Original Title was Chapter 34: Taurus is Hung, Like a Horse, and Adamant About 'Ox'ford Commas
But FF has a 39 character limit for chapter titles... so I had to make a different pun for the chapter title.


BRAZEN

Thursday Afternoon

"Was drugging him really necessary?"

"Is he drugged?" Ilia responded absently after initially seeming to ignore the question, peering intently at Brazen as if wondering about the answer herself, and finally pushing her treacherous mind to its limits trying to come up with some reasonable response. "I think this is about as intelligent as he has ever been. Like, this? This is Adam at his peak."

Brazen concentrated on his hand. With enough focus, he was able to slowly raise it upwards, just a bit. He couldn't form a fist; he couldn't even slap at Ilia. On the plus side, being in this state meant he got to sit back and watch as Ghira rowed the little boat alone towards the shoreline. It also diminished the pain of his injuries. Ilia kept her weapon pointed lazily towards Brazen - she was too paranoid to help row. When they had first set out, she hadn't taken her eyes off of him. Now, boredom was working against her attention span, letting her hatred for him wane as he continued to offer no threat. Maybe it wasn't Ilia's fault - maybe the currents here made the going tough. Either way, the shore still looked far away.

"Ilia." Ghira gave a little growl of annoyance. "What was done to him?"

Ilia sighed and leaned back against the side of the boat. "Just some sleeping pills. And maybe a horse tranquilizer or three. To make sure that he didn't go telling everyone about how you used your semblance on Adam. Which would have worked out fine if you hadn't done so yourself. Not that I'm questioning what you did, or anything. Sir." Brazen could hear in her voice the disappointment of not having gotten to see him convicted on all charges and thrown into the ocean off a plank.

"The matter of who revealed my sin matters not - the sin itself is what must be atoned for. I knew I had to make it clear to our people what I had to make amends for, but incapacitating Dominic like this was not necessary. Do you know how long the effect will last?" Ghira stressed the name as he spoke, passively reprimanding Ilia yet again - for what must have been the twelfth time during the trip - for assuming that Brazen was the real Adam Taurus, when Ghira had convinced himself otherwise.

"It is sort of like what we'd give him to put him to sleep before surgery at that dosage, so I would think it is something he can sleep off? Eight hours? At least he is safer this way."

"And it has been, what, about two so far?"

Ilia checked her scroll. "Two and a half."

Brazen grumbled. He tried wiggling his foot. Nothing. He hoped his fast-recharging aura would, much like how it reduced how much sleep he required, provide him with faster recovery from the injection they'd given him.

"I see lights down the coast. Is that Fort Castle?"

Brazen jiggled himself to the side to have a look. Far away was a patch of artificially brighter clouds.

"Yes. Probably one of the lighthouses. We'll land a bit away from there."

"So that we can scout it out, first?"

"No. Because I want to get to the shore before nightfall, and rowing all the way to the settlement would mean that wouldn't happen. Unless you want to put your weapon away and take up that second set of oars." Ghira indicated the unused set of oars, stashed under the seat as they had been all along, hopefully with a nod of his chin.

"And let him get the drop on us?"

"Didn't you just say he'd be like this for another five hours?"

"Yeah, but Adam's got one of those weird metabolisms. There was a rumour in the Fang that he actually fed off his hatred for humans, that he went a whole month without eating once for a mission. Look, he's already wiggling one of his hands." Ilia replied. "Besides, at least one of us should be ready for a fight. Even if the local humans don't want to lynch us, there are plenty of grimm around here."

Brazen remembered that month. He hadn't 'fed off his hatred for humans'. The cafeteria at headquarters had just stopped offering full vegetarian menu options because Sienna wanted more meat, so he'd had to eat in his room, subsisting on the veggie leftovers from Blake's plate whenever she'd gotten broccoli as a side dish and she wasn't too engrossed in her latest book to forget about him. He'd lost fifteen pounds. That's when he'd finally put in his transfer request to be sent to Vale… though that hadn't happened until much later on.

His tenure as High Leader may not have gone exactly as he'd hoped, but at least he'd repealed the cafeteria menu Sienna had imposed!

Hopefully not my most notable lifetime achievement…

"Ilia, when will you start to believe me when I tell you that this man is not Adam Taurus?"

"When I see actual evidence to support it." Ilia glowered at Brazen, "like seeing this twin brother in person. I'm betting he just dressed up a boarbatusk with one of his spare shirts and a red wig to fool Lichen and the other girls. It would be hard to tell the difference - admit it."

Brazen had actually been slightly concerned about the grimm. The humans ashore he expected to be hostile, but Ghira could be relied upon to talk to them. With the Relic tied to his aura, Brazen was more worried that they would be hit by hordes of monsters as they made their way to shore in the pathetic rowboat.

So far, their little boat had been unaccosted.

It worried him that the three of them were a less tempting target than the boatload of worried civilians that had sailed in the other direction. He held out hope that, by some fortune, neither rowboat nor ship had suffered grimm attacks. The boat was large enough to keep smart, self-preserving grimm at bay. What excuse did their little rowboat have for making its voyage unaccosted? Maybe the drugs are making me calm? Maybe Ghira is in a good mood because his guilt has been lessened by his confession? And Ilia is clearly happy, pointing her weapon at me while I'm defenceless. The most straight-forward answer was that there were no local grimm. Fort Castle's population might be a larger lure for them.

razen didn't know how much of a pull the Relic had on local grimm while his aura was recovering, but at least he could pretend that the local emotional component to cause a monster attack was lacking. There was something comforting about being out on the open water; maybe it was just how different it was from the claustrophobic mine shafts he'd hated as a child. It was sort of nice to be able to just lean back and gaze up at the stars in the night sky.

As the boat rocked and rolled with the waves, Brazen occupied his thoughts with ideas on how to measure grimm attraction; little tests he could do, once he was free and mobile, to determine how much the grimm would congregate towards him while he had the Relic. If Bedlam has the Mistral Relic, do the effects stack, or does it get exponentially worse? It would be hard to answer such questions beforehand, unless... Cinder. If he could just catch Cinder, he could get her to talk. Certainly she knew about relics. It made sense, right? She had been in the catacombs of Beacon. The Headmaster had fought her there, defending the Relic of Choice. Probably. Why else would he have been away from the catastrophe befalling his human Kingdom? Yes. Cinder wanted the relics. If Beacon hadn't proved that, then the fact that RWBY were running to Atlas with the Mistral Relic, to keep it safe from Cinder, solidified the theory.

Catching Cinder was the hard part. Once she was caught, he would just need to craftily raise the subject without tipping her off to the fact that he was wearing one. That he was a Choice clone. Otherwise, she'd tell Salem, and that would get… messy.

Or, he could kill Cinder. Let Neo do it. That would make Neo happy.

A dead Cinder would make Salem unhappy.

I could just put the blame on Neo.

That would probably make Salem kill Neo. It wasn't like Salem would just let Neo take Cinder's place in whatever hierarchy her organization had.

For some reason, quite possibly because of all that sex they'd been having, Brazen found he did not want Salem to kill Neo.

She has a useful semblance! She is a delightful human to have around! A rarity!

It was definitely the sex, though. It had given him something new to think about. All these years, what had he been doing? Fighting for the faunus, getting revenge on the humans, and all that other necessary stuff. He'd, in his idle moments, fantasized about future generations of faunus children learning about his heroic exploits. He'd never really thought about his own children being amongst them. I'd never really thought about my own genetic legacy, as it were. Probably because Blake had always given him the cold shoulder - no wonder, since that relationship had been decidedly one-sided, thanks to someone's semblance. Someone who was currently rowing the boat. Ghira. Or maybe, lacking parents of his own, he never really thought about what being a parent consisted of. Moonbright changed his options as much as being unshackled from his unhealthy obsession with Ghira's daughter. I have options, and the desire to explore them!

Of course, such plans would have to wait until after Cinder was found. Which would have to wait until he had liberated himself from this present predicament.

The shoreline was getting closer. He'd have lots of time, between getting recuperated and getting his hands on Cinder, to figure out a clever way to get her to tell him what he needed to know. He looked at his finger. If Bedlam and Dominic were still around, they could have summoned Dai and just asked for a more in-depth look at the Owner's Manual for answers about how the ring attracted grimm. I guess she is the sentient Owner's Manual, Brazen considered.

He wouldn't mind a more in-depth look at Dai, either.

It sucks that Dom and Bed aren't here. I could have entertained them with a nice quip on that.

Dominic would have laughed. Bedlam would have ignored the enigmatic attraction of Dai in lieu of - no, he wouldn't. He'd be over Blake.

Because the obsession with Blake was just a lie.

He was able to clench his fist and hold it for half a second before his hand relaxed flat again.

Ghira was riding his high horse, having confessed to his followers, but Brazen hadn't had a chance to give him a piece of his mind, yet.

It was a problem in and of itself: he thinks I am Dominic, instead of Adam, while his semblance only really was affecting Bedlam. Who nobody knows about except Dominic and I. So if I'm mad about what he did, it would be expected that I'd be angry about something Ghira had done to someone else - my brother - not to me, personally. Because normal brothers don't have shared memories up to a certain point like the three of us do.

He suddenly wondered if baby twins shared memories of the womb or something, before they split up.

How do babies happen?

A little rational voice in his mind seemed to imply that what he'd been doing with Neo might cover that.

I mean, in terms of souls and memories.

He looked at Ghira, who was twisted around so that he could look towards the shore thoughtfully. He looked at Ilia, who was now rummaging through their bag of provisions. She pulled out a granola bar and ate it, then returned her gaze to watching Brazen.

He was able to clench all of his fingers on his right hand, save the middle one. Ilia saw the intention behind the laborious exertion and scowled at him, then smirked as she remembered that Brazen had only eaten some green sea slop since recovering.

Ghira didn't notice. "I think I made a good impression on the governor of Fort Castle, while he was in the city to participate in the agreement we made with Prince Jupiter. With any luck, his desire to have stronger trading relations with Menagerie will outweigh any orders the Prince sent, in haste, to do us harm. Once we have Plutony's ear, we can start fixing whatever went wrong in Mistral."

There had to be a way to leverage Ghira's guilt, over what had been done years ago to Adam Taurus, into a benefit to him today. Maybe even just a willingness to be a bit less diplomatic in their approach to solving the war. Ghira might not approve of having Brazen and Ilia go off to assassinate the Crown Prince, but maybe he could turn a blind eye to it?

"So why is he even with us?"

"As I said, Dominic is a friend to the faunus, but has expressed no desire to join our people in Menagerie. He asked to return to the mainland. We cannot simply abduct people to join our citizenry. Besides, he's already helped us once and knows something about the situation on the continent. I'm betting that he'll continue to help us, or at least temper his brother, should the latter appear."

Brazen literally couldn't argue with any of that. Even if he could voice objection, though it rankled fiercely, his goals and Ghira's were not opposed. Even if he despised what the feline fellow had subjected his mind to for years with his hypnosis, for now Brazen would have to accept working with him again.

It's for the sake of the faunus. Just like finding Cinder. The necessities of his opposition to humanity's tyranny.

"So this isn't about dumping him off so that he doesn't cause us any problems in Menagerie?" Ilia said with disappointment. "Because I'd be totally on-board for that, if that was actually the plan. I wouldn't even tell Blake. We could pretend he slipped out or something." Ilia grabbed Brazen by the shoulder.

"Ilia, this is about working together for all faunus to help one another in an effort to create a better world. And it will be work - what we must do shan't be easy, and we can't just sever ties with Adam Taurus or his brothers - both this one and his comrades in the violent extremities of the White Fang - because their outlooks are unpleasant and difficult for us to deal with. If we exclude our detractors from our offering of peace, then are we any better than them?" Ghira said, then added, "stop leaning him over the edge like that."

"Yes. It's not a high bar with Adam's ilk." Ilia sighed, letting Brazen lean back into the boat. "So is that why you're not using your semblance to make Adam less shitty?"

"Using my semblance reminds me of my own youth. My owner delighted in having me use my semblance for twisted entertainments. I don't like seeing anyone stripped of their freedom. Even criminals are better reconditioned than thrown away. In a world like this, we need all the help we can get sometimes. My use of my semblance on Adam in the past was a severe lapse on my part. Emotional. I can't let myself stoop so low again."

Brazen saw Ilia roll her eyes, but she didn't pursue the conversation farther. No matter how useful or powerful a semblance may be, some people just ended up hating theirs. And as much as Ghira using his semblance to fix problems with people - if humans could be said to deserve such a designation - would simplify matters, Brazen did appreciate that Ghira's renewed reluctance to hypnotise his opponents did afford him his own freedom; and hopefully Bedlam's, too. Mines, there were certainly worse things he could have suggested I do than devote an excessive amount of concern towards his daughter. Brazen imagined what his life would have been like if Ghira had suggested he not kill humans. What an awful life that would have been! So many terrible humans left to live their racist little lives all through the world. With that in mind, it was almost even possible to consider forgiving Ghira for controlling the ambit of his life over the past decade. Almost.

Ghira continued to row, and Ilia continued to be suspicious of Brazen's immobility, until at last they made it to the rocky shore. Ghira aided Brazen to his numb legs, stiff from the drugging and the lengthy session of sitting in the little boat. With his limbs still mostly paralyzed, his feet awkwardly stumbled about on the uneven pebbly ground that slid and slipped beneath him. Ilia grabbed the rope from the boat and went off into the shoreline thicket to tie it off on something. Ghira began to ask Brazen if he felt like he could manage to walk unassisted, if he could do it if he had a walking stick, when Ilia's shriek put the older faunus on full alert.

Five humans emerged from the thicket; one of them dragged Ilia, who was entangled in a mass of fishing net.

Over Ilia's snarling and swearing, Ghira attempted to speak. "I am Ghira Belladonna, envoy of Menagerie, and I demand to-"

One of the men threw another fishing net over Ghira, who did not move as it enveloped him. With the pull of an attached rope the net closed tight, putting Ghira in the same predicament as Ilia as they yanked him down to the ground. Without Ghira's support, Brazen wobbled uneasily as the humans surrounded him.

One of them poked him with a long fishing rod in the chest, sending him collapsing into moist algal pebbles with a pathetic faceplant.

"You get the call out to the fort-folk, Jeb-boy?"
"Ya, Pa. They's on the way over. We gonna take 'em back to the ranch?"

Brazen was lifted up, and saw that Ilia was being carried through the thicket as well. Two humans carried Ghira by his wrists and ankles, while the fifth human walked behind with an antique firearm. It looked like it had been crafted before the Great War.

"What is your intention?" Ghira asked in his deep voice, far too calmly for Brazen's liking. Was it not obvious? The backwoods humans were lynching them.

The man cradling the antique gun gave a throaty guffaw. "We's taking you in for the bounty. Lord is paying lien for faunus strays like you's. You lot must've thought you could get away by boat, but you'll be back in Fort Castle soon-soon."

Brazen's keen vision noticed that Ghira's claws retracted into his fingertips. Of course his claws could shred through the netting - but now that he's heard where we're heading, he's perfectly content to let us be taken. Brazen sighed. At this point did it really matter which of his enemies claimed him as a captive? Being taken prisoner was becoming a habit for hims lately. Well, I always did want to visit Fort Castle. Everyone always talks about how important it was to our cause after that battle the old faunus warriors won there during the Rights Revolution. If anything he was surprised that Mistral's declaration of war against the faunus had been received this far south already. That means that all of Mistral must know. He supposed he had been out of it for a little while, and Mistral airships, while not as fast as a bullhead, were still faster than conventional sailing.

After a short walk, Ilia, Brazen, and Ghia were dumped into the back of an old pickup truck. The engine turned over with a belch and they began a bumpy journey through the jungle's rough road to wherever these wretched creatures lived.

Ilia, unlike Ghira and more mobile than Brazen, was not content to passively accept her capture. She insisted on wiggling and biting at her net, which didn't do much other than give the humans something to laugh at while gorging themselves on the provisions the trio had had in the rowboat.

At least, they started by laughing at her.

"You know, for a faunus, this one ain't too bad lookin'. Almost human, it is." One of their captors noted, running his hand along Ilia's foot. "Pretty lean."

"Don't touch me, creep!" Ilia shouted, "keep your hand to yourself!"

"Hmmm. Reckon you'd do with learning a bit o' respect for your human superiors. Weren't you learned that it was humans what did make society? Like that fine net you've got on… or them fine clothes. No animal could figure out how to make itself clothes. If you wanna keep making such a fit and fuss, maybe we treat you more like an animal. Maybe take away the benefits humanity has given you."

"You're only scared to fight me fair!" Ilia shouted, her volume louder now as she became even angrier. "Think you're tough? Hitting me out of nowhere, tossing a net on me? I could take you! Just try! Let me out of this net and we can see who can beat who in a fight! What, scared to fight a girl without backup?"

"Aoh, little faunus, you wouldn't outlast me. I can go for a long time…"

Brazen suspected Ilia hadn't quite figured out what the human was implying, because she kept challenging him to a duel like the human would be interested in a fight.

That stopped when the man roughly yanked off Ilia's shoe. Suddenly she clued in to what the man's brain was planning, or maybe she'd figured it out from the get-go and this was just how she'd chosen to react to her predicament.

Whatever Ilia's thoughts may have been, things were taking a dark turn and Brazen wasn't going to sit around for that. He might not have been close enough to protect Salt, but he was, despite having only a little lingering sense of comradery with Ilia, willing and available to aid her against human lechery. He'd gotten enough strength back in his body. He was still numb everywhere, but with a twist and a flop he spun up and surprise-slammed into the human who was bothering Ilia, knocking him out of the trailer onto the dirt road. The humans who were tasked with guarding him didn't stop him from doing so.

"Ha ha! Dale, stop the truck! Yer boy Jeb done fell off into the ditch!"
"That'll teach him to think with the plantain in his pantaloons!"

The truck slowed down and the other humans continued to laugh at Jeb. To prevent further outbursts, Brazen, Ilia, and Ghira were all wrapped up with fishing line. It was a mixed curse: Brazen would not be able to move again and Ghira's claws were now no longer a feasible escape option, but the hardy line would at least ensure that none of the humans would accost Ilia anymore. Ilia, for her part, had inched herself into the corner of the cargo bed and matched it with her colours. Jeb, rather than retaliate against Brazen for bumping him out of the truck, busied himself defending his embarrassment against the continued jibes of his fellow humans.

"I was only doing it as a joke, not like I like faunus in that way!" He complained, "or in any way! I'm no race-traitor."

"Oh, Jeb protest a bit much. I think he's got that faunus fevah - maybe he wants to get himself a faunus bride to make some puppies with?"
"Can you imagine a mix-breed wedding? One side is folks in suits and ladies in dresses, the other side is what, a pig-sty?"
"No, no, a bunch of dogs and cats, all fighting. Imagine the noise! You'd not even be able to hear the vows."
"Who'd give the bride away? A bear with a top-hat?"
"Guess we know why Jeb really gets up at five in the morning to 'milk the cows', eh lads?"

"I don't have no feeling fo' faunus!" Jeb argued, despairing at fast becoming the target of ridicule.

"Yeah, sure you don't. That's how it all starts: denial."
"Then what's next, confusion? Anger? Bargaining?"
"No, no, it's curiosity, arousal, and then bargaining. Bargaining is the part where you shed off your humanity to get some of that awful animal booty. After that you're making a charity foundation for faunus rights, raising lien for awareness that barely covers operational costs, campaigning for them to be allowed to be in charge o' things, and being a general simp."

Brazen tried to ignore the racist commentary the humans were making, but it was difficult not to compare their words to his own situation. Neo, for all he could tell from his… thorough investigations, was not a faunus. She was human. Was her relationship with him based merely on the novelty of his species? What if it hadn't been Moonbright but his superior faunus allure that had attracted her to him? What would happen if that novelty wore off?

He leaned against the side of the cargo bed and looked at his reflection in the truck's mirrors. The explosion had burnt off a fair amount of his hair, and what little skin was visible between his bandages was peeling like he was recovering from a terrible sunburn.

His dishevelled, wounded appearance was hardly appealing, and did not do wonders for his self-esteem; but looking like this, he'd be a bit harder to identify by the local human authorities. A slight silver-lining to his misery, and it wasn't like he wouldn't heal eventually - not with his strong aura boosting his recovery. As they continued rocking along through the jungle, Brazen retreated into his own head, worried about whether or not Neo liked him or just liked him.

As the moon was obstructed with the glowing silhouette of Fort Castle's towering skyline, Brazen looked at Ghira. Ghira had a - presumably - happy relationship with his wife. He was sadly the closest thing Adam had ever had to a father figure. But after what Ghira had done to Adam, what he'd done to Adam's relationship with Blake, was the older faunus really the person Brazen wanted to be talking to about girl problems?

Brazen wasn't totally unlearned when it came to parents. He'd heard his brethren in the White Fang talk about their lives all the time. A father instructing a son to take care of a daughter wasn't… it wasn't unseemly. It was closer to the norm, really. Natural. Parents would want their offspring to support and protect one another.

Maybe I'm just upset about how one-sided that was for me. Maybe if Blake had cared about me, Purrsuasion wouldn't sting so smartly. Or maybe it was the fact that Adam wasn't really Ghira's son. Just because Ghira was the closest thing he'd ever known to a real 'father' figure, didn't make it so. Ghira had never treated him as kin: he'd been saddled with the obligations, with none of the boons - boons like the quintessential pubescent parley pertaining to girls. The bird-faunus and the bee-faunus chat.

Brazen wondered if Ghira would have intervened to protect Ilia, if Brazen hadn't bodychecked Jeb out of the truck first. The man was content to be a prisoner. Was he willing to sacrifice Ilia's chastity for a clear path to his human 'ally' in Fort Castle? Ilia was as much a daughter to him as he was a son.

It seemed that Ghira was all too willing to sacrifice his adopted children for his true heir or pacifist cause.

Brazen snorted derisively. My human allies are better for the cause than Ghira's political contacts. Cinder, Neo, and Hazel were so much better than some… effete human nobles. They actually wanted to change things! Humans like Jupiter and Plutony had had the power to change things and never did - which implied that, without the application of the proper motivational violence, they never would. Cinder and Hazel represented actual change, supported by real strength. If he had to choose between the institutions that wrote laws on paper and the power to shock the general population into changing their mind, well, he'd choose the latter.

Even Ilia was a stronger ally than those humans Ghira respected in powerful social positions. At least Ilia could do things herself - or she could, should she muster the willpower to determine what it was that she wanted to do.

It seemed all too likely that Ghira would have let these humans do as they willed… letting Ilia become a necessary sacrifice for the sake of peace - no, for the sake of submission. Brazen quickly began thinking of ways he could use that little fact to undermine Ilia's allegiance to Ghira and his new White Fang. The moment they had some privacy it would be simple to turn her back to his way of thinking.

Ghira doesn't care about you!
He'd let the humans use you as sport, treat you as a plaything, just to get an audience!
He'll roll over and beg the humans to be nice, but won't use his claws to make them fear us. It'll be like the days before Sienna all over again: protests that see us run out of town, timid. Segregation. Poverty. Abuse.

In his mind, Ilia was already a potential asset; ally again. Whatever had possessed her to betray him - Blake, not wanting to hurt other faunus, or whatever - couldn't still be a factor here. Blake was gone. They were fighting humans now. She'd betrayed him because what she'd been tasked with doing had been morally grey. But now everything is black and white - the battle lines are clear again. Yes, Ilia was practically already back on his side. How much of a grudge did she have against him, really? Wasn't it all a reflection of Blake's infectious insolence? Ilia was like a sponge for Blake's emotions, and had just been mirroring what Blake had spent all summer drilling into her: Adam bad!

I'm not Adam, though, Brazen smiled. Once she believes that, like Ghira does, then we'll be fast friends - comrades again.

He began brainstorming ways she could be useful.

He didn't much care about what Ghira planned to do next one way or the other, and using her against Ghira would be muddying up her sudden morality. I need to use her assistance in fighting the humans. Ilia was relatively skilled with a weapon and, more importantly, her weapon hadn't been left behind. They were in the cab of the pickup truck.

The absence of his equipment irked him greatly. He didn't have much in this world, and he tended to live lightly, but his weapon was a part of his identity. Not to mention my scroll and all that lien I'd had in my wallet! All those fake ID cards! A couple of condoms I'd picked up before Neo called Dom and I up to save the girls at the jail!

He hated to give credit to racial stereotypes, but damn it all wasn't it just his luck to get robbed by some faunus.

I could simply send Ilia to Menagerie to retrieve my stuff. A bit of a waste of her talents, but it would save me the hassle. The justice of it seemed right, too. It was mostly Ilia's fault that he'd had all his gear confiscated. She should make it up to him by couriering it back to his possession. It would be so convenient to have it delivered to the warehouse in Mistral.

Hmmm. A problem arose in his mind. She'd probably run into Neo.

The problem solved itself as he recalled something Bedlam had mentioned about his first encounter with Neo. She'd transformed into Blake.

Ilia liked Blake.

Brazen needed some insurance to make sure Neo didn't turn on him beyond the suspicion that Neo had that faunus fever. Without Dominic or Bedlam hanging around, Ilia could provide a trustworthy second eye to keep on Neo.

Yeah, I can make this work to my advantage.


NEPTUNE

Thursday Afternoon

He and Dominic had spent most of the day reading in his room after their ship's narrow escape from the 'chowder' clam-grimm. Dominic had finished the children's fairy tales book with Neptune's help. Neptune decided to take a break from the reading to try to start a conversation with the faunus.

It's not like I'm good for much else than my brain right now.

"So, how common are faunus with gills as their trait?" Neptune asked, genuinely curious because even Mistral's finest official accounts of faunus morphology were tainted by racialized perspectives. Truly it was hard to get a fair run of facts when, prior to the current century, faunus had been deemed unworthy of rights and freedoms afforded to human citizens. Vale had been a bit better for that sort of data. Key word: had.

The faunus who bore a striking resemblance to the reason Vale's academia was in literal ruins shrugged. "I don't know, what would you call it, demographics? Statistics?" He looked at Neptune, who nodded. "I know I've encountered them, but certainly they're less common than the various… mammal types. Cats, dogs, mice, sheep, bears… that sort of stuff. Faunus with more exotic traits - or the cool ones, as most of us see it, like wings and gills and that sort of thing, are much more rare. Of course, any faunus trait is still better than not having one at all."

Neptune pursed his lips at the dig at humanity, but held his tongue while Dominic continued to talk. Taurus had sort of earned the right to be angry at humanity in the past week alone.

"Ilia's ability to change colour is reptilian, which is pretty rare of course. On the other hand, bat-wings are rare, too, even though bats are mammals? Like flying mice, right? I guess it is more common to have smaller faunus traits, like bat-ears or-" Dominic shuddered "bat-noses, that are the standard fare. But they do exist, and if you find a population of enough faunus - especially when the different traits marry each other, you get the odd cool traits like gills and wings. Of course, if you have two bat faunus with wings and they have a child, the child is, in my experience, more likely to get saddled with ears or feet or-" Dominic shuddered again, "bat nose."

Bat noses? Neptune wondered. He sort of wanted to inquire more about that, too, but it would have to wait. There was a more important tidbit that Dominic had just said. More important even than the possibility of finding someone to help Neptune safely train his semblance. "Ilia? You know Ilia?"

Dominic went rigid and his eyes shifted back and forth quickly. "Uh, yeah. We're… acquainted. Just a little. Through my brother. Through Adam."

Wait, how would he know Ilia through Adam if he only met Adam recently - after Adam and Ilia's ideologies had split? Was Ilia still in contact with Adam even after 'joining' Blake to come save Haven? Neptune's hormones refused to think ill of Ilia. No, something's sour in Dominic's story. Neptune suspected that he'd known about - and been more complicit in - the attack on Haven than he'd previously intimated. That little inconsistency would have to wait, though.

"Did she ever mention me?"

"Mention you?"

"Yeah, you know, like something about how I dress or how I look?" Neptune prompted hopefully. "Maybe something along the lines of 'wow, that Neptune sure cuts a fine figure' or that sort of thing? Maybe she saw one of my team's fights during the tournament in Vale?" Not all of their fights had cast him in as poor a light as the fight against NDGO. He'd been downright impressive in most of them! If Sage and Scarlet hadn't voted against him, and if Vale hadn't fallen, he probably could have won the singles rounds! Neptune was - and he immediately hated the thought, since it was so marine a term - a real catch!

"You mean Ilia?" Dominic raised an eyebrow appraisingly. "I'm sorry, are you into Ilia? Like, attracted to?"

"Answer the question!" Neptune insisted, falling back on his Junior Detective interrogation training - all forty-five minutes of it.

Dominic wasn't intimidated into answering the important query, however. Instead, he began a fit of snorting laughter.

"Hahaha… oh boy… hahaha… you… hahaha… and Ilia!"

Neptune crossed his arms. He still had a long way to go before he would make detective on Vale's police force, even with their vastly reduced ranks after the Fall of Beacon. "I fail to see what humour you are finding in this."

"Have you… hahahaha… have you ever spoken to Ilia?" Dominic managed to say, gasping for air, "or did you just… ahahahah… admire her from afar?" He laughed some more, wheezing something that sounded close to 'best way to admire her is from afar'.

"I managed to have a short conversation with her at the train station whilst Sun and Blake were saying their farewells." Neptune replied, confident that his charm had made a good first impression on the svelte faunus that had shadowed Blake. "She was the model of politeness and courtesy."

Dominic rolled down onto the floor, looked up at Neptune with the beginnings of a mirthful tear in his eye, and with a single sentence broke Neptune's ambitions: "Ilia likes girls. Ilia likes Blake Belladonna." He looked Neptune up and down, lingering on his core-region. "Not to assume, but I don't think you fit the bill."

Neptune slumped down onto the floor beside Dominic as his thoughts about Ilia evaporated. Well, that's that. We can't help how we're born, I guess. Another thought struck him. Sympathy for his friend and team leader, Sun. Poor guy. How can he compete with a dime like Ilia, when it comes to Blake? Neptune might be devastated by this revelation, but at least he could take solace in sharing his pain with Sun's own as they realized the loss of their heart's desires. Neptune started laughing, too. Life was absurd. It wasn't like Neptune had believed Sun for a single second when the guy had claimed that he and Blake hadn't been 'like that'. Sun, no guy chases a girl around the world if he doesn't want to be 'like that'.

Speaking of guys chasing girls around the world, Neptune remembered his purpose and stopped laughing so he could speak. "Blake, eh?" Neptune said slowly, recovering from the fit of giggles. "The girl that Adam Taurus was with?"

Dominic's hands turned into fists.

Aha! Neptune thought to himself, I may only be a Junior Detective, but methinks the faunus doth retain some emotional baggage wherein the Lady Belladonna be concerned!

"Adam Taurus… my brother… was never 'with' Blake Belladonna. That was… it was something different entirely. I can't explain it. I shouldn't think about it, either. We've enough problems with the grimm."

"He was never 'with' Blake?" Neptune parroted before pressing his attack. "How about you? When exactly did you reconnect with Adam, that you know so much about Ilia? You said you adopted his name when you reconnected, but you didn't say when that happened - how long have you been going by Dominic Taurus, rather than just Dominic? How did you know to get to Piter's airship, that we would be there? Sun told you, didn't he? What is going on between you and Sun? Even if you're not really Adam Taurus with a cheap dye-job - which is not really doing its job anymore, by the way, you're totally a redhead - then it begs the question 'who is Dominic' and why is he here? Are we going to pretend that you're some random civilian carpenter that just happens to be the brother of Mistral's most-wanted terrorist?"

"That's a lot of questions." Dominic hummed softly. His good eye narrowed at Neptune menacingly, reminding the human that he was without aura, in the middle of the ocean, in the company of what was, without concern to his relationship with the figure of Adam Taurus, a man that had held his own against Piter, the Royal Guard, and a host of armed soldiers. Not to mention what Scarlet had said earlier about the delight Taurus had taken in shredding through the grimm.

"Why did your aura shatter at breakfast? What happened to your left eye? Why do you keep it covered? What were you and your brother doing with Neo?" Neptune continued, heedless of the peril as his curiosity got the best of him. "Why are you here?"

Dominic stared intently at Neptune for a moment, thinking.

"I just wanted to get out of Mistral. Disagree with me if you don't think it was awful there."

Neptune nodded. "Yes, that makes sense. Except for the part where it doesn't, because you could have taken a myriad of other alternative routes to extricate yourself from the anti-faunus sentiment my cousin has stirred up." Neptune held out his hand and began ticking his fingers as he listed off the possibilities: "you could have gone with the faunus to Menagerie. You could have taken the train with Blake's team up north to my hometown. Argus is way more faunus tolerant, which is funny since it is between Mistral and Mantle. You could have gone back to wherever you came from in the rural outskirt provinces of Mistral, or whatever you told us. You could have hopped across the sea to Vale by travelling west - which is what I still think my team and I should have done."

"And yet, here I am, with you and your team."

"And here you are." Neptune agreed. "Why?"

"I dunno, maybe because I find Sun interesting. I've never actually seen a faunus in charge of humans before."

Neptune coughed. "If you can call it that. Let me know when you see Sun act maturely enough to be in charge of himself."

Dominic leaned back. "I mean, joke if you like, but I've seen much worse leadership before."

"Like Adam's leadership?" Neptune blurted out with immediate regrets as Taurus' face flashed with anger.

The anger, however, vanished almost immediately. Probably because it was the truth.

Dominic swallowed. "Not what I meant but… yes. Adam's leadership was certainly… worse. More challenging, with more numbers involved, but… flawed. His focus was split, he was distracted… his purpose, his judgement, became clouded. Shadowed." Dominic clenched his fist tightly, looking away from Neptune as he breathed heavily.

Neptune began to understand Taurus' motive. He wasn't here to kill them. He was here to learn, to grow, to relocate his self. He was a student. Whether he was Adam or not, he had some desire to improve himself. Which meant that, unless he wished for any such lessons given to Taurus to be used to promote the cruel agenda of the previous iteration of the White Fang… "It's not just about how you lead. It's also about the why. Adam was stoking the fires of long-standing hatred. It was easy, but burned up fast - like an exploding fire-dust crystal. Just a lot of damage without any real direction. Sun leads us - when he leads us - by example. He leads us democratically, letting us participate in the decisions, helps us see the rational for making the hard decisions, to do things right rather than easy. Like real huntsmen. He's not our leader, he's more like… have you ever seen a concert?"

Dominic shook his head. Of course the man had never seen a musical concert. It wasn't his fault - society hadn't really wanted cultured faunus. It had wanted able-bodied, subservient faunus.

"Okay, well, it is the best example I can think of right now so I'll have to explain it. In a musical orchestra, you have a lot of people playing a lot of varied instruments. Horns that blow, strings you pluck, drums, whistles, and so on." He didn't bother naming instruments, since he figured that would require a more explanative definition. "They all have different ranges, different abilities. Things they do well, things that are hard for them. It is the same with our team. I'm smart and studious. Scarlet is whimsical and suspicious. Sage is observant and strong. Sun brings us all together into a harmony. He's the director of our band."

"I think I understand what you mean. It is just not how Adam ever operated." Dominic replied. "In the White Fang after Ghira stepped down, we had objectives that worked towards a singular vision. We were also all wearing masks and maintained anonymity amongst our own ranks, so that there was less individuality. Most faunus were… hesitant to step up, to do anything about their lot in life. They've always been intimidated by humans. So, Sienna had to be more intimidating, sometimes. Built up a cult of personality around herself, to the point where some members of the White Fang worship her. Well, worshipped."

'We', he says, Neptune noted. Taurus' wasn't a convincing liar, and his story was full of more holes than the yacht. "No real harmony, just a loud protest, like an entire band of drummers in a parade, blocking the street, making a spectacle." Neptune apprised.

He nodded. "Yeah, hitting stuff with sticks was about as much combat training as they could do. Which wasn't their fault - they had jobs, families, a lot of other stuff going on that meant they couldn't be training every day."

"Listen: forget all those other questions. I'm not stupid, you know I'm not stupid, but all of those other questions don't really matter. You wanna run from your past? That's fine, so long as you've got a future you're honest about. So let me ask you one real question: are you going to go to Vale, or are you going to keep hanging out with Sun?"

Dominic sighed.

"I'm cool with you sticking around." Neptune offered. Despite his best judgement, it was the truth, even. The man was not being a problem - no less than his treacherous teammates had been in the past week. If I'm a renegade prince, Scarlet is an unrepentant pirate, Sun is a himbo, and Sage is… Sage, then Taur- Dominic, Dominic would fit right in with our motley group.

After a minute of silence, he said, "I don't even know. So much I don't know. Was there a way to lead the White Fang, to have them work towards the goal, that wouldn't have led where it did? Was he not strong enough, or did his obsession with Blake just skew his vision?" He stood up and grabbed a book off the shelf and tossed it to Neptune. "Books. Reading. Such a Blake thing to do. Such a Belladonna thing to do."

Neptune caught the book. "There's power in words. Knowledge, ideas, transcending time and space."

Dominic nodded and sat back down beside Neptune.

"'The Journey to the West', what a completely inapplicable story," Neptune read the cover and shrugged. "I've never read it," he explained as Dominic shot him a questioning look, "but I'm just saying that, on a ship heading east, what can we learn from this?"

"Maybe to learn how to go east, you have to know how to go west first? Just as one may need to sin before they can seek atonement. Or maybe travel advice is valid no matter the direction taken." Sage said as he walked into the room through the open hatchway. "How are you two doing?"

"Not bad. We were just about to start some more reading practice for Dominic here." He held up the book. "Ever read this one?"

Sage shook his head and sat down on the bed, inviting the other two to entertain him by reading the story aloud. Neptune handed the book back to Taurus, who opened it up. Unlike the previous children's fairy tale book, 'Journey to the West' was a pop-up book and the faunus jerked back a little as the picture leapt up at him. Regaining his composure after a moment, he began to read the book.

"There is a… spear-it-wall…"

"Spiritual," Neptune corrected quickly over his shoulder.

"A spiritual man, a Saint, who is tasked by… his Emperor to go on a journey to the west, to learn how to…" Taurus' slow, painful reading could almost be considered funny if the reasons for it weren't probably so miserable. Neptune managed to remain serious, like a good teacher, correcting him whenever he mispronounced a word or struggled.

Sage, not so much. "Haha, it's a pop-up book?" He guffawed. "Hey, Neptune, why's your cousin got a pop-up book in his little library here?"

Neptune rolled his eyes. "It was probably for his kids or something."

Taurus looked up from his attempt to decipher the next word in the sentence. "Jupiter has children?"

Neptune saw a flash of something in that singular blue eye. Something inexplicably cruel. A hunger. It worried him. "Yes. Innocent children." Whose conception I'd really rather not think about. "He's the Crown Prince and is expected to continue the lineage with his… wife… after all. It's properly natural."

Yet, it was Sage who pointed out the obvious issue first, not Taurus. "Hostages would have made that fight a lot easier. Why didn't you mention them before we ran up to get our butts beat? I mean, my legs were fractured. If Taurus hadn't shown up when he did, we'd probably all have been taken prisoner."

Neptune gave them a flat look. They're still my family! I'm not going to hold my own family hostage to deal with another family member! As a student of history, there was nothing more frustrating to read about than bloody internecine conflicts. They were the dumbest, most pointless wars humans engaged in - especially when it was just kids fighting over inheriting the throne, which Piter had seemed to think Neptune had been angling towards - as if I'd want to sit on the throne, bogged down with duties and obligations when I want to adventure and read and learn!

"I still feel little pains shoot through me when I stand up! What if I'm crippled for life?" Sage made a show of massaging his thigh. "I could spend every lien I make from here to the grave on chiropractors, herbal remedies, and lithe girls with healing semblances to lather me in oils."

Neptune frowned: taking hostages would have worked. Piter loved his kids to the point that they were his biggest weakness. Like, a glaringly obvious tactical oversight.

Still not something I'm going to do!

"Sage, you're an idiot. We did not do that because that would have been wrong. You know, morally dubious? That's not how huntsmen operate." Neptune whined, "seriously, was I the only one listening in class? Was I the only one of us who actually wanted to be a huntsman? You can't take children hostage! That's straight-up villainy! You may as well grow out evil moustaches to twirl with your finger while laughing maniacally."

"Nah, man. Being Huntsmen? The rest of us went to Haven for completely different reasons: we just wanted an excuse to go around with our shirts open, flaunting these abs and pecs. I think Sun was there for the buffet-style cafeteria. You're the oddity in SSSN, bud." Sage said calmly, and with that terribly unyielding face of his that, revealing nothing of his real thoughts, could have you believe his lies. Even Neptune, a veteran of a year of constant interactions with Sage, had to remind himself that beneath that stone-faced exterior was the beating heart of a japing jester. And that's what makes him not an oddity in SSSN… we're just a ragtag bunch of clowns with more muscles than sense.

"The kids would probably have been harder to get to than Piter on his airship, too." Neptune argued, "not that we need to think about this, because huntsmen honour and everything."

There was a loud snort. "Yeah, huntsmen honour and five lien will get you…" Taurus stopped talking, remembering, perhaps, his audience. "It is how a terrorist would operate, though." He shrugged. "Well, maybe things worked out… Convert his people to the way of righteousness." The last sentence was the final lines from the first page of the pop-up book he'd finally managed to decipher; Taurus flipped the page. "The… Saint is joined on his… quest by three cursed warriors who become his… disciples in return for the Emperor's divine blessing: the… conn… conniving Pig who seeks to have his beauty restored, the Sand Priest who had been cursed to live as a fish, who is… pardoned and let onto land so long as he helps The Saint; and finally, the mischievous Monkey - strongest and wildest of them all."

The pop-up had four little figures dangling up from the page, representing the four adventurers. Each one had their name labelled on them, for easy reference, though it was not hard to tell them apart. The Saint wore a simple robe and was completely bald. Sand was blue and might be some sort of fish-faunus, but also wore an old-fashioned sailor uniform. The sight of him made Neptune remember his desire to find a gilled faunus in Vacuo to work on controlling his semblance without risk of drowning someone. Pig was an anthropomorphized boar, which amounted to being a porcine-faced fellow, tusks and all. The authors had made a solid effort in demonstrating to the target audience of the book why the guy would want to have his appearance changed. Monkey seemed to be a straight-up monkey wearing pants. I guess it is sort of hard to anthropomorphize a primate, Neptune reasoned.

"The Saint and his Disciples came to a river that was guarded by a terrible dragon." The next page revealed a massive black-scaled serpentine creature with lots of teeth and horns, breathing red flames. Taurus pulled on a little tab that said 'PULL', and the dragon lurched down and collided with the Saint's horse. "It… devoured… Saint's horse in a single gulp, as it was very hungry - few… travellers came so far."

"Well I guess they're all walking now." Sage said. "Why did only the Saint have a horse? Why were the other three walking like chumps?"

"Maybe they couldn't afford horses?" Neptune said. "Maybe they didn't know how to ride one. Do you know how to ride a horse, Sage?"

"Well, umm… I'm sure if I was up next to a horse I'd figure it out."

"I've never ridden a horse." Taurus said. "I've known a few horse-faunus, though. They're not much good for riding, though." He turned the page. "The Saint was not afraid, and sc…scolded the Dragon. The Dragon became sorry, and changed into a dark stal…stallion to replace the horse he had eaten, so that he could let the Saint ride on his back while listening to him teaching his disciples about… righteousness." He turned the page. "Monkey was angry. He'd wanted to beat the Dragon up, to show that he was the strongest. Pig was upset that he had not been able to eat the Saint's horse himself."


Sage stood up, his stomach growling, to announce that they should go to the galley to get something to eat before bed, as Taurus finished the pop-up book - which had an open-ended conclusion of 'and they kept adventuring together', which was somewhat unsatisfactory after it had settled into a familiar routine of 'group comes to town, town has monster, Monkey has a tantrum and goes off while party tries to fight monster, Monkey is convinced to come back, party defeats monster and moves onto next town'. Maybe the point of the book was that enlightenment was more about the journey.

Or maybe there was a sequel somewhere.

Neptune took an aura suppressant pill and followed the other two out of his quarters. Sage let Taurus zip off ahead so that he could share a word with Neptune.

"The Monkey." Sage said, keeping his words brief, simple, but meaningful.

"Hmmm?"

"I heard your conversation before I entered."

"What conversation was that?" Neptune asked, having forgotten.

"Sun being the director of our four-man band." Sage reminded. "It is odd, I think, that all FOUR huntsman academies follow the rule of FOUR-person teams. The Journey to the West must be a story that predates the formation of the current social order. Predates the Four Kingdoms."

Neptune shook his head. "What? No, there are four of them in the band there, too. Unless you mean we have the Four Kingdoms because the founders were inspired by the story somehow? That could make sense. A lot of these stories are really old and people love fairytales." Neptune lifted up the book, which he had for whatever reason brought along, and searched for a publication date. On the inside cover it had a handwritten note, done in elegant green ink, that read 'Happy Birthday; please enjoy this gift of knowledge from your friends at Haven Academy. -LL' Neptune flipped to the next page, where he saw that it had been printed a couple years prior. But that doesn't mean the story isn't older than that. "The Saint, the Monkey, the Pig, and Sandfish. Four. Just like the number on our team, just like the number of kingdoms and academies."

"What about Menagerie?" Taurus called back from ahead, startling Neptune.

Oh, right. Faunus-hearing.

"It doesn't have its own academy." Neptune said, as if that somehow meant it wasn't really a kingdom.

Taurus seemed to be thinking the same thing. "Maybe not yet."

"Five." Sage said, his voice now a low whisper. "On the journey, they get a fifth member."

"The Priestess?" Neptune questioned, "she doesn't travel with them, she just magically helps them when they needed help. Which was yeah, often enough that she may as well have been travelling with them, but she wasn't really with them."

"No, the Dragon Horse." Sage pointed at the man ahead of them who was grabbing food out of the freezer, putting it on plates and shoving them into the microwave. "You know, a horned thing with hooves…"

Oh, right. The replacement mount. It sort of got glossed over after its initial scene. Neptune stopped in his tracks and stared, switching between gazing at Taurus and then down at the book in his hands.

No way.

"Sun's read this, hasn't he."

"I'm starting to suspect as much." Sage replied calmly. Too calmly. How could he say it so calmly when they'd just found the book that Sun seemed to be using as a cheat-guide for their lives? "Which is saying something, since it assumes he's ever read anything at all. Since neither of us have ever read it before, maybe it is from Vacuo?"

He was talking such a big game about wanting to make friends and do good but he's just living a fairytale!

"But on the other hand, what if he hasn't?" Sage pondered. "Lots of people have strange semblances. Maybe this is just some sort of… what would you call it? Destiny-thing. Maybe it is just our fate. Besides, Sun didn't make our team. Lionheart did. Or maybe it is just an eerie coincidence. The characters are pretty broadly defined cliches, they might be able to be applied to anyone. Isn't the point of most stories to make the reader empathize with a character, put themselves in that situation? Like, if we applied it to team RWBY, Yang could be the monkey. Ruby could be the Saint…"

"I don't know. None of them really seem piggy to me. Which leaves me thinking this is more applicable to us." Neptune liked the thought of destiny even less than he did the horrifying notion that Sun had managed to sit still long enough to read a book. "So what does that make me? I'm not the Pig!"

"I'm guessing you're the Sandfish, since you've got that whole thing with water going." Taurus said, evidently not excluded from their whisperings. "We're probably putting ourselves into the fictional characters a bit too much because of boredom. B… my brother's ex-partner used to do that a lot: imagine herself as something else, imagine the world as being different. Doesn't change reality. Believing that the Warrior in the Woods was about a faunus might have been just as much my personal bias, since neither of you had really seen the character that way before since you're human; I did feel for the Warrior, though - alone, protecting others who don't… who don't really appreciate it. Doesn't mean I think that story was written just for me in particular. So I'm not going to get too worked up about what character I'm acting like. Just gotta live life, and not get lost in fantasies and fairy tales." He paused. "Though I've heard that Ruby Rose is like a vacuum when cookies are involved. And the way the Schnee's family gorges itself on dust profits…"

"Scarlet is our Pig." Neptune and Sage said at the same time without hesitation.

"Which makes me the Saint, I suppose…" Sage added haughtily. "See, this is why you should heed my words and the wisdom they contain."

"You mean like that time when you said you didn't need a ranged weapon to take out a nevermore?" Neptune said with a sneer, "remind me, how did that turn out?"

"Sun got my sword out of the tree." Sage replied. He rubbed his hands together sheepishly. "...Eventually."

"How long do these mashed potato instant-dinners need to be in the microwave for?" Taurus asked.

Sage picked up one of the empty cardboard boxes. "Says a minute should do."

"I think those were for the staff to snack on," Neptune pointed out. "No way Jupiter would eat those things - he's all about gourmet cuisine and the posh life. Honestly we should be thankful he even allowed a microwave to be onboard."

"Yeah, skip the cheap meals and get out the nice stuff," Sage advised Taurus, banging cutlery on the countertop with gusto. "The nice stuff! The! Nice! Stuff! If we're going to be outlaws on a stolen ship, we may as well make the most of it. Other than steering the ship and chatting, what can we do but eat and train on this floating tub?" Neptune joined him in banging cutlery on the countertop, making a racket.

Taurus opened up a cupboard with non-frozen food ingredients. Bags of flour, sugar, and other dry goods. He opened up the fridge and gestured at the contents therein. Fruit-spiced vinegars, vegetables from the far corners of the Mistral dominion, creams and cuts of meat.

Neither Sage nor Neptune nor Taurus made any motion to procure any of those fresh, high-quality ingredients.

Taurus opened another cabinet, revealing a variety of gadgets, tools, bowls, and measuring devices. Neptune knew enough about cooking to be able to identify one to be a measuring cup. He was pretty sure another thing was a whisk, but this was a test he hadn't studied for.

Finally, Taurus found a large white chef's hat from a hook above the island counter and threw it towards them. Comprehension came quickly to Sage and Neptune as they stared back and forth between the hat and one another.

"Aw man, do none of us actually know how to cook?" Sage asked. "You've got to be kidding me. This trip is going to be bad. TV dinners, cereal, and some fruit."

Taurus muttered something about that sounding fine to him - "I'm vegetarian anyways."

Because of course he was. Neptune mentally put a little tally mark on the 'Is Dominic Evil' chart, under the 'YES' column. What kind of fine, upstanding, moral character refused the deliciousness of meat? "Hey now, complaining about food is for the Pig to do. Stay in your lane!" Neptune playfully chided as he accepted a similar plate of nearly-thawed mashed potatoes from the one-eyed faunus. To Taurus he asked, "so how do you feel about becoming the fifth member of our band now? I mean, even with your bad dye-job hair, I think we could find some room for you."

"I'm not a horse. I'm not a beast of burden."

Sage choked on his food. He caught Neptune's eye.

Oh right… Dominic had to carry Sage's body off the airship…

Just as the prophecy prophesied!

Neptune and Sage's thoughts were brought out of their reverie by the arrival of Scarlet, who, upon entering the room - as if drawn by the scent of warmed-up food, scoffed. "Fuck if you're not a beast, the way you fight." Scarlet grabbed Neptune's plate of food and began eating it.

Pig!

Taurus was somehow prepared for that, though - there was more food handed to Neptune almost immediately. There were two more plates sitting in reserve - for Sun and Cammy, presumably.

Taurus scowled at Scarlet. "The hair-dye was to help me keep a low profile in Mistral. Like you are aware, I bear a certain resemblance to a wanted man. As for whether or not I'll keep helping you lot stay out of trouble… well, that's sort of a big choice. I'll need to think about it."

"Well, you have time." Scarlet said, "we're still leagues away from getting to shore. I meant the 'beast' thing as a compliment, by the way - not as a racial slur or anything..."

Taurus shrugged, not seeming to care - or just good at hiding his feelings.

Neptune dropped his fork. "How long are we going to be on this boat for?!"

"Sorry mate, it is the largest body of water on the planet. We can't sail across it in a day." Scarlet laughed. "Look at Mr. Geography-Whiz here! Besides that, those nasty little wrecker grimm got all into the rigging during that last fight and snipped it all to bits - we're running on engine power only now, and that engine's getting hot. I've been having to let it cool down every-so-often…"

Neptune turned away from the rude pirate and looked at Dominic. Dominic was using his fork to draw little circles in his plate of lukewarm mashed potatoes, lost in his own thoughts. So Neptune looked at Sage. "He's YOUR partner. Deal with him somehow."

Thankfully Cammy entered the galley, reported that Sun was manning the wheel, and put Scarlet on his best (or, at least, better) behaviour.

"Cammy, do you happen to know anything about cooking?" Sage asked, hopefully.

Cammy held up her scroll. "I know how to order food with delivery apps on this." She said it proudly, like that was somehow a skill that would be relevant at all in their current situation. Neptune had to wonder how many city-dwellers in Mistral were starving in their apartments, should Piter have kept the local network blackout going to try to stem the revelation of his wife's infidelity.

No! Neptune mentally slapped himself. That was a very negative line of thinking to start on. Jupiter's assertion - that Ghira had used a semblance to do it without her knowing - still gnawed at the back of Neptune's mind.

That little voice that kept wondering: what if Jupiter is justified? What if the side that included a thief, a terrorist, a pirate, and Sage was not the right side in this conflict?

Neptune finished his plate of mashed potatoes while Scarlet, Sage and Cammy reminisced about their job to Kuchinashi and Cammy's developments in using her semblance. Politely he excused himself and left the galley with the last plate of food. Steeling his resolve he brought the plate up onto the deck to deliver it to Sun. The sea surrounding them was deceivingly tranquil, like a vast sheet of glass. Only the hum of the engine and the ripples behind the yacht broke the illusion of placidity. If those ripples were only from the wake of their own ship, Neptune could actually imagine himself feeling at ease.

"Braving the deck at last, Mister Vasilias?" Sun called out. "'Tis a fine day."

Neptune handed him the plate and leaned on the railing near the steering wheel, in the centre of the ship far from the edge.

"How is the rest of the crew?"

Neptune gave Sun a sideways look. "He is, almost without a doubt, Adam Taurus."

Sun nodded. "I value your opinion, partner." He said it with an almost condescending tone, like how one would talk to a child that still believed in the Tooth Fairy.

Neptune sighed and held up the pop-up book. "Have you read this?"

Sun gave it a glance while he shoved potatoes into his mouth, letting the wheel go. "Nnn-nmmm." He shook his head side-to-side. "Mmmm-mmm mmm (what is it)?"

Neptune put the book away. He'd never known Sun to straight-up lie about anything and get away with it; his poker-face was awful even when it was stuffed full of food. Maybe Sage's suspicion was off… maybe it is just a coincidence. Neptune had over-thought things like this before, and it wasn't uncommon to get pulled into a good story with relatable characters. Maybe he just wanted a small hope that Lionheart had had a plan for them, a path they were still on.

"Why are you letting him come with us?"

Sun swallowed. "Why not? The more the merrier I always say."

Neptune seethed. "Why not? Adam Taurus is a fucking psychopath murderer-terrorist! His own people disavowed him! Did you never see the video of him executing SDC hostages? Even if I agree with letting him come, now that we're here and don't have much other option and he helped us out, normal people would have not gotten to this point based on the reputation. Sage said he chopped off a guy's hand on Piter's ship - doesn't that remind you of what he did to Yang?" Neptune grasped his arm with his hand. "I need my arms, dude!"

"Hey, this isn't about his rep. I fought Adam at Haven, and I say that the man downstairs is different. Maybe not in how he fights, but at least in the why. I got a good feeling here about him." Sun clapped his chest over his heart. "We shouldn't judge someone based on their appearance - it's the actions that make the man. Especially when all he's done so far is help us, even if he is a bit 'rough around the edges'. Ever since Beacon… I've noticed that places outside Vacuo are really different from Vacuo when it comes to… you know…" His tail stuck up and waved. "You sound like you're doing a lot of footwork to make an enemy for yourself. Why would you want him to be our enemy? We should all be friends, everyone, everywhere! I mean, I want to be friends with Piter, too, don't get me wrong. I don't want to take sides. I don't want there to be sides. There's so many better uses for our time, man." His tail gestured like a pointing finger towards the back of the ship. To the ripples, and what still lay beneath them. The ever-present threat of grimm was a solid argument in favour of humanoid unity. "So if someone wants to be my friend, I go by that."

Neptune had to give him credit on all the points he made. After the events in Mistral, the idea that the White Fang, and faunus in general, could have been systematically persecuted and demonised had more traction than before. Certainly Adam Taurus had committed criminal actions - brother gods, Neptune was certain the man had a bodycount to his name - but what if society was to blame more than the faunus serving potatoes, learning to read, fighting to keep me and my friends alive?

On the other hand, Sun didn't strike Neptune as the sort to have such a broad perspective; and if he did, Neptune wasn't going to let him own the moral high ground of this conversation without a fight.

"Is that because you've got nothing for them to get out of deceiving you, you broke ass?" Neptune shot out, "or is this just because you got a free lunch out of him? No, I think perhaps this has got something to do with Blake leaving you to go north?"

"Why would you think that? Man, I'm spilling my heart out to you here."

Sun didn't look upset, though. Neptune detected the hint of a wistful smirk when Blake's name came up.

"Oh my gods, you wanted her to come with us to Vacuo or something, didn't you."

Sun shoved potatoes into his mouth, not answering.

"She spent all summer showing off how well-off her parents are, so you wanted to impress her with how well you know the gutters of Vacuo." Neptune accused. "That didn't happen, so now you're hanging out with her ex."

More potatoes. Silence, save for the chewing.

"You're trying to fix him?" Neptune scoffed, "this is some next-level virtue-signalling, dude. Or the worst reaction to a breakup Remant's ever seen… truly pathetic. Sad."

"So you agree that he is fixable." Sun said proudly after swallowing the lumpy potato mash, "see? I knew we were on the same page here. He's cool now. Nobody is hopeless - not even Scarlet."

Neptune had many doubts about that. Scarlet? There was no hope there - the man was too far gone. As for the actual topic of conversation… "Taurus wanted to kill everyone on that airship, or so I'm told."

"That's not true." Sun objected quickly.

"Okay, everyone except you, and maybe Cammy." Neptune corrected, and Sun backed down as that little fact was addressed. "How long can you keep him under control? What assurances do we have that he won't snap on us?"

"Well, there's the fact that we're stuck on a boat that he needs help to sail and protect against the grimm. There's our strong optimistic belief in the power of friendship. In a straight fight, the three of us could overpower him…" Sun grinned that cheeky monkey grin of his. "So assurances? Absolutely none, bud. Absolutely none."

Neptune looked out at the water. It was so tranquil and still he could pretend it wasn't water at all. Just like Sun and Taurus: when he's not trying to kill him, Sun can pretend Taurus isn't a beast. He sighed. Well, just because Sun is an idiot and is doing this for idiot idealistic reasons doesn't mean I can't do it for smart reasons.

He could help make a good person out of Dominic. He could make up for the sins of his family, of his society, and create a better future - starting with the conversion of one man. Whether or not his justification, his reasons - guilt - for doing so were more or less noble than whatever was motivating Taurus… well, I can't worry about that. I have to do right by me. Or, maybe, the conversion of two men: his own perspective needed to shift, too, he needed to truly believe in a paradigm shift where human-faunus relations were concerned.

If there was a lesson that Neptune had taken away from 'The Warrior in the Woods', it was that it was the ambition of each generation to improve things; incremental changes building towards a better world.

"Think your family will be okay? I know the boat experience makes you think I don't care about you like I should, but man you know I totally do."

Neptune honestly hadn't had time to think about that. Now that he did… "Yeah, Mom and Dad'll be fine. I mean, they're in Argus. They're practically citizens of Atlas, with the amount of soldiers there. If Piter has a problem with them, he'll have to go through Atlas' military to get them. Which… is probably why he was so intent on getting me to envoy up on his behalf."

"Man. Politics are so complicated. That's why I like being a huntsman. Grimm bad. Hit grimm with stick. Be hero!"

Despite his pedigree, Neptune found it hard to disagree with that simple string of statements. While Sun finished his dinner, Neptune stared out at the water. No sign of land in sight.

He had a sudden urge to get a little bit of fun revenge on Sun for deciding to escape by boat. "Did you know Ilia likes girls?"

Sun frowned. "Shoot - did Dominic tell you?"

Neptune nodded.

"Damn. That was worth a few more good laughs, watching you try to flirt with her. Oh well."

Neptune slugged the faunus in the arm, making him nearly drop his fork. "What a good partner you are, telling me that before I made a fool of myself."

"Ow!" Sun rubbed his arm. "I would have told you before you went and proposed marriage to her." Sun went down on one knee. "My darling Ilia, wouldst thou doeth me the honour of giving me thine hand in matrimony?"

Neptune rudely shoved him to the deck, grabbing the steering wheel as Sun comically flopped prone. "Jokes on you: with a hot thing like Ilia competing with you for Blake, your chances with the sexy catgirl just dropped from 'slim' to 'nil', no matter how many of her other beaus you redeem to the hero life."

Sun's face was priceless as it went through several phases. First, he contemplated the words. Then, his heart began calculating his chances against Ilia in a competition for Blake's love. Finally, his brain confirmed the truth of what Neptune had said. Sun was devastated. His face fell, aghast at his certain loss of Blake's affections (whatever miniscule portion of those he had managed to scrounge together with his blatant summertime simping) to the wholly more attractive Ilia. Content at having witnessed the emotional collapse of his partner, Neptune went back below decks towards his quarters.

"Next time, steal a gods-damned airship, fuzzbrain!"


BRAZEN

Friday Morning

They had passed through the gates of Fort Castle's walled harbour-village past dark, so rather than fulfilling Ghira's hope of an immediate audience with the local governor, the three of them were put in what Brazen would rate as one of the lower-quality dungeons he'd seen in his lifetime. The walls were made of crumbling masonry and chiselled stone, the entire place reeked of urine that had dried before Ghira had been born, and was stocked with numerous medieval torture devices.

Ilia had regarded those, momentarily, with a look of revulsion and fear. No need for that, though. They weren't here to be interrogated. This was just temporary holding. In that regard, their accommodations were modern: the three of them had been secured to hang from the wall with manacles - perhaps the only thing in the place that was made in the last century - and watched by a squad of human soldiers armed with electric-dust Immobilizers, which were really just a fancy, ranged cattle-prod that would shoot electric current through a projectile cable. It reminded Brazen of Neo.

Odd, how the brain works, where the mind wanders to.

In the morning, a soldier in an outfit that had several more epaulettes and fancy badges on his chest came into the dungeon and gave them orders after waking Ghira and Ilia up; Brazen hadn't slept at all. Ghira was to be taken to see the governor, having had his identity quickly confirmed. The other two faunus were "to be sent to a labour mine, as the rest of the roundups." He made a comment about how the bounty hunters had done a "real number on that one before bringing it in" which almost made Brazen chuckle. How ironic it was that the bandages he wore, courtesy of the faunus, got him sympathy from a human.

Ghira promised the two of them that he would come for them immediately once he set things right, before being taken away separately.

The humans put shock-collars on all three of them. Brazen wasn't happy about it, but he was in no position to contest it - yet.

Ilia was having a little panic attack and struggled as best as she could as her manacles were unhooked from the wall so that she could be dragged ahead of Brazen to a waiting bus that was already filled with an assortment of local faunus the humans had rounded up the day before. Brazen was able to slowly hobble on after Ilia, deciding to sit down beside her in the aisle seat. For a moment she looked like she wanted to contest the seating arrangement, but looked out the barred window instead. Like most people, she'd rather sit with someone she knew and hated than risk sitting beside a stranger.

Brazen would have loved to have made a new friend, but he planned to whittle Ilia's walls a bit during the trip as part of his scheme to turn her back to his side.

Brazen decided to continue his ruse of cheerfulness. Thanks to the bandages, all that was really visible of him was his good eye and his forced manic grin. "Looking forward to going into the mines, Ilia?" He asked, nudging her arm with his to get her attention - a necessity, as between her ongoing panic and the din of the other captives' muttering, she had actually stopped paying attention to him.

"What?"

"The mines, girl!" Brazen hoarsely said through his veneer of mirth. "In a few hours, we'll be thrown into a dark pit, or maybe a shaft, and our only way out will be to dig until we find something worth hauling back up to the surface! Ah, the mines." It took real effort to say the M-word with anything other than disdain; for the past decade, he'd adopted the common practice of Fang members to use it as profanity.

Ilia scooted across the seat to be further away from Brazen and his forecast of what they could expect to happen to them. "Ghira will get us out."

Brazen nodded, agreeing with the delusional statement as if it were possible that Ghira could somehow convince the prejudiced, murderous humans to release captive faunus. Ilia, we've been trying that since the Rights Revolution - if they haven't started listening to our complaints yet, why would they do it now, after declaring war and bounties on us? He didn't say that, though. He was working on converting Ilia back to rationality, back to his cause. Calling her a naive fool would be detrimental to that effort. "Sure he will, but it is a couple day trip to get back to the capital by land. I doubt they'd use an airship for prisoner transport, if they even have any available. I know you only saw a few bombers when they attacked the exodus ships, but from what I saw in Mistral City they'd recalled as many ships as they could."

"What are you talking about?" Ilia said with a sneer on her lip.

Brazen leaned against the side of the bus, looking out the grungy window at the passing landscape. "I'm saying you'll be at the mining camp for a couple of days. Maybe weeks." Certainly Brazen had no intention of remaining at the camp for so long - he had things to do - but escaping would be much easier if Ilia wasn't a thorn in his side.

Ilia processed that for a minute. Brazen took the time to subtly peer around the bus to survey who else was aboard. He counted seventeen other faunus, five of whom seemed to be a family of whiskered-folks. He wanted to say feline, but for all he knew they were otter whiskers. Whiskers were whiskers, right? The two sitting across the aisle from himself and Ilia looked like they'd been beaten; one had some bruises on his arm, the other one had a black eye. Bruises seemed to have boar tusks, and black-eye's hair looked spiky, like a hedgehog. The rest of the bus looked haggard, wearing rags that ensured their faunus traits - dog noses, paws, hooves - were easy to see. None of them looked like they would be helpful in a fight. Scrawny arms, skittish attitudes. They probably didn't even know what aura was.

Besides the nineteen faunus, there was the human driver and four armed soldiers on the other side of a metal cage-wall separating the front of the bus from the back of the bus.

"Well, he'll just convince the local governor to free us. That'll be quick."

Brazen chuckled. "It's not been more than a few days and the local governor is already following the Crown Prince's order to round up the faunus population and send us to internment camps with what I can only call enthusiasm. I'm not sure he's any more friendly to the faunus than his cousin in the capital."

Ilia's spots went a pale grey.

"Don't be afraid. Mining isn't so bad. Heck, most days my old crew barely lost anyone in the dark. And even when we did, we'd normally find where they'd gotten stuck and pull them out before they died of thirst or anything nasty like that."

Ilia shrunk into herself. "If this is your way of trying to convince me to misbehave, it is not working. We are, in your case regrettably, forced into the roles of ambassadors on Menagerie's behalf. We will not cause trouble. We shall have faith in Ghira and the process of peaceful resolution." Under her breath, she muttered, "that's what Blake would want us to do…"

Brazen attempted to look surprised. With all the bandages, facial expressions were difficult. "Perish the thought, dear Ilia! I'm honestly looking forward to returning to the profession dominated by a company that brands us like livestock!"

Ilia couldn't stop her gaze from snapping to where his brand was, covered though it was by bandages. She knows my face. Her spots became even paler, and her skin blanched as well.

He wondered how Ilia's faunus trait would react to being branded.

"Of course, maybe they'll not put you in the mines." Brazen said nonchalantly. "The fishermen you let capture us seemed to like you."

Ilia's spots changed to a purplish-red. "They ambushed me!"

Brazen shrugged. "Hey, I'm not saying otherwise. I'm just saying that some people wouldn't have been captured by a bunch of fishermen with more nets than wits, and other people are you. But hey - if that's what you're into, so be it. Better than chasing after Blake."

With crimson spots adorning her skin, Ilia swung both of her shackled legs at him in a roundabout kick into his side; then she began using her feet to stomp into him. "You don't get to talk about Blake anymore!"

"Okay, okay." Brazen apologized, and the stomping stopped. Once she had her feet back on the floor, he added, "not that I really wanted to before. Even my brother only liked her because of your precious leader Ghira's semblance. Pretty sure mind-control semblances being used like that is a crime, by the way… even by what Menagerie considers to be laws."

"God, how long are you seriously planning to keep up that charade? Adam?" She hissed the name under her breath. Hedgehog-hair perked up and glanced over at them, near enough to perhaps have heard. The humans up front would have heard nothing over the din of the vehicle as it rumbled through the jungle - though one had looked back when Ilia had started kicking Brazen, making sure he didn't have to intervene with the shock collar remote.

Brazen stifled a smirk that threatened to grace his face. "You have me confused, Ilia, with my virtuous brother."

"I hate you." Ilia said. "I hate you so much. For what you did to Blake. For what you did to all of us. For being the biggest asshole on Remnant. Pretty sure this entire war is your fault, somehow."

"Hey, it was Ghira that made my brother do those things for Blake. Honestly, if free will had been involved, you were the better student. If not for Purrsuasion, my brother would definitely have taken you under his wing instead. You've always been a bit more…"

"Morally compromised?" Ilia offered, sounding like she hated herself for being herself in that regard.

"I was going to say that he considered you more creative in your solutions to problems."

"I'm not like that, anymore. I'm not like you." She spat out, no, she nearly hissed the words. "I don't crave revenge to make myself feel happy. I'm not a beast, not a monster."

"To humans you'll never be anything more." Brazen said and looked back out the window. The jungle was dark, the canopy thick. He wondered where they were being taken. Southern Mistral was thick with jungles and swamps. Faunus slavery in the region had never been completely abolished; small pockets of humans, practically bandits living without nearby CCT relay tower coverage, who refused to accept the change in social policy, had been the target of many White Fang operations in the Kingdom. They'd always popped back up, with new faunus victims. "Anyways, this war isn't our fault. I can't say what did cause it - I sort of just found myself reacting as it started to unfold. Found out they were coming to kill you all after we rescued Lichen and the girls, so we decided to split up: I came south to save you, and he went up to help Sun Wukong against the human leader. He'd probably know more about what's going on."

The fact that the war was still in full swing, and how his aura had shattered, didn't really fill Brazen with much hope in Dominic's success in fighting the Crown Prince with Sun. He tried not to imagine the worst, but it was difficult.

"Wait, you're working with Sun?" Ilia said, now genuinely surprised at the revelation that Sun and Taurus were in cahoots - even when humanity had declared them all enemies of the state with a single stroke of a pen. She whispered under her breath, "I knew I shouldn't have let Blake keep hanging out with him - that Neptune guy he called his partner was totally hitting on me every chance he got. I knew those guys gave off a bad vibe!"

Brazen shrugged. "Hey, I've got no real love for Sun. Got no gripe with him, either. My brother seemed to be getting along well enough with him, though… y'know, after they weren't fighting each other mano-a-mano at Haven anymore."

"Mano-a-mano?" Ilia chuckled. "Is that how he tells that story? I remember him getting his ass handed to him by Blake, then by Blake and Sun, then running off into the woods to cry. Like a little bitch."

Brazen's face hardened.

"Oh, yeah, your 'brother' was a real paragon of strength that night. Just got a whole run of sound defeats, one after the other, by sooo many people. It was so bad, the White Fang unelected him as leader on the spot and surrendered."

Brazen knew what Ilia was doing. She was trying to get a rise out of him with some shots at his ego, get him to give himself away as Adam. It was working.

Well, two could play at that game.

"So we've covered Blake and the war. What did he do to upset you, Ilia, to make you so happy to change your colours? Thought you were on his side."

"You know I hate that phrase."

Brazen played dumb. "What phrase?"

"That stupid colour change thing." Ilia said, turning away from him in her seat. "I'm not a coward. Not a traitor."

"How did big, bad Adam hurt you?"

Ilia turned away. "What do you care, if you're not him?"

"I'm his brother. If you've got some sort of problem with him, then it is a family concern."

Ilia turned back to him. "So, what, his beef is your beef?"

Brazen chuckled. "So what, it's okay when you make fun of my horns, but I can't make fun of your spots?"

Ilia nodded in agreement with such terms, fully at ease with her own hypocrisy.

"Well, if that's how it is, I guess I can live with that." Brazen leaned back. Her being able to joke like this with him was a good sign for resetting their comradery. "Adam told me about you, though. Maybe not everything, but he told me why you joined the Fang."

Ilia slumped in her seat and sighed.

"The SDC took everything." Brazen stated, "it's what they do. They cut into the land and strip it bare. They cut into our people and lay us bare. Atlas might have pulled its military out of Mistral after the Beacon incident, but I'm sure there's still some SDC outposts even this far south. They won't treat us well, even by local standards. They'll both have files on the pair of us. If you're not thinking of escaping, then you might reconsider your view on that fisherman. Maybe some white-haired human foreman will take a liking to you, maybe that's your way of avoiding the dangers. You say Neptune was flirting with you? Maybe you should have gone for that - I hear he's the Crown Prince's cousin. Think of the political advantages!"

Ilia made a little retching motion at the option he suggested. "What about you? You nearly died in the mines all the time when you were a kid. Shouldn't you be, I don't know, a bit panicked?"

Brazen shook his head, as if chastising Ilia for her stubborn intransigence in refusing to believe his lies about his identity. He was terrified of going into a mineshaft again, but he knew that that was because of how badly the SDC had treated him. All things considered, he had been quite competent as a slave miner, so much so that he wasn't concerned about the actual work. His fear was that he would be delayed, imprisoned, indefinitely - which his mission could not permit! The best means to avoid that was to gain Ilia's aid. He wasn't sure quite how he would put her talents to use in his escape, but he wanted the option and, quite frankly, he wanted Ilia to not hate him. She'd been his friend - and he didn't have… any of those left these days. Still, it was an uphill battle to regain her loyalty. Why couldn't I have been sent off with Ghira? At least that blundering idealist believed I wasn't Adam… I wonder why.

It had something to do with his Purrsuasion semblance.

He hadn't been able to remove it from me, since I'm not affected by it, but felt it through my aura's link to Bedlam?

Brazen wondered if Bedlam was free of the control. Had Ghira actually been able to remove his hypnosis through the cloned aura? Did distance matter? His constantly-breaking aura seemed to imply it did not.

Mines, I hope the two of them are okay.

A larger question: if Bedlam wasn't 'purr-suing' Blake anymore (Dominic and Bedlam would have laughed at the pun!), then what would he decide to do with his life?

"My brother managed to survive the mines. Which is what we'll have to focus on for the next while, until Ghira can rescue us." Brazen said it with enough effort to make it sound like he even believed it might be plausible that rescue was coming. More likely, Ghira would say his piece, then be put on the next bus to wherever they were heading. Humans only negotiated with peers, people with leverage. Ghira was a hostage, a captive. It would take some sort of miracle for the man's plan to work. Brazen didn't have enough faith to depend on miracles. He'd have to make his own, or, at least make his own way back to the city.

Perhaps the universe shared his jaded sense of dark humour. When the bus finally stopped and the faunus were herded out, they were greeted by a large metal-link fenced compound at the base of a large cliff. Weather-worn letters stamped into the rock face were easy to read, even with Brazen's difficulties.

Brazen had been wholly expecting to be delivered back unto the SDC.

Instead, it seemed that he was now an unwilling employee of the AsbestOz Mining Cooperative.

Ilia leaned up next to him. "If you ask nicely, maybe they'll do the brand vertical this time - to re-use the 'C'."

Her words didn't have any effect on him, so she moved on to keep up with the other faunus as they were herded forwards, leaving Brazen to straggle behind to wonder if he was entangled in some sort of conspiracy or simply the butt of whatever joke reality was making.

Before he could start laughing, a jolt to his neck reminded him of his concerns, and he stepped forward to match his pace up to Ilia.


ADAM

For a long time, or what felt like a long time in the Between, he stared in a daze at the floating circle that continued to show his lives like movie theatre screens. He touched Brazen's circle. He immersed himself in Brazen. He pulled away, to do the same to Dominic.

Dai did not deign to respond. She sat a healthy distance away, letting him think, after the spectacle of the morning.

"Did Ghira release Bedlam through the aura shared with Brazen?" Adam asked, incapable of determining what was responsible for that fleeting freedom he'd tasted. "Is that why Dominic felt it, too?"

Maybe it was the catnip tea he was drinking. Dai suggested. I do not think it really matters much to Bedlam though.

Adam sprung to his feet, moving away from the arrangement of circles to stand over where Dai sat. "Doesn't matter? Doesn't matter! If he'd known… if I'd known that the choice I made to make him was based on… on that!" Adam spat out the last word. "Ghira enslaved me!"

For a creature who proclaims peace and equality, the father of Blake did seem rather quick to subjugate your younger self.

"He's no better than the SDC!" Adam raged, "at least with the Schnees the methods of control were obvious. Acclimatable. Not that I ever stopped hating being their property, but at least I managed to accept the pain every day brought until my escape! At least those chains were visible! Breakable!"

You are so much fun when you are angry. So fiesty. I love it. Such passion. Yes. Dai said, her slitted eyes narrowing to focus on him as she smirked. Her claws began making that nigh-imperceptible droning sound she made by grinding the serrated grooves together.

Adam continued his rant about the sorry state his selves were in. "Now look at Brazen! He's, what, taking Brazen as a bartering chip? He's still treating us like a tool! Me! Treating me like a sword he's not willing to swing himself!"

Does Ilia do something with her hair to make it look like a chameleon tail, or does it coil like that naturally?

"There has to be something I can do… what is the score of the game?"

Daichotomy? Dai replied, let me think… I believe you are currently in the lead. Dai created a scoreboard out of some green. Why do you ask?

"I'm too… too angry to think right right now." Adam replied as he examined the record of the game's score. Two points for Dai, thanks to Dominic and 'first' one with Bedlam - which I still say shouldn't count. Especially if Bedlam's entire personality was compromised by Ghira's semblance! Adam had three points, which didn't count the initial time where he'd initially influenced Bedlam to not gut Neo after escaping his bondage. Dominic had chosen to save Sage, despite being human, from certain death on the airship during the fight with Jupiter; Brazen had been convinced to treat Neo nicely (which also had helped him figure out that Neo hadn't actually escaped her own table-trap), and he'd also stayed the course to save Ghira's exodus ships rather than following Dai and Hazel's advice of just playing it safe and going with Cinder's allies to meet Salem face-to-face. Adam frowned, thinking about that choice. If Brazen had left Ghira to his fate of getting bombed to smithereens by his human 'allies', it would have been poetic justice and Brazen wouldn't be a captive. "If I win the game, I can dive into one of them and tell them to gut Ghira. Brazen, probably." One more point. He just needed one more point.

Brazen seems to be leaning on Ghira rather hard right now. Both literally and figuratively. Dai pointed out. If not for that little intervention in the court, one of your selves would still be bound for Menagerie. She paused. I would have liked to see Menagerie, especially through your perspective. My prior excursions did not let me see much of the world, nor of your people.

"Oh? What did your prior excursions let you see?"

Ah-ah-ah! Dai wagged her finger, you have not won the game, yet.

Adam rolled his eye. All of these choices. If he won, would he use the chance to get revenge on Ghira for his filthy lies, or would he try to learn more about his hostess? Reason warned him that the latter was the proper course, but… Ghira ruined my life!

You should be happy for Bedlam. He was sandwiched between two relatively attractive females. A male fantasy.

Adam glared at Dai. Here she was, mocking his defeat at the hands of two girls and a motorcycle. "What were the odds of him being taken unaware like that? How could that happen?" He complained, "after all that planning, all that plotting to use those awful Apathy grimm to sneak into Argus?"

Maybe it had just been a combination of factors: the surprising meeting with Blake, the sudden arrival of Yang. The cold, harsh walk to Argus The hunger.. The presence of the grimm. All of it had conspired against Bedlam's success.

Makes you wonder where those monsters wandered off to.

"Maybe they're starting that jazz quintet." Adam sighed, resigning himself to his own impotence, stuck here in the Between. He looked at the third ring, now black and embedded into the green foggy pedestal he'd cobbled together for it. The other rings floated, wafting up and down on misty eddies, but Bedlam's ring was motionless.

He'd been looking forward so much to seeing Bedlam succeed. It would have opened a lot of options to his trio, to have Blake as a captive. Ghira would be putty in his hands. And he'd have nobody to blame but himself, since I'd be sure to be taking good care of Blake while using her as a hostage… The White Fang would be back under his command. That other relic, the blue one, would be his, too, so Brazen could play with that. Not to mention it would liven up the monochrome atmosphere of this place, having Blue back. Now all those hopes and ambitions were wasted, it seemed. Blake had won, and escaped to Atlas. And if there was one place Adam Tauruses didn't want to go (without a large army), it was back home.

Dominic seems happy, at the very least. Dai said encouragingly, so it was not like everything seems lost.

That thought did cheer Adam up a little. Dominic was not captured or defeated. He was still on course to fulfil his choice-path.

He will just have to manage to leave behind his new friends and Sun's yummy abs so that he can make it back to Vale.

Adam looked at Dominic's ring, which showed him enjoying a cheap microwave dinner with Sun's subordinates. The need to return to Vale looked like it would be quickly overshadowed by SSSN's ability to make him feel… welcome. Wanted. Unfamiliar feelings that he deeply craved.

The worst part of it was that even Adam couldn't decide what was better: an army of loyal faunus in conquered Vale, or four friendly trainee-huntsmen.

"You really do know just how to make me disappointed with myself." Adam shook his head. Everything was going wrong all across the board. Why were things going so wrong? Everything had begun going sour… "back when I put on this ring!"

Oh?

"Ever since I found this ring and put it on, it is like I've been cursed to fail!" Adam accused. "Sienna refused to accept the glory of my victory in Vale. Blake stopped me at Haven. My followers rejected me! I have… faunus blood on my hands. Literal faunus blood. My own people! I'm supposed to be their saviour!"

Some people cannot be saved. You did what you had to do, to save the rest.

Adam nodded. Yes. It was necessary. I'm still working towards the goal of saving my people.

You are not cursed because of the Relic of Choice, Adam. Dai cooed, growing smaller and fluttering up to perch on his left shoulder. You are just having some regular bad luck. Cheer up. Things will get better soon.

He shot her a quizzical look. "I thought you said not even the gods could time-travel. How do you know things are going to get better? Have you been holding out on me?"

I said that not even the Gods could travel back in time.

"So what, you're saying I have a destiny to have a better time in the future? Doesn't destiny sort of contradict the idea of free will - of choice?"

Probably.

"So how do you know that things'll get better?"

Dai giggled in his ear. I do not. But it is what creatures tell one another when they want them to stop being so petulantly broody. Unlike myself, who is a different definition of broody. She began to rappel down his chest like a mountaineer, until he plucked her from his navel and held her up to his face.

"You make a terrible liar and what?"

Cloaca! She fidgeted about in his grasp, and he let her go so that she could flutter off around Brazen's ring.

Adam felt the muscles in his stomach clench. With a hard expression and a gesture towards Dai's scoreboard he replied, "you're a bit behind in points for that."


AN: Not sure what constitutes a gallon of milk but I hope it is good for your bone.
People keep calling this a crack-fic and I can see why. Blame my editor.

I'll admit when I initially planned this story out, Ilia was not an important character in my mind, but recently her value to my narrative has been expanded. I like how that happens every now and again while writing.
I hate how it makes me have to rethink the entire trajectory of certain plots, though.