Cards of Remnant

by TheMaster4444

Ruby Rose has wanted to be a Hunting Duelist all her life, to train her aura to manifest the monsters in her deck to fight the Grimm. So when she gets an invitation to join her sister at Beacon Duel Academy, she jumps at the chance. But old powers are stirring, and ancient summoning methods not seen in eons are about to clash, with the fate of Remnant in the balance.

42. Seeing Red - Part 2

beta-ed by xenosaiyan

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"Strike! Strike!" Adam chanted, a company duel disk on his forearm with all five monster zone slots filled. His left eye was covered in a black eyepatch, edges of red peeking from its borders, while his right eye, still baby blue, kept an eye on his quintet of Mine Moles, the sturdy Beast-Type digging away with their pickaxes in perfect synchronization. "Strike! Strike! Strike! And… rest!"

His five Mine Moles instantly halted their work, turning back to him with cutesy smiles. Down the hall of the mine, the rest of the miners on his team, all of them only capable of keeping two or three Mine Moles manifested simultaneously, obeyed his command as well.

Gus smiled and waddled up to him. "Too early to stop for the day, right, boss?"

"Yeah, but we've been going a while. Best to get an Infinitrack Tunneler up here, check for nearby dust pockets," Adam explained, with his own grin. "No point in risking anyone to an accident."

"Very good, boss," The mole faunus beamed at him, pride and care painted on his face. He turned to the rest of the mining team. "Come on, you lot! We may be waiting for the Infinitrack team, but that's no excuse not to at least look busy. The overseer's given the new regional manager a tour today, after all! Gotta come all the way down here to make sure the mine hasn't blown up! Haha!"

Laughter echoed from the rugged faunus miners, Adam even managing a chuckle as his Mine Moles hopped over to him to receive rewarding head rubs under their hard hats.

He had certainly flourished as one of the youngest shift leaders in SDC history. A year since he saw red, since he lost the ability to see the sky with both eyes, and he was amazed that he could feel this good again. When the SDC lawyers had come to the Taurus family hovel, with their fancy suits and practiced apologies, he'd wanted to punch their teeth out. His parents and older siblings had held him back, the younger ones hiding as best they could from the men who'd come down from Atlas like angels from on high.

Most religions tried to make people forget that their angels were often warriors, ruthless to their enemies.

The attorneys had done their job to placate him, slid an NDA across the table, and promised that Armstrong would be removed from his position as overseer of the mine. Adam would receive a promotion to shift leader, unprecedented for his age, and hush money equal to six months of his normal pay. All he had to do was keep quiet and not put the SDC through the hassle of burying him in the media and court. He'd still been tempted to throw it in their face, but his parents had simpered and pleaded with him to take the deal. They couldn't win if they fought anyway, and at least this way they could get proper care for his eye and even make up for the loss of his income to the family food fund while he was recovering and couldn't work.

Adam found he couldn't complain in the aftermath. His new shift leader pay helped make it so the Taurus household could better feed its too many mouths. More impressively, the hush money he'd squirreled away had shortened the time he needed to save up enough lien to leave The Crater from years, to only one year and some change. He'd have enough funds to set out and find his place in the world in only a few short months. A few short months until he could get his piece of the sky.

That was worth an eye… right?

"Hahaha! Not bad, Noroma! Not bad!"

Adam froze as soon as that deep voice reached his ears, the Mine Mole he was petting perking up in concern as its duelist's hand halted. Gus and the other miners stopped laughing, all of them looking at their shift leader in horror as they registered whose cackles filled the mine.

Sure enough, led by the new mine overseer, a spindly human named Mamoru Noro, Armstrong came around the bend of the cave, the human Fortress Whale clad in the uniform of a SDC regional manager.

"It's, uh, actually Noro, Mr. Armstrong, sir. Mamoru Noro," the new overseer winced, uncomfortable as the manager pulled him close in a one-armed chokehold hug. "Not Noroma."

"Well, whatever you go by, you've gotten this place looking just a bit better than when I ran it," Armstrong gloated. "Even putting out better numbers than I did. Which helps me look good to the bigwigs up in Atlas. What's your secret?"

"Well, I am an expert manager and beloved leader of men. Even faunus," Mamoru tried to posture. He managed to reach out from Armstrong's grip to gesture towards Adam. "This young man is one of my shining accomplishments. Our top shift leader, Adam Taurus."

"Top shift leader? This babyface?" Armstrong chortled, releasing Mamoru and marching over to the one-eyed bull faunus.

The miners were silent as their old overseer approached the young man he'd mained, shaking with dread for the one-eyed teenager. Gus tried to head off the huge human, but Adam waved the old faunus away. He would not be cowed, rubbing the head of his nervous Mine Mole underneath its hard hat and making sure to stare straight at Armstrong when the disgusting bastard arrived and looked him over, hiding the terror freezing his heart and threatening to jitter his knees.

He understood exactly what had happened. The SDC lawyers had played him. They'd told him and his parents that "Armstrong would be relieved of his position as overseer of the mine.", deliberately misleading the bull faunus that the man who'd humiliated him and burnt out his eye would be fired. The reality was that, whether Armstrong had known it at the time or not, his promotion to regional manager had already been in the works and he'd obviously have to be relieved of his position as the mine's direct overseer to take up that task. His numbers had been too good for the company to let him go over something so small as branding a faunus worker, even if those numbers were the fruit of his team's competence, of Adam's competence, that he'd often only gotten in the way of with his brutal slave-driving.

What did humans care if humans hurt faunus to profit humans?

Armstrong's repugnant scent washed over him, his cold terror steadily morphing to burning fury as his old overseer scanned his form. What right did this human garbage have to wound Adam, and then stand atop his hard work and call himself a giant? He didn't know if he'd be able to hold himself back and keep from slugging the bastard if he picked his nose and flicked the mucus onto him again. His willpower was already fading when–

"Ha!" Armstrong laughed, hearty and jovial. "Aren't you a strapping lad? Keep up the hard work, young buck. The SDC rewards hard workers with many gifts that'll please your doe, if you know what I mean."

The fat man turned and waddled back to Mamoru, still cackling as if he'd shared some inspirational words and a jaunty joke with Adam. Gus and the other miners breathed sighs of relief, silently rejoicing that nothing dreadful had come of the confrontation.

Meanwhile, Adam was left staring after the bearded human, his baby blue eye blinking in numb befuddlement. "Buck? Doe?"

Did Armstrong… did Armstrong think he was a deer faunus? Sure, a lot of humans just saw his horns and just said the first horned animal that came to mind, but Armstrong knew him. He had known him for years. He'd maimed him. Did he really not know he was a bull faunus all that time?

That was… that was disheartening, but not unexpected. He supposed all he could do now was put this disgusting encounter behind him and get back to work. While he seethed at how the SDC lawyers had tricked him regarding his assailant being punished, the money and promotion they'd given him for his silence were real. A few months. Just a few more months and he'd have enough cash to put the filth of The Crater behind him–

"Muscular animal that one. Tall. Broad shoulders. He'll do good for us here," Armstrong spoke with Mamoru as the humans started walking off to continue their tour. "He a new hire?"

Adam froze, the question colder in his ears than the tundra of Solitas. A new… a new hire? He… he…

He didn't remember him. The bastard had burnt out his eye and he didn't even remember him. Just another faunus put in his place, who didn't deserve a second thought. Why should he, when there was no consequence for what he'd done?

When the bull faunus could be maimed for something so small, wounded for something so small, and then forgotten so easily?

Mine Mole whimpered at his side as he reached down and took hold of the Beast-Type's pickaxe.

"Oh, um, yes! I personally brought him on," Mamoru quickly improvised, preening at the compliment as he shamelessly lied to his boss. "I do have an eye for talent. Even amongst the beasts–Aaaaaaahhhhhh!"

The slimy human shrieked as Adam stampeded into his field of view and buried his pickaxe into Armstrong's back.

The fat bastard coughed up a thick swamp of blood, his eyes wide with shock, agony, and terror as his spine and organs were carved up from behind. He never even had the chance to raise his aura before his blubbery caress hit the ground, dead before he struck the icy rock.

Adrenaline drove Adam then, his ears picking up the whirr of Mamoru's duel disk deploying to life. The young bull faunus acted on instinct from there, knowing that he was dead if the overseer got the chance to summon a monster. Fortunately, the slimy human was clearly no combat duelist, panicking and sputtering as he gaped at his superior's corpse. Gaped until Adam was practically on top of him and used his pickaxe to smash his duel disk off his arm. From there, his taller, more muscular body was all he needed to corner the coward against the wall and wail on him. Wrath and rage that had long boiled with him erupted with furious, righteous judgment, bashing the company man until his aura crumpled and his pickaxe struck bone and blood.

It was only then, with the second human torn apart before him and the blood finally visible on his hands, that Adam realized what he'd done.

The adrenaline left him immediately, replaced with a deathly chill as his eye widened in uncomprehending horror. His pickaxe dropped from his suddenly limp grip, disappearing into shimmering sparks as his Mine Moles vanished, his usually steady manifestation of their aura bodies collapsing as his mind became light and murky. His stomach churned at the sight of what was left of Mamoru, the young boy staggering back, only to hop up in terror as he accidentally stepped in a puddle of Armstrong.

His head whipped between his two victims, his mind stretching apart as he fully registered that he'd just murdered two people. All while his fellow faunus miners gaped at him with astonished alarm.

"Adam…" Gus stammered, the snarky old man at a loss for words. "What… what did you…"

"What did you just do?!" another miner wailed, panic searing across his face as he smashed palms over his cheeks. "Y–You just killed an overseer! An overseer and a regional manager!"

"Do you have any idea what you've just brought down on us all?! How the SDC's gonna react to this!?" another hysterically panted. "They… they'll fire us all. Blacklist us. We'll never work again! Our families will starve! My kids are gonna die–"

"No one is gonna die!" Gus shouted, turning around to the rest of the crew and thrusting out his paws to stunt the growing hysteria. "We… we can handle this. We're the only ones who know about this. As long as we stick together and… I don't know, stage it right. Make it look like there was a cave-in, we can play this off–wait! Adam!"

Physically, the bull faunus heard the old man, but mentally, he did not. He'd dumped his duel disk, SDC property that had a tracker in it to keep a miner from taking it offsite, and grabbed Mamoru's from the ground. Once he was properly armed, he dashed through the mine in a panic, weaving through his crew in a blind, desperate sprint. Gus wasn't nearly fast enough to do anything but futilely reach out his paw at the younger man's back.

Adam hadn't been thinking about where he was going, but somehow he made it to the elevator, smashing the button to close the doors and rise. The minute he was sealed inside, he crashed against the wall, collapsed down to the floor, and puked, the putrid smell of Armstrong and Mamoru unwilling to leave his nose.

What… what had he done? What had he done?! It'd felt so good, so right in the moment, but then… then…

"Gaaaabbbbgggg!" he puked again.

He leaned back against the elevator's cold steel wall, shivering with a guilty chill. It wasn't as if coming this way had been a smart move. The mine's perimeter had guards to ward off minor Grimm attacks. He'd be walking right into them.

Maybe he should. The others' worries weren't wrong. Maybe he could spare the rest of the crew from reprisal by turning himself in. Maybe if he sacrificed himself…

His thought process stilled when he caught sight of the elevator doors. The doors, and the letters painted on them in crimson.

SDC.

The same letters that Armstrong had burned into his left eye. The same letters that the fat bastard had said he deserved. The same letters that symbolized the company that had tricked him into accepting that he had.

The same letters that his crew below blamed him for standing up to.

Adam's fingers clenched back into fists, the young boy slowly steadying his frazzled breathing as he glared at the Blue-Eyes White Dragons engraved throughout the elevator. The Schnees' beasts stared at him with their accursed pride, demanding he supplicate himself and beg for forgiveness for his trepasses against their masters.

But he had done nothing wrong. Armstrong, Mamoru, the SDC, he was not wrong to stand up to them for what they'd done, for what they'd continue to do without even bothering to remember their victims. To remember him!

The others could let fear drive them to grovel. He'd had enough of being used, abused, and told to be thankful for whatever meager scraps the humans decided to reward him with. He was not an animal!

He'd make sure they never forgot that.

Amazingly, something in his will provoked a response in the cards in his lap. Adam looked down and pulled Mamoru's deck from his duel disk, the same Six Samurai deck that was gifted to every SDC overseer once they were promoted. Armstrong had customized his with some personal monsters, but it seemed his replacement hadn't been so creative.

And yet, despite the archetype's terrible history with the faunus, Adam could sense the warriors within genuflecting towards him, their spirits recognizing his iron will, hailing him as a duelist worthy to command them. The archetype made to hinder the faunus was recognizing him for his strength. He had never heard of that happening before. He might be the first faunus in history to achieve such a feat. To be lionized by the legions of Shien.

With that boost to his wounded confidence, Adam steeled himself and rose to his feet.

When the elevator arrived topside, he ducked behind a snowdrift and used it to wash the obvious blood from his person. From there, he just walked to the gate of the mining facility, and none of the guards even gave him a second look. They all knew him, or at least didn't see anything out of the ordinary for a faunus worker breaking down and going home after only half a day. It wasn't their business if the animals wanted to lose the pay for the rest of their hours.

They were so proud, so arrogant, thinking so little of his kind and never imagining that they could possibly be more. They didn't give Adam a second look when he clocked out and road the midday truck back to Mantle, likely forgetting his face the moment he was out of sight, never mind the eyepatch marring his visage.

His one good eye glared up at Atlas the entire ride back, furious at its nerve to obstruct the sky from his sight.

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RWBYRWBYRWBYRWBYYUGIOHYUGIOH

"Ugh…" Adam groaned, sprawled on his back as the smoke cleared from Machu Mech's special ability. The uneven rock of the tunnel stabbed into his back as his aura crackled from the strain of the cannon bombardment.

Crackled… but did not break.

Adam Taurus: 1000 Life Points

"What?" Oobleck gasped, the huntsman's eyes wide behind his spectacles. "How?"

Adam grit his teeth as he staggered up to one knee, holding up the card he'd pulled from his graveyard. The old gift, the old common, that he shouldn't have even still had in his deck.

"Damage Diet," he grumpily revealed. "I banish it from my graveyard, and all effect damage I take this turn is halved."

"Damage Diet? I must admit, of all the cards I expected you to have discarded for Battle Shogun's search effect, I did not expect it to be that one," Oobleck said. "Very well then. Since you survived, Number 33 now reaps the second part of its effect. It gains attack points equal to the damage you took."

Machu Mech's cannons receded into its floatation ring, the ancient yet futuristic city burning hot with a golden glow (ATK 5400).

Adam smirked with a victorious chuckle, glancing at his Primal Being Token from beneath his Grimm Mask. "Formidable power. Too bad you gave me a monster with even more as part of your vaulted strategy."

"I suppose I'll have to borrow a page from your book with a bit of tactics," Oobleck conceded, sliding a card from his hand into his duel disk's backrow. "I activate the continuous spell Chronomaly Pyramid Eye Tablet!"

An ancient tablet rumbled up in front of the professor, a radiant glow shining from its intricate hieroglyphics. Machu Mech's surface seemed to glow brighter in the brilliant light (ATK 6200).

"So long as Chronomaly Pyramid Eye Tablet is on the field, all Chronomaly monsters gain eight hundred attack points," Oobleck explained.

"Not bad for some chicken scratch," Adam sneered, steadily regaining his breath.

Oobleck sighed and shook his head. "To be a student of history does not mean you have to love all its areas the same, but it does mean you must be open to what can be learned from all of them. Machu Mech, attack the Primal Being Token. Meteor Meltdown!"

The floating city's tallest building shot a beam of light up above. Serving as some sort of signal, the air crackled with power as an asteroid fell from the heavens. Adam planted his hands on the ground to steady his kneeled stance, some of Mt. Glenn's desolate skyscrapers crumbling from the reverberations as the meteor annahilated the Primal Being Token.

Adam Taurus: 800 Life Points

"Nibiru, The Primal Being!" Oobleck called out to his other meteorite. "Attack him directly."

The gargantuan rock rolled over its side and barreled for Adam, the ground shaking as the titanic creature that fell from the heavens rumbled towards the tiny, insignificant bull faunus. The world racing to crush him, as it always did.

"I know enough of history. We fight your 'Great War', you try to exile us to the squalor of Menagerie. We fight to live where we please, and you make us beg for your tolerance. No more. The line must be drawn. Here! This far! No further! And I will make you pay for what you've done!" Adam spat, his head whipping up with rabid fury as he smashed a button on Wilt. "I activate A Hero Emerges! When your monster attacks, you pick a card from my head and if it's a monster, I summon it."

Adam spread out the two cards in his hand. Both had been searched by his Gateway of the Six Samurai, so his opponent knew that they were both monsters. Of course, going by Doctor Oobleck's skill shown so far, his knowledge of the Six Samurai archetype, and the concerned expression on his face, he was well aware that his situation could be better or worse depending on which of the two swordsmen was special summoned.

The doctor pointed to the card on the left.

Adam smirked. He chose wrong.

"Come forth! Secret Six Samurai - Kizaru!" he shouted, a dark-haired warrior in brown-tinted robes flashing onto the field, its sword raised in a defense mode guard (ATK 1900/DEF 1000). "When Kizaru is special summoned, I can add a Six Samurai of a different attribute than monsters I control from my deck to my hand. I choose Legendary Six Samurai - Shinai!"

Nibiru rolled over Kizaru and crushed him, the warrior helpless against the calamity of time. But he had served his purpose, preventing Adam's defeat, fetching him another monster, and putting two Bushido Counters on Gateway of the Six Samurai by being summoned, the religious arch lighting up two more of its holy plates.

"I activate the effect of Chronomaly Acambaro Figures in my graveyard," Oobleck announced, the hunched-over clay figurine rising to his field. However, it tail suddenly lurched around and struck the huntsman, the experienced duelist nonchalantly raising his arm to block and weather the blow.

Bartholomew Oobleck: 3000 Life Points

"I pay one thousand points to activate this revival effect, and at the end of my turn, Acambaro Figures returns to my hand," Oobleck explained, inserting the last two cards in his hand into his duel disk before retrieving the resurrected monster's card, its aura body shimmering away. "I set two cards facedown and end my turn."

"Draw!" Adam yelled, ripping a card from the top of his deck and grinning at the sight of it as he stored it away in his hand. "I normal summon Secret Six Samurai - Hatsume!"

A red-haired kunoichi leapt onto his field, a pair of kunai ready between her fingers (ATK 1600/DEF 1500). She twirled around and tossed the blades at Adam's graveyard, Legendary Six Samurai - Mizuho (ATK 1600/DEF 1000) suddenly back on his field, ready for battle. Four more Bushido Counters stacked before Gateway of the Six, for a total of six.

"Hatsume can banish two Six Samurai from my field or graveyard to summon a different Six Samurai from my grave," Adam said, banishing the fallen Fuma and the Shinai from his first turn to pay the price for Mizuho's revival. "Then, since Mizuho is back on my field, I can special summon the Legendary Six Samurai - Shinai that Kizaru added from my deck to my hand last turn."

The armored warrior (ATK 1500/DEF 1500) emerged beside his lover, his clubs ready for battle. Two more counters plopped down onto Gateway of the Six, two more plates lighting up sapphire.

Finally. Now was the moment for victory!

Adam smashed the card he'd drawn for his turn into his duel disk. "I activate Six Strike - Triple Impact! If I control three or more Six Samurai monsters, I can destroy all your face-up monsters, your face-up spells and traps, or your set spells and traps!"

Hatsume, Mizuho, and Shinai dashed into a triangle formation. Mystical sigils flared beneath each of them, one orange, one green, one purple.

"I choose to annihilate your monsters!" Adam gloated. "Fire!"

The magical emblems beneath each of the samurai all turned orange. Tempestuous lightning flared between the triad of warriors, coalescing into a single pulsing orb at the center of their formation. Humming with power, the sphere of death unleashed a beam of terrible power onto Oobleck's field. Nibiru, The Primal Being, the calamity from the sky, was torn apart in the blink of an eye.

Number 33: Machu Mech… was not?!

"Huh?" Adam gaped, that infernal floating city refusing to fall from his sky. "What happened? Why wasn't it destroyed?"

"If a Chronomaly monster would be destroyed by battle or card effect, Chronomaly Acambaro Figures' effect allows me to discard it instead," Oobleck explained, placing the monster from his hand into his graveyard slot. "I did not revive it for no reason."

"Useless! You think you can stop me!" Adam raged. "I activate Mizuho's special ability! Once per turn, by tributing a Six Samurai monster, she can destroy one card on the field. I tribute Shinai!"

Just like when she'd launched the attack that'd killed Perry, Mizuho gripped Shinai's throat, the two lovers tearfully pressing their foreheads together as scarlet energy filled the male. Yet, with the dignity and will of true warriors, the lady samurai still threw her mate up into the air, the explosion of his body ripping through Mt. Glenn's barren ruins and shaking Machu Mech.

The ancient metropolis rumbled louder and louder, the blast of the defiant samurai having triggered some chain reaction in its futuristic systems. The Number's flotation ring cracked apart, the arrogant city tumbling down into the subterranean canyon. Adam's smile widened as he was once more able to glimpse the sky through the small hole in the ground ceiling above. The night sky, true. A cloudy and storm-filled firmament, but unobstructed.

His.

"Shinai's effect activates when he's tributed. I can return a different Six Samurai from my graveyard to my hand. I choose Legendary Six Samurai - Kizan and use his effect to special summon him," Adam called, the black samurai joining his female comrades with his elegant longsword (ATK 1800/DEF 500). "You're wide open, human. And I've got more than enough power to take out your life points and end this duel."

"So it would seem. Your tactics will have triumphed over me," Oobleck mournfully smirked. "And my strategy will have triumphed over you."

"What are you babbling about?" Adam demanded. "You'll be dead."

"And Team RWBY will be nearly to your base, if they're not there already. While you, by far the greatest threat to them, will be too far away to do anything before they put a stop to your train. You have no runner after all, and unlike me, you have no super speed semblance."

Adam scowled. "You shouldn't put so much faith in Blake. Take it from someone who's made that mistake."

"Ms. Belladonna knows the future she seeks to create, even if she does not yet know how to achieve it. I shall trust in that, as I have trusted in the hopes and dreams of many of my students," Oobleck declared. "What about you, Mr. Taurus? Indulge a doomed man. Let's assume everything goes the way you hope it does. Team RWBY fail to stop The Breach, The Grimm swarm Vale, the kingdom falls, and the worst of humanity lashes out against innocent faunus in retribution. They rally to you, and you lead them to victory in the ensuing race war. Humanity is enslaved or extinct under the faunus' bootheel. Then what?"

"Then we get what we deserve," Adam smiled, his eye glimmering beneath his Grimm mask. "We will have won."

"As I said before, nobody wins forever. Or for long. The wheel just keeps turning. Or do you expect a world built on wrath, genocide, and uncompromising racial purging to be free of troublemakers? How do you plan to protect your glorious revolution from the next one?"

Adam's face remained resolute. "I'll win."

"Are you even listening?! Look around you! Look where we are!" Oobleck demanded, the professor finally losing his temper as he threw his arms wide towards the decayed wasteland that was once Vale's bustling second city. The kingdom's great hope to expand against the tide of Grimm, turned to ash and corpses. "Nothing lasts forever but time and The Grimm! So why throw away your humanity for a power that cannot endure?!"

"Throw away my 'humanity'?"

Adam darkly chuckled. Even knowing that the professor was trying to stall him, it was simply too ridiculous a statement. He couldn't help but speak.

"I've always been fascinated by that term. A person's 'humanity'. Decided and defined by your species of course, not mine," he noted. "And so it is the term for 'kindness', and 'compassion', and 'basic decency'. As if the slime that is your race ever knew such things. You just wanted to make my people chase after them, chase after weaknesses that you could exploit to make us your cattle."

"Weaknesses?" Oobleck sadly repeated, almost as if in mourning. "You think kindness and compassion are weaknesses?"

"Power, real power that will be lionized throughout history, doesn't come to those who are born strongest, or fastest, or smartest, or especially not softest. It comes to those who will do anything to achieve it," Adam proclaimed. "I will not settle for scraps won by whimpering for backhanded tolerance. I will have the sky. I will make you pay for what you have done. Battle!"

"Not quite!" Oobleck injected, one of his facedowns flipping up. Another massive clay tablet, similar to the Pyramid Eye continuous spell, conjured itself in front of the professor, crackling with electricity as it conjured a pair of craggy stone monoliths with ancient sun calendars on them (ATK 600/DEF 600). "At the end of your Main Phase, I activate the trap card Chronomaly Esperanza Glyph! This card allows me to target an Xyz Monster on my field or in my graveyard, and summon two Chronomaly monsters who are one level higher than that monster's rank from my hand, deck, or graveyard."

"So by targeting the Rank Five Machu Mech, you get two Level Sixes," Adam scowled.

"And then this trap allows me to Xyz Summon with those two monsters immediately!" Oobleck revealed, a golden spiral galaxy blooming behind him, over the edge of the cliff into the canyon below. "With my two Chronomaly Sol Monoliths, I build the Overlay Network!"

The two monoliths morphed into nodes of orange light and soared back into the twinkling swirl of stars.

"Citadel of ancient knowledge, be reborn from the fog of time by the will of knowledge greater still. Though buried by burdens under the sea, rise again to question creation! Xyz Summon! Rank Six! Number 6: Chronomaly Atlandis!"

"Another Number?" Adam hissed, the nebula beneath the cliffside erupting in a supernova even larger than the one that had released Machu Mech. A wave of heat lingered as the huntsman's true ace stood up within the canyon.

Literally stood in the canyon.

It was the size of two skyscrapers stacked on top of each other. Gargantuan was too small a word. Its feet of lava started at the base of Mt. Glenn's grave, leading up to a chest forged of a chiseled, ancient pillar. Its shoulders were mountains, its head an active volcano, all of it towering above the cliffside and the remaining buildings of the subterranean city (ATK 2600/DEF 3000). It blocked out the sky more than Machu Mech ever had.

"I was never able to get that trap card exactly right for this monster. Atlandis' effect on its summoning has a very specific timing, so if I activate Chronomaly Esperanza Glyph in response to another Chain Link, I miss the timing," Oobleck informed his foe. "Fortunately, that did not occur this time, so Number 6 is able to equip itself with any Number monster in my graveyard and gain half its attack points. Machu Mech had twenty-four hundred attack points, and Pyramid Eye Tablet is still on the field. That's not an insubstantial boost."

Adam's eye narrowed behind his mask, watching as Machu Mech appeared in the center of Atlandis' pillar chest as Pyramid Eye Tablet graced the living mountain with its glow (ATK 4600). "What happened to strategy? I thought you planned to die here?"

"Planned to die? Never. What a foolish thing to do?" Oobleck said, pulling down his glasses a bit so he could look disapprovingly at his opponent from across the field. "But I am a teacher. I became one because I recognized that my life is finite. My combat abilities, finite. I am satisfied with dying so long as I did everything in my power to enrich the lives of others. I fear that viewpoint is the cornerstone of why you and I will never see eye to eye."

"Don't be so certain. Many will be enriched by the future I create. The future where there are no humans," Adam replied. "Since a new monster was summoned, the replay allows me to remain in my Main Phase. I remove six Bushido Counters from Gateway of the Six to target one 'Shien' effect monster in my graveyard and special summon it. Resurrect, Great Shogun Shien!"

Six coins clinked off of the altar of Gateway of the Six. The giant plate in the center of the holy arch lit up with a blazing blue shine. And from the afterlife behind the gate, his imperious ace monster emerged anew (ATK 2500/DEF 2400).

"With him back on the field, you're only able to activate one spell or trap card per turn. And you've already used yours," Adam warned, sweeping his arm towards his three rank-and-file samurai, his opponent's last facedown useless. "Now! Mizuho! Hatsume! Kizan! Contact Fusion!"

"Contact what?!" Oobleck squawked.

Adam ignored his opponent, gnashing his teeth together as he focused his aura into forming a vortex and calling forth his Fusion Monster's empty shell. Unlike a traditional fusion summon, there was no spell card or monster effect to do the work of the summoning. He had to hold together the shell until he filled it with the material monsters' aura, and combined them all together. His aura crackled and his already exhausted muscles screamed as he morphed Mizuho, Hatsume, and Kizan together into the swirling whirlpool of space. He'd never attempted a Contact Fusion after taking such a beating before. Without the insight gained from Banesaw's Gate Guardian duels, he wouldn't be able to even chance it.

Still, he would have. He could not rest on his laurels, not when there was still so much farther to climb to his goals. He had not equaled the Sun Dragon yet. He had not avenged himself on all those who'd wronged him. Fall, the scorpion faunus, the SDC, Blake. It was possible. He just had to reach them. He just had to keep going. He just had to keep moving forward.

Until all his enemies were destroyed.

"Won't accept a life of destitution. Suffering is over now. Terminate. Annihilate. Take vengeance for our pride. Destroy them all while I am glorified! Fusion Summon! Secret Six Samurai - Rihan!"

Razor-sharp blade claws sliced through the fusion vortex, a glowing emerald figure leaping out as a blinding streak of light.

When he stood in the Extra Monster Zone in front of Great Shogun Shien, the new samurai appeared more like a ninja than anything, lithe and deadly as his green robes gleamed with mystical sigils (ATK 2400/DEF 2400).

"What on Remnant?" Oobleck muttered as two more Bushido Counters fell onto Adam's gateway, totaling six. "Ozpin said that you all had a new summoning technique, but he said it used a spell card like Ms. Rose's did."

"I activate Gateway of the Six's search effect! I remove four counters to add Kagemusha of the Six Samurai from my deck to my hand. Then I banish it from my hand to activate Secret Six Samurai - Rihan's special ability!" Adam roared, yanking the tuner monster's card from his deck and tossing it into the air. "By banishing a Six Samurai monster from my hand or field, I can target one card on the field and banish it!"

The sigils painted over Rihan's long, flowing robes blazed with emerald light. The samurai's blade claws suddenly bloomed with enormous holographic extensions of themselves, titanic talons that could slice through even a mountain.

And with one lightning-fast swipe, Number 6: Chronomaly Atlandis could personally attest to that fact, the towering goliath torn to shreds of crumbling aura.

"Your Number is gone! I activate Gateway of the Six's first effect! I remove its last two Bushido Counters to increase Great Shogun Shien's attack points by five hundred!" Adam howled, the legendary shogun brandishing his blade as the sword was set alight with blood-red flames (ATK 3000). "Battle! Breakthrough Moonslice!"

Like a furious demon, Great Shogun Shien charged across the cliffside, his imperious aura keeping the huntsman's final facedown pinned to the ground.

Oobleck fell into a practiced guard stance, his arms crossed in front of him, but it hardly helped when the samurai's blazing sword smashed into him. If his duel disk hadn't been placed properly, he would have lost the arm, and even then the shielding device was destroyed in a spray of crackling sparks.

The professor's aura shattered to nothing as his body flew over the side of the cliff.

Bartholomew Oobleck: 0 Life Points

Winner: Adam Taurus

---

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"Enjoying the book?"

Adam looked up from 'The Histories of Shien's Conquests' tome he'd been engrossed in. The fires of the White Fang's camp were a bit of a ways off from his secluded corner, but not far enough away that the howls of celebration for his victory that day could not be heard. "Yes, it's fascinating."

"Then it was a birthday gift worth getting," His mentor grinned, Sienna Khan sauntering up to lean against the tree he was sitting under. "A warrior's mind is as crucial as his deck. And a mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone. You're already an excellent duelist, but you could become even more if you expand your understanding of the world."

The tiger faunus woman was the sole reason he could believe those words. His parents had always advised him to stay away from the White Fang. They'd cautioned him that their family had enough to worry about without picking a fight with humanity. Maybe that was why he'd fled to the White Fang's recruiting station for help getting smuggled out of Solitas after he'd returned from the mine. It was only a twist of fate that Sienna had been there that day and seen to the matter personally, dropping everything to assist him. From there, she'd taught him so much, of dueling and Remnant as a whole. And from those teachings, he'd come to understand what his parents truly were, what he should have realized they were the moment they told him to take the SDC hush money.

Cowards. He found that in some ways, he hated them even more than Armstrong.

"How are you holding up after today?" Sienna caringly inquired. "Even without Ghira going off on you, I know this can't have been an easy fight for you."

"Huh?" Adam replied, only to recall what she was referring to after a few moments. "Oh, that. I'm alright."

The White Fang's caravan had been moving from one town to another on the Anima frontier. Always a dangerous place given The Spiders' presence, but the ones who'd attacked them that day hadn't been gangsters. Just humans, a pack of regular humans who decided that faunus claiming peace could not be allowed to traverse land even somewhat close to their village. Adam and his Six Samurai had fought them off, but one of the humans had made a last-ditch run at Ghira Belladonna at the end, the High Leader's aura having already broken trying to peacefully resolve the conflict.

Adam had been too absorbed in the fight, rushing from foe to foe as the humans fell one after another to Shien's blade, alive but with no aura, just as Sienna had taught him. But when he'd reached the final one, that technique slipped when he saw how close the enemy and his Battle Ox were to Sienna and the High Leader. Without fully realizing it, he'd commanded Shien to kill him, and the shogun had.

It was the first time he'd killed since the day he left Atlas. In the aftermath, as the rush of victory faded and he realized what he'd done, he'd expected the same avalanche of guilt and weakness that had struck him last time. But it didn't come for some reason. He was briefly ashamed when Ghira had brought him to task for the death, but Sienna had swiftly stood up for him, declaring that he'd saved the High Leader's life. That he was a hero.

When the rest of the caravan joined in the tiger faunus' praise of him, when they cheered him as their champion… he couldn't remember ever feeling better.

"When I killed Armstrong and the other guy… I was weak. Too weak," Adam declared. "I'm not weak anymore. Thanks to you. I won't hesitate to do what needs to be done."

"That's good to hear. You shouldn't feel guilty about killing in self-defense," Sienna reassured him. "Our people need defenders–"

"Uh, Aunt Sienna? A–Adam?"

Adam turned towards a cat faunus, about two years younger than him, who was nervously shuffling at the corner of his knook. She held a single card in her hand as if it were some precious jewel.

"Blake? What is it, sweetie?" Sienna asked.

"Oh, um, I actually wanted to talk to Adam. I wanted to thank you for saving my dad," Blake stammered. "And… and also, well… Aunt Sienna told me your birthday was a bit ago, so I… well, happy birthday!"

She bowed her head and offered the card she'd been holding to him. Adam blinked in surprise. No one but his mentor had known when his birthday was, so he hadn't expected gifts from anyone. His family certainly hadn't had the money to get much for him or his siblings back home.

He reached out and accepted the card, grateful for his Grimm mask to help conceal his shock as well as his brand. He turned the card and smiled at the sight of it. "Damage Diet."

"I know, I know, it's as common as a card can be," Blake apologized, embarrassed. "I wanted to make something more personal but dust has been scarce, and then I wanted to buy something rare, but then Banesaw's dad needed to pay for his medication, so I tried to help there–"

"It's perfect," Adam reassured her, with a grin. "It may be common as dirt, but the reason the card companies keep making more is that it's useful. I'm sure this'll save my butt in plenty of duels. Thank you."

"O… oh! That's great! You're welcome! If it'll help you win duels, then it's the best present I could have gotten you," Blake cheered, her nervousness replaced with a ferocious spirit and excitement. "I know my dad got prickly with you, but he overreacted. You saved him! You're an amazing duelist! Someday, I want to fight for our people like that. Make sure the humans know we won't just roll over and let them push us around!"

Now it was Adam's turn to blush.

"Blake! Where'd you go?"

"Oh! Gotta go," Blake said. "I'm showing Ilia this new dance that Bane came up with. Perry says it's dangerous, but hey, that's what shadow clones are for."

With a wide grin and a spirited gait, the cat faunus dashed off back to camp. Leaving Adam to watch her go like he'd just seen the shattered moon become whole.

He was roused from his stupor by Sienna's playful chuckle, the usually serious tiger faunus' friendship with the teasing Kali Belladonna suddenly much more understandable.

"Oh, uh, I… I just," Adam stammered, stowing the Damage Diet trap into his deck box. "That's… uh…"

"I'm her honorary aunt, not her father. I'm not going to give you the fifth degree," Sienna reassured him. "You're both kids. You want to dip your toes in some puppy love, go ahead."

"Oh. Okay," Adam said.

"So long as you're after her for the right reasons," Sienna said, her promise not to go fifth-degree on him instantly broken. "Not after the prestige of dating the High Leader's daughter?"

"What? No!" Adam stuttered, flailing his arms defensively. "I mean, I am honored that someone of such high standing in our people would feel that way about me, but I wouldn't be attracted to her for that alone."

"Oh? Then what does attract you to her?" Sienna queried, now playful once more.

Adam looked after where Blake had dashed away, an admiring smile rising to his lips. "A girl with that much fire in her? How could anyone not admire the blaze? Especially when her parents give her such weak, passive kindling–"

Sienna's smile at the first part of his answer vanished, her hand pressing down on his shoulder and forcing him to turn and look up to see her displeased face. "Ghira Belladonna has done more for the faunus than you'll ever know. He is many things, but weak is not one of them. Understand?"

Adam gulped and nodded. "My apologies."

Sienna's anger dissipated, the exhaustion of decades of nonviolent protest for their people seeping through her features. "It's alright. Honestly, I can understand the mistake. Despite all he has done… perhaps his methods have reached the limits of their effectiveness."

Adam's brow furrowed, starting to put together what his mentor had wanted to talk to him about before Blake had interrupted them. "You're going to run against him for High Leader in the next election?"

"The Albain brothers have already been gathering support for me. But they're slippery. They go where the wind blows. I need more than them if I'm to actually help our people. People I know will stand by me no matter what," the tiger faunus explained. "Are you with me?"

Adam stood with an eager grin. "To the ends of Remnant."

Strength and unwavering conviction. That is what he saw in his teacher. It was what she'd helped him see he'd had in himself all along.

His family, Gus, the miners, and now Ghira Belladonna, they all wanted to roll over to the humans. They agreed with their enemies' assessment that they were animals. They just wanted to be pampered pets instead of workhorses, so they tried to convince him that standing up for himself was somehow wrong. That to insist on the dignity of his manhood somehow made him evil.

That he somehow deserved less than the respect he demanded.

But he knew better. He remembered the adrenaline that had rushed through him when he put Armstrong in the ground, the rush when he'd ordered Shien to slash apart the human running for Ghira. He remembered how Sienna, Blake, and the rest of the White Fang with sense had applauded him for it. All his dreams of one day leaving Mantle to find his place in the world while waiting around and wasting away playing the humans' game, now he knew what it meant to go forth and seize his destiny. To carve his name upon history in a way that the humans could never forget.

He looked up at the night sky, one eye seeing the brilliant glow of the shattered moon. He raised his hand to the heavens, feeling as if he could grab it as the cheering celebration of his victory filled his ears from the campfire.

All while his branded eye saw only a red SDC, as always, the specter of Armstrong smashing his foot down on his chest ghosting over Adam's body.

Never again. He knew what he deserved. The humans would not take the sky from him.

---

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Adam looked down over the edge of the cliffside, the heat of victory still filling him as he searched for Oobleck's body below. Even out of aura, it wouldn't be wise to just expect an ace huntsman to die from a fall. And he hadn't heard the crash of the body hitting the ground.

BEEP! BEEP!

He groaned at the honking horn, turning to see Torchwick's ice cream-addicted gremlin waiting for him.

She sat on the pilot seat of a duel runner that was just one singular wheel, apparently an experimental racing vehicle the manufacturers were calling 'The Wheel of Fortune'. After Neo had stolen herself one, she'd painted a third of it pink, a third of it brown, and left the last third white. She'd changed the name to 'Second Thing' and now she had the front of it attached to her cartoonish caricature of Blue-Eyes White Dragon by a pair of reins.

BEEP! BEEP!

Adam's eyebrow twitched as the puny human honked her horn again, both her and her cartoon dragon mockingly waving at him.

Still, annoying as she was, he didn't have time to argue with her. They needed to get back to base and make sure the train attack went off as planned. With the professor's aura broken, even if he did somehow survive, he wouldn't be able to get to the White Fang's base in time to do anything about it.

The bull faunus made to move towards the runner, only to pause. He reached into his deck box and retrieved Damage Diet. The card that Blake had given him so long ago.

Given how Fall had arrived so soon after his lover abandoned him on the train, he'd been so swept up in the whirlwind that had followed that he'd forgotten to take it out of his deck. It was a common as dirt utility trap card, yet it had been the start of their friendship turning romantic. Just two kids seeking love amidst the war for their people. He'd sworn to fight with all he had, and she had promised to always be by his side in turn.

Until she'd broken that promise.

"You think you're the only man who's ever been left before? Who's ever had a love they thought would last forever suddenly ended? Do you think that fire in your chest that's burning down your heart is unique?"

"... no," Adam finally having an answer to The Sun Dragon of Hell's questions.

"Focus only on what you've lost, and you'll only find yourself losing everything."

"You're right," he murmured, glaring down at Damage Diet as the words from Patch rang in his ears. Soon replaced by words older still.

The words of a human Fortress Whale accompanied by an eyesocket throbbing with searing pain long past and his own screams.

"This is what you deserve, you animal."

He gripped Damage Diet with both hands and tore the card in half. The dust inlaid within it sparked a harmless rainbow glitter as he tossed the pieces into the cemetery of Mt. Glenn.

He would not settle for the common scraps of a liar and traitor. He would no longer allow Blake's specter to loom over him and drag him down with her betrayal. The pain she had caused him was special only because of how dearly he'd treasured her before. The agony itself was just the latest in his long history of suffering, of others trying to convince him that happiness could be found just by looking around him. What trite.

Happiness had to be taken. And he would take his. Starting with Blake.

No more chances. No more daydreams of dragging her back to White Fang to redeem herself, or making her see the error of her ways by making her viscerally understand what it felt like to lose what you loved. She had chosen to side with the humans. She had chosen to side with his enemies. And like all his enemies, from Armstrong to the last human who ever lived on Remnant before his Shien's blade made the species extinct, he would simply, quickly, kill her.

He marched up to Neo's duel runner and hopped up to hang onto the side. "That dragon pulling the runner make it go faster?"

The diminutive criminal grinned, Blue-Eyes Toon Dragon flying in to be lovingly petted by its mistress.

"Good," Adam stated, pleased that Oobleck had miscalculated more than one factor in his grand strategy. "Get us back to base then. I have business to settle."

Neo's smirk was tinged with bloodlust as she mockingly saluted him. Her duel runner's engine roared to life as its great wheel span. Blue-Eyes Toon Dragon took position in front of the vehicle as its reins cracked, the caricature's legs and wings spinning into cartoonish blurs of speed.

With its first-rate engine combined with the mighty toon mount pulling it, The Second Thing shot off down the tunnels at twice the speed Team RWBY's runner had. Neo had also had weeks to learn the ins and outs of Mt. Glenn's tunnel system, including shortcuts their enemies were none the wiser about.

Beacon's huntresses were not as safe at their rear as they might have thought.

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Many things filled Doctor Bartholomew Oobleck's head as he plummeted through the air.

Calculating the speed of his fall. The worth of the life he'd led as a hunting duelist and educator. How Lil'Miss must have felt this terror when she fell through that tomb because she saved Saphron. It made her shift to selfish criminality after she turned out to have miraculously survived her own fall make just a bit more sense, even if he still could not excuse it. But he supposed he would be dead soon, so his opinion was of limited value.

"AARF!"

"Huh?" the doctor exclaimed, twisting through the air just in time to spot a black and white blur take a running leap off one of the floors of the barren skyscraper. The furry creature smashed into Oobleck and tackled him through the air. "Oomph!"

The impact knocked the wind out of the huntsman, but it also arrested his fall, the momentum of the creature's charge shoving them both onto one of the cliffside's lower ledges. They rolled and tumbled across the sudden ground, their inertia pushing them onward and into the canyon wall.

Dirt was kicked up all around them as Oobleck collapsed on his back, exhausted and bruised, but alive, with his rescuer perched on his chest.

"Good dog," the doctor coughed.

"Aarf!" Zwei merrily barked, the light of his semblance glowing to regulate the huntsman's breathing as he leaned down to lick the man's face.

Oobleck glanced up at the top of the cliffside he'd fallen from, dozens of feet above his current position. The fact that there were no samurai taking potshots at them suggested they'd fallen down far enough or were at a sharp enough angle that Adam couldn't see them. But with no aura himself, the huntsman wouldn't be able to summon a monster to take him and Zwei back up the cliff any time soon. His delay and exhaustion of The Blood-Soaked Bull would be the only contribution he could lend to stopping this insidious plot. Even then, the enemy would have his entire trip back to the base to work at restoring his aura.

"Sorry, girls. I've done what I can," the doctor mumbled, his heart steadily adjusted to a healthier pace by the corgi's semblance. "You'll have to take care of the rest."

Perhaps it was foolish to try to reach out to Adam, but after hearing that Tai had nearly convinced him on Patch, he'd felt it was his duty to try. He was tired of seeing talented people take dark paths in life because they didn't meet the right people at the right times to help them through their most dire moments. Alas, it seemed that the time when someone could have helped Mr. Taurus had passed many years ago.

And he feared Team RWBY was not strong enough to defeat the monster he had become.

---

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Ilia had been panicked enough before the giant demon dragon attacked.

Torchwick had startled everyone when he'd suddenly yelled to get the train ready to go ASAP. The news that Blake's team was inbound with a full-fledged hunting duelist backing them up had just made things worse. The base's garrison was mostly made of the fresh recruits they'd picked up from the rallies in Vale, so the news that real hunting duelists were on their way there, led by the Odd-Eyed Bandit, was extremely rattling to them.

Amazingly, Roman's charisma and surprising leadership skills were able to get the panicking faunus organized into action anyway. Ilia's questioning about the safety of beginning the operation before the escape tunnels were dug may have been overruled, but there was a portable hardlight dust generator on every car and about a fifth of the Paladin Racer duel runners had been loaded up with their riders in a few minutes.

Then the giant demon dragon had come crashing into the cavern and Ilia's day got so much worse.

The gigantic gargoyle behemoth smashed its flaming claw into the center of the White Fang's forces, a wave of fire scattering the masked grunts. Credit to how well the newbies had taken to Ilia's drilling, a good chunk of them started to form back up to summon their own monsters against the blazing archfiend.

But then the yellow duel runner right behind the hell dragon had smashed into the half-assembled freedom fighters with the force of a meteorite. Yang Xiao-Long wielded her motorcycle and her ferocious Synchro Monster like a battering ram, plowing through the faunus forces whenever they tried to form up. Giving the other three Beacon students time and room to leap off the sides of the vehicle and into the fray.

Ruby Rose, or Little Red as Torchwick was so fond of calling her in his rants, followed her sister's example, calling forth a powerful Synchro Monster as soon as she rolled across the ground. A tree with a baboon's face turned to stars inside the emerald tuner rings of a beautiful, fairy-like flower, and a majestic dragon with a plumage of roses roared through the cavern. And soon after, exploded.

Fire and razor-sharp petals scattered across her opposition, the masked duelists shrieking as they frantically dove for cover from the eruption. Before that, Ilia had been trying to rally their forces into a stand, but once even the fringes of the faunus fighters were struck, a rout was inevitable. They were hit too hard, too fast, and their forces simply didn't have the experience to handle it effectively.

Leaving Blake and the Schnee heiress a straight shot for the train.

The huntresses were delayed only a scant few minutes by some of the Vale Cell veterans who stuck around instead of heading back to Mistral with Banesaw. Torchwick, as shamelessly pragmatic as always, decided not to help them make a stand and instead strolled into the driver's car. Soon, the train's engine was revving up, but the portable hardlight generators bolted to the roof of each cabin still needed time to fully activate.

Ilia leapt onto the rooftops of the train cars, racing for the front as she whipped out a Polymerization. The plan for the attack on Vale had been to ram through the mountain past the city's defenses and swarm notable targets with a high-speed en-masse assault of the Paladin Racers. It was risky and certainly flashier than she preferred her operations, but with Atlas' latest tech which the police wouldn't be able to match, it could certainly still be effective.

But at this point, it was doomed to fail. Only a fraction of their forces were loaded onto the train. And even if they had been, the plan had been to strike when Beacon's hunting duelists and students were out of the kingdom for their away missions, but not all of them had left yet. It was too early and too thrown together. If this was a normal operation, Ilia would scuttle it right now and save as many of their people and supplies to safety to fight another day. Unfortunately, 'The Lady Rhodes' would have the heads of everyone in the Vale Cell if they didn't at least make a show of smashing the train through the mountain.

So here she was, stuck fighting a stupid battle that she wasn't sure she even wanted to win. But for the sake of her troops, she had to. As soon as they were through the mountain, she would sound the retreat and get her grunts back to safety before anyone in Vale even realized there was an attack going on.

Blake had her Pendulum Zones filled quickly, her signature Odd-Eyes shrieking down from the gateway between the twin pillars of light. A Spiral Flame Strike streaked for the car right behind the driver's car, the cabin wider and fatter due to being salvaged from a richer commuter train, designed so passengers could have room for some fun duels on the way to work (It was hard getting an entire train to an abandoned subway station in the middle Grimm-infested territory! They had to use what they could find closeby!).

Ilia jumped onto the roof of the dueling car, Amazoness Empress' blade coming down to slice the Spiral Flame Strike in two, scattering the crimson blaze. Her eyes met Blake's as the cat faunus dashed for the locomotive, her amber orbs for once as hard and fierce as the chameleon faunus' grey irises.

"Do you know?!" Blake roared. "Do you know about The Grimm!?"

Ilia tilted her head to the side, confused. The Grimm? What, did she know that there were Grimm in Mt. Glenn? Duh. It was kind of hard to miss them.

WHOOO!

The train's whistle blew loud as it began to move, the powerful machine quickly picking up speed. At the same time, the conductor car's hardlight generator finished charging, the protective barrier flaring to life along the outside of the car. Ilia dashed down the top of the train as each cabin's generator activated in turn, she and her Fusion Monster defending them from Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon's attacks as it aimed for whatever part of the locomotive was still unprotected.

By the time Ilia reached the car at the end of the coupling, Blake's chances to destroy any of the carriages from the outside were gone. If she wanted to stop the attack, she'd have to take down the forces within, ideally getting to the conductor's car, beating up Torchwick, and hitting the brakes. The cat faunus grabbed onto her teammate, the Schnee using her glyphs to speed them both into the final car just as the final hardlight dust shielding went up, Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon's aura body dissipating as its link to its duelist was disrupted.

Ilia lost her connection to Amazoness Empress as well. She was about to resummon her and then head below to help the grunts on the train fight off Blake and the Schnee (no chance any of them could stand up to them outside a duel). But then she caught sight of the yellow duel runner racing after the train as it picked up speed through the tunnels, Yang Xiao-Long gunning the throttle as her enormous dragon flew above.

And Little Red crouched on the back of her sister's seat, her knees bent like she was going to jump.

---

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"Uncle Qrow and Zwei's Birthday Surprise?" Yang called up over the roar of Bumblebee's engine, the speedy duel runner keeping pace with the train no matter how fast it accelerated.

Ruby nodded. "Uncle Qrow and Zwei's Birthday Surprise!"

"Uncle Qrow and Zwei's Birthday Surprise!" Yang yelled, pumping her fist. "You heard her, Hot Red Dragon Archfiend! Molten Scarlet Flare!"

Her mighty ace let out a calamitous roar, the tunnel shaking as it spread its wings and gathered fire in its maw.

"If their plan is to use this tunnel to blow a hole straight to Vale for the Grimm to go through, they've got to have some way for the Grimm to get into the tunnel. Probably some kind of explosives given all the dust they stole," Ruby deduced, pointing up at Hot Red Dragon Archfiend. "If they go off and The Grimm get an opening, we'll need something powerful to make that opening into a chokepoint."

"On it," Yang grinned, extending her fist to her team leader. "Kick their butt, sis."

"You know it," Ruby smiled, happily fist-bumping her sibling before her face became all business. She carefully watched the train, the chameleon faunus on top of it, and, most importantly, the hardlight dust barrier being projected by the portable generator bolted to the roof.

She had to be careful. She'd only have a split second.

Hot Red Dragon Archfiend thrust its head forward and spewed a massive typhoon of flames at the train. The mighty monster's attack crashed into the hardlight dust barrier, the veil of light crackling against the force of the ferocious blaze. Even still, it held firm.

Held firm… until, for the briefest moment, it flickered.

Ruby leapt, her semblance igniting.

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Ilia was not entirely sure what she'd just seen. One second the hardlight barrier was holding firm against a gargantuan attack from a demonic Synchro Monster, and the next, it flickered and Ruby Rose was leaping forward inside the shield!

The tail end of her crimson cape was sliced off when the barrier stopped flickering, the huntress tumbling across the train's rooftop from her momentum. Whatever training she received at Beacon enabled her to roll into a combat crouch before she fell off the moving vehicle, but her moment of vulnerability enabled Ilia to snag her with a duel anchor despite her own befuddled state.

"H–How?" the chameleon faunus stammered, looking back and forth before her foe and the point in the hardlight barrier where she'd come through. "How did you do that?!"

"One time, to make me feel better about not having many school friends to come to my birthday party, my dad and my uncle had an all-out duel. They used one of these portable generators to make sure they didn't burn the house down while they were at it. That's when I discovered that they've got a slight design flaw," Ruby revealed. "They get hit with enough force all at once, the barrier flickers for just a moment while the system compensates. Our dog peed on my uncle's foot when it happened before."

Ilia stared at the silver-eyed, her face flickered through half a dozen colors as her expression was twisted with confoundment. "... are you insane? If you'd been caught in the barrier, it would have sliced right through you, aura or not!"

"I have a speed semblance," Ruby waved off. "Now stop this train!"

"Does this look like the engine car?" Ilia snarked.

"Well then surrender the duel so that the anchor will drop and I can go stop it!"

Ilia rolled her eyes. "You can't seriously expect that to work?"

"Come on! You're Ilia, right? Blake and Pyrrha both say you're a good person."

Ilia stifled a blush at the mention of Blake's praise, only to glance away and clench her fist at the conflicting emotions roused by Pyrrha's mention. "I had one duel with Nikos. That's hardly enough for her to judge my character. Weird memory sharing notwithstanding."

"They don't need memory sharing to know you don't want Vale to be flooded with Grimm!" Ruby shouted. "Because that's what's gonna happen!"

"There's always a threat of Grimm when we stand up for ourselves. Peaceful or violent," Ilia remarked. "If we let that risk stop us, we'd still be slaves–"

"No! I mean this plan is to just flood Vale with Grimm!" Ruby yelled. "This isn't a terrorist attack! It's a genocide attempt!"

"And here I thought jumping through a hardlight barrier was the most insane thing you would say," Ilia scoffed, deploying her Lightning Lash duel disk. Seriously, the Lady Rhodes or The Madam or whatever she wanted to call herself was far from cuddly, but what possible point could there be in doing something that insane? "Now, are we going to talk or duel?"

Ruby growled, grinding her teeth together as she deployed her own duel disk. "Never thought I wouldn't have time for a duel."

Ruby Rose: 4000 Life Points

Ilia Amitola: 4000 Life Points

"Duel!" Both duelists shouted.

Both were so focused on each other that neither noticed the streak of a brown, pink, and white duel runner blazing to the front of the train, pulled by a cartoonish dragon with its wings and legs blurring through the air.

And carrying a masked redheaded faunus with bull horns.

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"Well… that could have been worse," Blake huffed, the last masked faunus in the car dropping unconscious around her and Weiss.

Performapal Drummerilla and two Phantom Knights each bowed to their duelists and faded away, the enemy's stolen duel disks crushed and the Paladin Racer duel runners tipping over in their clamps, smacking against spare portable hardlight dust generators. The terrorists must have been new recruits, because they had been so surprised by the huntresses' arrival that they hadn't had the wherewithal to have two of their number pin the girls down with duel anchors and just have the rest of their group bumrush them while they were defenseless.

Blake turned to her teammate, remembering the inner conflict she'd previously expressed about fighting the White Fang. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm alright. I mean, still feeling guilt for hurting people driven to terrorism in significant part by my family, but the whole 'imminent Grimm attack' is helping me push it down," Weiss panted. She glanced up at the train car ceiling. "Ilia didn't come down to help her troops?"

"Something must have kept her up there," Blake guessed, knowing her old friend would never have abandoned new recruits to be trapped in a room with opponents so far above them. She heard a familiar, if muffled, voice shout down through the grimy steel. "From the sounds of it, Ruby."

"She wasn't there when the hardlight shield went up. Though I suppose if anyone could figure a way inside one that was already up, it'd be that dolt," Weiss fondly shook her head. "I guess this means we do our part in the plan while she and Yang handle theirs and cover us. Where are the bombs?"

"Any of them that are on the train are probably in the engine car. That's how I'd do it, at least. Blasting through a mountain will take a lot of force," Blake surmised. "If it were me, I'd set up the bombs that were going to let the Grimm into the tunnel in advance, planted them in the rock."

"Probably set up in secret by Torchwick's little card thief gremlin," Weiss growled, stomping forward to the next car. "Come on. We don't know if those bombs are on a timer or if someone's got a trigger for them. Let's put the breaks on this train before we find out and get up to our necks in Grimm."

The pair rushed through the various train cars, making their way to the final cabin before the engine car. The walls were slanted, scuffed-up gray, long rectangular windows enabling the huntresses to watch the tunnel outside racing by. Clearly, it was a dueling car meant to allow passengers to enjoy the scenery or safely watch a match taking place on the way to work.

It was in that wide and well-fortified car that they found a familiar orange-haired jerk tinkering with the next door's panel and his duel disk.

"Torchwick!" Blake shouted.

"Ugh. Those animals couldn't stall you until we reached the end?" the criminal groaned, rising to face the girls. "Hello, kitty cat! We've got to stop meeting like this. People are going to talk, and I do not want to get dragged into the hurricane that is your love life."

Weiss threw out a duel anchor and bound the gangster's wrist, yanking him out of the way of the door. "Blake! Go!"

Blake nodded and immediately dashed for the door to the engine car. They couldn't risk all of Vale in a duel, not when one of them could just restrain Torchwick while the other got to the front and put the brakes on the locomotive.

Unfortunately, it turned out the panel for the door had been what the gangster had been hotwiring before they'd got in. Blake was no stranger to the ad hoc engineering involved in a train hijacking, but she'd usually worked on SDC systems that started in their proper condition, not mechanics that had already been cannibalized. Heck, Torchwick had decades more experience as a thief than her and it showed in how she couldn't make heads or tails of his work.

And unfortunately, when she punched the door in frustration upon realizing that fact, a hardlight dust barrier had crackled over the steel. So summoning a monster and blasting into the engine car with brute force was out too.

"Yeah, I may have done some fiddling once you lot showed up. Cranked up the engine car's hardlight generator to cover the inside of the train too. Then I linked it, this car's generator, and the door to my duel disk," Torchwick gloated. "Unless I lose a duel, and that's me specifically so not just taking it off and hitting a button, you're not getting in there. Granted, I'd hoped to be safely stowed back up front behind the barrier before you got here–."

Blake had Performapal Odd-Eyes Minitaurus out in the blink of an eye, the bipedal bull pinning the thief to the wall with the blade of its axe.

"Surrender the duel anchor match with Weiss," the faunus coldly demanded. "Now."

"Or what?" Torchwick laughed. "You'll kill me?"

"You're trying to flood Vale with Grimm!" Weiss snapped.

Torchwick shrugged, a flash of legitimate disgust flicking over his face for an instant. Though, his features quickly resigned themselves to their usual flippancy. "Believe me, I'm not exactly thrilled about it either. Terrorist lunatic just doesn't have the same ring to it as master gentleman thief–"

Performapal Odd-Eyes Minitaurus pressed its axe further into the gangster's neck, his aura buzzing as it fought against the pressure of the strike. The Beast-Warrior glanced back at Blake, just waiting for her to give the command. Torchwick paled at the sight of her glare, his unflappable facade cracked with fear.

Yet, as Blake only glared at him for several seconds, the thief's swagger steadily returned.

"You can't do it, can you?" he challenged, actually chuckling at the blade against his neck, whatever intimidation he'd previously felt completely evaporated as Blake stalled. "Killing in the heat of a fight or by accident is one thing, but putting down a defenseless, unarmed person? Murdering in cold blood? That doesn't come so easily to you, does it, kitty cat?"

"Blake?" Weiss worriedly inquired.

"It's your life or the tens of thousands of innocents that you're going to murder," Blake snarled at the gangster, though she couldn't hide the slight tremble in her arm as it held up Gambol Shroud. "Not exactly a choice."

"But it's the choice you ran away from your bullheaded beau for, wasn't it? Because he liked making that choice?" Torchwick reminded her with a smirk. "Or was it because you were afraid if you stayed with him any longer, you'd start liking that choice too? That you wouldn't be able to pretend you weren't a monster too anymore?"

"Shut up!" Blake spat.

"Oh come on. Do you really think a little bow on top is going to make people forget what you were? What you've done? How many years did you stand by your man, help him on his missions, watch him earn that blood-soaked nickname of his?" Torchwick kept needling her. He nodded his head towards Weiss. "Go on. Show your new friend what kind of animal you really are, Odd-Eyed Bandit."

Blake's monster kept him pinned to the wall with a huge axe, yet she was the one struggling to look him in the eye.

Why was she hesitating?! He… he was just trying to get in her head. She knew that. He knew that. Weiss knew that. They all knew that killing the guy trying to murder tens of thousands of people to save those tens of thousands of people was not a moral black spot.

And yet, nothing he said was wrong. Blake had run from Adam because he'd begun to enjoy killing because he could. Even if she wouldn't enjoy it, she'd never murdered an unarmed person as a member of the White Fang.

Did she need to cross that line as a huntress?

"Do you want her to kill you?!" Weiss yelled at the gangster.

"Why? You want the pleasure, little miss heiress? Mount my head on the Schnee Family wall?" Torchwick quipped, whipping his gaze on her with a sarcastic laugh. "Go on! Do daddy proud! Hahaha!"

The prim and proper duelist stumbled back from the thief, his charismatic and macabre taunt unknowingly striking at the core of her internal doubts. He laughed more as he saw her face marred with new indecision, both members of Team RWBY rendered helpless despite their fury.

"You kids. You know, I was actually worried when I found out you were here. Was terrified that you'd brought that redhead from Atlas," Torchwick tutted. "But you two and Red, you're just… just kids! You see a guy like me with my hand in a cookie jar and you rush in like classroom hall monitors. Shame this ain't the schoolyard. In the real world, guys like me don't waste our talents on cookie jars. And it takes more to stop us than kiddies playing huntress."

The thief's duel disk suddenly beeped, its center display screen lighting up. All three duelists glanced down at the device, its glow showcasing a new message from a short-range communication link labeled 'Neo'.

'Lower the duel car's shield.'

"Oh thank goodness, I did not know how much longer I was gonna be able to keep you talking," Torchwick smirked. "Bad news, kiddies. Playtime is over."

He smashed a button on his duel disk. The hardlight dust shield surrounding the outside of the duel car shimmered and fell. And the moment it was gone, the window behind Blake shattered.

Glass sprayed through the cabin, the cat faunus rolling away through the storm as the wind from outside suddenly smashed over her body. Performpal Odd-Eyes Minitaurus' body ironically shielded Torchwick from the danger as it covered him against the wall. Fortunately, despite being unable to dodge with her duel anchor binding her to Torchwick, Weiss just had to raise her arm to let her aura tank the blow.

Blake landed in a combat crouch and whirled around to face whatever had smashed through the window. Unfortunately, when she saw exactly what, or rather who, it was, her heart froze in utter and complete terror.

So much so that she didn't even have the wherewithal to conjure a shadow clone to escape the duel anchor that shot out to claim her wrist, trapping her with the one person she feared above all.

"No more running, Blake," Adam ominously announced, The Blood-Soaked Bull rising to his full, towering height amidst the glittering remains of the window. "Today, on the first day of our people's new golden age, your traitorous stain will be removed from history."

His arm rose and Wilt expanded for battle, his glare piercing Blake's soul even from behind his Grimm mask. She didn't have time to comprehend how he'd leapt through a window onto a moving train or how his presence meant that Dr. Oobleck, wise, quirky, coffee-addicted Dr. Oobleck, was dead. She didn't have time to register that Performapal Odd-Eyes Minitaurus had disappeared now that she was restrained by Adam's duel anchor, which meant that Torchwick was now free.

All she knew was that her heart was beating so loud she could hear it hammer in her ears. Her lungs weren't expanding as far as they needed to for such a high-stress situation, her breath growing quick and desperate. Her nightmare had become real.

Only this time, all of Vale was doomed with her.

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"Blake!" Weiss shouted, rushing over to her frozen teammate. The Schnee heiress yanked Blake back to the opposite side of the train car. Torchwick sauntered up side-by-side with Adam, the pair blocking the huntresses' path to the conductor's car, their only hope of stopping this madness.

"Perfect timing as always, Neo," Torchwick typed into his duel disk's message system, reactivating the duel car's hardlight shield and saluting the driver of a white, brown, and pink duel runner driving alongside the train. It was clearly what Adam had jumped from to get onto the train. "You got the detonator for the Grimm bombs, so get to the escape tunnel and then let'em rip. I'll be right behind you once I'm finished playing schoolyard bully."

Neo playfully saluted and peeled her Wheel of Fortune duel runner from the train, cracking the reins of the cartoon Blue-Eyes White Dragon she had pulling her vehicle for extra speed.

Weiss growled at the woman who'd nearly murdered her back at The Docks and the mockery she'd made of her family's signature dragon, but quickly raised Myrtenaster to deal with the people trying to kill her at that moment.

"I thought you said the escape tunnels weren't made yet," Adam frowned at his ally, his breath a bit heavier than one would expect from a duelist of his skill. Perhaps his battle with Dr. Oobleck had taken more out of him than he'd expected.

"Yeah, the ones for you animals. Neo's handling the detonator. Making sure she has a way out was a priority," Torchwick explained, flippant even as the taller terrorist growled in displeasure. "Hey, it's a lot easier to make a tunnel big enough for one mini-person in heels than it is for half a zoo on duel runners."

"Just don't slow me down," Adam sneered, drawing his five-card hand as he turned towards Weiss and Blake. "The traitorous Odd-Eyed Bandit and the SDC heiress. My lucky day."

"Yeah, sure." Torchwick rolled his eyes, pulling his own starting hand. "Guess we're doing this tag-duel style. Two-headed giant if you please."

Weiss scowled, but she offered no argument to the idea. Adam's Great Shogun Shien would automatically limit the spell and trap usage of all his opponents, so Torchwick would be at a disadvantage in a battle royale-style tag-duel. By opting for a two-headed giant style, it was ensured that both their decks could operate at full capacity. And yet, with how much damage a Six Samurai deck was capable of putting on the field at once and how much monster destruction Ruby had told them Torchwick's deck was capable of, combining their life points might have been the Team RWBY members' best chance at victory. Otherwise, they might have been picked off one by one.

And her teammate was in no condition to survive something like that.

"Blake!" Weiss shouted, drawing her hand as she watched the cat faunus tremble under Adam's gaze. "Blake, you have to move. You have to draw your hand."

"You may surrender if you wish," Adam shrugged. "If you do, I can promise you the mercy of a swift execution."

"Blake! We have to duel!" Weiss yelled, her face strained with terror. "If we don't duel, if we don't win, all of Vale is in danger!"

Wasn't that the horrifying reality of it? Weiss' upbringing among the elite of Atlas, council members and CEOs who held thousands of lives in their whims, lent her a bit more familiarity than her friends with the danger they now found themselves in. But even for her, the stakes were petrifyingly high. They were students! They weren't ready for this! They weren't qualified to hold every life in Vale in their hands!

And yet, they did. They were the only ones standing between the kingdom and a tidal wave of Grimm. Dr. Oobleck had tried his best to help them, but Adam's presence meant that he had failed. Who knew if he was even alive? And if a professional huntsman, an ace huntsman, couldn't defeat The Blood-Soaked Bull, what chance did they have against him and Roman Torchwick at the same time?!

None. They stood no chance. Even together, they were likely outmatched. But if they dueled alone, that non-possibly somehow got even smaller.

They'd made their choices. Now they were here. Whatever their reasons for going to Beacon, whatever their reasons for this foolhardy investigation, whatever their reasons for coming to Mt. Glenn, they didn't matter now. Because Torchwick was right about one thing. Playtime was over.

It was time to be hunting duelists.

Blake's trembling arm rose. The fear didn't leave the cat faunus' face, but she managed to draw her five-card starting hand. "D… duel."

"Duel!" the rest of them echoed, far fiercer.

Weiss & Blake: 8000 Life Points

Roman & Adam: 8000 Life Points

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My beta got back to me with the sensitivity reading of the Adam flashbacks, so we are good to go with this chapter! Huzzah! You all know me and I'm never a fan of leaving a Part 1 hanging for long, so I am very happy to get this chapter out so soon following the last one.

Adam vs. Oobleck was a fun duel to plan and write, though also a tricky one. It is framed with Adam as the underdog protagonist, but I also couldn't afford to undersell Oobleck's strength if the match was to be effective. The intensity of the doctor's various Number summonings and the imagery they provided were hopefully effective in portraying that Oobleck is not a weak duelist by any strength, but Adam's intense hunger for evolution, while flawed, allowed him to close the gap enough to turn the tide. Also had a lot of fun with the flashbacks showcasing the various systematic, environmental, and just plain human evils that ultimately intensified Adam's existing but manageable human flaws into what they became in present day, with Sienna Khan proving the right mentor for him at the wrong time in his life despite her good intentions. Also led to a fun conclusion where Adam completely misses the point that he only survived to win the duel because the dirt common card Blake gifted him out of genuine love long ago, his trauma ultimately consuming him completely.

And now, no more investigation, no more setup. The stakes are set. Team RWBY have their opponents. The Battle of Mt. Glenn has begun.

"Now it's time to say goodbye. To the things we loved, and the innocence of youth."

Next Time on Cards of Remnant!

"I'm afraid luck is not on your side, ladies."

"Don't even think about touching my sister, you bubblegum half-pint!"

"Hey! That's my monster! You didn't even use its effect!"

"You were right to run back at the docks! Behold the pride of my Burning Soul!"

"The dead exist in the past. And I must attend to the future."

"Blake, you have an opening. Please, trust me."

Next Time on Cards of Remnant: Time To Say Goodbye - Part 1

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Go Forth and Conquer!