Yo ho, me hearties! Some spoiled seasick dandy's done swapped about the prior two chapters into a proper orderin'. Pay it nary any heed. Affix your eyes to t'screen for another bilge-fresh batch o' me scribblings, which be good as any grog in port! Hoist the colours, pillage, plunder, and pirate to yer hearts' content! Have ye a jolly TLAP Day!
~Jolly Jackie, the Rummy Writer
Chapter 33: Not CLAMming Up
NEOPOLITAN
Tuesday
Getaways were a fine art; Neo a virtuoso. The pilots tailing her may have had years of experience flying and knew what all the buttons and dials on their control consoles did, but Neo had a lifetime's worth of striving to get away. It only took her an hour of daring dives through the dark morning mountain ranges surrounding the city and the occasional illusionary decoy before she was finally confident that she'd lost her pursuers. She wasn't quite sure where she had ended up, but the craft was nearly out of fuel and she'd given Dominic more than enough of a headstart to ensure that dum-dum got away safely, too.
She brought the aircraft down 'gently' into a thicket of brambles and sapling trees, burying the nose of the vehicle into the ground and underscoring the importance of wearing a seatbelt when crashing your ride. She evacuated the craft, hopping out into the woods and pulling out her scroll for its compass application to figure out which way she should begin heading to get back to the city. In all of the excitement she had lost track of how far from the city she'd come, but at least it was closer to Mistral than Vale had been.
"You should make use of all of these brambles, Neo."
Neo nodded. It was a good thought. She began pulling and tugging at nearby vegetation that had been scattered about - perhaps by the arrival of a large airship, who could say - and repiling them on top of her scuffed vehicle.
"You never know when you might need an airship again." Roman's voice said in her ear. He would have been proud of her ability to create camouflage from local materials.
Brunette Trivia's voice joined from the other side. "Assuming it can be refueled and pulled out."
Neo looked at her work. It was like a giant squirrel nest on the ground. Anyone passing by would find it strange, but at least if the military flew past overhead they wouldn't see it as easily as before. Looking around, it didn't seem like many people came out this way. In Vale, this much wilderness would have been the exception - like Forever Fall or the Emerald Forest - but in vast Mistral, it was so much more common. Still, she wasn't sure whether the military would keep searching for the ship. She doubted the boys' theft of that royal yacht would go unnoticed for long, which would diminish any outstanding urgency to find her own ship.
"On the topic of Taurus' ship: it would probably make more sense to just use Adam's ship. Less crash damage." Trivia continued. "Besides, didn't he say that he'd have a bullhead from Cinder's flunkies? A bullhead would be nicer than this heap of junk. Squirreling this thing away like an acorn has just been a reason to have to re-manicure your nails."
Neo glanced at her fingernails, now grungy with sap and dirt.
"Ah-ah-ah." Roman scolded Neo's memory of her naive younger self-image. "Never underestimate the value of a few well-placed stockpiled resources. A criminal must ensure they have as much variety in escape plans as possible."
Neo popped back into the airship and fiddled with the transponder that she and Brazen had disabled earlier when they'd heisted it. Gods, Neo loved a good heist. Linking the transponder to her scroll, rather than to the Mistral Military Network (being very careful to not let it send out a ping to alert anything in the area still searching for her), she felt confident that - so long as she could find her way roughly back to this general area, she could find her little hidden treasure later. With that accomplished, Neo began walking south, back towards the city.
"Especially when some plans remain so… unreliable. Untenable, even."
"He's talking about Adam." Trivia clarified, as if Neo hadn't already figured that out. "He's saying Adam isn't a reliable partner. Just because he might have been hiding his knowledge of Hazel's hideout from us. Even though there are so many other reasons to arouse your suspicions."
"He is probably working for Cinder. Excuse me: still working for Cinder. He probably has been laughing at you behind your back, with Cinder, this entire time as he leads you on distraction after distraction - most of which arouse something other than dear Neo's suspicions."
No! Neo shook her head angrily. Adam was her partner! He'd said so! He'd promised! She had to believe that he was being honest with her, and that the Hazel-angle had been a dead-end.
"He's not told you why he cares about finding Cinder. Your motivations are clear enough." Roman gestured to himself. "But all he's said so far are vague hints about wanting to question her and needing your help to find her. What with him being Mistral's most-wanted faunus terrorist and all."
"He does have some charm."
Not to mention his semblance, Neo thought in between her illusion's badgering.
"What does Adam Taurus still have to gain from Cinder Fall, other than revenge for costing him his leadership of the faunus terrorists?" Trivia pondered. "He seems to, for some reason, want her alive."
"Despicably so." Roman agreed. "Reasons beyond mere revenge for harm done to friends and reputation. He did mention something about Cinder's master, which was something I always hinted at… before playing along to Cinder's tune got me taken off the board."
Neo began to walk faster, as if she could outpace the conversation taking place on her shoulders.
"I'll admit, it would be nice to win it all." Roman said. "I might not have said much about who Cinder was in league with, but if they're as happy with Cinder as you and Adam are…"
"Then they'd probably let us kill Cinder for them before welcoming us into their confidence?" Trivia finished the thought. "Maybe. In any case, not killing Cinder for Adam's sake seems to be the easiest way to keep Adam happy. Hopefully he'll let us kill her after he is through with her?"
"Probably not worth getting ourselves in too deep with what got me killed."
Neo did not like all this talk about Roman's death. She didn't even feel like thinking about things beyond avenging Roman. Such thoughts distracted her from her purpose. Fantasies about a life with Adam on a beach, schemes to ingratiate herself into Cinder's master's good graces, these were idle thoughts that had no bearing on getting Hush buried deep into Cinder's heart. Can we change the subject?
"Alright. How about we talk about what's going on in Mistral?" Roman offered. "It seems like the government there is declaring war against Menagerie - there has to be some way for us to profit from that."
"Adam is aligned with Menagerie. If Mistral had declared war against them, then they've declared war against Adam. Which is bad for us if he is our partner."
Ugh. Neo rolled her eyes fiercely, letting her distaste for this subject be known. Politics suck. It was like a game for popular people that enjoyed talking too much. Politics wasn't a way for her to have proper fun - not without Roman around.
"We could discuss why your imagined version of your younger self has the voice of Mother." Trivia offered. "I mean, besides your daddy issues, do you really have to have mommy issues, too? Why do you get to use the scroll to sound like the greatest vocalist Vale ever heard, while I have to sound like a naggy hag who shipped us off to boarding school the first chance she got so that we'd stop being her and father's problem?"
Neo waved her hand dismissively. She wasn't about to go down the rabbit-hole of introspection! This was going to be a happy walk through the woods. I have enough problems without having to deal with grimm.
"Well, what would you like to talk about?"
How about we focus on how good I was at flying that airship? Or deciding what I'm going to eat once I get back to the city - I'm thinking honey-glazed chicken. Neo wondered if Adam was already back in the city. His flightplan had looked like it would take him pretty far southeast, but he'd beat her back to base if she had to walk all the way. Neo checked her scroll for the time, surprised as rays of sunlight broke through the dense forest canopy to let her know that it was daytime. I guess it is a bit early for chicken. Maybe a croissant.
"Or just take a pudding cup, dump it on Adam's chest, and lick it off?"
Yes, that sounds nice, too.
DOMINIC
Wednesday
Dominic couldn't say that he'd ever slept in a bed as nice as the one aboard the Olympic. It was so nice, it may have been why he found that he actually slept-in when he'd tired of forcing himself to stay awake with a rigorous workout routine and enjoyment of a cold, refreshing shower. Sleeping in… that's a first - especially in the past couple weeks… he thought to himself as the grogginess of sleep faded.
He wanted to believe that it was the bed, and not that one of his clones had died. With no ring appearing on his finger, he knew at least one was still alive. Bedlam, at least, hadn't gone off on a foolishly noble suicide mission to save Ghira.
There existed a strange conflict in him at the uncertainty of it. He'd hate to have lost Brazen - especially in defense of Ghira and the other traitors. But if he had, then the silver lining there would be that Ghira would not be a problem to his plans to reclaim the mantle of High Leader.
I don't want to wish Brazen dead, I just almost wish his mission would fail. The guilty thought made him feel terrible. There were other faunus lives at stake, too, not just Ghira Belladonna.
Sure, but they're all the cowards, race-traitors, and failures that brought me low in the first place. The faces of the Menagerie Militia in the dark at Haven, opposing him as they stood behind the Belladonnas to save the school, flashed through his mind. He would not forget the face of any of those who had foiled him. Stabbed him in the back. Cowards, traitors, and failures!
And Salt. Brazen's mission wasn't just to safeguard his enemies!
He threw the largest pillow from his bed clear across the room. He sprung to his feet and looked at his surroundings. Human comforts. Part of him insisted that he deserved this, that he deserved to take from humanity the spoils of their enslavement of his people; another part of him was overcome with hatred. Hatred of humanity. Of what they were. Of what they'd done.
Salt. Lichen. Rothy.
…Rothy's mother, whatever her name had been.
Victims!
Ghira's ship carried victims of human oppression. It wasn't their fault that they had been conditioned to oppose him. Humanity had ingrained their chains upon them!
Okay, Dominic reasoned, I'm still righteous. I'm still fighting to protect my people, even if humanity has turned them against me. He could not forget how they had fought against him, laid him low, but he could forgive. I can… forgive Ghira and the other weak-minded ones for choosing humanity over me.
If I have to.
I guess.
He thought about forgiveness. The worry that he had lost Brazen was strong - perhaps stronger than the other worry. Bedlam. His other brother, off chasing Ghira's daughter, was - in Dominic's mind - on just as ill-conceived a mission as Brazen. Maybe even moreso. I know that is what I, Dominic, think, but I remember thinking it was important when I was Adam. So, it must be important. Besides, maybe Bedlam would surprise him and manage to bring the runaway back to their side. He stared at his finger. He heard the movement of team SSSN several rooms away. Stranger things have happened.
It was, paradoxically, so much easier to forgive Sun than it was to forgive Ghira or the others, even though he had - or perhaps because he had - introduced himself as an enemy combatant. Sun had never pretended to be his ally. He hadn't betrayed Taurus like the rest. Sun has always been strangely forthright and honest. It was becoming apparent to Dominic that his disguise would not last forever - even if his hair dye coming out didn't clue his new companions into the fact, Dominic just wasn't very good at keeping up the ruse. He would have to plan for how to deal with that eventuality… although there was a good chance Sun already knew and just didn't care.
It was a possibility that was difficult to believe, but if Dom could forgive Ghira, it stood to reason that Dom in turn could be forgiven much more readily by a Vacuan faunus he'd met only once in battle. Yeah, that's right, Sun has no personal gripe with me. We're practically strangers. We only fought that one time - our only interaction before my 'split'. Dominic smiled. Me and Sun. The idea of having a fresh start soothed even the smarting hurt of having to associate with humans. Sun's humans.
They weren't the worst of their species. Dominic might even argue that they were better than average. After the incident with Prince Jupiter, Neptune should agree that humans aren't really fit to rule Remnant. A possible convert to my ideology. Scarlet might comply on the condition I rescue his brainwashed friends from Jupiter, trading a cruel overlord for me instead. If there was irony in that thought, it went unnoticed by Dominic as he continued to analyze his current travelling companions. Cammy will probably do whatever keeps her safe and/or whatever Scarlet does. Sage was still an unknown quantity. He was a human huntsman in training with no discernible outlying character traits. He is the bedrock of their group, the straight man of this comedy troupe. Dominic would have to be satisfied by the hope that Sage would fall in line with whatever the rest of his team decided. If nothing else, I did at least save his life, so he owes me for that.
And it wasn't like Dominic planned to throw humans into pit mines, whipping and branding them like certain companies had been known to. No, he just meant to seize general political and military power. Just a bit of autocratic control. The humans would, for the most part, continue as they had lived before, but the Kingdoms' councils would consist of faunus. Military leaders and policy decisions would be faunus. Faunus holidays would be put on official calendars and not treated as jokes.
I'm just setting out to abolish the tyranny of the majority - too long have faunus rights been ignored or abused because we lack numbers to give weight to our standing as sentient beings living on Remnant.
Dominic made his way to the top deck of the ship to see how much closer they were to Vacuo and, thereby, Vale and his loyal forces. "Where are we?" He called across to Sage. In every direction all he could see was the flat horizon and rolling waves.
"What do I look like, a navigator?" Sage replied, "all I know is that I've been sailing straight east. No idea how fast, nor how far we've moved since I took over the wheel. This thing isn't really made for purposeful travel, so it doesn't have any measuring devices. Bet it never even left sight of land before we took it. Since you're here, why don't you take over? I could use more rest to let my aura regenerate and my bones set back into place." The human rubbed one of his bruised legs with a free hand.
Dominic rolled his eye, but moved to comply. He'd feel better being in control of something for a while.
"It's not complicated. Keep your hand on the wheel - Scarlet swore he'd know if I let it go, watch out for shoals and grimm, and keep us heading east using the compass app on your scroll." Sage gestured to his scroll's depiction of a quivering needle indicating the path north to Solitas. "The water is deep here, though, so I haven't actually had to alter course at all to avoid any obstacles."
"Have you seen any grimm yet?"
Sage nodded. He pointed around back to the west. "There are a few trailing behind us, but they seem to be keeping their distance."
"They're gathering for an attack." Dominic stated; it wasn't a question. "They did the same thing to me on the train to Mistral."
Sage made a face. "To you?"
Dominic realized his error. "I mean, to me and all the other people and humans on the train. Nevermores just started accumulating in a giant flock from the forest we passed through until an alpha led an actual attack."
Sage looked out to the water. "So you think that if an alpha grimm shows up, we'll be attacked?"
Dominic slumped against the wheel. "Not if." When.
Sage looked glum, accepting the inevitability of it. They lived in Remnant. The largest body of water was bound to have some nasties lying in wait to snag them up. "I'll get some rest."
Dominic wondered how much damage the Olympic was designed to take from grimm. His gut told him that it wasn't much. He watched Sage move away, realizing that, despite his reservations about humans, he would have to rely on their aid in getting safely across the ocean.
It seemed like, for some reason or another, he might need them to keep watch while he slept longer than he had in weeks. Definitely the bed's fault, not Brazen or Bedlam's fault. Maybe I just like the rocking motions of the waves against the hull. A dark shape floated past under the bow of the ship, the little horror sizing him up before languidly passing by to join the growing assortment of aquatic grimm that had taken an interest in the allure of a relic passing through their territory. Monstrous mockeries of sea-turtles, eels, and sharks trailed behind the yacht. Their glowing eyes made the water shimmer with a false sunset for hours, until the actual sun sank beneath the horizon. Then there was just the eerie light following behind the ship in the night. At one point he thought he saw something flying far in the distance on a perpendicular course to their own. With his keen faunus vision, he could swear it looked like a flying boat - a Mistral patrol ship, maybe? Dominic suspected it to be human pursuit, but it was soon out of sight, not changing its course at all - if it had even spotted the yacht in the dark water.
When Cammy came up for a breath of air, he didn't bother pointing the sight of pursuing grimm out to her. Her semblance wouldn't be helpful in a fight, and her human terror would only add more incentive for the attack to come before they reached the shore's sanctuary in Vacuo.
NEPTUNE
Wednesday Evening
"You're sure he's still at the wheel?"
"Trust me, we'd feel it if he let go." Scarlet replied. A second or two later, he wobbled his head as he reassessed his words. "I mean, I'd feel it. You landlubbers might not notice if the ship flipped upside down."
Neptune felt himself become nauseous at that imagery.
"Dude!" Sun hissed at Scarlet.
"Oh, please. He has to get over this whole sea-sickness shite. We need to be at full-strength, and right now we're all mostly broken. Except," Scarlet accused, "for our two resident faunus. Funny how that happened."
"Is there a need to be suspicious?" Sage asked lazily from his chair, notably apart from the rest of them who'd chosen to all sit around Neptune on the bed. "It's a bit of a negative emotion, and as I've told you, that is becoming a problem."
Sun nodded. "Good idea, Sage! We need to find a way to lighten the mood here. Come up with some proper happy thoughts."
"I'm… happy that I'm alive?" Cammy offered tentatively. "I'm happy that I am alive." She said again, with a bit of certainty. "I'm excited to have a semblance that won't ruin my life."
"Good start, Cammy!" Sun congratulated.
"I'm happy to see a new place. Vacuo should be interesting." Sage offered. "Visiting Vale was nice. Until. You know…"
The room went quiet after that.
"Okay, well, are there any issues we can talk through?" Sun asked. "Any problems or issues we can solve quick?"
"I'm drugged up and tied to my bed." Neptune said, "with nothing but whichever of you is tasked with watching over me for entertainment."
"Anything at all." Sun asked the rest of them.
Neptune huffed and sank into his mattress. It hadn't been his idea to get on the boat. Why was he being punished? "Fine. What are we going to do about Taurus?"
"Good topic." Sun nodded, now paying attention to Neptune. "I'm thinking he's definitely teammate material."
The others responded to that with incredulous looks, except Cammy. "Whoever he is, I'd like to get to know him better. He's a bit of a mystery, and that just makes the reporter part of me keen to investigate. Who is Dominic?"
"I'm pretty sure he's a murderous psychopath who will, without warning, kill us all for either not being faunus or, in your case, for having stopped his attack on Haven." Scarlet said. "But nobody's listening to me, are ye. So I say sure, why not, bring 'im into the fold. Let's make uniforms and get fully licensed together. He has shown some capacity for restraint when you're the one doing the asking."
"Good point - is he really a good fit for our team if he follows Sun's orders?" Sage chirped, then added a bit more quietly, "not even Sun does that half the time."
Neptune was listening to Scarlet, but having spent several hours in Taurus' company had mollified his concerns about the guy. If he was actually Adam, then Adam was not what Neptune had thought a wanted mass-murderer/terrorist would be like. He'd been calm, curious, intelligent. Maybe that was just because his frustration with humans had been recently vented on Jupiter's forces?
Did faunus come with a built-in human ass-kicking quota? Had Adam filled his for the week?
Did Sun fill his own quota up by constantly exasperating Neptune?
"But you say that like you ever had any real interest in being a licensed huntsman, bro. I say he's not killed us all (yet) which honestly puts him on equal footing towards me as the rest of you." Sage said, his sweeping gaze judging them all. Even Cammy wasn't exempt, which Neptune felt might be warranted since she was responsible for some of what had happened. "He did pull me out of wreckage, so I guess I'd be a vote in his favour. Not like I can justify tossing him overboard when I owe 'em like that. I just don't know if I'd go so far as to say 'teammate material' when it comes to him and us."
Sun continued nodding. "You're right. We have to figure out if he is cool enough to join our esteemed ranks. This team has standards which must be upheld!"
The others laughed, then stopped and went awkwardly silent when they realized Sun had been serious. Sometimes, with Sun, it is hard to tell. If anything, SSSN had been the most rag-tag team to represent Mistral - they hadn't even bothered to bring their school uniforms to the festival, while everyone else had.
"If he joins our team, would our name be SSSND?" Neptune asked, "because that seems like it would be suitable for Vacuo. Sand."
"Sand Sea?" Cammy interjected, reminding them that she was present and nominally part of the team now, too.
"Maybe it'll be ASSSN, like how he'll probably try to assassinate Vacuo's leadership, too, like how he's gone through Vale and Mistral." Scarlet glowered as he reminded them of Taurus' crimes. "Vale has no Council, Atlas is sealed off, Mistral's in shambles…
"Speaking of team names and Mistral, do we… want to talk about Headmaster Lionheart?" Neptune asked. "I feel like that is weighing us down."
They all went quiet again, making Neptune feel a bit guilty about broaching the subject. He knew that he didn't want to spend too much time thinking about how their headmaster had apparently turned traitor, but he also felt like they needed to resolve their thoughts about it, too.
"Taurus wasn't responsible for Lionheart and Jupiter doing what they've done." Scarlet said. "They made their own decisions to bugger everyone up. Piter might think we're associated with Lionheart, but he's wrong. We know the truth, and it'll be easy enough to prove."
"Say what you want about the Prince, but he had no reason to want to start this all. His agreement with Ghira and Menagerie was good, things were going so well. Whoever released this wanted there to be war, wanted Jupiter to lash out." Sun surmised. He nervously tapped his feet on the floor. "They never did find Cinder."
"'They' being team RWBY and company, you mean?" Neptune asked.
Sun nodded. "After the fight at the school, she was missing. Lionheart was dead, Cinder was missing, and Blake said that Yang was sort of evasive about what had happened to the bandit lady - who just so happens to be Yang's estranged mommy, they say."
"So you're saying that Cinder is responsible for making Jupiter think Lionheart turned traitor, and for making him think that Ghira was plowing his wife?" Sage summed up, "just to ensure that Mistral fell like Vale? You don't think Ghira…"
I do not need to think about my cousins' sex life, Neptune winced, thankful that Sage had not finished the statement.
"That makes a certain amount of sense." Cammy said, "it would be sort of stupid to pull off a surprise attack in the school with so many unknown variables without a contingency plan or two. I mean, if Cinder did just place all her bets on her main plan going off without any problems-"
"Problems like luring team RWBY into a trap before blowing the school up, even though there were otherwise no defenses left at the school until the faunus showed up from Menagerie." Neptune interrupted. "Yeah, I felt like that was bad strategy on her part. Why have the bandit summon Yang's uncle to the school to defend it if their goal was to blow it all up? For a plan relying on stealth, they kind of made it so that they'd get noticed."
"Any problems that hadn't been part of the plan, that is." Cammy continued, "then she'd be really stupid. Or she wanted the attack to fail."
Sage whispered something to Scarlet about how Cinder had had Emerald do her homework while infiltrating Beacon as a fake-student, prompting them to wonder how smart the villainess was.
"Which wouldn't make sense, because it isn't like she was working alone. I mean, Lionheart was a traitor - he fought team RWBY at the school, I saw it - and there were other people involved on her side, too, that would point out obvious flaws and the need for backup plans." Sun said over Sage and Scarlet's tangent. "Odd that she'd go with a sexy video of Ghira, though. How would she even have known he'd be in the city?"
"You're assuming the video was fake because you didn't see it. It looked real enough." Sage said, "certainly enough to make Jupiter think it was real."
"Maybe she just did that as a bonus, in case Lionheart's treachery wasn't enough to set off the fire?" Sun mumbled. "I don't know…"
Cammy pulled out her scroll. "I could ummm… I remember seeing the video pretty well."
Neptune blanched. "Gross. No. Please, no."
Sun bit his bottom lip. "I mean, on one hand, I wanna say no, too, but on the other hand, it could help us figure out what happened. Figure out how-"
"If." Sage interrupted.
"- Cinder managed to fake the provocative scene well enough to set off the prince like this."
"Emerald was an illusionist. Maybe Cinder had her do it?" Neptune reminded, hopeful of finding a quick answer that would let them avoid having Cammy use her semblance to recreate what half the team had been exposed to in the news manager's office.
Scarlet came to Neptune's rescue. "If not Emerald, then Neopolitan worked with Cinder in Vale. Maybe that's why she's here in Mistral, hanging out with Dominic and Adam? From what Sun told us after hearing from the RWBY ladies, Emerald's more of a psychic - can't really film that, can ye? Neopolitan's my bet. She… could make a video of anyone doing anything, with her illusions." Scarlet's face flushed. "Man, that's sort of hot."
"But would Taurus… oh, right." Sage began. "I almost thought that that would be implausible due to his role as a member of the White Fang, but now that I think it through… it makes more sense. The attack on Haven fizzles, so Cinder and Adam get Neo to make the fake video, which starts a war between Mistral and their strongest ally - Menagerie, the only other state willing to come to their defense. Mistral is destabilized, and Taurus' enemy - Ghira - is defamed. Bing-bang-boom, easy evil."
The room nodded. It all made enough sense to be probable. The Junior Detectives had solved another big case!
"Which still brings it all back to Taurus, I think. The other one, I mean." Neptune said. "Dominic says that his brother went to save Ghira from the bomber squadron that Piter sent out to destroy the Menagerie-bound ships. So that's what, him creating a disaster that he can save them from, or did this fire just start to burn out of his control? Even if Dominic was innocent in all of this, he still seems to cherish his brother. And his brother's ideology. Which means he would be happy to see humans suffer - not really what team SSSN is about, I hope?"
"Or it means he's playing us for chumps and is working with Cinder and the other baddies just like his brother. Maybe it means that he's just that willing to get his own people killed to win. He has that whole thing with Blake, right, maybe he just isn't stable." Scarlet said. "I've noticed that guys that have a thing for Blake are short a couple marbles."
"It means that he's been hurt. He's wounded. He just needs help healing. I think, while we might not all be willing to join the White Fang (and I mean Ghira's non-violent organization, of course), we can all agree that the current social set-up isn't doing many people any good. Jupiter is just the latest in a long list of instances of people screwing one another over. Come on - most of Mistral has been overrun by bandits for decades!" Sun said, impressing Neptune with having actually paid some attention in Haven's classes. "We can help Dominic by supporting and nurturing him. The power of friendship!"
"Or break him down by telling him the truth about what his brother, Cinder, and Neo pulled off, on the assumption that he is 'innocent in all of this', as you said. Maybe this is what we can say to him to convince him to turn away from his brother's path and join us instead." Scarlet offered. "I mean, we could rebuild him. We have the technology. Better. Cooler. Gooder."
"Technology?" Cammy asked. "What technology?"
"The technology to make team SSSND-C uniforms?" Scarlet stretched. "I dunno, it was just a line from a movie."
The Six-Million Lien Man, Neptune recalled the movie. Taurus' bounty wasn't as high as that, but it had been large enough to motivate Sun's teammates to go along with his plan of getting close to Dominic over the past week.
"I'm just not convinced he's cool enough. Even if he is more redeemable than his sibling." Sage said. "I mean, he has Taurus' look, and he might be rockin' the tortured past/brooding loner attitude, but does he have the moves to back that look up?"
Sun frowned and looked away. Neptune noticed and for a moment thought Sun was concerned that Dominic didn't have the moves - but then he realized that Sun being silent was suspicious. Sun was the talkative one. He's concerned that Dominic does have the moves. Neptune recalled what the others had recounted of the fight on Olympus to him and what Sun had learned (via Blake) about Adam Taurus' combat capabilities.
Dominic blew up the ship using the same type of semblance that Adam Taurus has.
Neptune kept his gaze on Sun. He wasn't sure if the other three in the room had thought it yet, and certainly there were many examples of family members sharing semblances. My own extended family has the whole elemental theme, for instance. There was a lot of research that had been done on aura, mostly inconclusive, but most of it agreed that it was an extension of a person's soul. If Dominic had Moonslice, it could be argued that his soul was very similar to Adam's. For all they knew, Adam and Dominic had secretly been working together for years in the White Fang, lying and deceiving their way to success. Neptune thought about it: if he'd had an identical-ish twin, the possibilities were endless. He could do twice as much homework! His grades would have been perfect!
If 'Dominic' had Adam's mastery of Moonslice it begged the question: are we gallivanting about with a terrorist after all? Is there any substantial difference between pretending Adam is Dominic or ignoring that Dominic is just as bad as Adam? As folks say, 'if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck… it's a duck.' Or, in this case, a bull.
More importantly, did that matter at this point? Mistral was behind them. They were going to Vacuo, where they could confer with the headmaster and government there about what had happened in Mistral, but beyond that they had done all that they could do to save lives and right the situation on their own. Neptune knew his teammates knew that, that they were essentially running away with their heads hung in defeat, and rather than acknowledging that and wallowing in their own inability to emerge victorious against such impossible odds… they were focusing on a smaller, more addressable issue.
Even Neptune wasn't overly fond of the bitter taste of defeat. Maybe new allies, like a Taurus, were what were required for success. So far it didn't seem like a loathsome burden to bear. There was even the optimistic hope that this relationship could be mutually beneficial, socially. Even if it has negative ramifications for us later down the line, it means living that long, so it could be worth the cost of associating ourselves with a pariah. Taurus' was only a criminal in Vale, Mistral, and Atlas - not in Vacuo. Scarlet had complained that that meant there'd be no bounty for them to cash in on, but it also meant that it offered them all a chance to regroup and restart without being bogged down by prior assumptions about themselves.
"I'm not sure." Sun admitted. "I've never seen him dance. Even if he, maybe, possibly, probably isn't but-it-doesn't-matter-if-he-is Adam, Blake never said anything about whether or not Adam could dance. It wasn't something she liked talking about. The good times - if she had any - with Adam."
Oh, those kinds of moves. Neptune sighed. His teammates were actual idiots. He was an idiot, too - of course they'd all seen his actual combat moves. They'd not been knocked out before Taurus had shown up to save the day. He should have known that Dominic's combat skills weren't what was being questioned. Or what was considered relevant to his teammates.
Scarlet and Sage shouted out in fury.
"Well we have to find out if this is going to go anywhere!"
"It was bad enough we had to teach Neptune!"
"I'm NOT doing another dance training montage."
"Can he at least sing? What's his octave range like?"
Their raised voices were, without doubt, audible to the faunus steering the ship. Well, I guess if he hears one thing from us talking about him, doubting his repertoire of dance choreography is least likely to provoke him.
"Montage?" Cammy asked, genuinely interested. Fortunately she asked this in a written work rather than in the animated series, so the audience was not subjected to a five-minute clip of chibi Team SSSN learning to dance after their abysmal performance at Beacon's dance, nor was she privy to how SSSN's dedication to dance and music had won them many fans in Vale that had come out in droves to support them during the Vytal Tournament.
Nobody had to know how Neptune had been forced at gunpoint to go beg Lie Ren for dance lessons, lest he be kicked from the team.
"Okay, enough about Taurus." Neptune said in the hopes of avoiding any more memories of how awkward he had been at Beacon's dance, "I want to be let out of bed. I'm all drugged up and my semblance is off, so why am I still restrained?"
"Because…" They each started to say.
"I'm pretty sure you'll commandeer the ship and head to the nearest shoreline."
"Your whining will be a lot harder to ignore if you're walking around the ship."
"You look so comfortable on the bed and need to get more rest."
"I had no say in the matter?" Cammy added with a shrug. She, at least, could claim innocence for his plight.
The four different responses failed to diminish Neptune's irritation with his ongoing confinement. "I'm serious, let me get out of this bed."
"We probably should let him out…" Sun acquiesced, and began moving towards Neptune's wrists.
"Do we have to?"
"He's so much nicer like this."
"I'm sure we could drag the bed around Shade Academy to get him to class."
"Girls will know he's all about the bedroom. We've got his best interests at heart."
"We'll never have to worry about getting our own table in the cafeteria."
Neptune scowled at Scarlet and Sage, who were clearly enjoying Neptune's pain. He made a mental note to get revenge on them for this later, once he had appropriate means at his disposal. And once he was off the ship.
"Can't we just train his semblance so that it isn't a problem?" Cammy asked, "I'll be training my aura and stuff, too, so he can join in with me."
Scarlet shuffled closer to Cammy. "We're huntsmen, Cammy. We all train our semblance and aura all the time. It's part of the job. We'll all be training together. That way we know each other really well. Really well."
Cammy flushed beet red, shutting up and looking intently at the floor.
Definitely something going on between those two, Neptune noted, even though it didn't surprise him in the least. He'd always known Scarlet was a dog; he'd just been surprised, somehow, that his teammate was a sea dog. Damned pirate, always chasing after the booty!
"Neptune's problem is more than with his semblance. I think he has an actual phobia, a deep-rooted aversion to water, that holds him back. He needs therapy."
"Well sorry for not wanting to accidentally drown any of you!"
The other three boys pointed at the patchwork repairs Dominic had made to the ship after his semblance's previous outburst.
"Well, I mean, I'm not going to feel comfortable about your safety. That's all I meant." Neptune corrected himself sheepishly. "Dominic was telling me about faunus with… gills. I might actually follow up on that. Once we get to shore. And aren't on a boat. It is something I never thought of trying before today, so I'm actually sort of excited that it could work for me."
"That sounds like a smart plan." Sun smiled. "Pffft. Another reason to make new friends! All these cool new perspectives, making us think cool new things."
Neptune wasn't totally onboard with that sentiment. He wanted to be open-minded, but the past few days had just been opening his eyes to a world of injustice and tragedy that were human-caused, if not his family's fault in particular. Was thinking about training with someone who breathed water worth discovering that his cousin was a little eugenics-eager tyrant?
Sun finished untying Neptune's hand, and moved down to start untying his ankles while Neptune quickly started untying his opposite hand. While Sun seemed to be taking care to untie the bindings, Neptune just used his newfound leverage to tear himself free. Neptune's method was so effective that he soon was tearing his ankles free, too.
"I'm free!" He cried joyfully, hopping up onto his feet. For a moment, everyone watched quietly.
Then Neptune bolted for the door, running through the halls towards the top deck like a bolt of lightning from his trident.
"Neptune!" Sun shouted after him, "where are you going…?"
Sun's voice, and the voices of the others, faded behind him as he used a power greater than aura - determination - to move with great speed as far as he could away from his so-called 'teammates'.
I'll just seize control of the ship and steer us towards the nearest shoreline! Easy-peasy!
It was not 'easy-peasy'.
Neptune had forgotten several things, and been unaware of another.
He'd forgotten that Dominic was still a factor, and presently was in control of the steering wheel.
It had slipped his terror-stricken mind that the drugs had negated his semblance and his aura, leaving him vulnerable.
He had ignored his knowledge of Remnant's geography, and the fact that they were partway across the largest body of water on the planet with no land in sight.
As the other four scrambled up the stairs to the top deck behind him, they also became aware of the unknown factor. The Olympic, the stately yacht that bore them towards Vacuo, was under attack by a swarm of wrecker-grimm that had crawled up the sides of the ship to scuttle towards the helm.
Dominic gave SSSNC a friendly nod as they all ran out onto the deck, but could not wave. One hand was dutifully maintaining its hold on the steering wheel to ensure their course remained set, whilst the other slashed and hacked and stabbed at the crab-like monsters that were intent on pinching him with their jagged claws. His hair sparkled with sea-spray around his horns as his body tensed in response to his effortless motions to slaughter the dripping horrors. SSSNC shared a glance between themselves, each of them accepting that, whatever other questions about Taurus remained, at least one was answered: he certainly looked cool as he nonchalantly defended the ship with one hand while steering it with the other.
Neptune also noted that as the water splashed the faunus, flecks of natural red hair strands were visible plastered against his horns.
"I seem to have driven us through a reef of grimm." Dominic said in a somewhat apologetic tone, as if he'd accidentally spilled a cup of tea rather than imperil their lives. "Someone feel like taking a turn at the helm?"
Auraless Neptune did an abrupt about-face and returned to his room. There were lots of books there for him to study, and his honour as a huntsman-in-training was not required for the defense of their craft.
Twenty minutes of listening to muted weapons-fire through the walls later, Scarlet came down to check in.
"Hey. You okay down here and all?"
Neptune looked up from the book he was reading (a rather dull tome regarding the adoption of the lien as an international currency after the Great War) and nodded. "Is the ship still under attack?"
Scarlet didn't immediately answer the question. "Did you take your suppressants?" He checked his scroll, looking to monitor Neptune's percentage was still null.
"Is the ship safe?"
"Not really sure." Scarlet sat down on the bed. Neptune had chosen to sit in the chair, not feeling like getting back into bed so soon after his freedom had been so hard-won. "The grimm are still out there, like nothing I ever saw before at sea. They keep coming up onto the deck, but they are too small and weak to really be a threat to us. Especially with how fast and… enthusiastically Dominic was tearing into them. Sun didn't tell him to hold back against grimm, like he did against the soldiers on the airship. Watching him go all-out is…" Scarlet punctuated his unfinished thought with a nervous shiver. "He's got moves. Scary fast."
"What about when night comes?" Neptune asked, glancing out the nearest porthole window at the reddish-orange reflections shimmering through, sunset indication of approaching darkness. "What will we do then?"
Scarlet scoffed. "We have two faunus with nightvision for that, and Dominic seemed to be looking forward to spending an entire evening killing. Killing grimm. Besides, the little wreckers can't get below decks unless we leave a porthole or door open for them to scuttle through." Scarlet got up off the bed and knelt beside Neptune's chair. "I'm a bit more worried about how they were acting, instead of the attacks themselves. They just kept going for Ad - for Dominic. For Taurus. Made it really easy to destroy them. They weren't ignoring the rest of us, but they seemed to really want to claw him. So I figured, since you've got nothing else to do, I'd let you figure out why that is."
"You mean you wanted to give me reason to be suspicious of him."
"It is sort of suspicious, yeah, now that you mention it." Scarlet agreed with a smirk.
Neptune gave Scarlet a hard look, then relented and gave a sharp laugh. "I guess a little suspicion is warranted. I wasn't suspicious of you, look where that got me."
Scarlet leant back and put his hand to his chest, acting wounded. "Sir, perchance you would grace me with an example of such harms as I have seen fit to injure you with?" The forced imitation of Neptune's tone really sold the entire line.
"Get!" Neptune pointed at the door. "Get out of here you boob. Wouldn't you rather be helping Cammy practice with her 'semblance'?"
Scarlet blushed, but got up and went for the door. "I'm just sayin', whatever Taurus is, there's something strange about 'im."
Neptune looked back at the page he'd been reading, but he couldn't focus. His brain had been given a problem. What attracted grimm? Negativity, right? Was Dominic a cauldron of negative emotions to such a degree that he was luring in this many grimm on his own? Neptune searched his own feelings, finding that his own heart was quite heavily burdened with thoughts of his homeland on the sunset horizon. He knew Scarlet harboured similar worries about his childhood crew, that Sun was concerned about Blake's dad and the rest of the faunus bound for Menagerie. Sage and Cammy, at least, might not be as enticing for the grimm, but all of them had unlocked auras. According to school textbooks, grimm were seventy-percent more likely to go for a person with aura rather than a civilian - a fact that usually made huntsmen's jobs easier when protecting civilians, the teacher had cheerfully noted that day in class.
Okay, so even with five other unlocked people onboard, most of whom are going through emotional life crises and only barely started opening up with one another about our feelings and fears, the grimm still want to go for Dominic. Neptune looked at the shelves of books. Damned Scarlet, I hate it when he's right.
Having nothing better to do to help, Neptune did what he did best. He started researching the problem. He started doing his team's homework.
Someone had to be the brains of their group.
NEOPOLITAN
Thursday
The Luck of the Mountains was busier. It was a party, even if the tone was different from what Roman's stories had portrayed it as having been like so many years prior. She'd struck a deal with the bartender: she'd provide the establishment with a modicum of sensual entertainment, and he'd provide her with enough alcohol to numb her worried mind. Neo's illusions gyrated on the stage, hooting patrons drank and cheered. Best of all, with their attention on the stage, they kept their distance from Neo's booth, letting her mind wander from sustaining the scantily attired images of whichever lucky patron was 'elected' to be sent up on stage. Where did her mind go? Immediately to sour suspicions and impatient inferences. Where was Adam? After her long long walk back to the city, she'd expected - wanted? - to find him waiting for her. When he was nowhere to be seen, she'd waited all day for him to show up until she finally passed out from exhaustion.
She was beginning to have emotional flashbacks to the fallout of the Beacon attack. Waiting for Roman to show up. Hoping. Expecting. Waiting. Needing.
Not this time! She looked at her scroll and saw, to her relief, that Adam's bounty was still listed on the local boards. Certainly, if he had died on his mission to save the faunus, the government would want everyone to know.
But there were no celebratory parades on the city streets. In fact, there wasn't much activity at all on the streets. Even down in Mistral Below, people were staying indoors. That there were any patrons besides herself, if she could be considered as such, in The Luck tonight was honestly surprising. Neo had drawn the assumption that they were regulars.
"Or maybe they're just still counting all the legs, arms, and heads before designing the floats and balloons for the parade." Roman suggested, "knowing Mistral, they'd want to showcase a bit of excessive wealth in their declaration of victory over a faunus."
Neo's memories of Roman's infrequent musings on his homeland, combined with the grandeur of the airships she'd seen while ferrying Dominic around like a chauffeur - hey, I ended up doing that for Cinder, too! Is this becoming a trend? - came together to create a concern that Adam's ongoing bounty did not give her cause for comfort.
"Well, it was always a longshot. Relying on Adam." Trivia muttered. "It was nice while it lasted."
"You're doing the right thing. Make use of the resources you still have, the institutions you can rely on." Roman advised, waving his little cane to indicate the gloomy establishment. "You won't find a more solid figure in Mistral than Malachite - and I mean that in more than one way."
Neo smirked. Malachite did strike a solid silhouette. Or, at least, she had when Neo had seen her last, during their little skirmish in Vale years ago. Her daughters had always been concerned about what they ate, to preserve their lithe figures, so Neo doubted their mother had ever slimmed down.
"If you keep gobbling up desserts and drinking, you'll end up the same way."
"Your inner-child seems to think that that's a bad thing, Neo!" Roman replied, feigning surprise.
Neo took another swig from the bottle.
Adam's on his way back. He's just… taking longer than I thought he would. Maybe he damaged his ship, too, or ran out of fuel, and he has to walk back. That made sense. If even Neo, a trained getaway driver, had suffered such mishaps, then some rough faunus guy had probably had to rely on his aura and his thick skull to survive whatever crash impact landing he'd ended up in.
"With him, it's more appropriate to say he's hoofing it back." Roman quipped. "How long are you going to wait for him?"
It's not like I'll just be sitting around pining for his return, Neo defended her plan. I'm still working on finding Cinder.
"By drinking the barkeep's entire stock?" Trivia complained.
"No, she is keeping close to Malachite's network. So that when the Spyders find Cinder - and if she is alive, they will find her - Neo will be ready to hear the news."
If Adam thinks he can just lollygag around the woods like a wild animal, making me wait, then he'll be in for a sorry surprise when he finally waltzes into the city only to find that I've already dealt with Cinder!
"Yeah, but didn't we want Adam's help to take her down?" Trivia reminded, continuing to be an irritating little voice of rationality that Neo took another swig from the bottle in another attempt to silence. "Cinder is powerful. She killed the Nikos girl, she killed the headmaster of Beacon. We need Adam to be a nice meatshield for us."
Yeah, need Adam's meat.
"We can always request some backup from the Spyders." Roman offered. "They'd be just as reliable as Taurus - and less painful to watch as they get burnt to a crisp by the Scorching Caress; or use them as a distraction in an ambush. Just because she can beat some heavy hitters in a fair fight doesn't mean we need provide her the same courtesy."
Yes, Neo agreed. In a way, taking care of Cinder on her own, using Malachite's goons, would be doing Adam a favour. She'd be protecting him from taking unnecessary risks, keeping him safe from harm. She'd get her revenge, she could blame the kill on Malachite and her goons, she and Adam could tie up the loose ends with the Spyders, and then the pair of them could retire and live on a tropical beach someplace.
There were louder cheers from the bar's patrons as the current dancer suddenly changed to wear a grass skirt and a coconut bra, her illusion mirroring her fantasy.
"Woah, Daniels, didn't know you'd look so good wearing that!"
"Bet the wife likes it when you shake your hips, birthday boy!"
The target of their mockery and model for her illusion, Daniels, was surrounded by empty bottles, having been drinking even more heavily than Neo since his likeness had been chosen by his party as the evening's entertainment. Suffering the tyranny of the majority, his complaints were ignored. "You'se guys is all jerks… this birthday sucksss."
Even slitting Cinder's throat while she slept would feel pretty good… though it might be too efficient… Neo wanted to make sure Cinder suffered, right? After all, Cinder had set events in motion that had gotten Roman… gotten him… he wasn't here anymore.
As Neo considered using Spyder goons to kill Cinder, two examples of them sat down uninvited in Neo's booth, snapping her mind from bloody visions. She gave them a cold glare, but they weren't fazed. The pair of them were cocky with the certainty that Neo wouldn't start anything violent while waiting for information on Cinder.
"Mind if we sit with you?" Brick asked after he'd already sat down. "We're supposed to be keeping an eye on you, but that's a lot easier to do if we're all friendly."
"Less creepy on our part to sit with you, rather than peeping at you like these other perverts." His partner added, gesturing to the crowd of middle-class men whose attention was still, and always had been, focused on the illusion of their gyrating coworker on the small stage.
Neo shrugged and took another hard swig from the bottle. She hadn't seen them watching her, so they must have been watching her through the security cameras or something.
"And we do want to be friendly." Brick continued, "especially given the state of things in the city. Everything here is about to change."
"There's a big shuffle coming," Mortar explained. "The Below have had enough of how the Above have been running their affairs and what-not. It's about time we make our grievances heard."
Brick nodded. "Getting rid of those filthy faunus they kept down here was a good first step."
"But why should the elites be in power? They've all - quite literally - got their head in the clouds. I say it's time some of us below get a fair taste. Ninety-percent of the population shouldn't have to live on ten-percent of the wealth!"
Neo could read between the lines. She hated politics, but she wasn't stupid. Malachite was looking to expand her operation. She already controlled Mistral Below. Which meant the only place to go was up. Malachite was going to do politics, and she would rise a crest of popular unrest to carry her up. She'd manage to convince her downtrodden base that things would change if she were in charge. Neo knew well enough to know that such social upheavals only ever served to change the faces in power, not the system itself. Her father had been an example of such, as was the man who filled the vacuum left behind after Vanille died.
"Malachite feels like, if you're interested in doing some more freelance work, and have nothing else on your agenda, she could make some more arrangements with you to ensure that your comforts are guaranteed." Mortar produced a fresh bottle of a much higher quality booze and placed it in front of Neo. "Here. To friendship!"
They each poured a fresh shot and drank.
"Not a chatty one, are you?" Mortar said after a few more shots, and much more inane conversation about his personal life that the increasing intoxication drew out of him.
"It's fine. She just don't trust us." Brick said. "Not yet. She will, once she realizes how good she'll have it being a Spyder. Until then, I don't mind being given the silent treatment. Hey, it just lets us make the sales pitch uninterrupted."
Several hours later, Neo had managed to attain a slight buzz. She'd made some progress, an inroad with the Spyders, tonight: she might not really care about how Brick had gotten into working for a criminal gang, nor did Mortar's struggles to provide for his alarmingly mundane family interest her. They didn't have to know that, though. All they needed to know is that she'd feigned enough interest in them opening up to her about their petty lives to ingratiate herself to them - remedying any residual hostility from their initial encounter. She had maintained a presence, and the possibility that she was interested in what they were selling: a more long-term position in their organization.
"Never let people forget you exist, Neo. Let them forget that you're a threat, let them forget why they should care about you, but never ever let them let you out of the back of their thoughts." Roman counselled her, reminding her how painful it had felt for her as a child to be ignored by her parents. To have her shunted away to her room, to be tended to by a string of governesses, and eventually to be sent away to school. She might not share Roman's obsession with the limelight, but she was still loath to be ignored. "At the same time, don't forget what else is in their thoughts. Malachite might be genuine in this offer, or it might just be misdirection. She knows who you were, who we were together, but she's probably unsure of who you are now. And when she's not sure about something, she's bound to be wary of it. That's how all information brokers are - they deal in facts and certainties. She wants you on the payroll, like she had me."
She wasn't sure what Malachite wanted her to do next, but she'd let Malachite know she was still hanging around, waiting. Neo stumbled home through the alleyways of Mistral Below, having enough sense to use her semblance several times to throw off any potential pursuit, until she finally made it to the TorchQuik Warehouse. She wobbled towards the middle of the space, where she'd made a pile of blankets that she could curl up in for another bout of fitful sleep. The blankets smelled like her. They smelled like Adam. They smell like us. With a little smile, she shoved her face into the blankets and enjoyed the smidgeon of hope that the memory of what she'd had yet provided. Adam would return. He had to.
Until he did, her hand drifted down her belly to keep herself sated. It hadn't helped yesterday evening. Her hope was that any residual pangs of physical longing would dampen as time apart from Adam went on.
"Yeah, that's not what's getting damp right now, is it?" Trivia sighed.
DOMINIC
Thursday Morning
Cammy and Scarlet were up at the helm, ostensibly so Cammy could be taught how to control the ship. Nobody in the galley was ignorant of what was really going on between those two. Sun had been, but Sage and Neptune had openly broached the subject while eating cereal.
"...which would make sense, given how her last cameraman turned out. Bole. So her semblance makes sure she'll never need to rely on a Bole ever again." Sage was saying as Dom crept into the room.
"Well, speaking of a bowl, how about you grab another one for Dominic?" Sun commanded playfully, directing his human back to the cabinet that contained the breakfast cutlery and dishes. "Sleep well, Dom?"
Dom slid into a seat at the counter, nodding wearily in response to Sun's question. "Why're you eating here in the kitchen, instead of in the fancy dining room?" He hid a smirk as servile Sage brought him an empty bowl and a container of cereal fit for royalty. Lots of little almond slices and dried fruit mixed into the multigrain melange. The good stuff. None of that Pumpkin Pete's garbage or SDC faunus kibble.
"Because we're lazy?" Neptune offered, stirring his steaming cup of cocoa methodically in the hopes of it cooling enough to be drinkable. "The dining room is all the way over there."
"Unlike the proper owner of the ship, we don't have a waiting staff." Sage added, even though, in Dominic's mind, he was doing a fair job of it already. "Probably for the best nobody was aboard the ship when we took it."
But it wouldn't be very discreet of me to just start demanding these humans wait on Sun and I hand and foot. It was a nice image to think about, even if he couldn't see it being made a reality until, at the earliest, his proud return to Vale.
"So what have you been talking about?" Dominic asked casually while filling his bowl to capacity with cereal. "Grimm been behaving themselves?" He had heard the occasional retort of firearms through his brief sleep, but no alarms had been raised so he'd taken the time to do some exercising in his bedroom before he'd gotten a text from Sun on the scroll's local network that the boys were waking up and going for breakfast together. The invitation must have been sent as they were on the way over to the kitchen, if Dominic was the last to arrive. His invitation had not been an afterthought; he had arrived shortly after the others because he'd given his sweaty body a quick rinse (the showers were divine aboard the yacht) and had also wasted a bit of time drafting a message on his scroll to save to the journal. The others haven't posted or logged anything since Brazen used Lichen's scroll - I may as well break the silence. It wasn't like he was worried about his selves, or anything. They were him. They'd be fine.
Probably.
He doused his bowl of cereal with milk, definitely not the type to eat his worries away.
"We were just gossiping about Scarlet and Cammy." Sun confided, "they're up together at the helm, he's teaching her the ropes - but we were just saying that those aren't the only ropes they're getting tied up in."
"That attempt at a pun got away on you, didn't it."
"Yeah, Neptune, I really lost it on that one. They can't all be A-material" Sun sank his head. He immediately perked back up. The guy's optimistic cheerfulness was like a trick birthday candle, impossible to snuff out. "Anyways, us being us, we were speculating on the specifics of their relationship. Sage has been trying to sabotage that fruitful conversation-" Sun emphasized his statement by grabbing a banana out of a conveniently nearby basket, "- by talking about Cammy's semblance, instead."
"Her semblance is useful, for things outside of combat." Dominic agreed, finding humour in helping Sage steer the conversation away from commentary on the state of Scarlet and Cammy's courtship dance. "As huntsmen, I'd suppose you gauge most semblances in their usefulness in taking out monsters, but it's nice to have more mundane semblances."
The boys nodded thoughtfully.
"Okay, tell me this. If I have some bloke that can shape wood to his will - what use do I have for your carpentry skills?" Sage asked, "I mean, in a world where we have these sorts of utility powers, if it weren't for the grimm, would semblances determine your career?"
"That's an interesting question," Neptune said. "I think it sort of already works that way. People with martial semblances end up in our line of work."
"Unless it's the other way around. Nobody knows for sure. What if being in our line of work encourages development of a martial semblance?" Sun countered. "Velvet, back at Beacon, had a camera semblance, too. But hers let her copy weapons and fighting styles and… well, you know." Sun stopped providing useful facts about huntsmen in front of Dominic, perhaps because he didn't want to put 'Velvet' at a disadvantage on the off-chance that Taurus and Velvet ever came to blows or… well, given the topic Sun and Neptune were trying to steer the conversation towards, perhaps Velvet had been a more intimately-known character.
"So you're saying that if we keep tossing Cammy into dangerous situations, her semblance will evolve a way to be used in a fight?" Sage said. "Deadly evolution…"
"Do semblances evolve, or do we just find new ways to use what was always there?" Dominic wondered aloud as he greedily scooped up cereal before it could get soggy. "My brother and I… I'm sure you noticed, but we share a semblance. He's probably better with it than I am," Dominic lied. "After we found each other, our semblance… we found another way of using it. I don't know if it was always there, or if it just evolved as the situation required. How would you even know the difference?"
Neptune grabbed a banana and slapped it down on the table beside where he sat. "We could do a study. For science. Get two brothers, separate them, test their semblances. When one shows an evolution of the semblance, see if it is in the separated brother without using the stimuli that had awoken the change in the former."
"Dude." Sun warned. "That's sort of…"
"Separating families?" Sage agreed, "I can tell Scarlet to turn the ship around if you wanna play like that."
"Oh, come on guys, I didn't mean like what… I didn't even say faunus!" Neptune pleaded, "it would be done with consenting individuals. For science! For understanding!"
"They're messing with you, Neptune." Dominic surmised, then shoved another heaping helping of food into his face.
"Ah." Neptune regained his composure. "Of course they know that I am a pillar of morality, and would not treat life with the indignity that some in my… family… have tended to do."
Dominic swallowed the cereal. "Nah, I meant they wouldn't turn the ship around."
Sage and Sun guffawed as Neptune rolled his eyes. "Oh, ha ha. Very funny. You lot are all comedians now?" He got up and put his dishes in the wash basin for someone else to clean later. He mumbled under his breath, in a tone so low that Dom only made out bits and pieces. "Flood this entire ship" and "see how they like swimming to shore" were slightly concerning. On the other hand, the yacht did have a lifeboat. Dominic was confident he could escape to safety if Neptune lost control.
"I guess Weiss and her sister have a family semblance. The Schnee semblance - glyphs." Neptune said as he returned to the table to eat his banana.
Dominic had not thought about that.
"Yeah." Sun agreed, "I remember hearing them talk about that. Weiss was training to use one of her glyph abilities that her sister insisted she master. Summoning, I think? I can't remember."
"Probably because you were focused on Blake." Sage said nonchalantly, earning a red blush from Sun that quieted him quickly.
"So Dominic. Those wrecker grimm, the crabby things, seemed to like you. What's up with that? Are you particularly interesting to them?" Neptune asked somewhat bluntly. Normally Adam preferred direct conversations, but Dominic, being sort-of undercover, hesitated to respond as he tried to find a thing to say that did not blow his disguise even more than it probably already was.
"Probably something to do with how your fam just tried to bomb all of his fam, man." Sage said, giving Dom a break to come up with good reasons for why the grimm preferred to come for him that didn't include magical relics, as he rose and went over to the cupboard that had all the tea in it. "Anyone fancy a cup o' tea? I'm gonna make a pot I think."
"Sure."
"Yeah."
"If there's sugar."
"I don't know. Maybe they were just upset I'd driven a yacht through their reef and disturbed them. Maybe they knew I was to blame. Maybe it was just because I'd been alone on deck?" Dominic answered with as many plausible lies as he could think of. He knew that the grimm had been drawn to him because they sensed Choice on his aura. The downside of carrying this power is often irritating. He hoped that Brazen could negotiate some sort of solution for that with Salem - get her to call off her proverbial dogs, as it were - without tipping their hand to the enigmatic creature. I want to not be chased by grimm for the rest of my life, but we also need to keep the Relic a secret from her. The grimm were an annoyance, but if Salem had torn apart Beacon looking for Choice, then Dominic felt assured that his life would not count for much in her eyes. "Perhaps they didn't like how I looked." He figured if he threw enough plausible falsehoods at them, they wouldn't consider the improbable true cause of their grimm problems.
There has to be a way of keeping grimm away that doesn't require putting a living wall of my own subjects between me and the threat… He was faunus, not human. He wasn't going to copy what the humans had done with the Huntsmen Academies to protect his Relic.
Well, if worst came to worst, he could just eradicate the grimm after overthrowing humanity. There had to be a way to exterminate them all for good, right?
They ate in silence, Sage hovering by the kettle boiling water for tea, letting Dominic think further upon his situation. As he thought about his division, his selves, and his plans for the future, he pulled out his scroll under the counter and finished his journal entry. Nothing fancy, nothing explicit. Saved SSSN from Prince. Sailing to Vacuo aboard stolen ship. #SameboatasMe #Outlaws #Piratelife
He saved it, and felt a bit better about himself for being the most recent of his selves to have contributed. Brazen had used Lichen's scroll at some point to text himself, directing Bedlam on how to make use of the scroll he carried. The scroll was, perhaps, their greatest magical advantage going. Nobody - save Salem - could communicate as easily as they could without reliance on a semblance. And that's assuming Salem's control over the grimm is, itself, not just some overpowered semblance in and of itself…
He wondered if Salem did have a grimm-control semblance and wasn't just a freakishly old/smart grimm or using some sort of Atlesian technology (because who else would have developed technology that evil?). Had she evolved her semblance over time or had just always been that powerful?
"Maybe some aspects of a semblance just require more aura, so novices cannot make use of certain abilities until they increase their aura reserves to a suitable magnitude?" Dominic offered to the stale conversation, thinking as much about his own development of Moonbright as he was thinking about Salem and Cammy. "Also, if there was someone who could use their semblance to do carpentry, that doesn't automatically make them a good carpenter. It would just make their work a bit quicker."
"Like how while Sun can make an entire basketball team by himself, there's nary a brain cell betwixt 'em all." Sage said. As Sun glared at him with a how dare you hurt me so face, he shrugged and continued with "tea's ready" as if taking potshots at Sun's intelligence were a common enterprise amongst SSSN.
Neptune began pouring sugar into his tea, but the other three took theirs plain.
"Wow. That's actually pretty sweet even without sugar," Sun commented. "What kind of tea is this again?"
Sage shrugged. "I dunno… honeywood, it says?"
He was right. It was sweet. Dominic's heart started to beat faster, like a full-blown sugar rush was hitting him. He gripped the countertop with his free hand.
"So, Neptune. If Scarlet's got a thing going with Cammy, and Sun's head-over-tail for Belladonna, I guess that just leaves us." Sage stated calmly, sipping at his tea as he did.
Neptune finished dumping sugar into his tea and took a sip thoughtfully. "What do you mean? Leaves us as the proud, single bachelors of the team? The remaining reasons single ladies will care about the exploits of team SSSN?"
"Nah, man, I mean we'll be the only ones left to claim our winnings from the Vytal bet." Neptune's face went red as he blushed, remembering, no doubt, one of the reasons his teammates had wanted to visit Vacuo in the first place. Dominic's face was similarly flushed, but for a different reason. Sage noticed. "Ah, right, Dominic's in on that little tidbit. Courtesy of Mr David, prior to his first encounter with his new lady love." Sage didn't understand. He'd mistaken Dominic's countenance as a blush of modesty. "Hey, Sun, if you say Dominic is as honorary a member of the team as Cammy, does that make him partial to the bet? I don't know how NDGO will feel about it."
"Oh, man, I'd forgotten about that." Sun admitted, "I mean, Blake and I aren't in a relationship per se. I told her I'd like to see her again, really, and that we'd had some fun over the summer, but there wasn't any commitment there…"
"So what you're saying is that you still dig Gwen?"
Sun coughed up some tea. "I dunno. I mean, sure, she's cute and such, but… did you see them at all during the Fall? After the screens all got hacked and things went to shit. I heard rumours, bits and pieces, on my way to the docks."
"I heard some things, too." Neptune said. "Not great things but, really, you can't blame them if it's true."
"Cowardice or reluctance to help those in need isn't really attractive…" Sun said, though his voice was muffled, like there was cloth over Dominic's ears. Everything sounded… distant. Dominic struggled to focus on the conversation.
He failed.
"So what if they weren't fighting where we were fighting when the festival got attacked-" Sage began to say, but then all three of them suddenly turned to regard Dominic as his fingers broke through the countertop.
Dominic knew they were looking at him, but he didn't much feel like it mattered at the moment. He wobbled on his feet, and his legs gave way.
"Take care… take care of Blake."
He clenched his eyes shut, as if closing his eyes could do anything to stop the inexplicable flood of memories assailing his mind.
"Blake is going to do something reckless."
"Um, is he okay?" Neptune asked, looking between his teammates, confused and unsure about what to do. He didn't want to be the first to approach Dominic, but felt like maybe someone should.
Sun had no such hesitation.
Dominic felt Sun grab onto his shoulder, but slapped the hand away.
"That countertop was solid marble…" Neptune muttered, a bit more relaxed now that Sun was doing something. His return to a more relaxed state of concern, and the peace of mind of all present, did not last.
All three of them shouted in alarm as Dominic's aura shattered.
Then a dark shape obscured the light that had been coming into the galley through the windows; the ship shuddered and leaned hard to its side.
"We hit something!"
"What happened to Dominic?"
"Topside, Sage, with me! Let me guide you up - grab my tail. Neptune, stay with Dominic, figure out what happened to him!"
Then there was a gurgling sound, a malevolent torrent of water through knives, and Dominic knew without knowing that an alpha grimm had caught up with the Olympic at last.
But he couldn't care, even though he could feel in his soul that it was coming for him, like a shark for blood.
Neptune's human face was in front of him. His mouth was moving, but Dominic didn't hear a word he was saying. All he could process was what Ghira had done to him.
How dare he use me.
To think I'd contemplated forgiving him!
For all his talk, for all his posturing, he's as bad as I've ever been seen as being.
Bedlam. Poor, poor Bedlam.
Neptune grabbed Dom by his shoulders, still flapping his lips.
Dominic felt a fury start to well up inside of him. Brazen had gone to save Ghira. He'd gone to save the man that stole my life as much as the SDC ever did!
Ghira could cost him two of his three lives.
Dominic rubbed his hand. No ring. No Relic. At least one of his brothers yet lived… though the shattering of his aura made him wonder how much longer that would last. His aura had shattered the other day, too.
Who is dying now?
Not me, he decided.
The ship was under attack. He was under attack.
"-the medical bay to figure out what's going on with you." Neptune said, not perplexed by Dominic's lack of responsiveness thus far. Neptune was probably dealing with his own, hydrophobia-related, issues. Being on a ship was bad, but being on a sinking ship would be a greater fear for the guy.
Dominic got to his feet, not bothering to question when he had fallen to the floor, and drew Wilt. He left Neptune in his wake as he made his way up to the top deck.
"Where are you going?" Neptune shouted after him, "the medical bay is this way!"
"To fight."
"You don't have any aura - it shattered! We should get to safety! Get you to safety!" Neptune corrected, "that's what Sun said."
Dominic didn't particularly care what Sun had said. He might not have his aura, but he still had Wilt and the strength of his arm full of hatred and rage. He wouldn't sit idle below decks while some monster wrecked his means of passage to his goal. Neptune trailed after him, hesitating between fear and concern.
If I die before I make it to Vale, who will hold Ghira to account for his sins? Brazen? Bedlam? He had no idea what their situations were. He was the only one using the scroll to talk. His selves were ghosting him! But… Better that then being actual ghosts…
As he went up the stairs to the top deck, Cammy rushed by. Her arm seemed to be covered in blood, likely hers.
"It's enormous!" She shouted, "sucking us in!"
Dominic got to the top of the stairs and saw what she meant. The side of the tilting yacht was caught in the toothy maw of what could only be described as a nightmarish shellfish, attempting to swallow the ship whole. Crab-like wreckers scurried about the rigging and deck, while spiny obsidian-black barnacles fell down from the raised shell of the alpha with the rain of seawater. The wreckers were intent on cutting ropes and scratching the ornamental railings with their fiendish claws, while the barnacle grimm seemed to exude some corrosive substance that ate away at the ship. Scarlet was desperately trying to steer the ship out of the threat of the open maw sucking them in, while shooting the wreckers that accosted him. Sun and Sage were busy in the middle of the ship, fighting the wreckers while tossing forth options for dealing with the danger.
At least with his aura shattered and the alpha grimm directing the attack, the wreckers did not all swarm towards him like they had the last time.
"Sage, jump up onto its shell and try to smack it closed, or maybe spot about for a weakpoint on its aft." Scarlet shouted, " there's gotta be some sort of joint or something on their back where the two sides of the shell meet, right?"
"Don't they move by shooting water out their front or something?" Sage argued, "how fast can it turn around to pursue us? If we can get some distance from it, it won't be able to catch up. I think we're better off keeping these little guys off the rigging and sails so that Scarlet can get us clear of it."
"Don't be so sure - this thing came out of nowhere."
"Or maybe you were just not paying attention to where you were steering the ship, partner…"
"I feel like if something that big shot water at the ship, we'd be in trouble." Sun interceded, "hey, don't clams have like, pearls inside?"
"Not always." Scarlet said, "Besides, I think this thing is more like a scallop."
"I bet we could sell it - imagine how much lien a pearl from something this big would be!"
"Do grimm have pearls? Wouldn't it just smoke away like the rest of it after being defeated?"
Dom strode over to them, whacking a few scurrying horrors that snapped at him along the way, and kicking a couple of the barnacle things off the ship. He looked at the giant. A large oval shell hanging open above them, a mirror of it underneath, and a fleshy mass of teeth and muscle in between.
He pulled out Blush and began firing into the center of the maw, figuring that somewhere in there, past its stomach, was some sort of fleshy head or body tissue. "Seems to me that it is giving us all the opportunity to attack it we need. The shells are its defence; it has become greedy and tried to eat us in one go. Let's do damage to it like this while it is open, before it closes up and just tries to smash into the ship to scuttle us."
Sage looked at Sun. Sun looked at Dom. "Your aura…"
"Doesn't make my rifle any weaker." Technically his aim was worse, and the recoil was noticeable, but it was not like the clam was hard to hit. He might not be regarded as a terrific marksman, but he could hit the broad side of a barn-sized target at point-blank range.
Sun looked at Sage. "Jump up on top and see if you can attack that joint - keep this thing open wide. Let's kill it."
Neptune was still in the doorway leading below decks, his face pale. As water splashed down on the deck, he shrank away back down the stairs. "I'm just gonna… Cammy looked like she could use some medical attention." With a burst of speed, he had vanished back below. One could hardly blame him; while, like Dominic, he was bereft of aura to protect him from danger, Dominic had no issue with water.
Sage bounded up in a blast of green energy, leaping up atop the shell that hovered menacingly over the yacht. "This thing is covered in jagged spikes!" He drew his sword and went out of view.
Sun had his staff-rifle firing into the maw alongside Dom, seeking out some sort of dark heart shrouded within that could claim them victory. "What is this thing?" He shot a glance over to where Neptune had been, realized his partner had absconded, and sighed. "Well, if nobody else knows what this thing is called, I'm going to name it a Chowder. You know, like the soup, and because it's trying to turn us into chow."
"I mean, I've encountered my share of nautical grimm, but never something like this." Scarlet replied over the din of their firearms. "Lucky us, it must be one-of-a-kind."
From deep inside the creature, tendrils began to emerge. Most were tipped with sharp hooks, but a few bore glowing yellow eyes.
"This thing is full of surprises."
"And not good ones." Sun agreed.
Sun and Dominic were forced away from the creature as the tendrils shot forth at them; Sun had to use his whirling staff to defend himself, limiting his ranged damage. Dominic kept them at bay with Wilt, but the sheer mass of the waving limbs made him wonder if firing into the creature was even a viable solution. They made their way to where Scarlet continued to hold position, defending the helm.
The situation was dire. Severed ropes swung about wildly, bearing heavy metal hooks or wrecker grimm, the barnacles spewed acid all over the deck making balanced footing impossible, and casualties seemed inevitable.
If it got any worse, it would nearly be as bad as a day working in the mines for the SDC.
"Before we die, I'd just like to say that we should have respected my partner's wishes and taken an airship to Vacuo." Sun said.
"Ass!" Scarlet hissed, "you're the one who kept pushing for a boat. Bleedin' spendthrift, you are!"
"Well, that was before all this happened. Some of us have some value for the journey, rather than the destination." Sun defended, "Besides, why does this stupid boat have so much food but no cannons? When I said we should take a boat, I sort of figured it would have some cannons like any other ship."
"It's a recreational yacht for sailing around Mistral Bay - it was never intended to see combat." Scarlet replied, "probably the worst ship we could have nabbed."
The chowder reared its maw open wider, letting even more tendrils flail out as wreckers kept climbing up the sides and barnacles ate through the hull.
Dominic wondered if Bedlam had been onto something about the Relic letting them control the grimm. These things don't have faces like Bedlam's grimm… how would I even communicate with them? And how would I explain it to Sun if it works?
Before he was forced to try the foolish gambit, the problem solved itself as there was an audible 'snap' preluding the maw falling shut; the tendrils that had been harassing the boys at the helm were severed and began to dissolve into wisps of smoke on the deck.
Sage strode up along the spiked upper shell, sword in hand. "I found where the shells connected!"
Dumbfounded at the sudden cessation of imminent digestion, only Scarlet had the presence of mind to give directions. "Alright, you scoundrels, get to clearing m'deck of these foul little crusties and wreckers!"
The chowder itself began sinking into the water. It wasn't dead - the mass inside was unharmed by the cutting of its joint muscle. It couldn't open its shell back up, though, which meant they were safe. From it, at least. Dominic joined Sage and Sun in routing the remaining grimm, kicking, shooting, and stabbing their way across the ship until it was clear. Then began the arduous chore of cleaning the side of the ship, as it was covered in barnacles. Dominic refused to refer to them as 'crusties', even internally.
"Scarlet, are we going to have to slow down to clean off the hull under the waterline?" Sage asked.
Scarlet shook his head. "I think we're just going to have to make a run for Vacuo at this point." He gestured to the school of dark shapes still following behind them, flowing past where the chowder continued to sink into the waves. "I'm not slowing us down to take a suicidal swim. The wreckers have ruined the sails, so all we have are the dust-powered propellers. Granted, those are like ninety-percent of our speed but I'm… not actually sure how much distance we get per crystal."
"We'll make it, right?" Sage asked. "I'm not ready for a life living adrift on this boat."
"We'll make it." Sun assured his comrades. "All six of us. Team SSSN-CD."
"Team sinked?" As the adrenaline wore out, Dominic felt exhausted. Too exhausted to even contest being conscripted into a team with such an ominous moniker. "I'm going to my room." He had to write in his scroll what he'd somehow remembered about Ghira. He'd been hypnotized, abused, all these years. If his brothers did not know already, he had to tell them. Maybe it could break Bedlam out of his obsession before he wasted any more time on following Ghira's daughter.
He had a feeling that his brothers already knew. He hadn't done anything that would have ended the hypnosis himself, so it stood to reason that some external factor had done it. Maybe Ghira's aura broke. It was a hopeful thought. Maybe Ghira was dead. Maybe his people would have nowhere but Adam to turn to. Yes, come crawling back to me, begging for succour and protection from the humans you fought against me to aid.
He rubbed his finger. Still no ring. He began slowly typing into his scroll. As he did, he began thinking about how Sun would receive the news. He'd been close to Ghira. His naive idealism was so similar. Will it dishearten him to learn that Ghira Belladonna is as bad as every other leader the White Fang has had? Dominic doubted the knowledge would break Sun's spirits, but still treasured the fantasy of it turning Sun fully to his side.
As he continued to type, he realized he couldn't tell Sun. Not until they reached Vacuo, at least. Such news would only foment negative emotion, and that was the last thing they needed on their barely-seaworthy ship while his Relic kept acting as a grimm beacon. That chowder thing only attacked us because I'm here - if not for Sun's perpetual good mood, we'd be overwhelmed. Dominic wasn't willing to fail his mission just for the pleasure of seeing Sun's face upon hearing how Ghira had mistreated a teenage boy. Paradoxically, Dominic relied on Sun's optimism almost as much as he wanted to wipe that perpetual smile off his face for good. What had more value to him? Sun's good spirits or the opportunity to radicalize such a strong fighter to his cause?
Seeing Sun smile made Dominic hopeful. Hopeful that somewhere, perhaps in Vacuo, there was a place where faunus could be that happy.
Dominic saved the journal entry on his scroll and turned it off. He lay down on the floor and began doing pushups. Exercise would help him stave off his host of grimm-attracting thoughts, or at least prepare his body to destroy them during their next encounter with the ocean's dangers. Besides, without his aura, he was running on his body's true strength.
…Eighty-six.
Eighty-seven.
Eighty-eight.
Splash.
Dominic looked up as a trickle of water wound its way under him. A barnacle grimm had bored its way into his claimed chamber. He stood up, stabbed Wilt into the monster, and shoved a pillow into the breach.
"I guess I'll have to get something better than a pillow to patch that up with." He noted as the down soaked through.
Another plank began to bulge as corrosive acid ate through. Moments later, another barnacle bored through. Calmly, Dominic stabbed it up and shoved another pillow in.
"I… need to cheer up."
Dominic exited his room, then went to the supply room to get some earth-dust sealant to make better patches on the two holes. Not feeling safe in the room anymore, he left again to wander the ship. Where could he go to cheer himself up? What would make him happy here, surrounded by humans and other monsters? He didn't trust himself to be near Sun right now; the temptation to just blurt out Ghira's shameful secret was simmering on his tongue. I want to tell Sun, but for the good of the ship, I certainly can't do it now… His heart carried his legs to Neptune's stately bedroom at the rear of the ship. If nothing else, his room is a bit above the waterline, so at least there will be less intrusions here. It wasn't like he enjoyed reading stories with the human noble. It was just an activity. An exercise. A necessary exercise to improve his capabilities. His painstaking journal writing session was proof enough that he needed to become more literate. A faunus leader should be literate, so that, in his autumn years, he could write boring memoirs for faunus schoolchildren to read in classrooms. He could see them now in his mind - so ignorant of the struggles he fought to ensure their potential futures. The teacher would be talking about important dates and characters in the hero Adam Taurus' life, and they'd have the luxury to let their minds wander off to thinking about games and girls and whatever else children who aren't raised in a workcamp think about.
He knocked on the door.
"Are we still under attack?"
Yes, Neptune's human cowardice could cheer him up a little. Until his feet were off this pleasure craft, that was of the utmost importance. Keep cheerful. Don't think about Ghira. Don't talk about Ghira. I'll lose myself in stories… like Blake Belladonna used to.
Dammit Dominic, he chided himself as his raging thoughts restarted, you already fucked up.
