Chapter 11: Rising Like the Moon
"Stand firm, outlast/We won't be beaten by the past.
One goal, one pact/Looking forward, never back." -Rising, RWBY OST, which I feel is a better theme song for Adam than anyone else in the series.
NEOPOLITAN
I needed that, Neo thought vacantly, her body still thrumming with the afterglow and her mind in a whirl of pleasure. She hadn't expected to have so much fun! Especially not with a lowly faunus of all things. She'd always heard Miltia and Melanie talking about certain faunus being well-endowed in their pants, but when she had stripped Adam she had not seen anything to give that gossip any credit.
Honestly, she'd had bigger. Back in Vale, she'd been surreptitiously seeing several of Junior's muscleheads on the side while waiting for Roman to task her with a job worthy of her skills. Looking back on it now, he'd probably been trying to keep her out of Cinder's way. While it had been happening, she had thought he just wanted to know as little as possible about her sexual liaisons with Junior's boys. He might not have disapproved of how she got her jollies, but that didn't mean he wanted to know all the details, either. Ignorance is bliss, some say. They'd always run in dark circles of Vale's underworld, but he had tried to keep her from getting mixed up with the worst of their associates.
Neo fondly remembered the first time Roman and she had met. She'd been sent off to boarding school by her birth-parents and hadn't been fitting in well at all. She'd been tailing Miltia and Mel, hoping to repay them for their general bitchiness towards her, and had ended up helping Roman escape from a fight with the twins and their foreign friends – Mistral's Spyders Syndicate. Her life had started getting better at that point. She'd started identifying as Neopolitan, rather than as Trivia as her birth-parents had called her. The headmistress of her boarding school had taken an interest in Roman, so Neo had been forced to play double-agent for a while. What fun! It sure made her ostracization by her classmates more bearable, and she got special combat and spycraft lessons.
When all that was finished, her and Torchwick had beaten two gangs and set her old house alight – killing both mommy and daddy. A three-for-one deal! Vale's gang came under the new management of Junior, and the Spyders scurried back where they'd come from. Roman and her had partnered up after that, and the rest, as they say, is history. It wasn't like she had anywhere else better to go.
Torchwick had been different from anybody else who'd ever been in her life. He was older, wiser than her, sure, but he treated her as an equal. He would teach her his ways, show her how to survive in the world like he did, pass his vast knowledge along, but he never insisted on any of it. He had an eye for talent and loyalty that would serve him well during their rise through Vale's underworld, and he had said that he saw immense promise in her even in her youth.
Roman Torchwick, the finest thief in Vale. Intelligent, charming, and devious rather than ruthless, which set him apart from the rabble of criminals. Able to get anything he wanted – and he wanted everything. Most importantly, he wanted everyone to know his name. Brand recognition. He had built a life of luxury for himself, and his young accomplice, on the fringe of Vale's society.
Neopolitan, who was happier than even her overactive imagination had ever dreamed of being. A girl who had finally made her fantasies of being on top of the world a reality.
A fragile reality.
Just like her semblance, it had shattered when Cinder had gotten involved. When Cinder had gotten Roman killed for the sake of her schemes.
Neo had angrily blamed Torchwick, for a while, for letting them stay involved with the revolutionary for so long. What happened to his eye for loyalty? Surely he knew Cinder would ruin them. They had had nothing to gain, working with Cinder. Nothing that Neo could ever see, at least.
She had spent weeks like that, before realizing that it wasn't productive to blame her friend. It would be much more productive to blame Cinder, the stranger. She knew Cinder had represented Mistral for the silly huntsmen tournament that all the social elites worked themselves into a frenzy over. She determined to make her way to Mistral, since that was her best lead on tracking Cinder down.
How hard could it be? She had proudly told herself.
It was very hard, as it turned out. Without Roman's smile, witty charm, and silver tongue, she'd been completely alone and with less resources than she could imagine. Even Miltia and Melanie, having made peace with Roman like the rest of the Spyders, and Junior's gang, hadn't been willing to help her out.
"You're lucky I don't blame you for the fact that I've lost most of my clients." Junior had told her before banning her from his club.
With nowhere to stay, a dwindling purse, and nobody to help her, she'd had to follow her lead on foot.
Nights were the worst. Nights where she couldn't find lodging and had to sleep in fallen logs. Her mood was never great, focused as she was on what she had lost, so grimm were always a threat. She didn't always travel alone. There were many people that had decided to simply flee Vale. Disguising herself as a wayward waif, she'd been able to make simple rubes take her in. The trouble with that was that her semblance required concentration. Concentration required consciousness. Sleep required a lack thereof. Finding that the small girl they'd taken on out of pity earlier in the day was a young adult illusionist was never met with further charity. The lien I stole from them was paltry, too!
So she had slowly made her way towards Mistral, careful to avoid unnecessary risks, stealing and conning as she went. At least Roman had ensured that her face had never made it onto a wanted poster, so she did not have that concern to worry about.
Which more-or-less had brought her here, to the Mistral Below, wallowing in a puddle of various fluids underneath her publically-wanted, high-bounty, and exceptionally well-built prisoner, riding the remnants of her orgasmic high.
Unlike during her time spent waiting in Vale, there had been no convenient time to indulge her wanton female needs while travelling. I really needed that, she concluded. She felt her hand still shoved down her pants to reach her clit and smiled lazily. She reached for her scroll, rolling over and reaching to find where it had fallen into the puddle. She typed a message into it, and after a negligible delay she heard her words come out from the networked speakers she had connected to her device.
She pulled her other hand free from where it had been playing with herself, enjoying the wet residue that clung to her digits.
Adam's words earlier were a bit disheartening. Had he meant them? Had he just been desperate to stop her lewd actions, or did he actually not know any more than she of Cinder's present location? Neo found she didn't really care. Despite his dick being physically proportionate to the average – taking into account his rather massive height – whatever had happened at the end had more than made him her number one lay of all time. The unbelievable pleasure she had felt from whatever he had done... she needed more of that. She would also have to have what could be considered a chat with Miltiades next time she saw Junior's ward. Not only had she misled Neo about faunus' bestial endowment, she had not mentioned anything about whatever Neo had just experienced. Maybe the Malachite twins had not slept with half the White Fang in Vale, as she had claimed. Or maybe Adam Taurus was just special?
She looked up at his face. He had a very beautiful, deep blue eye. Then he had a very ugly, scarred branded eye. The asymmetry of his face made her want to stare and it made her want to look away at the same time. She felt like seeing his face was important. Maybe it feels important because he had always worn a mask as long as I've known him, in all his wanted posters. He had hid the brand, so that she was one of the few humans who had seen his face.
Humans did that to him. Was he ashamed of the brand? From what she knew of him, it probably served as a constant reminder of a time in his life when he was weak or something. She wondered if Cinder had seen him without the mask. She wondered if she could top what the Schnee Dust Company had done to Taurus, to make him remember her, too, for the rest of his life.
Then she thought of how the brand sort of made him heterochromatic, too, just like her. Her heart beat a little faster at that, her imagination racing as uninvited romantic thoughts began.
His unmarred eye examined her with a passive, perhaps distant expression. Maybe she had broken him. He did seem to have some sort of hangup because of his relationship with Belladonna. Neo looked away, focusing instead on her slick fingers again.
I needed that, but I could definitely use more of whatever it was. A stronger dose. She strained to stand up, finding that regaining her footing was difficult because of her wobbly knees. She brushed her mussed tricolour hair out of her face with the hand not clasping onto her scroll, streaking more viscous fluids through it. She wished that the warehouse had a shower in it. It had a hose and some sinks, which had let her get the water for the torture earlier, but no shower. Well, who takes a shower at work, she considered. Well, at least she had the hose, and if that failed she could just use her semblance to make herself look presentable. Her trek from Vale to Mistral had left her clothes a tattered mess, and she'd never really understood how her servants had done laundry. Eventually she might need to replace her wardrobe. The surprisingly large amount in Adam's wallet could help with that, if for some reason she chose not to rely on her thievery talents.
Or maybe she would just stop wearing clothes. Winter was closing in, but she could just move to Vacuo or Menagerie, or the south of Mistral even, and enjoy the perpetual equatorial warmth dressed in only the finest clothes her semblance could imagine.
If she went to Menagerie, she could imagine herself with some sexy bunny ears. Adam would be right at home among his own kind, wouldn't he, and eventually she could get him to move past his infatuation with Blake and accept her as his owner. With his reputation, none of the locals would mind her keeping him locked up nice-and-tight. He would be a perfect toy.
Thoughts of her retirement would have to wait for her revenge on Cinder to be seen through, though.
She tucked her scroll into her bra, subtly exposing her perky nipple to her tall captive for a long moment, then had both hands free to examine her 'retirement package' where it hung between his legs. It had lost a fair amount of its prior vigour, but that could be quickly remedied. She was suddenly curious about how much she had managed to wring out of him with only her mouth: the condom was missing, but his bulging balls were still evidence of his virgin enthusiasm, stamina enough to please her further. She looked around at her feet and found it floating near the drain.
Wait, why is all of this not going down the drain? Useless. It must be clogged or something. The building was several years abandoned, having been used by Roman's family before she had met him. She wondered if he had any living relatives...
She lifted up the condom, but there was no trace of semen in it. She squinted at it, disbelieving. Did he not...?
Well. She would fix that!
"Like I said. You're not Blake." Her pleasure-pet was clearly proud that he had managed to not finish properly, despite her due diligence. "My passion is for her, and her alone."
The condom was probably fine. She moved to put it back on, though since he wasn't hard and everything was all sloppy it didn't really go on easily. She had to massage him a bit, first. She didn't mind, the sensation of his girth in her hand was relaxing. She took a break to let it rest on her cheek, too. It was warm.
With the condom back on, she lay back down flat on the floor (beyond the area of the puddle), raised up her legs, grabbed her pants at the hip and slowly pulled off pants and panties in one go. She took off the socks, too, but since they were completely soaked from wading around in the consequence of the clogged drain she had to really struggle to get them off. She felt a bit ridiculous doing it, hopping around pulling at her own foot. Adam didn't laugh. Nor did he smile. He just watched, silently.
At least he seems to have settled down, she observed. She had been on the verge of gagging him, or just cutting out his tongue, a few times for the things he had said about Torchwick earlier. A filthy animal like him had no right to be so dismissive of her deceased mentor, finest thief Vale had ever known! She looked up at his mouth, which was set in a tight line to display his resolution to resist, noting his lips with interest. She would like to put those, and his tongue, to more constructive pursuits. You get to keep your tongue, Adam, she smirked, but you'll have to learn to use it! She looked away from his mouth before she was too distracted by her own prurient fantasies, which had quickly begun remembering pornography about a sexy teacher keeping a naughty boy late after class...
With her lower body nude, she rose back up. He is really tall, she realized not for the first time, but the disparity between them made her next task more difficult. How would she get her vagina, which was here, to his dick, which was all the way up there?
She did a little leap and latched onto his shoulders, his nice, broad shoulders, with her hands, and sort of hung there, dangling from him. Her breasts squished against his firm chest. She pulled herself up, letting her tongue trail along his chest as she did so. So many little nicks and bumps from his many scars, a tapestry of his suffering, she simply couldn't resist. So many scars that her own brutal sessions beating him scarcely registered. Once she had gotten up enough, she tried to manoeuvre herself to line up with him, only to discover that while she had managed to get up high enough for the task, he had insolently allowed himself to stay no more erect than when she had managed to get the condom on. In fact, if she had to guess, it was less than that.
Wasn't she sexy?
Junior's boys, once they had gotten past the tedious "are you actually legal" questions, and the "what if Torchwick/Junior find out" nonsense, had found stuff like her prior stripshow and licking immensely arousing.
She released her hold on him, leapt off him and did a quick somersault into the puddle. She could have just dropped down, but the flip gave her a chance to show off a bit of her flexibility. Junior's boys liked that, too.
Adam's expression remained stoic. He watched her, and was certainly paying attention to what she did, but his gaze was not lusty like the ones she had received during her escapades in Vale. His gaze was a different sort of predatory. A caged animal, and here she was poking a stick at it.
Or poking its stick, she chuckled.
She gave him a disdainful look while crossing her arms across her stomach. Then, leering at him, she raised her arms, and with them, her breasts, showing off her cleavage against her wet shirt and dark bra. Still no reaction. She took hold of his dick in her hand and began rubbing it again, which at least had been effective before. It was effective again, now. She got him erect with a bit of effort. I don't care about your feelings for Belladonna, you're still just a man.
Stepping back, she made a circle with the thumb and finger of one hand, and repeatedly inserted a finger from her other hand into the circle. She shoved the knuckle of her hand hard against the circle. She might not be able to talk, but hopefully he could at least understand that simple bit of sign language. Having abandoned her panties probably helped the translation.
"That's not going to happen," Adam stated. Hah, like what you want matters anymore, Neo thought as she stuck her tongue out, then smiled with epiphanic glee. She would not need to bother trying to climb Mt. Taurus again, she would just use the table mechanisms to get him horizontal. Then she could just ride him until she was thoroughly satisfied before having a sleep.
It had been a long trek to Mistral. She could have used a good horse to ride to get here, but she'd settle for a nice ride now that she'd arrived. She would worry about her next step in finding Cinder when she woke up.
Scratch that, she'd worry about Cinder after washing her hair. It was totally flush with grime at this point and she was going to make a priority of cleaning it up upon waking. Hunting Cinder could wait that long, at least. Roman would understand. "The first part of looking fabulous is feeling fabulous, Neo. Looking fabulous is the first step of being fabulous. Always set time aside to make sure you feel right, whether it is properly casing a joint before a heist or just being happy with your makeup." Melanie and Miltia must have envied Neo for that, at least: living with a father-figure who not only understood, but appreciated cosmetics.
On occasion, Junior had shaved his beard; between that and his expensive suits he cared little more for his appearance and had just as much to teach the Malachite twins. Suckers. They'd had to learn about girl stuff from the net after she'd gone and gotten their boarding school shut down for its connections to their mother's gang. She wondered if the twins were still alive in Vale.
The table lay flat now, and she impatiently pumped a foot pedal to lower him until he was pretty much on the floor. Neo was quite pleased that the warehouse had this table: she imagined they had used it to test products on less-than-willing individuals, when they were still in business. Roman's interest in crime hadn't put him at odds with his extended family, she presumed. They'd all been crooks and mercenaries, from what she had overheard him say; more often on the wrong side of the law than not. He'd always wanted to establish himself on his own terms, though, rather than riding the coattails of his family. The table had a seal on the side opposite of where Adam lay which claimed that it had been 'rigorously tested to contain even the most savage faunus brutes'. She hopped up delicately onto the table and stood overtop his face, letting him get a nice clear view of what she was offering. She wasn't sure, but she felt like she dripped a little as she did so. She crouched down, keeping herself just out of range of what he could reach with his face if he chose to try to bite her. He was still a faunus, barely better than a feral animal.
With her body kneeling away from his head, she licked down along his chest until she was at his groin once more. She thought about turning around to watch his face when he felt inside her depths for the first time, but for now decided to keep letting him ogle her cute butt.
She scowled. He was deflating again.
She was still in control! There was no way she'd relinquish that control; she'd missed it ever since Roman had vanished. Since he'd died. She grasped him with her hand and grunted in annoyance. Adam grunted, too, from her touch. He had gotten harder, quicker, before. When she was using her semblance. She pulled her scroll out from her bra and began cycling through her photo gallery. Eventually she found a set of pictures that she had taken for Roman and Cinder while she had been working undercover at Beacon. Pictures of the huntress team who had managed to irritate their operations. Pictures of Blake. She typed into the scroll, which relayed the words through the speakers.
"IT'S OKAY IF YOU NEED ME TO PLAY DRESS-UP FOR TODAY, IF IT GETS YOU READY AGAIN. WE WILL HAVE LOTS OF TIME TO DOMESTICATE YOU." He's lucky playing pretend is my specialty, she thought as she concentrated on the image of Blake; the tell-tale shimmer of her semblance washed over her body. She now 'wore' a Beacon uniform, complete with a plaid skirt. 'Her' dark black locks reminded her a bit of her disguise from when she fought in the tournament as Cinder's team's fourth member.
Speaking of members, Adam's was rising up from its dreadful torpor at last. She pulled off her top and tossed it to the side, where it slid down the foam sound-proofing of the wall, leaving herself clad in only her bra that held her scroll and ample tits. She put her hand on her newest possession's precious plump pole, pleased that her semblance managed to fool him into thinking of his lost-love, Blake, while also slightly jealous of the devotion he showed towards that ingrate.
His dick twitched, and she smiled with delight. She put the scroll down by his hip on the table and began to shimmy down his rock-hard torso so that her body met his just above his groin.
She pressed her entrance against his tip while holding the illusory skirt up to give him a clear view of what was happening. Neo considered turning around to get a look at his face when they connected, made him hers. Then another thought occurred to her.
She glanced back over to her vest, which had happened to fall on the blindfold that she had tied over Adam's eyes earlier.
Her brain was trying to tell her something. Something about that seemed strange. Just like how his eyes had entranced her.
The blindfold that she had put on him earlier...
...
...
When did I take that off him?
She twisted her body around, letting her head do a full 180 degree turn to gaze once more into Adam's single blue eye. His lips. His branded eye.
Then at his single free arm, clutching a single bloody fingernail, aimed at the binding around his left arm.
Neo's eyes widened in realization, her mouth forming a small 'o' as she gasped with alarm.
Adam's hair glowed crimson, sucking all colour but red from the room. A line of blood, trailing from where his free hand had been held against the table, glowed crimson; the blood from his mutilated hand. Energy shot out of the fingernail he held, severing the cable securing his other arm to the table.
"Like I said, that's not going to happen. Time to die."
The last word seemed to resonate through the room; perhaps the dread implications ignoring the dampening effect of the walls. Neo tried to raise herself off of him but he was too fast, lurching forward and wrapping around her minuscule torso with his large, muscled arms. She was forced to gasp as his arms began to constrict.
Her brain started running again, flooded with panic juice. She flailed wildly, kicking and headbutting and scratching at him, but his aura flashed greenish-red with each blow, absorbing it all.
"I think it would be satisfying to kill you, human. More than most, after what you nearly stole from me." His tone was icy, lined with contempt for her.
Kicking. Flailing. Wiggling to escape his grasp, but it was futile. He held her securely with a single arm around her belly now, while the hand of the other wrapped itself around her throat. He was going to strangle her to death. She was too small to take him on in a close-quarters melee like this.
No, no no no no! She hadn't avenged Roman! She hadn't killed Cinder!
She hadn't even managed to get in one final lay! If there's an afterlife, how am I going to explain this to Roman? 'Sorry boss, I didn't avenge you and oh, can I borrow some clothes?'
The air in her lungs began to grow stale. She wouldn't last long if she couldn't think of something. She didn't want to die like this, here. She had so much more to do...
"I need to!"
I didn't say anything... can he read my mind? Neo thought, the hand around her throat thankfully stopping its constriction.
"Useful? ...maybe." The hand around her throat relaxed, just a bit, just enough to let her breathe again. Air to stave off suffocation. Precious air to keep her alive. She gasped wildly, desperately.
Or maybe I just made a crazy faunus terrorist even crazier, and he is talking to himself now.
"Yes... big picture...not a good idea..." His body suddenly jerked a bit, and he seemed to hesitate for a moment, collecting himself. He brought his mouth up to her ear, and she felt the heat of his fast breathing tickle her to the drum. "Now. Neopolitan. Neo. Let me tell you... what is going to happen next," Adam said calmly.
Neo's body went limp as she began to consider how out of her depth she may have gotten herself. She didn't have Roman or her father to bail her out of this one. She wasn't going to beat Adam in a contest of strength: she was an ambusher. A sneak. Now she was a shark out of water, gasping for breath as she trembled.
"Time to turn the table on who's tyrannized."
BEDLAM
Holding his erstwhile captor in his vise-like grip, Bedlam picked up the scroll from the table while keeping his eye on her. She no longer struggled, perhaps realizing the futility of wasting her energy like that, but he wasn't going to let his guard down around the woman anytime soon. She was just waiting for an opportune moment to flee, to free herself. He knew well her thoughts: for the past few days, those captivating schemes had been his.
Bedlam found an icon on the scroll that seemed to pertain to him, labelled "Torchquik Warehouse Systems admin". Within that, he found the controls to release his legs from their captivity. He probably could have just let his brethren continue to charge Moonslice to allow him to break his legs free as he had done for his arms, but then his sudden plan for Neo would be somewhat spoiled. The poetic irony of trapping her alive in her own device.
Bedlam stood up, stretching his arms and legs, his back. Keeping Neo held aloft with his uninjured hand, her bare legs dangling helplessly. He dialed a familiar number using her scroll, though he had never called it before. He heard a ringing from outside of the room. I guess my scroll isn't that far off. Neo's eyes glanced toward the door, too. The ringing stopped.
"Green Eyes? Who is this?" His voice came through Neo's scroll.
Bedlam responded quickly, "I'll give you three guesses, but if you get it on the first try I think I'll need the other two myself. I'm at the old Torchquik Warehouse in lower city. In process of escaping. I'm hungry. You know what I like." Bedlam ended the call. No need to let Neo hear a response: if he was lucky she would think the initial response was a pre-recorded message or something and wouldn't think too hard about why his scroll had rung outside the room they occupied. He looked at her scroll some more, looking through the menu options. "Unless you have any food out there for me, Neo?"
She remained unhelpfully silent, wheezing a bit still from the choke-hold he had released her from. That the voice had told him to let her out of. Or maybe it was just his imagination, his fatigue, playing tricks on him? It would be easier to think of it as nothing more than his instincts kicking in, preventing him from doing something rash when, before her attempt at seduction had begun, he had seen the value in letting her and Brazen work together. Yet, despite how easy it would be to ignore and forget the incident, it had seemed like so much more than that. He looked at his captive, who had had to set up a speaker system to compliment her semblance, so it stood to reason that she could not make audio illusions. Maybe her semblance had evolved, when it seemed like she was about to perish? Maybe he was just tired and delusional.
Bedlam added the mysterious voice to the list. The growing list of oddities that he had experienced during his captivity. How had Neo survived that initial hit from Moonslice, if that is what it was, directly into her face? Why was that first surge of his semblance white, rather than black? Was the voice real, or did he just imagine it? If it was real, then who had convinced him to leave judgment of Neo to a jury of his peers?
Why did he only think of clever puns when his clones were nowhere in sight?
Hopefully the 'three guesses' bit had given his brothers a solid chuckle. He was confident that the jury of his peers line would have at least gotten a snicker out of Brazen. Speaking of whom, I'd better act like my twin as much as I can for the time being... I might not want to have anything to do with Neo for the rest of time, but Brazen might be a different story. I shouldn't do anything that would burn the bridge on his behalf.
"So, as to what is going to happen now: I am going to restrain you on this table before checking out what is waiting for me on the other side of that door. My friends are on the way." Neo's eyes darted between him and the door, then to her clothes scattered about the room. "Oh, you're concerned about your dignity now?" Bedlam rolled his eyes. "Don't fret. I'm not going to kill you. I meant what I said earlier. I think you might still have some value to the goals of my faction...some value to my goals. If you let me convene with my allies, I'll be able to make them see that. If you're goal is finding Cinder, then you're better off sticking with me than trying to fight further. We may just want the same thing." He hoped that was what Brazen would say in his place. It felt right, but his mind was still buzzing from the torture, exhaustion, and desperate adrenal fear he was still coming down from. "After working with Cinder in Vale, you'll find I am much more... amenable to working with your kind than I was before."
Neo willingly submitted to having her arms shackled in the bindings that had been around his ankles, though he had to tighten them substantially because of how small she was. Instead of being spread-eagle in the centre of the table as he had been, she was forced into more of a 'T' shape at the bottom of the table. I guess it is just as easy to refer to it as the top of the table, since it is just a flat slab of metal, so the top is where her head is resting. Her head was resting at the edge of the table, while her diminutive body's toes barely reached past the middle of the table.
"There, see? That wasn't so bad. I'm going to get dressed, back in a bit." He examined what remained of his clothes and found that his shirt, pants, and stolen hoodie were torn up quite badly: capable of covering up his nudity to some degree, but would attract attention if he wore them in public. His shoes, socks and gloves were fine. His underwear was sliced cleanly in twain by the parasol. "Guess I'm going commando for a while."
The blindfold she'd put on him was there, too, as he shifted through the remains of his apparel, but he needed no memento of his stay here when he still had Neo as a problematic prize. He didn't bother blindfolding her with it, either; the door closed on a soundproofed room, so when his brothers arrived they'd have enough privacy from her.
He put on the shredded pants and discarded the tattered remains of the rest on the floor of the chamber before heading out of the sound-proofed room, entering the warehouse proper for the first time. It was a large, open, empty space. Dust had collected on the floor, disturbed only by Neo's footprints and where she had seemingly dragged his unconscious body to the chamber. Windows near the ceiling of the three-story tall room would let sunlight through during the day. It looked like it had been a storage warehouse once, though all the product had long since been removed from the premises. On his side of the building were a handful of small offices. The sound-proofed room was labelled PRODUCT TESTING. Another one had a sign over the door that read MARKETING, to his left was DISTRIBUTION MANAGER. The fourth office had had its label removed.
Outside the product testing room was a desk, which seemed to have been pushed out from the distribution manager's office, around which sat some tech equipment that Neo must have been using for her audio tricks, Neo's purse, as well as the cattle-prod and his weapons. He regarded her scroll, and found that he could access a live video feed from inside the testing room. Neo sat on the table, regarding the open door. Contemplating what I said, no doubt. Hopefully her desire to hurt Cinder would override her fear of him long enough for him and his psyche slices to come to an agreement about what was to be done with the human. Under the desk was more of Neo's personal effects: a familiar black bowler hat with a red ribbon around its brim, a sleeping bag, a pile of energy bars that he suddenly realized she must have been eating while holding him captive. He almost felt bad for insulting them when she had tried to offer him one, now. Almost. He checked one for an expiry date, and was not surprised to see that they were five years outdated.
It's strange, I would have thought the SDC would have bought all these up when the company was liquidated during its legal battles... to feed to their faunus miners...
Wilt and Blush lay on the other side of the table, attached to his belt. He restored his weapon and his belt around his waist and felt relief at the weight of it hanging off his hip once more.
"Honestly, I felt more naked without these than without the pants..." he told the emptiness of the warehouse. The resultant echo startled him. Maybe it was because he had spent the past few days in the sound-dampening room, where there had been no echo; maybe it was because it was no longer impossible for him to hear his own voice, like an echo, from one of his clones. Maybe he was just a bit paranoid about sourceless voices, given the unseen speakers used by Neo and... whatever had insisted he not kill her.
The building was secure, as far as he could tell. One enemy hostile, working alone to get information out of him. The situation was managed. He went over to the door of the warehouse, keeping an eye on his captive by using her own scroll as he did so. Peering outside, he saw that the neighbourhood was lower city, near the docks. It smelled like the sea. Almost all the buildings had the look of being warehouses as well, though this early in the morning all were dark or lit by minimal lighting. It is Monday morning, he realized as he checked the time on the scroll. The workweek won't begin for hours.
Bedlam discovered that he had accidentally taken Brazen's pants when he got dressed last time he had been at Lichen's place; his wallet hadn't been as full, since they hadn't figured out the Relic's item duplication benefit until after he'd been separated from the other two's progenitor. Brazen's going to be pissed that I got them ruined.
He walked back to check on Neo. She sat on the table just as she did on the scroll screen. She turned to him warily, watching him as he removed the shattered cable that had held his arms. The cable had been severed from the shackles by each use of Moonslice, so he was not going to be able to attach them to her legs, but he was able to remove the cable from its housing on the back of the table (where it was revealed that it was a single length of cable held in place by a clasp, rather than two individual cables) so that he could tie the cable around the table's width, around Neo's abdomen, forcing Neo to lie on her back. It just wouldn't do to let her have too much mobility. Her legs were still free to move, but with her wrists shackled and the cable around her belly, he had some confidence in the restraints.
Bedlam grabbed her pants, thoroughly soaked through from having been discarded in the puddle on the floor. He extracted her panties from her pants, and motioned to her to let him put the panties on. She complied, her eyes averted with what might even be an emotion similar to shame. Now Neo had her bra and panties to make her look less indecent for when his brothers decided to get around to showing up at the scene of his great escape.
He regarded the puddle on the ground. He pushed the table away from the middle of the room and saw the outline of a drain on the floor. He jabbed into it with Wilt, trying to see if he could unclog it. After a few seconds, his motions unclogged it. The water made a gurgling sound as it rushed through the pipes, reminiscent of the sounds Neo had made on him earlier. Bedlam walked out of the room, suddenly angered due to the reminder of what she had done to his body; he grabbed the cattle-prod and walked back in. Neo's eyes widened when she saw that and she began desperately shaking her head, though to her credit she did not scream or beg in terror.
"What, suddenly you don't like your little racist insult? Not so funny anymore?" Bedlam whispered in her ear. He plucked at her bra, delicately lifting it to allow him to insert the cattle-prod between the mounds on her chest, letting its tip slide down along her belly. When it snagged onto her belly button, she tried to defend herself by clenching her legs tightly together, but was unable to allay his effort to continue its movement past the elastic band of her panties. "You seem like the sort of girl who relaxes more when she has something long and hard intruding down there."
Neo continued to shake her head and thrash her legs, but despite her flexibility she was not able to reach the cattle-prod with her feet. She tried to kick at him, instead, but he easily deflected the kicks with his other arm. He pushed the prod further, deeper into Neo's panties, making her face twitch in pain when the device hitched against her sensitive hairs, until making her mouth go wide in a silent shout when he brought it to rest on her tender nub, her eyes wet with the beginning of tears.
"Now wait here, don't try to escape, and I'll not have to turn that on." Bedlam threatened, and his prisoner went rigidly still. "My friends will be here soon enough. If you piss me off, then we can see how long you can handle the shocks. Did you keep track of my record?"
No answer.
"I did." Bedlam growled at his captive, his teeth clenching in fury as he remembered enduring the torture, remembered the counting. It nearly convinced him to turn the thing on anyways, despite his promise of not using it if she behaved. Best to leave her alone until hiselves arrived. He left the room and closed the door behind him.
He checked out the other offices. 'Marketing' was completely empty. Faint outlines and small punctures on the walls suggested something had once hung there, posters or boards or the like. Long removed. 'Distribution Manager' had a lot of scuff marks from where Neo had shoved the desk out, and the middle of the ceiling sported a sturdy-seeming fan for the comfort of its occupant on hot, Mistral summer days. He flipped a switch on the wall and a light came out of the fan. Another switch flipped made the fan begin to spin. He flipped both switches again and exited the room. The unmarked room was an old bathroom, complete with three toilet stalls and a pair of sinks. A hose was connected to one of the sinks: he figured that Neo had used that to fill the water bucket up for the waterboarding session. One of the stalls had a toilet, filthy though it was; the other stalls had a shattered pile of ceramics in place of a toilet and nothing. Someone had stolen the third toilet. Pathetic humans, Bedlam thought to himself, realizing that at this point he was just trying to keep himself awake while he waited for Brazen and Dominic to arrive.
He sat outside the product testing room, watching her renewed squirming on the live video feed, waiting for Brazen and Dominic to find the place. He did not have to wait long before he saw shadows fluttering along the warehouse windows, which gave brief warning before Brazen came crashing through. Dominic came through the door at the same time, his Wilt drawn. Brazen landed on the empty storage floor with a roll and had his own Wilt and Blush bared by the time he came to his feet.
Bedlam gave them a polite wave and tucked Neo's scroll into his pocket. Together, they shook their heads with exasperation. "Oh good, you're here," Bedlam called, "come on in, make yourselves at home. I'll introduce you to Neopolitan soon, she's just a bit tied up at the moment." He waited for a laugh, but didn't get one. "She's a former employee of our dear human friend Roman Torchwick, involved in the Fall of Beacon, blah blah blah. What'd you bring for food?"
Dom sighed and went back out the door.
"Seriously? Don't tell me you forgot food." Bedlam whined.
Brazen smirked, "no, we actually stopped to grab a pizza. He just didn't want to come into a possible fight while trying to balance it in his hands. So he stashed it outside."
Yeah, that would make sense. "While we're waiting, here's your stuff. I'm keeping the pants for now," he said to Brazen, tossing him his wallet. Dominic came back in with a pizza box held in both hands. "Dom, have I mentioned that you're my favourite clone?"
"Because of my inexplicable sense of style, or for my ability to do basic errands for you?"
"Yes. Now, food me please!" Bedlam grabbed at the pizza box, which Dominic pulled away from his grasp. Bedlam looked at himself questioningly.
"Test first." Dominic balanced the pizza box on his right palm while holding out his left hand. Brazen pulled the glove off the hand, then did the same to his own and laid his hand on top of Dominic's.
Bedlam put his hand on top of his twins', and as he did their red auras were briefly striped with green and the Relic appeared on each of their middle fingers. Dom and Brazen seemed satisfied by that and their shoulders relaxed. Brazen sheathed Wilt, the rings fading away when he removed his hand to do so.
"Now, I believe I said something to the effect of 'food me, please'?" He grasped at the pizza box in Dom's other hand, which Dominic let him take. "Nice, green pepper and onion." He began shovelling a slice into his mouth, his nose and tongue overwhelmed by the scent as he realized just how hungry he was after days of brutality.
"So, are you going to explain what happened here?" Brazen asked. Dominic nodded in agreement; they wanted answers.
Bedlam, a gooey slice of pizza filling his mouth, apologized by way of sign language that he could not talk with his mouth full, and that they may as well tell him what they had been doing since they had last seen each other.
"I went out to the bullhead and saw our friends there. All of them. The big guy is back in town for a bit longer. Now that I know you're safe, I'll see him about my goal." Brazen said, "I couldn't really do that before now, since having you like this put all of us at risk of sudden aura depletion..."
Oh, Bedlam thought, realizing that he should have had more faith in his siblings' desperation to get him free for their own personal security, rather than for their personal purposes. In his defence, his mind had been attentive to more pressing matters. "Whrorry abuth thath", [sorry about that] Bedlam said through a mouthful of lukewarm cheese, while simultaneously grabbing a second slice.
"I checked out on our forces imprisoned from the Haven debacle. Ghira has gotten in bed with the local human government, and they managed to save Kuchinashi and investigate the White Fang HQ. Our people in jail seem to have given up the location of the base in return for getting remanded to Menagerie custody. I figure that will be a pretty cozy way for them to get out of dodge." Dominic reported, "at the end of the day, Ghira and the humans are trying to blame everything on Adam Taurus. It would seem that I led the impoverished faunus of Mistral astray with my hateful words, with my easy spite. The humans are scared enough to see Ghira as the lesser of two evils, so they'll let him have a stage to speak on until my head is on a pike."
Bedlam finished up his second pizza slice and considered taking a third. Dominic and Brazen glared at him - evidently upset at having lost their auras without warning and not having heard from him for days – as if daring him to take another slice of pizza before giving them an answer to explain what had happened to him. Go on, take another slice, Bedlam, their eyes said, and Wilt might make a slice in you! Bedlam was pretty sure that his brothers would not actually attack him for making them wait, but the threat lingered there.
"So Neo, who was one of Torchwick's goons if what I gathered from what she said is honest, seems to have chased after Cinder to Mistral. She wants Cinder to make bloody reparations for Torchwick not living through the Battle of Beacon."
"He died?" Brazen and Dominic said in unison.
"Apparently. She was sure enough of that point to hike across the continent in search of your girl." Bedlam said to Brazen, then continued nonchalantly, "I actually saw her on the train from Kuchinashi, while moving through the cars. I didn't realize it at the time, since she has an illusion semblance that she can use to disguise her appearance."
"If Torchwick is not in Vale, I'll have an easier time of it when I return there, I suppose." Dominic mused. "Nature abhors a power vacuum."
"Anyhow, so Neo saw me on the train as well, and I guess she figured I would know about where Cinder went after Haven. From the news videos of Blake confronting us, and from her time spent at Beacon on Cinder's team – she has some nice photos of Blake in a schoolgirl uniform with her team in class – she knew that I'd probably be found in the vicinity of Blake. So she just waited for me to show up and, when I did, she used her semblance to get the drop on me and some rancid chemicals from this warehouse or something to knock me out. She dragged me here, tortured me for Cinder's whereabouts, then I escaped and now she's tied up on her own torture table in that room over there." Bedlam gestured to the PRODUCT TESTING sign. "Live video of the room on her scroll," Bedlam added, taking out her scroll and fumbling to access the transmitted video feed again. "Her semblance lets her make fragile illusions that everyone can see, but visual only? She had to use audio tech to mimic the sounds, and she couldn't do anything for smell. She made me think she was chopping me up, but when I couldn't smell my own injuries I saw... smelled through it."
"We do smell well," Brazen sat down beside Bedlam, took a slice of pizza, and wrapped his arm around Bedlam's shoulders. "Tortured, you say?"
Dominic sat down on the other side of Bedlam, took yet another slice of pizza, and mirrored Brazen's one-armed hug. "If she worked for Torchwick, that racist piece of trash, I'll assume that she does not see eyes-to-eye with us on the matter of faunus rights."
"Yeah, she's human."
Together, they replied, "which begs the question, if she is human, why is she still alive?"
"You have Wilt," Dominic noted.
"She tortured you," Brazen reminded.
"Yeah, just a bit of electroshock, some waterboarding, her semblance, sensory deprivation... nothing too bad. We've certainly had worse. I think it was her first time."
He instantly regretted how he had phrased that, as Brazen and Dominic raised their eyebrows. The video was finally visible on the scroll, and they regarded it with interest as he had spoken.
"Torturing someone, I mean." Bedlam clarified, as he realized what they were inferring from the image.
"Why is she naked?" Dominic asked.
"She's not naked!" Bedlam retorted, "she's got underwear on now."
"Why is she alive?" Brazen asked again.
"Now?" Dominic asked simultaneously.
"I kept her alive so that we could talk about what to do with her," Bedlam explained, "while she was trying to get Cinder's whereabouts from me I had the presence of mind to think to myself: 'Golly, I wonder if Brazen is having any luck with his goal since I saw him last'. So even though I was very much wanting to squeeze the life from her with my hands-"
Bedlam raised his right hand and demonstrated the wound he had had to give himself in order to make use of the semblance his brothers had charged on his behalf.
"-I was compelled not to."
"Compelled?"
"What happened to your hand?"
"Yes. It was like a voice on my shoulder saying 'don't do that!' Maybe the voice was just a bit of you left in me." Bedlam grabbed another slice of pizza, "there was a lot of strange stuff that happened to me today."
Brazen and Dominic nodded on either side of him. "Like that feeling we shared earlier, before we started sparring to charge Moonslice. It felt like you charged Moonslice yourself, but you did it wrong."
"Yeah. That happened while she was sucking my dick."
Bedlam ate the slice of pizza. Neither one of his brothers interrupted him or pressed him for anything further as he did so. I would make a big deal of that, wouldn't I. With the slice eaten, he explained further what had happened to him; "So after the waterboarding in the afternoon, she got it into her head that pain doesn't really have much of an effect on me, as far as convincing me to tell her about Cinder was concerned."
"Our life has been a constant burden of misery and suffering," Dominic agreed, "she might be onto something with that assessment."
"Once she started along that line of reasoning, she took off the rest of my clothes and used her semblance to make herself appear as Blake. I didn't see much after that because she blindfolded me after she got the condom on. I felt what she did, though. Tricking my body into thinking she was Blake...making me think it was Blake touching me like that..." The thought of what Neo had nearly done to him, had done to his determination to be faithful to Blake despite her treachery, it made the pizza taste stale in his mouth as bile rose from his stomach. Reliving it hurt, but he needed his selves to know what he'd gone through.
"Take it easy, Bedlam." Brazen comforted gently, "we're all here, now. It's safe. You're safe."
"I'm fine. Just need a moment. Probably just ate too fast," Bedlam said, trying to deflect their concern. Who am I kidding, I can't fool myself like that. "Alright, I might have been a mess for a bit. I'm fine now."
"Torture, rape, and you're hearing voices?" Dominic listed, "that does not sound like something we should just wave off."
"I know, but I have to tell you what happened before I forget it all or come up with some explanation to dismiss it as delusion. I think I channelled Moonslice through the condom, with the energy she put into... put into me. It was white and red, though, instead of black like it normally is, when it fired off. I couldn't see what happened to her because of the blindfold, but I could sense a bit of it through what must have been aura extension."
His brothers looked momentarily impressed at those last words, with Brazen making a little hum of approval.
"I thought I had killed her with a point-blank blast to her head. Then she started moving again after lying on the floor for a bit, so I think it just knocked her out."
Brazen took his arm off and stood up, pacing in front of them for a bit. "It kind of makes sense, if you think about it."
"What do you mean?" asked Bedlam.
"Our semblance doing that," Brazen replied. "I called it Moonslice because Blake had taught me that the moon merely reflects the light cast on it by the sun. I hadn't known before she told us..."
"That's the SDC's fault," Dominic interjected.
"Yes, they didn't teach me much about anything other than how to be useful employees. At least I can drive and fly heavy vehicles. Anyways, until she taught me that I never had a name for my semblance. I just knew that I unlocked it during emotional trauma like everyone else, that it absorbs attacks so that I can redirect the energy back at whoever's trying to kill me at the time."
Bedlam remembered telling Blake about his semblance, the way she came up with a name for it. Moonslice, lighting the world when it is darkest. Justice for faunus. The way she had had her arm around me, like how Dominic has his around me now, before she had begun to fear me and what had to be done to liberate our people.
"What are you saying?" Dominic said.
"What I'm saying is that maybe Moonslice doesn't just absorb and reflect energy. It ... reciprocates intention. If someone tries to inflict pain on me, if I manage to block the attack I can reflect that hurt back at them; with Wilt, we can add fire dust to that for more damage. However, if someone tries to direct pleasure on me...while we have something in place to block and absorb the energy..."
"It dulls the feeling and sends the pleasure back at them!" Bedlam understood, then his body slouched, "but that means that I felt so little because of the semblance and not because I somehow knew it wasn't Blake doing it..." That makes me sad, Bedlam thought. A part of him had been secretly hoping that Neo's inability to get him to climax had had some deeper meaning, meant that he and Blake were truly soul-mates like the characters in her novels. It could still be true, though, he thought. She's still mine. If nothing else, there was always the theory that a semblance was a person's soul, which meant that his soul had protected his body from deviating from his heart's desire. That's still pretty romantic, yeah...
Dominic still seemed unsure about what had happened. "So when he blocked the pleasure of getting a blowjob with the condom, he blasted it back at her all at once?"
"Pretty much." Brazen answered. "What do you reckon that felt like?"
"It did knock her out, while I was blindfolded, so how would I know?"
They sat huddled together for a minute, enjoying their reunion, until Dominic ruined the moment.
"I'm just going to say what we're definitely all thinking: he fucked his way free?"
"Only you were thinking that," Brazen sighed, "I think there's more to it..."
"Don't be crude, Dom. Plus, you two definitely helped. Without Moonslice being charged normally, I still would have been restrained by the shackles on the table like her arms are now and she would have just woken up anyways. With the pair of you powering up Moonslice, I was able to break the ones on my arms after ripping off my nail to make an object to channel the energy through. Subdued her before she managed to go any farther."
"Good thinking with the nail, grisly as that must have been." Brazen congratulated, "she wanted to go farther? Sexually, you mean?" If Bedlam didn't know better, he would think that his clone seemed somewhat too eager to hear more about that.
"Of course she would. Look at us. We're pretty good looking (or at least, I am), why wouldn't she want as much as she could get?" Dominic hummed, flexing the arm that was not around Bedlam to show off his bicep. It was not particularly effective through the loose sleeve of the trenchcoat, but his audience knew all-too-well what was under the clothes.
Brazen snorted derisively, "what do you mean, we all look the exact same!"
Dominic brushed off the sleeve of his trenchcoat not presently being used to console Bedlam, "well, some of us seem to have chosen to have a better sense of fashion."
"Hey, the goggles and scarf looked good on the guys I took them off of!"
"Yeah yeah, you rolled some homeless guys without fashion sense because they looked better than you. Good job."
Bedlam had missed this, just sitting together with himselves, feeling completely at ease. Even with Blake, there had always been the sense that each of them were holding back. With his brothers, there were no secrets. No facade. They knew everything about one another, and if the strongest relationships were based on trust, then theirs was solid. The next time I see Blake, I have to be more open with her. About my feelings. I can't just expect her to understand my thoughts, my feelings. That's not fair to either of us. A few minutes passed as they ruminated the pizza and what had been said, until Bedlam broke the silence.
"So what now? Should we head back to Lichen's?"
"Well, the thing about that..." Dominic started, sheepishly, "...is that Brazen and I may have both been in the same room with Lichen at the same time. I passed it off as me being his long-lost twin brother, separated at birth, which anyone who is not versed in the existence of magical relics would believe more quickly than they would a story about magical relics existing. I suspect that Lichen may be someone not so knowledgeable about such subjects. With that said, when you were taken my first fear was that Lichen had decided to turn on me... it made me realize that despite our history, we cannot trust her much more than we trusted our lieutenants at headquarters. It's not fair to her to put her loyalty to the test like this, either. We should be looking for alternative lodgings. Something that we have a bit more control over," Dominic motioned at the wide open space of the warehouse, "this place might fit the bill, if there are no other occupants."
"I think it is just the four of us." Bedlam said, somewhat uncertain. He yawned, "I've been awake for days, guys, and not by choice. If there are no other burning questions to answer, I wouldn't mind actually getting some sleep."
His brothers nodded.
"What about the human?" Brazen asked.
"It's up to you," Bedlam replied, "but I think you should keep her alive to help track down Cinder. She might be human, but at least she is a criminal human. Makes her a bit more aligned to what we need from an ally right now. At least she won't go teaming up with Blake anytime soon. Having a human on our side that does not work for Salem might be useful on its own." Yes, Bedlam thought, it is me that thinks we should keep her alive. The voice was just because of how tired I am, hungry I was, scared of what Neo was threatening. There was no need to think any deeper on that, now that he had the opportunity to rest with a full stomach.
Brazen nodded.
"Don't screw up our biggest secret, at least not until I've corralled Blake," Bedlam warned. "If you need to, you can always blindfold her. After that, she won't be able to tell your voice apart from the other, or from mine." Bedlam got up, unlatching Dominic's arm from his shoulder as he did so, and strode over to the desk where he picked up the sleeping bag. He scrunched it up and used it as a makeshift pillow; Neo wouldn't have needed a pillow for it since she was so short there was plenty of material leftover to fold over for her head to rest upon. It was too small to fit Adam Taurus, so now it would just act as something soft on the cement floor of his new base.
"This place needs a throne before we can consider it a base," Dominic muttered, echoing Bedlam's thoughts. "We'll keep watch, you get some sleep. What are your plans for when you wake up?"
"Today I should meet back up with Hazel after I evaluate Neopolitan, I guess. Maybe she can help me with meeting Hazel, or with navigating the criminal underworld of the city." Brazen said, then took out the wallet which he had retrieved from Bedlam,"I have lien to buy information, but that is no good when the brokers are racists, looking to collect on my bounty, or both. Usually both. If Neopolitan seems amiable to a team-up, she could act as my face for such information brokers' services."
"Blake." Bedlam responded simply. I've left her unwatched for too long. Who knows what she has done while I wasn't there? For all I know, she could be on a ship with her father back to Menagerie already. What will I do if that happens? I would be forced to bide my time until I could get a separate passage there. His thoughts recalled Brazen's description of the jellyfish grimm. If this Salem person is truly allied to me and can control the grimm, perhaps there are... non-conventional means of travel I could entertain?
Fighting nevermores and lancers had been exhausting, but Bedlam wondered how it would feel to ride one? His curiosity shifted into budding dreams as he started into a restful sleep. Brazen lay his head on his left arm, while Dominic examined the wounded left finger on his right.
"Aura stopped the bleeding, but I'm not sure if the nail is going to come back in." Dominic said, "speaking of which, did you notice how fast our aura regenerates now?"
"That's fine. Who'll see it? I'll just wear the gloves anyways," Bedlam replied. "I noticed my aura regenerating quickly, and so did Neo, which is why she decided to stick the cattle-prod on me for a while to encourage my aura to stay down."
"Are you sure you'll be okay after all this? You can talk to us. No secrets from ourselves." Brazen said from where he lay on his arm.
Bedlam considered what had happened, what he had told them.
"There is a chat log on her scroll of everything she asked me through the speakers. Everything is on that scroll. You should read through that before you go in there, so that she doesn't realize you're not quite me." He gave the scroll to Brazen, who began going through it diligently. "She didn't get what she wanted," he whispered under his breath, though he knew that they could hear him. "About Cinder, or to spoil me for Blake. I'm still only for her."
Dominic ran his hand through Bedlam's hair, gently patting him on the horns. Brazen nuzzled against Bedlam's arm that he was on. The warehouse returned to silence, save for the distant hum of city traffic and the chirp of a lonely cricket echoing in the late summer air.
His only complaint was that his pillow smelled like Neopolitan.
DOMINIC
With Bedlam asleep on the floor, Dominic stood up and did a tour of the warehouse. He told Brazen what he found: nothing remarkable, but Brazen did his own tour while Dom sat by Bedlam.
[Place is bleak] Brazen agreed afterwards. [At least there's a toilet.]
[So what do you think?]
"I think we have to test out Moonslice's new thing under more controlled conditions. Preferably ones where we can see what is happening. I think Bedlam needs rest, but he's me: so he is going to dive back into his mission and bury his feelings about what happened here. I think we should stay here and ditch Lichen's place. Too many people in that neighbourhood that could identify us, if they felt so inclined."
Bedlam didn't stir at the sound of his voice. His body was too exhausted, needed sleep too desperately to be so easily woken today.
For an hour he kept a silent vigil, alternating between watching the windows, the door, and his twin as the last read through the scroll transcript.
"What's the transcript on the scroll like?"
"It's a thing. She's definitely absorbed a lot of what Torchwick thought about our people. She calls us animals, beasts, a lot." He scrolled through the messages some more. "Hey, it's not that strange that we don't have hair, right?"
"We have the SDC to blame for that, so I would say it is something I'm a bit self-conscious about. Maybe not so much as the eye, but still..."
"She mentions that here. Then she... ah, that's when she started trying to seduce him. It feels sort of wrong to read this. Her, pretending to be Blake for him. Calling us out for being a virgin." He scrolled through some more, continuing on despite his reservations about the action. "Oh, that's racist, too. This is going to give me a terrible first impression of her."
"That's probably for the best. She did torture us, or at least attempt to. The human is not our friend." Dominic replied tersely, "it'll be your job to get her in line."
"You mean you don't want to dominate her?" Brazen chirped. It was clear that he had been waiting for that opportunity. Dominic rolled his eyes, and Brazen was satisfied by his pun's effect and returned to the scroll. "Ah, she seems to have gotten wise to the fact that Bedlam has no idea where Cinder is, and decides to keep him as a pet anyways. Lovely."
"A pet?"
"Yeah, apparently whatever Moonslice did to her left a good impression," Brazen said, then hummed pensively, "we need a better name for it now, since there are sort of two versions of it. How about 'White Moonslice' and 'Black Moonslice'?"
"That's just... lazy."
"Well, come up with something better!" Brazen changed the scroll to view their captive. "I think she's fallen asleep. Her eyes are closed and she's not moving."
"Are you sure she's not dead?"
Brazen shrugged. "Bedlam didn't kill her, so I'm going to say she's still alive."
Dominic went to watch the street from the exterior door, leaving Neo's welfare in Brazen's hands. She's probably just asleep.
He got up and went over to stand behind Dominic. "Anything happening out there?"
He shook his head. The sun was still hours from rising, the moon hanging brightly in the firmament. "So, about White Moonslice..."
"Terrible name will have to suffice until we think of something better," Brazen said.
"Well, I was thinking that if I could charge up Black Moonslice on the train by sparring against myself..." he wrapped his arm around Brazen's middle, "there might be a similar method of testing out this new version."
"What exactly are you proposing?"
Dom tipped his head to the side, locking his horn under his twin's.
ADAM TAURUS
"You didn't tell me I could do that, Dai."
His glowing green host was huddled on a sofa couch she had conjured from the ever-present mist.
"He heard me talk, or at least reacted to what I said when I dove into him."
Ozma never did that, she muttered sullenly, of course, he never put up with being in here at all. Kept his aura all to himself.
"Who is Ozma?"
The wizard-immortal, the agent of Light. A human. You would know him as Ozpin, the one who entombed my relic in the depths of that fetid dungeon beneath his school. It was not my fault his choices ended like they did. Personally I think he simply prefers to believe in destiny: order instead of chaos. He calls me a monster...
"Well, that's just how humans see anything that is different, strange." Adam remarked. He looked back at the floating rings. "I couldn't do that before, though. Why was I able to implore him to spare the girl?"
He said my name. It opens the portal a bit, as part of the magic of the Relic that lets me know that I am being summoned. Since you were viewing life through his senses at the time, you were able to manifest a bit more strongly for a moment. Enough to attempt to influence his action.
Adam watched as his bodies reunited in the warehouse. "So if one of them says your name, or something phonetically similar, and I'm viewing their ring, I get to play conscience?"
When the gods created the Relic, it was to provide humans with the power of choice between good and evil. So everything here involves that choice in some way. It seems that letting the human live, in this instance, was the 'good' thing to do.
Adam was silent at that. It was a lot to process. That was fine: he had plenty of time in the Between Realms.
"I thought conscience was a little thing that sat on each shoulder, telling you to be a good employee or a bad employee," he said, remembering the SDC's colouring books given to the minor miners. He'd coloured his entire page black with charcoal, earning himself a beating by his taskmaster. "How do you know letting her live is good? For all we know telling him to let her live was evil. Shouldn't there be another Adam here, to tell my bodies to do the opposite?"
I know it was good for the same reason that I can answer your second question. There was another voice in his ear, but he chose to listen to yours instead.
Adam's attention was fixated on Dai as she rose from the couch, the gentle roiling of her wings enough to propel her upwards into the air.
I know that telling Bedlam to spare Neopolitan was good, for the simple reason that I told Bedlam to kill her.
Dai flashed a needle-toothed smile that nearly stretched from the base of one of her long ears to the other, and as Adam stepped back he once again wondered what Dai had done to deserve the brother gods trapping her in this green eternity.
Thank you for teaching me how to play cards, Adam. Let me return the favour. Let me teach you how to play my game.
