? I'm pretty sure I could survive falling off this ledge... I'm not some sort of idiot who has no landing strategy for when I jump out of a bullhead beyond "scream like a girl". It wouldn't explain the second shatter, either.
For her part, Rothy kept up a constant stream of chatter while they walked about the variety of tricks she could perform with a yo-yo, skipping rope, and how she had seen a card magician find her friend's three of clubs after shuffling the deck, without the magician knowing which card the friend had picked, at a birthday party in Kuchinashi.
"I'm sure I could learn to do it, too, if I had a deck of cards!" Rothy finished, smiling proudly.
Dominic sighed, "okay, yes, that's all very impressive. I never learned any tricks like that when I was a kid." Rothy held onto his hand, peering at the dark narrow streets with round saucer-eyes.
"What did you do before you became a pimper? Did you go to school or play with other boys and have birthday parties?"
Dominic sputtered and came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the street, "became a what?"
"A pimper," Rothy replied, "I heard about people like you from my friends but you seem a lot nicer than they said you would be."
Dominic had no words.
"Maureen said that the city was full of pimpers who took care of lost girls with nowhere else to go, but that they were mean and made the girls do all sorts of tricks even when they didn't want to do the tricks."
No words at all.
"Maureen comes to the city all the time, she is four years older than me and says that she knows lots and lots! Her daddy has a big company that makes wooden furniture," Rothy continued, her eyes still looking around at the dark alleys and shady businesses of the faunus neighbourhood. "She said her mother told her that little girls alone in the city would get found by pimpers and would not be happy so that is why she always had to stay real close to her mother when they visited the city, but you've been really nice to me so far Mister Dominic so maybe she doesn't know as much as she thought she did and maybe she cheated at hopscotch and called me a liar when I told everyone she did but she was the liar all along!"
Dominic began slowly moving forward again, leading her along as she continued to hold onto his hand. Sweat beaded on his forehead. Adam Taurus had trained for years to defend himself against the enemies of his people, to be a shadow in the night who could break into any SDC complexes and slave camps to liberate the faunus or destroy the profits of the humans oppression. He had travelled the world, but this little girl had effortlessly disarmed him.
"Rothy, I am not a pimp. Your friend misunderstood what that term means." Truth. Just be honest and upfront with her about it and charge through the awkwardness, he thought. "Pimps are bad humans who mistreat other people. I'm not going to make you do tricks, which is a term that refers to something much more unsavoury than card tricks in this context. You are going to be safe and happy, and once Kuchinashi is safe and happy we can make sure you get back to your mother."
Rothy seemed confused and looked him in the eye, "I knew Maureen was a liar! I don't like this place, though. It's scary. Are you sure we're not lost?" The narrow streets of the faunus district were markedly different from the sunny boulevards of the upper levels of the city, and even Kuchinashi was more spacious and brightly lit.
"I never get lost. This is the way. The place might be scary, but none of the locals here would be mean to you Rothy. Not if they see your nice hooves."
"All the girls in school made fun of me for having them, though."
"Well, in this neighbourhood we all have feet or horns or tails that the human kids at school hurt us for. Everyone here knows what you have to put up with." Dominic knelt down beside her, "do you know why they made fun of you for your hooves, Rothy?"
She shook her head, "because they don't like me?"
"Nope. It is because they're afraid of you. Because you are different from them. Because you are better than they are." Dominic pointed at a nearby alley. "How many trashcans do you see in that alley, Rothy?"
She craned her neck to count them. "Five?"
"The human girls in your class wouldn't have been able to see a single one." Dominic stood up. "Now let's hurry up and get to the house. It smells like it is going to start raining, but we are pretty close to where we're going."
It didn't take them much longer at all to arrive at Lichen's house. Dominic approached with his new ward in tow, rapped the door with his knuckles four times before twisting the knob and entered. "Lichen, I'm back."
Time to see whose side Lichen's on. If it's a trap, then maybe having Rothy with me will give them pause. He wasn't using Rothy as a shield – he'd not endanger her – but her presence might defuse any violence if Blake or Ghira were involved in Bedlam's disappearance. Local authorities might care less about collateral witnesses to an arrest attempt. Dominic was rather sure that he'd ruled both those parties out as responsible for his aura shattering.
"We're in the living room, Adam. Watching the news. " Lichen's tone was even. Not surprised to hear him. The sounds of the television ended, though the lights still flickered; Lichen had put it on mute so that they could talk, he presumed. He brought Rothy towards the living room.
"I've got another favour to ask, Lichen." The snowfox faunus turned her head from the screen to regard Dominic, then refocused her eyes on Rothy.
"Who is this? And did you dye your hair?" His hosts lounged in the living room, unconcerned by his entrance. Dom relaxed muscles that he had kept taut with apprehension.
"Hello Mrs Lichen, my name is Rothy. Mister Dominic rode on the train with me and found me when I was lost in the city." Rothy executed a polite curtsy.
"The train? Dominic? Adam, who is this girl?"
"I need you to keep her here, too, for a bit."
"Dominic?" Salt asked from the couch where she lay sprawled out with a quilt over herself, "why's she calling you that?"
Neither Lichen nor Salt seemed surprised at his return to the house, nor concerned by his presence. Much more than he'd expect of people harbouring a fugitive, at least.
"Because it is not particularly easy to introduce myself to folks as Adam Taurus at the moment, Salt."
Rothy finally released her grip on his hand. Lichen unmuted the television's news program. Dominic paid attention to it and realized that Ghira Belladonna was on the screen.
"...a new era of peace between humans and faunus is within our grasp. This generation can see a fresh start for our peoples, fighting together rather than against each other, fighting against hatred, against fear, against the ruin of our societies. We travelled here in the spirit of showing our good intentions, our sense of comraderie with the rest of the world, and were grateful to be received with open arm. All that stands between us and a new, bright future? The lingering and insidious message of division spread by men like Adam Taurus and the others responsible for the attacks on Beacon and Haven Academies. You all know that I have long been involved with the White Fang in varying capacities, creating relationships between myself and many members that human societies have deemed terrorists, criminals, and renegades for their actions. Because of my own personal past relationship with Taurus, it is necessary for me to publicly say that I denounce, repudiate, and condemn him and his actions, as well as those who follow or assist him in his evil endeavours. The people of Menagerie and faunus everywhere stand united against Adam Taurus and his message of vicious hatred."
The screen changed to a male and female human newscaster team, who began discussing Ghira's speech, "Ghira Belladonna gave that speech the morning after his militia and the Mistral police force managed to prevent a group of terrorists, including the White Fang led by Adam Taurus..."
The screen changed to a picture of Adam, with the words "Armed and Highly Dangerous" and "Reward for Information Leading to Capture" boldly written underneath for ten seconds while the newscasters continued to speak.
"...whom Menagerie has remained adamant must be captured to answer for his crimes against both states."
The female newscaster nodded, then turned to the camera, "since coming to Mistral with his volunteer militia, Chieftain Belladonna has been extraordinarily helpful and cooperative with the Mistral authorities. We take you now to the military's current broadcast, where the Prince has just given the floor to the Chieftain."
"It may come as a surprise to many here that Mistral was host for many years to the heart of the White Fang organization. The High Leader, Sienna Khan, excavated an ancient series of tunnels and converted it into a base of operations and central nerve centre for the Fang after I stepped down from that position. Thanks to prisoner testimony gained from the cooperation of those faunus who were misled and coerced by Adam Taurus into following him into his attempted attack on Haven, we were able to learn of the location of this base and ensure that it no longer poses a threat, physical or ideological, to the safety of the people of Mistral or Menagerie." Dominic noted how Ghira was trying to spin public perception to dampen outrage against his captured soldiers. They'll be doing community service in Menagerie for sure and the nooses in Mistral will stay unused...
A stocky man in an ornate dress-uniform, evidently the Crown Prince of Mistral and acting military commander of its armed forces, stepped back onto the podium. "This victory, and the successful defence of Kuchinashi against a swell of grimm not seen since the Fall of Beacon, heralds a time of friendship between our states." The Prince turned to Ghira, and the two men shook hands while smiling at the cameras. The camera panned back, revealing several other faunus and humans standing to the side of the leaders, Ilia among them.
Lichen muted the television as it went to commercial break, because nobody was as interested in a flashy neon advertisement for TorchQuik Energy Drink Xtreme (now in Red flavour!)
"Yeah, so, like I said, not particularly easy to use that name at the moment."
"Where did you get that child, Adam?" Lichen demanded.
Where does anyone get a faunus child? From the streets, of course!
Dominic was a bit upset at her tone and at what she was insinuating, or perhaps he was still a bit flustered by the pimp discussion from earlier. "I didn't kidnap her, Lichen. She's from Kuchinashi and came here on a train to get away from a grimm attack. The human just mentioned it on the news. Her parents were not able to get on the train so the humans shoved her out onto the streets to fend for herself. I think that's the sort of injustice the news should be covering."
"You did try to destroy the school at the top of the city this week, Adam."
Dom held his hands out with the palms facing upwards and pantomimed weighing the two stories against one another, settling on finding them equally important. Blowing up a school, forcing children to live in a dumpster, who's to say who's the greater social harm? Salt rolled her eyes, but continued to stay silent.
Rothy was slowly moving around Lichen's armchair, putting it and the older woman between herself and Dominic. Dominic sighed and removed his hat, then his coat. He sat down on the unoccupied couch across the room from Salt's, unstrapped Wilt and Blush from his back and reclined against the seat. Rothy's eyes shot up to stare at his horns, then to his unstrapped 'big tail'.
"Can you take care of her for a few days or not, Lichen? She's got nowhere else to go."
Lichen glanced at Rothy, then quickly back at Dom, "I'll care for the foundling, Taurus. The question is, how long are you going to be here?"
He tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling, "I don't know, Lichen. Until after Ghira leaves and I can get away safely."
"Get away to where?"
"You're safer not knowing that, Lichen," he chided.
"Don't you threaten her!" Shouted Salt, which made Rothy cower behind Lichen's armchair.
"I'm not the one threatening her! This society is the one threatening her, just like it's always been! I'm just the one who realized I could fight back against it all!"
Between the shouting, Rothy could be heard starting to cry.
Lowering his volume Dominic crooned, "don't worry, Rothy. Don't cry. You'll be alright. Everything is going to be alright. Lichen and Salt will take care of you until your mother can come for you."
"Salt, why don't you get a bath going for Rothy. Take her up and show her where it is."
The two younger girls left the room, their footsteps and the creaking stairs evidence of their obedient withdrawal at Lichen's behest.
"Public opinion has turned against you, Adam. Ghira is the only one not calling for your head on a pike. Have you considered turning yourself in? If you do it right, Ghira can get you better terms than anything you get after he's back in Menagerie. You know I don't want to see you die. The path you're on... will it really do anything to fix what they did to you in Solitas?"
They sat in silence, which was eventually ended by the sound of the house's plumbing roaring to life to fill the bathtub. Lichen turned the television back on, where the newscasters were discussing the attack on Kuchinashi.
Casualties, a large amount of property damage, but the town would survive. Ilhari hamlet had also been attacked, but the creatures of grimm had ended that attack prematurely to go to Kuchinashi. Following me like a grimm parody of the White Fang. Officials and scientists were baffled by the strange behaviour being demonstrated by the grimm attacks. The program then changed to coverage of local plays and sporting events, where comments focused on how allowing faunus in with the regular population would effect overall attendance and the theatres' choice of performance materials.
Several productions dramatizing the Faunus Rights Revolution were being cancelled. The new faunus audience would find depictions of those battles to be historically inaccurate and rather racist in tone.
"I'm pretty handy with a map, Adam. Dominic. Whatever you want to be called. I'd say that the grimm seemed to be moving from the wilderness towards Mistral city... starting oddly close to the White Fang headquarters and following the train line, which Rothy says you rode with her." Dominic stared with his one eye at his host, his eyebrows forming an angry V, "you come in smelling like you crawled in through the sewer... but it makes me wonder what you were doing before you entered the city through the sewers. I had thought you merely were hiding in the sewers, but that's where Ghira's militia would have looked for you when you ran from Haven. You left town. You went to your fancy throne room. Then you came back to the city, where you came to my front door saying you had nowhere else to go."
He opened his mouth to protest.
"Don't say you had options; we both know I was always the bottom of your list of preferred placed to lie low."
He closed his mouth and went back to scowling silently.
"You're trouble, Adam. You've always been trouble. I just always hoped you were the good kind, the kind that would shake things up just enough to make some good happen. I don't want to be mixed up in this. I don't want Salt to get mixed up in this. I don't know her, but I don't want that little girl you just dragged in off the street mixed up in this. The city wants you dead, Adam. I want you alive. So that means I want you out."
Someone pounded on the front door, a series of four quick knocks that was followed by the knob being turned.
"Lichen, I'm back." Adam's voice called from the front hallway.
"Ah, bum clouds," Dominic cursed as he heard his footsteps echo down the hallway towards the living room.
His host's mouth gaped wide open and her eyes were stuck in a state of utter bewilderment.
"Alright, so you're kicking me out, but he can stay, right?" Dominic asked. Hey, I have to try for comedy when I can in a life like this.
Brazen entered the room, realized what he had walked into with a glance and put his face in the hand that wasn't currently holding his Wilt.
"Ah, bum clouds," Brazen cursed before signing, [you didn't have the light on or anything in the room! We had a system!]
The system hadn't accounted for returning to the house with Rothy in tow. [Yes. I admit it and take blame on this. It is good to see you are not dead.]
Brazen nodded. [You knew I was fine.] He took out his scroll and pointed at the screen.
[This place is safe, for the moment. Did you have any luck with your search?] Dominic signed. Brazen put his sword away, but continued to stand in the arched egress in order to prevent Lichen from leaving the room if she chose to try.
"What in the name of the Brothers is going on? Why are there two of you?" Lichen's eyes darted back and forth between the pair a dozen times rapidly before they rolled up and she passed out in her chair. She had fainted. What a completely Mistralian thing to have done, he thought.
"Short answer 'yes' with an 'if', long answer 'no' with a 'but'. I met with Hazel; apparently he wants to stick around a while longer to get more information on what Blake's team's direction is. Hazel is back in the city, we came back together but parted ways before entering the city. Mercury wasn't against the longer downtime period, since that just means longer until their reckoning at their base with you-know-who. Emerald is still pretty out of it. Don't even ask me about the pilot right now, that is a total mind twister. How was your past couple of days?"
"Yesterday hung out around the prison to see what I could do there; Ghira is probably going to get them all out and sent to Menagerie so I decided against intervention there. Spent most of today looking for clues about Bedlam's whereabouts, found the faunus girl I sat with on the train eating out of a garbage can instead. Brought her here, where Lichen and I watched some scathing news programs. I think we may have overstayed our welcome here." Dominic whispered.
"Yeah, that might be a problem since she's seen us."
[Don't worry, we can fix this. Just give me a little time to figure out the finer details of how.]
[Do you think he's okay? Do you think he's alive?] Brazen queried, clearly referring to their missing sibling.
[Yes]
[How long did you sleep this morning?]
[Yes] Dominic returned, ignoring how tired he felt from having not slept. He sat motionless for a few moments, awkwardly, before reflecting the question, [how long did you sleep this morning?]
[I didn't. Been walking back to town with giant-man since aura shattered] Brazen gave Dom a worried look. Optimism aside, they had no clue about whether their clone was alive or dead. Brazen slapped his own face, "there is still one way we can know if he is alive or dead... Take my hand."
Dom took his hand. Nothing happened.
"Take off the gloves!" They removed their gloves and took their right hands in each other's grasp again. Each looked at their left hand.
"Dai, make the ring appear on my hand." Brazen said. If what Dai said was true, they could make the ring manifest when all the active parts of their soul were touching. If there were only two living embodiments of Adam Taurus left, then they could manifest the ring. A simple test to determine if Bedlam was alive or gone.
Nothing happened.
Somewhere, Bedlam was alive.
Brazen smiled then put on a resolved face and nodded. "We'll find him. We'll fix this. For now, I'm going to make sure Salt doesn't see me."
"Watch out for the two of them, they're in the bathroom cleaning the streets off of Rothy."
Brazen gave him the thumbs up and exited through the front door as quietly as he was able to manage.
Next bit rated M for torture; feel free to skip to the underlined plot summary afterwards that avoids the grisly details
Jackie
BEDLAM
Bedlam opened his eyes, but even his good one saw only darkness.
Where am I?
His mind panicked, momentarily forgetting himself and recalling the darkness of his youth. Calming down as he became fully conscious, he tried moving his arms to remove the covering from his eyes but quickly found that he could not. Stretched over his head, his arms were secured in place, as were his legs, to keep him lying horizontally on the hard surface in a spread-eagle position. Without the freedom to use his arms he settled for using his face to explore the material of the blindfold on his face.
Where am I? he thought again, trying to remember how he had gotten into this situation. I remember leaving the safehouse, then going to my spot to spy on Blake again. Since he did not remember much other than that, with his mind drawing a fuzzy blank when he tried to recall more, his assumption was that his circumstances were hostile.
The hard surface beneath him was cold where his body wasn't pressed against it and resonated when he tapped it with his arm. A metal table. They had left his clothes on, though his weapon, gloves and shoes had been removed.
"SUBJECT IS AWAKE," a mechanical voice sounded; its source was uncertain. Bedlam guessed that the room he was in was covered in sound-dampeners because he couldn't pinpoint where it was coming from but he suspected the voice emitted from multiple speakers. He groaned as he finished his sudden awakening. "SUBJECT IS AWAKE. ADAM TAURUS: RANKING MEMBER OF WHITE FANG CONVICTED IN ABSENTIA FOR MULTIPLE CHARGES OF TERRORISM, MURDER, ASSAULT, GRAND LARCENY, TREASON, SMUGGLING, AND ARSON."
"You mean I got off on the jaywalking charge? That's a relief," Bedlam sniped as his mind regained clarity. "Where am I?"
"SUBJECT IDENTITY CONFIRMED. ADAM TAURUS, YOU HAVE BEEN TAKEN INTO MISTRAL MILITARY POLICE CUSTODY. WE ARE PREPARED TO POSTPONE SENTENCING FOR YOUR CRIMES UNTIL LEGAL COUNSEL CAN BE PROVIDED FOR YOU IF YOU INFORM US OF THE LOCATION OF CINDER FALL."
Ah, excellent, the human legal system, Bedlam thought while he digested what they had told him. His understanding was that Mistral had few, if any, active huntsmen working for the city itself through the Academy after the Fall of Beacon: the necessity of struggling to protect their vast frontier and all of that. There are still a fair amount of huntsmen working in the criminal underbelly or as private security for the aristocracy. Bedlam gave himself some credit and doubted that a regular patrol of human patrol officers could have seen him and taken him down quickly enough that he had not had time to react or remember.
He took a deep breath.
The blindfold obscured all light, but sight was only one of his keen faunus senses. The air in the room smelled damp, which indicated to him that either the building had suffered from a plumbing issue for the past month or they were at the base of the city. He had doubts that the Mistral military police had captured him on the mid-levels of the city, then brought him all the way down to the less savoury lower districts; even more than he doubted a police facility would have a plumbing issue so agregious. There was also an underlying floral scent that he immediately placed as a perfume. The perfume triggered a memory: he had been on the rooftop of the boutique, watching Blake, when he had noticed the same smell. His mind associated it with danger and alarm, a sense of surprise. Someone had managed to get the drop on him, though the how of it still eluded him. He had definitely been taken on the mid-level district of the city where Blake and her friends enjoyed the panoramic view of the surrounding countryside.
"Who are you?" he shouted aimlessly out at the room.
"WILL YOU COMPLY?"
Why would they be focused on Cinder? Certainly the wanted posters for himself and Cinder had been plastered all over the avenues of Mistral, but their faces were not alone. Why not ask for the location of any of the others? Was it possible that the police had managed to subdue and capture Hazel and the kids, or at the least track down their locations? Maybe they had followed Hazel out of the city as he left to return to the airship where the kids had been unceremoniously dumped while he attended to his mysterious business back in the city.
If they had captured the other faces on the wanted posters then Brazen would probably be coming up with a plan to spring him, just so that he could reunite with Hazel. If that was the case, he just had to make his captors want to hang on to him long enough for that to happen. If they were trying to deceive him by disregarding the others, he would not lose too much from resisting and could at least make the humans work for it. A third option, that they just didn't care about the other three, implied that they were not who they said they were. Attempting to deceive him about the identity of his captor would fit in with taking him to the undercity instead of to a military police base closer to where he was taken.
"I'm thinking I'll hold off for better terms than 'we will give you due legal process if you do our jobs for us' before I tell you anything about Cinder's hide-out," Bedlam said slowly. Hopefully the mention of a hide-out would be enough bait to hook them onto seeing him as a possible asset rather than a discardable animal.
"YOUR CRIMES WOULD WARRANT THE DEATH PENALTY. COOPERATION COULD LESSEN YOUR SENTENCE. TELL US THE LOCATION OF CINDER FALL'S HIDEOUT IMMEDIATELY."
If the authorities had actually gotten me, I doubt a human judge would find any sentence beneath the death sentence suitable for what I've managed to do against their corrupt society, he thought grimly. He used his hands to try to feel what was keeping him secured to the metal table. Steel wire ropes secured to cuffs around his wrists, each leading to a different corner of the table. "Sure you wouldn't rather have information on Hazel?"
"HAZEL IS OF NO CONCERN. WILL YOU COMPLY?"
Bedlam was silent. Time passed, but with what might be lingering head trauma it was difficult to say how long it was before his captor's patience wore thin. He heard a door creak open, heeled shoes walking lightly across a concrete floor. The smell of perfume he had noted earlier became stronger. Whoever had secured him to the table was back in the room with him, implying that they might also be trying to deceive him about their plurality: why would the same person who captured him also be questioning him? Why would they be using a robot-voice? I grew up fighting Atlesian droids, machines do not scare me. If whoever had caught him was operating independently, it would all make sense. It's what I would do if I was working alone to get information out of a prisoner. Classic deception tactics. He began to try to discipline his thoughts, in case the perfumed-captor had some sort of mind-affecting semblance. The threat of such a person was quite real in many areas: such talents generally either ended up working for the police or for themselves as petty criminals. Mind-reading, not a useful semblance for fighting the creatures of grimm, generally meant such people would be left in more urbane environments even while Mistral's frontier was suffering a devastating shortage of trained huntsmen.
On the other hand, from what he had heard around town, nobody had learned of the fall of the White Fang HQ, the location of which was something that Bedlam felt a mind-reader could have wrung out from his captured fighters before hiselves had made it back into the city.
Something thin and sharp was drawn across the front of his chest overtop the cloth of his stolen hoodie, slowly. Tantalizingly. After it completed its pass, it was swiftly drawn back, creating a strange 'swoosh' sound. He heard his captor readying to strike down upon him with it, so he concentrated on protecting himself with his aura. The metal instrument came down to hit him flatly in the abdomen. The blow was softened by his aura: he certainly felt it, but it could not be said to have damaged him.
He heard a hiss of frustration before the instrument was drawn back again, heralding a flurry of blows against him until finally, after several minutes, his aura shattered. Bedlam was actually impressed with his aura for holding up for so long.
The unseen assailant moved away from him and moved back out of the room, closing the door.
"COMPLY."
Bedlam determined to remain stoic, saying nothing and thinking of what the weapon being used against him could be.
His captor re-approached him. The weapon came down again, this time striking through the hoodie into his scarred flesh. Bedlam made no sound, anticipating the strike due to the audible 'swoosh', gritting his molar teeth as it struck. His captor moved away from him once more, exiting the room. At this rate, I am going to need a new disguise on top of everything else. He felt a cool wetness on his abdomen, implying that the blow had sliced him to some degree. A disguise covered in bloodstains was not much of a disguise.
"COMPLY."
Bedlam remained silent. His captor came back and began striking him with increasing force. Unable to see what damage was being inflicted, it nonetheless felt like he was being given some nasty bruises and more shallow cuts. I've had worse from the SDC, he thought, but this is not getting me closer with my Blake business.
Blake.
Is it possible that it is Blake who has captured me? He doubted Blake would have any qualms about his current treatment; honestly, he didn't really mind it either. This sort of treatment was an occupational hazard for his line of work, a necessary sacrifice to ensure the freedom of his people in the future. He was a fighter and he had always understood that during a fight someone inevitably gets hurt. Maybe Blake had finally figured that lesson out?
The weapon came down again after a few minutes of steady assault, only this time to be deflected by his aura. His tormentor's device was dropped from their hand, having met the resistance unexpectedly, hitting the ground with a clang and a crumple. That's odd, my aura does not normally regenerate that quickly, he thought. What sort of thing am I being hit with that is wrapped in something soft and hard-tipped? He had heard of some captured Fang prisoners being whipped in Mistral with bamboo shoots, which would certainly be hard and leafy.
The item was retrieved, then the captor left the room for an indeterminable amount of time. When they returned, they immediately began striking him with the rod again until his aura shattered once more. After it shattered, something warm was placed around his ankle and fastened tightly.
Zzzap!
Bedlam shouted out in surprise as electricity shot through him, arcing up his body from the new accessory on his ankle. The maybe-bamboo-but-maybe-not length came down on his torso again, ripping through his tattered disguise and sinking into his flesh. Again and again, without any real rhythm or pattern of where it would hit.
Zzzap!
His leg spasmed as another jolt of electricity was released. It was not enough to harm him, he realized, but the tingle of constant voltage would prevent his aura from regenerating. The painful periodic discharges seemed to just be a way to make the treatment crueller. Another dozen strikes from the mystery device and his captor once more left his side.
"COMPLY."
He heard his captor return to strike him.
"Make me," Bedlam sneered underneath his bag. He heard the feet stomp repeatedly on the ground, as if they were having a tantrum but did not want to give it away by screaming. I'm getting used to the sounds in here now, I think. Captor is female, if the heels and perfume are any indication (but maybe they aren't since Mistralian human males are notable for their love of theatre and feminine fashions), probably short based on the strike angle unless they have my table raised high over them. Slim from the sound against the concrete they make when they walk, either they are stealthy or they do not weigh much. They're probably using the blind to make me think that they are bigger and more intimidating than they actually are. If it is Blake, maybe she is using perfume to disguise her scent. His captor approached him again and there was the sound of a dial being turned.
ZZZzzap! He roared from the pain, biting down on his tongue as a larger surge of electricity surged up his nerves; a faint smell of seared hair visited his nose for a moment before dissipating. Now he knew that the ankle bracelet had higher settings. Her cruel stick came down to hit him again, now on the thighs and arms, taking quick shots randomly at all parts of his body instead of focusing on his chest as had been done prior. The shocks, coming at regular intervals, became his way of keeping track of the passage of time.
...ten, eleven, twelve, ZZZzzap! One, two three...
More time passed, Bedlam enduring the violent attentions until he heard their laboured panting from having been steadily beating him, while he suffered regular electric shocks, for over an hour. Bedlam was somewhat impressed at their endurance: they are a capable combatant, probably a huntsman or as good-as. That would explain how they managed to take me by surprise while I was stalking Blake. They had not left his side to repeat their demands, the speaker controls seemingly being kept outside of the room, focusing entirely on trying to break his resistance.
If not for their breathing, Bedlam could have been misled into believing that one of Atlas' soulless tin-cans had been given the task of breaking his will. Sucking air in raggedly for breath from the effort of hitting him repeatedly for so long, the mystery captor turned the dial on the ankle shocker and moved away. They left the room and closed the door.
...ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen? He sighed with relief that the shocker was turned off for now; the smell of himself having been slowly fried was not nearly as disgusting as the shocks were jarring, but that was all he had to deal with now that the bracelet had been deactivated.
"TELL US WHERE CINDER FALL'S HIDEOUT IS." The mechanical voice must be a text-to-speech application, since it failed to express their fatigue. Or perhaps there was someone else watching these proceedings after all.
Bedlam wondered how long it would be before one of his siblings came to find him.
"YOU WILL TELL US WHAT WE WANT TO KNOW. IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME."
Bedlam sighed. I need to find a way out of this on my own. Knowing his siblings they were probably too immersed in their own agendas or one another to even notice he was missing, unless Hazel and the children had also actually been taken into custody. It nearly made him wish that he had quartered himself, rather than being fifty percent original. Not that he had any particularly meaningful choice to make in his goal like his original copy had had.
It's fine that they have each other, he reassured himself, when I am reunited with Blake, they will not resent my monopolization of her affections. He didn't need a twin; he would have his darling Blake back to his side and all would be well. He imagined the future he and himselves would build, wherein he and Blake would be free to live without fear, focusing his mind on his ambitions rather than his siblings – there was still the possibility of a telepathic semblance-user holding him. A Blake-focused fantasy distracted him from his current predicament for a while, making him lose track of time. Oh Blake, what torture could this huntress devise that could ever hurt me more than your desertion? What chance of stealing my hope away when you've already stolen it?
The footsteps came back into the room and he heard hands pulling levers and begin pumping a foot pedal. The table began to shift, inclining backwards and making Bedlam slide towards his hands. His movement arrested when the bindings on his legs became taut. Inversely suspended, he felt his blood begin to pool in his skull. The footsteps left the room.
"WE SHALL SEE HOW LONG YOU CAN WITHSTAND THIS."
Bedlam focused his meagre aura, no longer being interfered with by the electric current, on protecting his lungs from the pressure exerted on them by his other organs, ill-designed to be upside-down. He focused on his breathing and craned his neck up as much as he could to relieve the pressure in his head.
He almost missed the regular electric shocks; they had been a way to keep track of the passage of time. He knew that a long period of time passed while he remained inverted. Perhaps his captor had gone to the bathroom. Bedlam imagined them sitting on a toilet, reading a newspaper, having forgotten him completely. Endure. It was what faunus did best, out of necessity.
He took the opportunity to test his bindings again. They were solid, more than he was capable of sundering even with his aura-enhanced strength. He would need to find some more complex way of breaking them, or wait until his warden decided to relocate him to a new method of captivity that might offer a different suite of escape options.
"Why is Cinder the only one you are interested in? Not a fan of Mercury or Emerald?"
There was no response. They might actually have gone to the bathroom, he thought indignantly. It was one thing to be prying him for information solo, but to just take off in the middle of a round of torture? Amateur. Insulting. Did she not realize who she was dealing with? It perfectly illustrated the way the profession was stagnating, slowly decaying. Torture was losing all of its prestige thanks to hacks like this.
At least he knew with certainty that it was not one of his siblings doing this to him as an elaborate prank. If they had, he might have actually started to crack by now.
The table was reoriented to bring him level to the ground again, letting the blood rush back down from his head. He felt dizzy, but his restored aura had allowed him to power through the neglect. A cloth came up to his face, it was wet and smelled overwhelmingly of chemicals. The odour that seeped into his nose brought another chunk of memory from earlier back into clarity for him. His captor had appeared out of nowhere on the rooftop while he watched Blake sparring with the tall, older human who had accompanied Blake's teammates into the trap at Haven.
Before he had been able to react to the sudden appearance, she had gotten the cloth in front of his face, clinging to his back and locking her legs around his torso while she had waited long enough for the anaesthetic to knock him out. Then his mind had gone blank, like it was now.
When he woke up again, his first realization was that the blindfold had been removed. His head was locked into some kind of restraint that forced him to look down the length of his scarred, bruised and bloody body, still spread-eagle on a stainless-steel surgical table. His next realization was that all of his clothes, outside of his undershorts, had been removed and thrown in a heap in the corner of the room beside the door.
A small trolley sat beside the end of the table, atop it lay a saw, a drill, some pliers, and various other sundry items that he considered to be rather uninspired torture implements. At least the Atlesians had taken a bit of pride in making an art out of their attempt, creatively using dust and personally tailored psychological manipulations. This entire scenario just reeked of amateurism. He could jury-rig a better setup out in the forest.
"TELL US WHERE CINDER FALL'S HIDEOUT IS."
"Sure, right after you let me go and make me a delicious cake, I'll do just that."
The door creaked open, and a large burly man with a clean-shaven face wearing the standard Mistral military police uniform entered the room holding a long thin blade. He came to a stop beside the trolley. That doesn't seem like it is the weapon I was getting beaten with earlier, he considered, seems too sharp along the edge and nothing that would make the distinctive swooshing sound that they seem to think increases my apprehension. The fact that there was a large figure entering the room did throw a few of his earlier theories out the window: the female captor from earlier must have gone off to get this fellow, or perhaps he had simply been watching the entire time.
"AS AN AFTER EFFECT OF THE DRUGS YOU WILL FIND YOUR LIMBS TO BE NUMB AND YOUR AURA DISABLED. YOU CAN STILL TALK AND WATCH." Now that it was mentioned, Bedlam did realize that he felt disconnected from his body below the neck despite being compelled to look at it sprawled along the steel table. If his captor had disappointed him with their attempt to break him physically, they at least had some rudimentary talents with drugging him.
Taking a cue from the end of the speakers ringing, the officer dutifully stuck the long blade deep into Bedlam's shin. Bedlam watched as blood quickly squirted out before calming down to a steady flow of his vital fluid that ran off the side of his leg and pooled on the table. It seemed that his aura was not functioning on that leg, certainly. The officer yanked the blade back out of the shin, wiping it clean with a cloth while the flow of blood increased without the weapon to plug it up.
"YOU HAVE KEPT YOUR BODY IN REMARKABLY FINE SHAPE. IT WOULD BE A SHAME FOR IT TO GO TO WASTE LIKE THIS. PERHAPS YOU SHOULD TALK BEFORE YOU HAVE TO WATCH ANY MORE?"
The officer used the bloodied cloth to cover the bleeding wound, retrieved a spray-bottle from the trolley and doused the injury with a foaming liquid. The sight made Bedlam a little queasy, but he remembered his training and mentally commanded himself to focus on making it through whatever they had planned. The room smelled of Bedlam's anxiety-driven sweat.
Bedlam told them nothing in response, narrowing his eyes as he looked at his new wound; then locked his gaze back on the face of his new roommate, who did not look at his prisoner while motionlessly examining the other tools available on the trolley. He finally decided on the pliers and, picking them up, latched onto Bedlam's pinky toe on the right foot with the vise-like grip. He looked up at where Bedlam's head was restrained and cocked his head to the side.
Bedlam rolled his eyes, a gesture which was more effective now at conveying his thoughts on the issue since the loss of a blindfold over his head.
The pliers pressed against the toe and began twisting, twisting. The bone clearly fractured, then snapped with a gruesome sound that filled the room; he began pulling the remains until the disfigured toe hung limply from the foot like a sock full of red porridge. He put the pliers down and stood at attention.
"WILL FIND CINDER WITH OR WITHOUT YOU. ALL THAT YOU CAN DECIDE IS HOW MUCH OF YOU IS LEFT WHEN THAT HAPPENS."
"That looks really gross. I have to say, if I wasn't being forced to watch what you were doing down there I would not watch. That foot is never going to be used for walking ever again. I mean, wow, it looks like a sack of peas." Bedlam closed his mouth and directed his thoughts inward, physically inward, to keep his latest meal (whenever that had been) from being regurgitated at the sight of what the officer was doing. Who knows when they plan to feed me, if they plan to feed me at all...
"COMPLY."
Bedlam tried to shake his head, no, because he did not want to risk opening his mouth for a while. The effort was futile, the restraint kept his head facing directly down at his damaged body, but the sudden frown on the officer's otherwise inexpressive face let him know that the message was received by his hosts.
Watching the officer methodically tear the toes off, one by one, quickly became the chart-topper on Bedlam's list of all-time didn't-really-need-to-see-that. After he ran short on toes to maim, he drew the hacksaw, put a tourniquet around Bedlam's ankle, and began sawing through the middle of the foot itself. After that was done, he covered the gore of the bisected foot with cloth and sprayed it with the disinfectant like earlier.
Bedlam lost track of time, the sights before him making seconds seem longer. After each new brutality, the speaker would demand that he comply, that he inform them of Cinder's whereabouts, that he salvage at least some of himself for his sham of a trial. Like they expect me to believe that I'll get a trial!
He crushed both of the kneecaps with a hammer, smiling as he did, then prodded the squishy mess with the hammer's hooked side. The kneecaps were now like a gelatin dessert, jiggling after being prodded. Jiggling like Blake's posterior as they had run through the trees in Forever Fall. Great, now I'm going to have this memory to compare Blake's ass to in the future. Great. Just great. Officer Eric Jann (a name that Bedlam had invented for the man since he did nothing except mechanically mangle every body part that Bedlam could see) raked the prongs up towards Bedlam's undershorts before relenting and standing at attention once more. He must have a line of sight to whoever is operating the audio... or whoever is operating the audio has a line of sight to him.
The fingers and thumbs went the same way as the toes, one by one turned into limp dangling nightmare-fuel. As each one was mutilated, the speakers remarked casually about how Wilt and Blush would be of little use to him in the future and demanding his cooperation.
As his last digit, the pinky on his right hand, was crushed, the message finally changed tone. "THERE MUST BE SOMETHING YOU WANT. WHAT WOULD FACILITATE THE DIVULGENCE OF CINDER'S HIDEOUT?"
Ooooh, progress? "I just want to be released from here so that I can continue my task uninterrupted. I would give assurance that I have no intention of causing nuisance or harm to the Kingdom of Mistral ever again, either for past harms or this current farce."
"TASK?"
Seeing that the painless butchery had not given him reason to scream to indulge their ineffective sadism, he decided to at least indulge their curiosity, "I'm only out there to clean up a few loose ends. Faunus business. Nothing that the human police of any kingdom would deign important enough to be a concern for them."
"LOOSE ENDS?"
"A friend who betrayed me. I promised myself that I would not rest until I bring resolution to that conflict." Hahaha, promised myself. Technically true! "What do you gain from tracking down Cinder?"
"CINDER IS A DANGEROUS CRIMINAL."
"Yeah, so am I, but only the Mistral police and public would care about that," Bedlam rasped, "neither of which I feel like you belong to. So, let me ask again, what've you got against Miss Fall?"
"YOU UNDERSTAND BETRAYAL. CINDER BETRAYED HUMANITY. SHE MUST BE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE."
"You're not going to sell me that you're big on humanity after making me watch what you did to my limbs."
"CINDER MUST PAY FOR WHAT SHE DID AT VALE."
"I mean, if that's what you're after then you'll note that Emerald and Mercury are just as guilty for the fall of Beacon as her. Also, I'm pretty sure I might have been her main accessory to that. Without me, that whole attack would have been toothless." Hahaha, White Fang joke. Where were his brothers when he finally got some good puns in?
"THE WHITE FANG WERE MERE BEASTS OF BURDEN; DID NOTHING COMPARED TO TORCHWICK. HER PLANS WOULD NOT HAVE SURVIVED INFANCY WITHOUT HIM. AND AFTER ALL HE DID TO HELP HER WITH HER PLAN, SHE GOT HIM KILLED. CINDER. MUST. PAY."
Officer Erik Jann (whose name should really be read in reverse order to truly pick up on Bedlam's sense of humour while under duress) picked up the blade from where it had been placed on the trolley and jammed it through Bedlam's other shin, holding it in place firmly.
"Ah, you're one of Torchwick's crew. That explains a lot." Bedlam said while a smile began to form on his face, "I always wondered how incompetent his goons were when the man himself was so pathetically weak to begin with."
He heard something smash against a floor, or perhaps a wall, on the other side of the wall with the door. A nigh-imperceptible guttural growl followed that, but his ears were keener than any human's.
"Oh, I'm sorry, did I hit a nerve? At least one of us managed to today," he spat, then gave a quick, wry chuckle. "You can't even maintain concentration on your semblance anymore," he jeered. The policeman was rigid, unmoving. "I suppose you deserve some credit, because it did take me a little bit to puzzle it all out. You might be able to make me see and hear your little theatrics with the setup you put together, being dizzy from that prolonged suspension made me actually believe the sounds your speakers made were coming from my body, and the drug-induced paralysis made my sense of touch incapable of figuring out the ruse. But you can't fake the smell, can you? I can't smell the disinfectant spray. I can't smell this simulacrum that is having a great time with your fake tools. I can't smell my own fresh blood. Heck, you even forgot to make me bleed this last time when your brain started thinking more about your dead boss than what should happen when you stab someone through the leg."
The officer raised the blade out of the shin and plunged it through Bedlam's heart, or at least what had looked like it should be his heart. Instead of killing him, Bedlam's body shattered into pieces, like a window breaking after being hit with a shockwave, in front of his eye. The Mistral police officer broke, too, falling to the cement floor and disappearing into pink sparkles. Once the illusion was gone, Bedlam saw his own real body. He wasn't dismayed to see that it was sporting a generous number of new bruises, welts and slashes from the earlier beating he had been subjected to. He was slanted at a forty-five degree slope beneath where the illusion of his body would have earlier had him believe he had been laid out, his real body still shackled to the tilted table. A tube had been injected into his arm, which seemed to be dosing him with a constant intravenous supply of the numbing agent.
Bedlam was, professionally speaking, a little impressed by the imagination his captor had in crafting the ruse.
"Your attempt at the psychological torture was still impressive, and might have worked on a mere human. I'm not completely inexperienced in the field, though, and you're certainly not the first person I've met with an illusion semblance. Honestly, from a critical standpoint, Emerald's provide a lot more utility." And whoever is on the other side of that wall is not Emerald. The way Emerald looked at Cinder, that unadulterated reverence... Bedlam could not think of a reason why their defeat at Haven would undermine such devotion. If his captor was one of Torchwick's goons, they would undoubtedly be familiar with Emerald to some extent, which would make the jab all the more potent. "I bet she's a better thief than Torchwick ever was, too..."
A ridiculously small woman with half-brown half-pink hair that went past her shoulders accented with white streaks (which Bedlam doubted were from age) strode into the room wielding an umbrella, seething with rage. She pressed a button on the accessory and a long blade shot out from the lacy thing, turning it into a weapon. Ah, so that is what she was using on me earlier. For some reason it seemed familiar, but he could not place where he had seen it before. He suddenly wished he had had time to learn more about the humans Cinder had employed in Vale.
Ah, but then I would have had so much less time to obsess about Blake!
She removed the tube inserted into his arm, which continued to pump a green fluid onto the cement that smelled like citrus; she dabbed the mark on his arm with some alcohol before wrapping it in a bandage. Moving around him, she pulled some levers and winches behind him to rotate the table so that it was perpendicular with the ground, leaving Bedlam to helplessly hang from his tethered arms. She removed the leather restraints attached to his head that had forced him to watch her illusory theatrics, and he rolled his head in small circles to relieve the cramps in his neck that had come from forced stillness. She came back around to his front and brandished her extended weapon at his chest. In her other hand she held a scroll, which she typed into. The scroll was connected to the speakers, he surmised, for when she stopped typing the speakers began relaying her message to him.
"YOU ARE NOTHING MORE THAN AN ANIMAL. ANIMALS DO NOT FEEL PAIN, BUT THEY CAN BE TRAINED. I WILL TRAIN YOU TO SPEAK."
After a quick frown, she got on a stool at the side of his restraining table so that she could reach his face. She grabbed his nose and pinched it until he opened his mouth to breathe; taking advantage of his orifice she shoved a foul-tasting pill in him and mimed the act of swallowing it while her hand held his mouth closed. He did, and feeling began to come back to his body over a few minutes. Devilishly, she began poking his extremities with the blunt edge of her umbrella-sword until she was satisfied that his sense of touch had been restored. Like a doctor testing reflexes, she hit his knee.
She placed a modified cattle-prod attached to a leather bracelet on his ankle, a now-familiar sensation made all the more foul for its clear association with his horns. She turned up the dial.
Zzzap!
She smiled wickedly and Bedlam suddenly remembered having seen that smile with her eyes before: on the train from Kuchinashi as he was heading to the caboose, though she had had blonde hair at that point. From what he had just witnessed of his captor, changing the colour of her hair would be a minor application of her semblance.
He did not even bother to try and raise his aura defensively as his skin began to crawl and tingle from the current. No point in just putting up my aura to delay the inevitable.
She left the room with the numbing drug tube, which he noted was attached to a large canister sporting the TorchQuick Energy Drink logo, leaving Bedlam slightly enraged from her blatant racism: between calling him an animal and showcasing her use of a cattle-prod, he felt like she was trying to get back at him for the shots he had taken at Torchwich and comparing her unfavourably with Emerald.
The lights went out and the door closed, clicking locked.
...ten, eleven, twelve, Zzzap! One, two three...
He calmed himself, taking deep breaths infused with her lingering perfume, his own sweat and the growing stench of his skin frying from the electricity.
"We'll see who's the animal, human," he seethed through gritted teeth. "I'll see you tomorrow."
Zzzap! One, two three... he imagined that he would not be getting his required couple hours of sleep before she returned. He began wiggling his arms and legs in the hope of weakening his restraints enough to escape. At least it gave him something to do.
Zzzap!
It was fine.
His semblance dulled the pain.
Bedlam has been captured by Neopolitan, who is on the hunt for Cinder to exact revenge for the death of Roman Torchwick at the Battle of Beacon! Using deception, enhanced by her fabrication semblance, Neopolitan started to brutally torture Bedlam with illusions, trying to force him to reveal what he knows of Cinder's whereabouts. Bedlam is able to see through the trickery she employs by relying on his enhanced sense of smell, making it through the first session of torture without breaking. What a champ.
There, now you don't need to have read the last two scenes if torture ain't for your taste!
Jackie
