C4C3

by Jackie Allen

"When you can't trust anybody else, trust yourself": A sometimes lighthearted romp through Remnant, where nobody's favourite faunus Adam Taurus accidentally becomes the bearer of the Relic of Choice. Rated M because Adam has a tendency to impale people for reasons that appear morally relative. Some chapters NSFW. Parallel to show canon for a while; 'original' concept for the Relic.

36. Not A-Clone in the Dark

BRAZEN

Tuesday Evening, Day 20

Upon leaving the mine, the other faunus each gave sighs of relief, muttering small oaths of joy to be rid of their claustrophobic labours for another day. Some chose to stall their supper in favour of a quick, cold rinse to cleanse their bodies of sweat and dirt; as the days had progressed, fewer bothered, preferring to race to the small area set up for the faunus to eat. Brazen continued to use the shower facilities. Not because he was particularly dirty, but because it gave him a chance to use the small mirror there to inspect himself. His bandages still covered up most of his arms and legs, and still clung tightly around his head and chest. He arrived, as was becoming his custom, last to supper, content enough to take the scraps his fellows had left for him. A part of him railed against this; he'd done more work than any of them! Shouldn't he be fed first, fed more?

No.

That was dangerous thinking. He'd followed those thoughts before his split, and where was he, now? Here.

He took scraps and viewed it as a sort of fast, a sort of scourging of his past pridefulness. It didn't hurt his martyrdom that the other faunus tended to pick off all the meat, leaving him with his pick of yellowing lettuce salads and overripe fruits. There wasn't much in the way of nuts or cheeses; I could use some sort of protein. He wasn't that worried. He planned to be out of this backwater dump soon.

One pillar of his plan to escape he managed by night, when, having all retreated to the faunus domicile, he waited for everyone else to fall into fitfull slumbers. Once he was the last one conscious, assured that all breathing around him was regular, all movement minimal, he rose and crept from the crudely-built building. Even Ilia couldn't resist sleep forever, since, unlike himselves, she lacked a magic ring that split up the amount of sleep he required (already so little after the life he'd led).

The first time he'd snuck into Farsigan's cabin to air certain grievances on behalf of his fellow faunus, on his second night in residence at the mine, he'd been expecting it to be difficult, for himself to receive pushback or retaliation - which was fine, he was willing to shoulder the burden for his fellow faunus (as always), knowing that at the SDC, the 'squeaky wheel' typically got replaced (at least when it came to faunus employees). He'd expected a challenge, for his bold action to require threats to keep the human silent until he could fully make his case clear.

It wasn't so.

The guards paid no attention to security beyond keeping the faunus inside the barbed-wire fences, a fact that Farsigan assured him afterwards was because of the nature of his relationship with the military; Fort Castle's appropriation of the property had not happened without argument, and Farsigan was still in the midst of some manner of litigious processes to claim damages. However, his lawyers were located in Kuchinashi, neighbouring Ilhari where he'd lived most of his life, and, like most legal matters, were not likely to fix anything in a reasonable timeframe. So Farsigan had resigned himself to being a puppet proprietor of the mine, owner in name if not in practice, and the guards did nothing out of their way to protect him from their other wards.

Farsigan himself, when roused from his own slumber with his mouth covered with a stranger's hand, made no struggle. He reacted instead with a smile and a nod, then calm patience rubbing sleep from his eyes as Brazen explained his reasons for coming, pleasantly finding Farsigan like-minded in dislike for the present application of human authority. "I was worried you were one of the military guards for a moment there", he'd chuckled, "but of course, none of them have the…" He had put his fingers up on either side of his head, above his ears, imitating Brazen's horns.

From that night onwards, Farsigan hadn't bothered locking his door, and was awake when Brazen slipped over to visit. "It's not like I have much to actually do in the daytime," Farsigan had sighed wearily, when Brazen had asked if his nocturnal visits were an imposition. "Day drinking isn't really an option for me anymore." His empty flask lay on the bedstand, surrounded by a heap of what Brazen assumed were accounting logbooks and the like. More use had been given to a pair of knitting needles, which Farsigan had used to make yarn crochet in his idleness.

The cabin itself was not much better than the accommodations given to the faunus detainees, though they were quick to imagine that the mine owner lived in luxury at their expense like a Schnee would have. Cobwebs clouded each dark corner. Perhaps, with his human eyes, he just doesn't see them there. The floor was caked with dirt and grime. Farsigan himself was uncomfortable living here. After the mine had gone defunct, his family (according to what he'd told Brazen already) had migrated up to Ilhari. He'd been raised in a more urban environment than the mining camp - Farsigan was unused to 'roughing it' out here in the middle of nowhere.

Now that they'd been properly introduced, Farsigan eagerly anticipated the visits by the horned, bandaged faunus prisoner. "Hey. Was wondering how long you'd keep me waiting this time." Farsigan looked up from what he'd been knitting in the candlelight as a shadow flitted across his room.

Brazen had spent little time quibbling over his own feelings about the friendship. He'd worked with Cinder. With Torchwick, and now Neopolitan. What was an alliance with Farsigan, compared to them, that should trouble him? Farsigan was against the idea of slavery and wanted his family holdings back under his control without further military appropriation. He wasn't a true faunus ally, but at least had enough vested self-interest in aiding Brazen that there was trust between them. He wanted to have fairly-paid employees as a matter of principle, regardless of their race. Brazen, so far as principles were concerned, was quite willing to work with humans - so long as it works towards my cause. In the tunnels earlier that day he'd spent some time pondering that outlook. Was it an outlook Dominic would share, or was it a revelation particular to his path that let him think that he could use humans to free his people from humanity?

He wasn't even sure what Bedlam would think of anything, now, with the revelation of Purrsuasion; Dominic, Bedlam, and I will deal with that… later.

He forced himself to focus on the moment: right now he needed to concentrate on his budding plan to escape captivity, so as to take more proactive measures of achieving his overarching scheme of wringing Cinder's secrets to his benefit; if he had to be friends with a human to do that, with Farsigan, then he found that palatable. Farsigan, at the very least, was kinder towards faunus than Cinder. He wanted to employ them as something other than cannon fodder.

"Anything from outside?"

Farsigan shook his head. "Nothing at all really. Mostly more of the same, what little there is to overhear. The war is still in full swing, all orders stand. Locals are all-too-happy to enforce Jupiter's edicts against the faunus. His rural popularity is soaring, according to a poll done by the local news. After the Battle of Fort Castle, there's been bad blood against your kind this far south in the Kingdom."

Brazen thought of how the people this far from the city had spitefully feigned ignorance of the Kingdom's ban on faunus slavery for the past half-century. If anything, the recent war had simply removed the threat of punishment for what they'd been doing for years, emboldening them to more open and vile acts of racism. Farms, plantations, and workhouses across the south of Mistral swelled with cheap labour. Fragile families were fractured, brave homesteads left vacant.

"We need to know what is going on at Fort Castle, at least, if not in Mistral City. Ilia still believes Ghira will rescue us from this war." Brazen sighed and sat on Farsigan's bed. "Unless you've suddenly had a change of heart and decided this is how you like to live."

Farsigan laughed quietly. "Hardly. Though I can't say I mind your nocturnal visits to help me plan and plot against the status quo." The human groaned in exasperation. "I knew, coming here, that it'd be a rough start, but I wasn't expecting to be forced to beg and borrow from my own property. I mean, having my contact in Kuchinashi back out of our deal because the men he'd promised me were needed for reconstruction and defense after that big grimm attack - that, that I can understand… but having the government turn my property into a workcamp prison… cutting me out as anything but a glorified figurehead… not to mention this old cabin is almost as bad as-"

"The faunus lodgings, yeah."

Farsigan gulped and stopped complaining about his living quarters, deflating rapidly from his rant. At least he had a bit of personal space, even if it was dilapidated. "I was going to reveal this tidbit with a bit more dramatic flair, but damn it all you really know how to sour the mood… Plutony left for Mistral City with the Chieftain of Menagerie. I've not heard if he's returned, or who has been left in charge there."

Brazen hummed at that. Farsigan was a good source of intel, even if he understated himself. The human guards trusted the human landowner enough to let him walk in their midst unattended, letting their tongues wag.

Brazen got up and gingerly grabbed a large chunk of the fibrous white mineral from Farsigan's table, similar to other chunks he and the faunus had spent the day hauling out of the caves, well away from his face. "So why is your government so interested in this stuff? It isn't dust."

"We never dug for dust here at AsbestOz Mines! The world might be fueled by energy crystals, but Lord Plutony knows that there are abundant treasures buried beneath the surface, ores and crystals that have their own peculiarities and uses for the building of a strong Mistral. You can't forge steel from dust, after all." Farsigan said proudly.

The prospective prospector might not be fond of the current government's policies, but he did have a healthy respect for the local governor's son, who had been quite involved in the revival of the mine - even before the current troubles. Plutony had even granted Farsigan favourable lines of credit to restart his family holding, up until the necessities of war had required the noble to use the nascent mine as a prison camp.

"To be fair to Plutony, he's also sent faunus to nearby plantations." Farsigan had said, but that had only made Taurus more concerned about the origin of his dinner fruits.

It did not escape Brazen's understanding that the reason Plutony was in charge was because his father, the true governor, had been sent to oversee defensive operations across the sea in Mistral's colonies closer to fallen Vale. If I hadn't brought Vale to its knees, Plutony wouldn't have been in charge, and then who knows if this mine would have been revived…

"As it so happens, asbestos is a quality building material, good for making things that you don't want to overheat or burn. City defensive barricades, dust-engine components and braking mechanisms, weapons using fire dust, the hulls of ships and trains that get attacked by fire-breathing grimm…" Farsigan listed off the numerous things his mine's product was used in.

"Or useful against people with fire-semblances…" Brazen muttered. He remembered the handcuffs he'd found at Toys-N-Us, and his plan to use them to restrain Cinder. Now that he was at the source of the product, he could be a bit more ambitious with that plan. "Could you make armour out of it? Clothing?"

Farsigan nodded uncertainly. "If you got the right type of it, and had someone that is a skilled tailor. If you want that, keep an eye out for the stuff that looks like spider webbing next time you're down below. Good long crysotile." He walked over to his dresser and pulled out a dingy looking apron. "Old thing, this." He moved to the cold fireplace and lit it up with a nearby matchstick. While letting the fire build up he moved to his icebox and pulled out a lump of butter. He wrapped a slice of the dairy product in the apron and waited for the fire to crackle with heat, then placed the apron into the blaze.

Brazen watched the demonstration with keen interest, wanting to see the fireproof material in action.

"I've seen it used for insulation, for clothing - it can be made into a sort of fabric, ropes, building materials of all sorts." Farsigan used a set of iron tongs to lift the apron out of the fireplace. He shook it a little and dumped it onto the small table where he'd been sitting. The apron was now a cleaner greenish-white colour, years of grime having been scourged clean off by the flame. He peeled it open to reveal the butter, which was a bit shiny but had kept its solidity.

"Impressive." Brazen said. He poked the apron with his finger, tentatively, and was surprised at the coolness of it after being immolated. "What's its weakness? Does it dissolve in water?"

Farsigan shook his head. "Only thing we ever found that was a problem for stuff made out of it was strong acids. Which, sadly, some grimm are known to spit… so we know about that weakness from tragic circumstances."

Not very likely that Cinder will be carrying around a vat of acid. Brazen couldn't think of any sane plan that hinged on having a vat of acid just lying around. What would even be the point of that? Throwing someone in the vat to watch their fleshless bones float up to the top or something? Stirring it with an acid-proof ladle? Maybe someone with a semblance that made them impervious to acid using it to take baths?

Brazen was certain that Cinder would absolutely adore what he planned to dress her in. Why, she'd be all set to go to the ball - not that she'd be going much of anywhere at all once he'd gotten her restrained and nullified with a solid wrap of asbestos. Then, once powerless, she'd start to talk.

Which was one of the reasons Brazen had let this whole 'captured' scene play on for so long. He also wanted to convince Ilia to rejoin his team. No, he corrected himself, to remind her that all faunus are on the same team and always should have been.

Yes. With Ilia at his side and Farsigan's fire-proof asbestos, he would return to the city, capture Cinder, and get the answers he needed. His patience and endurance of this humiliating internment would be well worth it.

"I've… heard of this stuff before. The SDC calls it 'Fools' Dust', and more than one faunus 'employee' has earned a sound beating in their mines for filling their cart with the stuff." Brazen said, careful not to tie himself to a past with the SDC. Farsigan was notably anti-SDC, and Brazen didn't particularly want it getting back to Ilia at any point in time that he had memories of mine work. That would go against the whole point of gaslighting her and Ghira into believing that he was 'Dominic Taurus, brother of Adam'.

While Taurus was a bit of an expert on dust-mining, he found his expertise woefully ignorant of asbestos. In the SDC, they'd treated it as junk at best and a hazard at worst, like any non-elementally charged crystals. Farsigan respected his expertise in the basics of mining, though, impressed by Taurus' unmatched yields over the past few days, and despite his hatred for the mining industry, Brazen couldn't help but enjoy talking to someone who had studied the academic side of mining: geology, crystallography, and the business of affording large machinery that would be necessary if the mine hoped to expand beyond the present simplicity of delving down and hacking at visible mineral deposits with a pick. Not that Brazen intended to stay around, but Farsigan said that if the local government was serious about making use of the abundant asbestos in the area then they would have to invest in some heavy diggers, improved roads, and trained personnel.

In fact, Farsigan and Brazen had enjoyed talking shop so much that their forays into planning a great prison escape had been lost in tangential discussions several times.

"Well, that just shows how narrow-minded those jerks up in Solitas are." Farsigan harumphed happily at hearing how his operation had outwitted the competition in recognizing the value of the valueless.

Much like how he sees the value of an enthusiastic workforce. Brazen easily admitted that Farsigan had quickly gotten himself categorised as a 'good' human. Like Neo. Humans that were helpful to the faunus, in that they didn't go out of their way to support the faunus directly, but that their goals coincided with promoting general equality between the species, while falling short of admitting faunus superiority. It was a shame that Taurus had sort of abandoned the virtue of equality between the species himself. Still, good humans would serve his faunus world order well. Of course, that would have to get past the current war with Mistral. Which meant Brazen would have to hurry up and get back to the city to get his sword dirty.

With a pang, he remembered that his sword was probably in Menagerie by now, in Kali's clutches.

"I need a fire-proof suit." Brazen said, "a restraint jacket, more like. I'm in the middle of hunting someone with a fire semblance, but I need them alive."

Farsigan nodded. "Serendipitous, then, that you get waylaid in a mining operation for Asbestos owned by a artisanal craftsman from a family with a history of some talent." He put the butter back in the icebox and held the apron. "Not my finest work, but if I snag a bit more raw material from my stockhouse, and work through the day, I could fill such an order with at least a length of flame-proof bindings."

"I'd like to know more about your family, sometime. Like why'd they leave if they were so talented at the work? Why's the name AsbestOz, with the Oz at the end?"

"Well, I know for sure that the SDC drove us out of business before I was born. Just for being a rival mining concern. Thank the Schnees thirty years ago for that."

Brazen would hold off on thanking a Schnee for anything, if it could be avoided.

"As for the name, I seem to recall it was a pun on one of my lineage's name… probably whichever one of my long-deceased relatives that started the business, but those records are probably at Fort Castle, if anywhere. Nothing about that here," he gestured to his cabin, "or up here." He gestured to his head.

Brazen was almost certain Hazel's story about the soul parasite, Salem's foe, was somehow involved in the mine's history. He fumbled with why that should be important, outside of the tiny speck of concern that somehow there was something more sinister than serendipity at play.

"So if your family was driven out of the mining business, how'd you manage to be capable of making stuff out of asbestos?"

"We still had a large stockpile of the stuff squirrelled away. Couldn't sell it for industrial purposes because of tax regulations and such that favoured the SDC, so we took to using it for more artsy pursuits. Aprons, oven mitts, decorative things. My grandfather oversaw that paradigm shift in our family's operations… I learned the craft from him when I was a young boy. He'd probably know more about the name, since he was always the most interested in the family business. My father was more inclined to become an electrician. He'd loathe the idea of me having come back out here."

"Interesting... On that note, we should get down to more present and pressing business: this situation is untenable." Brazen stated, "I had to clear out another two grimm nests today. One of them was right ahead of where a couple of the kids were heading. If I hadn't been here…" The fights against the grimm while wielding a mining pick had been awkward. He had won, it hadn't even been much of a fight, but it just made him long for the handle of Wilt, the retort of Blush as it fired hot destruction into his foes. "It was worse than the other day when the kid just got lost down there in the tunnels."

"Can I anymore condemn the use of children in my family's mines?" Farsigan cried out, "there is nothing - save these delightful twilight reveries with you - about this situation that is in any way respectable or dignified. It was an actual struggle to convince the soldiers to requisition redundant replacements for the prisoners proper safety gear today! For the gods' sake, they seemed rather blase about sending your lot down into the caverns without proper ventilators and back-up lights! Can you even imagine mining for asbestos without ventilators?"

Brazen was thankful that he'd managed that. Having gear at all seemed a blessing, to say nothing of redundant gear to cover wear-and-tear breakdowns. The SDC had never provided breathing protection for its faunus crews. In their opinion, since dust crystals posed no air quality risks (according to the SDC Science Commission, at least), then anyone stupid enough to be handling asbestos or other potential hazards was violating their employment contract and were denied access to even the minimal healthcare faunus were promised.

No faunus employee of the SDC had ever had any say in determining the terms of their employment contract. To Taurus' knowledge, neither had any such employee ever actually been given any healthcare, either. It was a sad state of affairs when Brazen could say that, despite being prisoners of war treated like chattel by their jailors, conditions at AMC were still better than life working for Jacques Schnee.

Farsigan took some crumpled documents out of his duster pockets, revealing a schedule of arrivals and departures for the guards. He and Brazen spent the next few dozen minutes conspiring ways to free the faunus without dooming Farsigan's hope of re-establishing his family's mine or getting anyone killed.

That last caveat rankled, but Farsigan had been insistent on that. 'There are young faunus here - you don't want the situation to get violent and put them in harm's way, would you?' The human warned, and Brazen agreed to the terms (if only to ensure the human's continued cooperation). Ilia would have wanted those terms, too, so it would make it easier to get her to agree to whatever scheme he and Farsigan came up with.

He remembered the video Bedlam's spy camera had caught of Blake cozying up with Weiss Schnee. Making her father proud - and the Tauruses incensed - at how she resisted the (assumed) urge to kill the daughter of the Scourge of Solitas.

His life sure would be easier if people would be a bit more relaxed when it came to the whole business of killing their enemies.

Wouldn't it?

Maybe not.

Killing Sienna hadn't done him many favours, in the long run.

Not that she'd been right to refute his claims of being right about allying with Cinder. It was just that Cinder's plan had gone sour. And Blake had shown up to foil his attack.

Would Ghira have sailed to Mistral if Sienna had been leading the attack?

Would he have even found out about it?

…Maybe he could hold off on killing anyone for a while. After all, he expected Neo to not kill Cinder. It would be a bit hypocritical for him to demand that of her, while galavanting about on a killing spree himself.

It would be easy, too, since he didn't have Wilt or Blush.

He missed his beloved rifle-sword so much. Kali had better be taking good care of it!

"Okay, so we're supposed to get another visit by the armoured prisoner transport bus in two days." Farsigan looked outside at the moon hanging in the sky. "I mean, one day now, I guess. If we can incapacitate the local guards, the guards on the bus shouldn't be too much trouble. Then we can have all the faunus get on the bus for a clean getaway to the west coast, where there should still be intercontinental ferries to Sanus. From there, they could get to Vale." Farsigan pulled out his scroll, which reminded Brazen of how Kali had not stopped at merely taking his weapons. "I still have administrator access to the local scroll network. I can shut it down when you give me the signal, that way you and your pals can take the camp without casualties." On either side was implied and understood. "Alternatively, we could wait for the weekly material pickup in four days. Might be better to do that, since it can hold more people - albeit less comfortably."

Brazen nodded. In his mind, once freed, the faunus could make their way to Vale, where the liberated faunus would hopefully be welcomed by the Vale Brotherhood - which by then should have reaffirmed its loyalty to him. To Dominic. The real Dominic. Brazen would like nothing more than to go with them, but he still had pressing matters to attend to in Mistral City.

Like pressing a sword up to the Prince's neck while he declared his surrender.

His mind wavered, erring away from the relishment of future violence to another matter he'd like to press. Down on the desk again in a grimy warehouse - or somewhere nicer, if circumstances permitted. Erotic thoughts of Neo's deceptions set his mind to the task of ruses in general; refocused, he considered Farsigan's welfare after the escape was done. He wasn't planning to come with them: the prospector wanted to see his mine succeed. Which meant he was going to be left in a camp of humans Brazen was generously going to leave alive. "We'll make it look like you were incapacitated, as well. We'll tie your ropes loose, so you can get free once you 'awaken', and can make sure nobody dies to any grimm lured in by the scuffle." Brazen said, which Farsigan nodded along to and seemed pleased. The man probably hadn't even thought about how it'd look if he was the only human in the camp to not suffer any roughing-up, despite being the mine-boss. "Ilia and I will take the soldiers' jalopy and make our way to the capital, so that we can put a stop to this war, find Ghira Belladonna, and let you start hiring experienced spelunkers and geologists at fair wages - instead of scared families who ran a dry-cleaning shop."

---

CAMMY

Thursday Evening, Day 15

She'd killed an alpha grimm. It still made her slightly dizzy with euphoria to think about, the memory of adrenaline and achievement. Her. Cammy! She'd done it. What would Pop-Pop say? She scratched her hand nervously, until the glow of aura healing the scratch drew Scarlet's attention enough for him to take her hand in his. What would Pop-Pop say about her relationship with this scoundrel boy?

"Want to come with me below decks?" He asked her. Before, that would have been a coy suggestion to go out of sight to do something fun and physical together. Now, it had a serious tone.

"How bad is it going to be down there?" She said, speaking slowly, drawing on her journalist training, attempting to keep the quiver of apprehension out of her reply. Without power, the lower decks were sure to be dark and scary… but she had aura, now. She'd killed an alpha!

Scarlet tilted his head towards Neptune, and frowned. If Neptune had decided to be on deck…

"I need someone to have my back. I'd get Sun or Dominic to help, but they need to get some sleep while there's sunlight."

Night was coming, although, in all fairness, if she forgot the grimm threat, it was actually very lovely out at sea. Calm, clear skies, fresh salty air. So long as the moon stayed bright, her eyesight wouldn't be too far off from what the faunus guys could see at night, she believed. Or maybe that was just what the Mistral government's propaganda machine wanted the citizens to believe.

Cammy nodded, and followed him towards the stairs as he stage-whispered to Neptune his plan. Neptune nodded, then after a moment of thought got up from where he'd crouched under Sage at the helm and grabbed Scarlet.

"My pills. The suppressants." Neptune had remembered, "My aura is going to start recovering naturally soon."

"And we don't want that." Cammy said with uncertainty, still not used to Neptune's whole 'deal'.

"No, we really don't." Neptune answered. "Maybe if I can find an aquatic faunus in Vacuo to train with I can be better, but I'm not risking damaging our chances any more if I can help it."

"Could always just do that whole mind-over-matter nonsense and water-semblance us to Vacuo." Scarlet whined. "Honestly… your entire family is notorious for water mastery, but my teammate just happens to be the oddball who can't stand getting wet." He threw his hands up in the air as if to scorn existence, why me?

"Just get the pills."

"Hey, if we can't find your stupid pills, then we just get Dominic to make sure your aura stays at nil." Scarlet grinned. "Bet he'd not argue much against that duty."

Neptune's eyes shot towards the still figure of the dark faunus. Cammy could see him considering whether or not the past days of bonding with the faunus warranted exemption from the terrorist's brother's familial battle against humanity.

"I'll find the pills, don't worry," Cammy promised him. "They were in the room you were using, right? They should still be there."

"Be careful," Neptune said. "The floor in that room isn't very… it'll be wet."

Without anymore lingering above, Cammy followed Scarlet downstairs. The floor had water that sloshed up to her knees as the boat swayed back and forth on the tide. The doors in the corridor were all sealed shut; Neptune had had the sense to limit the water coming in before he had fled upstairs. Until Dominic woke up, they had little chance of doing much more than that.

Scarlet peered into the nearest door's little glass window, leading into the dining area. "Doesn't look bad in there. At least the food is safe." He grumbled, under his breath, "not that anyone knows how to cook…"

Cammy looked into the window across from the galley. "I think the bathroom's completely flooded."

"Guess we'll all be pissing straight into the ocean, then." Scarlet laughed, then saw her look of admonishment. "I mean, you're pretty much a huntress now. Gotta get used to not valuing modesty as much. Speaking of which…" He came up to her and wrapped his hand up her back, sliding it up between her slick skin and the soaked fabric. "That was pretty sexy, the way you executed that grimm up there in Dom's hand. Real bad-ass."

"Oh? And here I thought it was Dominic who's responsible for getting your mast back up." She grinned.

The status of the ship and Neptune's aura-suppressant pills were swiftly forgotten by the pair, as Scarlet lifted her up out of the water and pressed her against the wall. Their irresponsible burst of passionate love-making lasted until Sage stomped down the stairs. As Cammy fished her top out of the water, Sage came into view and groaned. "Neptune was so distressed he actually took over steering a yacht so that I could come down here and make sure the two of you morons weren't dead." He shook his head, then turned around. "Don't worry, Neptune!" He shouted up the stairs, "they were just fu-"

Scarlet's hands clamped his partner's mouth - his teammate's mouth, that is - closed, before Sage could further erode what modesty Cammy had left. Cammy was left blushing profusely in the middle of a flooded corridor, holding her top against her otherwise bare chest while squatting down so that the water covered up to her bellybutton.

Scarlet hissed something into Sage's ear, and Sage nodded slowly. Scarlet released his hand.

"Dude." Sage spat into the water. "Your hands don't taste quite like seawater salt, you know what I mean? Did you really have to get your fingers all up in my mouth?"

"I dunno, I think she tastes pretty nice." Scarlet replied, "what are you, then, some sort of connoisseur?"

Cammy lowered herself further into the water, wondering if she could just drown rather than suffer further embarrassment. She knew that her intimacy with Scarlet would be the running joke of the group for at least the rest of the journey. These guys did not know how to keep a secret. Everyone everywhere would know what she was getting up to. Pop-Pop and Grandma would find out at this rate.

The other half of her brain fought against the spiral of despair, focusing more on how her boyfriend had complimented the taste she'd left on his fingers.

"So, threesome?" Scarlet asked.

Cammy's brain split in half like a cracked egg, the yolk of thoughts sizzling as they landed neatly on her crotch.

"No disrespect, bro, but I gotta prioritize Neptune's safety. Dude is naked - I mean, he's at zero, not naked like you two are, up there, with grimm all over the place." Sage shot Cammy an A-OK gesture. "No offense to you or nothing, Cam. You're hot and all, but can't have my teammates dying while I get my rocks off like some people." He punched Scarlet in the shoulder.

Cammy knew that wasn't true: after the alpha had died, the rest of the grimm had sort of fell away from the yacht. There weren't even any down here in the water, which had facilitated her and Scarlet getting all hot and heavy.

Sage continued, "so, cute as Cammy might be, I'm gonna focus on the mission and not get caught up in your mess like last time dude set up a three-way. I mean, even without considering the Vytal Festival noodle stand incident, I'm not gonna risk it with him ever again."

With that, he dutifully sloshed his way past Scarlet, past Cammy, and down the corridor to the master bedroom to retrieve Neptune's pills. He splashed his way back past them, pills in hand, a few moments later.

Once he was back up the steps and out of sight, Scarlet scuttled behind Cammy. "Pfffft. His loss." She felt his hands, warmer than the ocean water, press up against her thigh. "So, how about we go back to giving you those happy thoughts?" Cammy was still a bit too discombobulated at having been caught in the act to respond, but he took the initiative and sank down into the water in front of her so that he could set her mind back at ease. She wanted to point out that in every horror movie, the couple that split off from the group to fool around were always the ones to get munched on by the monster. She wanted to cling a little bit to her former, weaker self, that would have been too shy and meek to do the things she had done in the past few days.

But Scarlet's tongue and fingers were very persuasive, and happy thoughts replaced all her worries, letting her float on something besides the water.

She still had some journalistic curiosity, though, and in-between half-muffled moans managed to ask, "what happened between you two at a noodle stand?"

Scarlet didn't stop his fingers, but whispered softly in her ear, "babe, if this thing between us is gonna work out and last, we can't worry about each and every noodle incident. Besides, if they ever get the Vytal Festival running again, who's even going to remember that I was banned for life from Vale's Culinary Exhibition for misusing chopsticks?"

---

When she staggered back up to the deck, followed closely by the smirking Scarlet, she saw that Dominic had already woken up and was talking to Sage at the wheel while Neptune had fallen asleep. Cammy assumed the suppressants probably helped him sleep or something. She didn't know if she'd be able to sleep; despite her exhaustion, she still felt like she was overcharged with adrenaline. And endorphins, too; thanks, Scarlet.

"So how's it look down there?"

"Bathrooms flooded, the bedrooms are soaked. Kitchen looks okay; it's on the other side of the ship from where the thing was firing at us. The games room looks okay, too, on that side. Not sure how the room Dom was using got flooded, though." Scarlet answered while Cammy sat down between the sleeping forms of Sun and Neptune. "We're sitting pretty low in the water, so we can't actually open up the games room or kitchen because that would probably flood them, too, and sink the ship."

"So we've got lots of water and food… but we can't get to any of it?" Sage summed up and sighed. "That sucks."

Dominic didn't sound surprised or upset that his room had flooded; it wasn't like he really had anything in it that was 'his'. "What about the next level down?"

"Totally flooded. If you want to get any of the medical supplies, or dust or carpentry stuff, you'll have to take a dive in. Means the engine room is a lost cause, too. So sails are the only option. Won't be able to get the machinery working without a dry dock fix."

"Can we go into those rooms?"

Scarlet shrugged. "Closet is open and engine room is flooded anyways. Medical might be better off."

"If we sealed the engine room and popped off an air dust crystal in there, could you fix the engine?" Sage asked.

Biting his lip, Scarlet seemed unsure. "Not sure. Never worked on a model so modern. Jolly Rogered had a more old-fashioned motor, and relied more heavily on sails. Shame we don't have someone who was raised working on heavy machinery aboard." He shot a look at Dominic.

Ignoring the look, Dominic nodded. "Okay. I'll keep lookout until Sun wakes up, then I'll get in there. Rest of you can sleep."

Cammy saw how Scarlet didn't really seem to like the sound of that, not trusting the faunus to be the only one awake, but unlike Cammy he was more tired so he flopped down next to Neptune and closed his eyes. Sage released the wheel to Dom and joined his team, leaving Cammy surrounded by silent boys.

"First kill?" Dominic asked, and she knew he was asking her.

"I stomped a bunch of those little ones earlier," she whispered quickly.

"Not the same. It's the difference between squishing a bug and a rat. Alpha grimm are smart. You seem a bit more intense since you shot it."

Cammy nodded. "How'd a carpenter get so good at fighting?"

Dom gestured, but Cammy couldn't quite make out what it was. "This world doesn't really give my people a choice, most of the time. You either fight or you die."

Cammy listened to the waves, to the soft breathing of SSSN, for a few minutes, trying to join them in sleep but without success. She got up and joined Dominic at the wheel, which she realized was presently a useless device; the ship wasn't going anywhere beyond a slow tidal drift. It was the best vantage point on the ship, and little more.

"Do you think I'll ever be able to go home?"

"I don't know. Do you want to? Mistral is a festering sore on the face of Remnant."

Cammy wanted to contest that with some civic pride to counter the sneer of disdain in his tone, but with all that had happened she found it difficult to defend her erstwhile homeland. She still had her grandparents in Kuchinashi, but beyond that, all she had had was her job and the apartment she was renting in the city. She'd never been popular in high school, and her coworkers at the media weren't really friends. Bole was an excellent example: they were all in it for themselves, and personal relationships were just another currency used to pay their way upwards.

Honestly she'd been no better. She remembered having wanted little more than a promotion and enough money to upgrade her bathtub. Small minded goals in a world with such larger problems.

Maybe the universe was just forcing her to spread her wings and leave the nest, so to speak. Maybe this - a life of danger, excitement, and adventure - was what she was destined for. Wasn't like I was much of a rising star in the office, she griped. Life was complicated and scary now, but there were good things, too. Scarlet was a good thing, she thought. At least, he made her feel good. In the throes of their interrupted passion, she was too embarrassed at being caught to be cognizant of how quickly her… she wanted to say boyfriend but they weren't really using that term. Sex friend? Sex fiend? Whatever he was, he had been awfully quick to suggest sharing her with his teammate. Or had he been trying to share his teammate with her? In the light of the moon, Sage's wet coat clung to his muscular torso, the gap down the middle showcasing his prominent abs, trailing all the way down to the hem of his pants. Cammy gulped, trying to keep her mind somewhat clear. She'd always heard rumours that faunus could pick up on certain things. Racist propaganda, certainly… but just in case, she wanted to keep her fluster in check lest Dominic get the wrong idea.

Her mind was momentarily distracted by the addition of Dominic to Scarlet's offer made earlier to his partner(s).

No!

Down, girl!

Did she want to go back to Mistral? Her life now, while difficult and frightening, was also intense and exciting. And full of really hot guys. Like, bad reality-television dating show levels of hot guys surrounding her.

Like my own personal stable of men.

No!

What did we say about 'down, girl'?

"I… guess not." Cammy admitted after taking a few moments to collect her thoughts and calm down, "but maybe I'd like to visit on occasion without being thrown in prison. And it still feels like we ran away and left things in really bad shape there."

"It does. I'd have much rather not left any loose ends, but hopefully my brother Adam will be able to put things right. He went off to save the faunus heading to Menagerie, so maybe that'll help matters somehow." Dominic paused. "We saved some by doing what we did. That will have to be enough for us, for now. Can't win a war with a single swing of the blade. Or… build a house with a single hammer-hit. Hammer blow?"

Cammy, her journalistic instincts kicking in, sensed an opportune moment to dig deeper into the Taurus brothers' situation. She'd been the second to back Dominic up when he claimed to not be his brother, and the first - and only one - to offer any proof. He'd taken an interest in her semblance because of that, she presumed.

"What's it like? Being his brother, I mean. Being a Taurus."

Dominic breathed in deeply and didn't say anything for a minute. He stared out back towards the way they had come, where the sun had set.

"It's not easy. But it is nice to have a brother. Makes it feel like I have someone to share the load with."

"The load?"

Dominic nodded. "My strength, his strength… We have a duty to help our people. We both understand that, even if we go towards it on different paths. We want the same thing. To bring justice for the weak and oppressed. With Adam Taurus in charge, my people will be free. Safe, more importantly. I have to do my part. Might be similar to how huntresses feel, the weight of responsibility, protecting the weak." The light of the moon reflected off the waves, catching his face and making it shine in a gentle glow.

Cammy bit her tongue, not saying what she thought of his brother's tenure in leadership positions. But Dominic seemed different. He must have been a good influence on his brother. Why else would the pair of them have defended the human train from Kuchinashi. Why would Adam have gone to save Ghira rather than take a shot at regicide? Not that I think Dominic saved us as an afterthought to an attempt at killing the Crown Prince - no, he came up to help Sun. Cammy had put that much together from what she'd heard and seen. Sun had surreptitiously called Dom for aid, and Dom had heeded the call.

Which made Dominic a good guy, by her reckoning. What was a hero if not someone who answered the call like that? She wished to believe that a hero could be so narrowly defined. It was just difficult to believe that the Prince, that the army, was bad. Relying on her journalistic instincts, she forced herself to question everything she'd known. She had to make due with what she'd seen with her own eyes. Jupiter had wanted to bomb innocent citizens. Sun and Dominic had stopped him. The lines were pretty clear.

Dominic took her hand and placed it on the wheel of the ship beside his own. His good eye gleamed in the gloaming. "Being Taurus is a burden, but I'm not alone in the responsibility. We can keep each other safe while we safeguard others. It is… nice, to have someone to have your back like that. I get why Sun keeps these guys around."

Cammy looked down at team SSSN with quiet appreciation. She was still getting used to having aura, but the boys would help her adjust. She'd be useful, she'd be strong, and she'd make lives better, even if she was a few years older than most huntress candidates started out - not that there had ever been an age limit to joining one of the academies, so long as you passed the physical tests. "So being you is like having aura. Power and duty. Being his brother is like being part of a team." Cammy yawned. "I've never been to Vacuo. Everyone always says it is a dump."

Dominic shrugged before saying quickly, "well, I've always heard that it is faunus-friendly. Always wanted to go, but what's the point of a freedom fighter in a place that's already free? Or a carpenter in a place with no trees? I'm no sand mason."

Cammy felt herself floating, realizing with a little start that Dominic had caught her up in his arms and was now carrying her down the steps to where the other boys slept. With a strange tender gentility, he placed her down beside Scarlet, where she fell into a peaceful sleep.

Words drifted down to her as she dozed off, faint.

"Never going to have to be alone ever again."

---

DOMINIC

Sun looked over the side of the yacht and had a little chuckle. "Well, not how I thought my week was gonna go. Thought the hard part would be getting Neptune on a boat, or keeping him on a boat, not keeping the boat from sinking." He chuckled again, "is it weird that I'm missing class? Or, at least, having class to skip?"

Dominic came up beside him and looked down at the hull, too. The once pristine paint, an ornately inscribed emblem of Mistral's wealth, was now eaten away by the corrosive grimm slime, pockmarked and chipped by holes and incisions. Dominic tried to feel a little happy at the sight - if nothing else, at least this little venture had deprived his enemies of a fancy toy.

A fancy toy he needed to somehow fix up enough to get him to Vacuo so that he could move on back to Vale and his waiting, loyal forces there.

"I'm going down below to find something to fix that mast."

Sun shot him a thumbs-up and a grin. "Holler if you need me, I'll be here watching out; when you need me I can help lift the mast back up in place."

"Think you can lift it solo? If I'm fixing it, I won't be holding it up at the same time."

Sun went over and tested the weight. "I bet if we both got it up, I could keep it balanced upright without too much hassle. Assuming nothing else comes and rams into us." He looked out at the ocean. "Maybe we'll wait until everyone is awake before we dangle a giant timber over them."

"Don't worry about me. I'm feeling cheerful and positive." Dominic said, and it was even rather true. His little episode earlier, when the Chowder had been getting reeled in, had been somewhat cathartic. He might not have addressed any of his worries, but at least he'd let them out for a little bit. He could focus on the present for the present, and not waste any time or energy concerned about regrets and possibilities. "Hopefully you're your usual, undampenable self?"

Sun's grin and thumbs-up gesture stayed firm, answering that.

So he went down into the water of the yacht's living level. Sniffing the air he instantly was aware of the smell of wet, expensive wood. The water rolled about lazily at his legs, gently telling him he was going to get soaked. He went back up the stairs and began to strip down to his underpants. No sense getting his entire outfit wet. As he did, he heard Sun gasp loudly. He looked up to see the monkey-faunus staring at him. "What?"

"Your body…" Sun said, "those scars…"

Dominic cooly regarded his own body. He realized that yes, it was in fact covered in scars from his years of living as Adam Taurus. It's my body, after all, I'm kind of used to it. Sun, however, was not. And he's not even seen what's behind my eyepatch. He thought about the integrity of his disguise. "Carpentry is a rough way to earn a living sometimes." Dominic snarked glibly, and Sun, still staring, said nothing in response. He looked like he wanted to, but was at a loss for words. Dominic tucked that little fact away: he could get Sun to shut up in the future just by taking his shirt off.

Maybe that's why Neo was always so quiet?

Dominic finished undressing, then waded down into the water, making his way to the next set of stairs before diving into the bowels of the flooded ship. He as much felt his way as he saw in the pitch darkness, relying mostly on his memory of the ship's layout as he made his way to the supply closet beside the engine room. Out of curiosity he peered into the engine room door through the little porthole window, and was a little surprised to see the ocean-blue filtered moonlight shining through the jagged chunks missing from the walls. A single wrecker grimm, its little claws hovering languidly in the flooded room, sat on the ruined mechanism of the engine. Dom resumed his mission, grabbing an assortment of tools from the supply closet: anything he could get his hands on, he ferried up to the top deck. Hammers, nails, a screwdriver, those he could identify. He also brought up a dozen other objects that, though he could identify them as carpentry tools, he had no name for them and, in several cases, no clue as to their function. He was tempted to punt them overboard when Sun looked away, just to avoid uncomfortable questions regarding his lack of expertise in his stated profession, but decided that, just in case any of them were necessary for getting to shore again, he'd have to take the risk of his deception falling apart.

They could prove he wasn't a carpenter, but with Cammy's testimony (and Sun's eerie trust), they could not peg him as being the notorious Adam Taurus.

Once he'd gotten the tools up, he went back down and faced the storage closet where the ship's dust supply was kept. It was flooded, too, so he took care to avoid the (thankfully airtight) drawers he remembered had any electric dust. With that limitation, he only managed to get two air dust crystals, an ice, and two fires.

He looked at the collection of crystals somewhat sadly.

"All good?" Sun asked, wandering over.

Dominic had been hoping to snag an earth crystal. He knew there was one left, but it was in a drawer with two electrics that would zap him in the water if he went for them. It was a problem with unrefined dust crystals - a lesson he'd learned firsthand in the SDC mines of Solitas. I could make an air bubble with one of the air crystals, he considered, but decided not to waste the air crystal like that unless necessary. He couldn't let himself be ungrateful for the dust. He knew that there was a very high chance that each crystal represented the tortured labour of one of his people, a brutal effort to wrench it from the ground at the whims of their human overlords. He would not let these dust crystals go to waste if he could help it.

Even the electric dust should be recovered at some point, once the ship was beached and drained.

Dominic nodded. Even without the earth dust, he had enough large nails to spike the mast into place. Hopefully it would be enough to hold firm against the ocean breezes it was needed to catch. "I think it'll manage."

"Okay, cool, because, and I hate to ask, but I'm gonna need to ask you to go back down there one more time. Neptune's aura suppressants from the room did their job, but that was just what he had on hand in the room and the rest of it is still down in the medical bay. We need those, otherwise Neptune's semblance'll be the death of us."

Dominic took a deep breath. "Yet, knowing that, you wanted to sail your team to Vacuo."

"Under better circumstances, yes. I was sort of hoping that, surrounded by his best buds (and on a bigger, armed ship), my dude could totally work through some of those water-issues he's got going on." Sun said. "I'm terrified of death, but I've faced it a few times now to stand by my friends. If I can do that, maybe the power of friendship can help Neptune overcome his fears, too."

"I suppose there aren't much worse circumstances than these." Dominic said, superstitiously knocking on the wooden deck to ward off jinxing their luck. He almost wanted to make Sun go for a dip, but there was really no sense in both of them being wet.

Sun moved closer to him and grabbed Dom's shoulder. "Thanks, by the way. For everything."

Dominic shrugged, but the hand stayed on his shoulder. "Not a big deal or anything. Just doing what has to be done."

"See, that's what I like about you. You just do what seems right without really thinking about yourself. You could have run off or hid, but you decided to come help out, instead. You like helping. I really dig that, man. We're gonna be good friends."

Dominic didn't argue against that. He wanted friends, right? Who didn't want friends? Sure, he had his clones, and his loyal followers in Vale, but friends - peers - might be more valuable. Assuming they were real friends, not fake friends. Or forced burdens like Ghira had made his daughter into for Adam. It would be nice to have friends… since he'd never really had any, had he? The closest thing to a friend he'd ever really had was… he thought for a long moment… Ilia, maybe? For a while, perhaps, and she'd ended up turning on him like the rest, hadn't she?

Yeah, he wanted a real friend or three.

"All this racism, and for what?" Sun went on, "because some of us have tails and different ears and eyes that see better in the dark?" He scoffed. "People should be judged based on the decisions they make, the actions they take, the choices they live. Not the colour of their skin or hair or size of their claws."

Dominic nodded, agreeing in principle, even if he thought it only right that humans pay back the faunus for all the years of abuse.

"Do you think faunus would fight each other if humans weren't around, based on traits?" Sun asked suddenly. "Like, do you think if we didn't have the common issue of humans and grimm to deal with, do you think monkey faunus and horny boys would still be friends?"

"Of course we would be." Dominic answered immediately. Human hegemony was the problem. Faunus were better. There was no reason for them to fight if they were given the reins.

Except… they did.

But that's only because of human dominance! He reasoned to himself. Blake and Sun and Ilia and all of the rest wouldn't have stood and fought against him to defend the humans if there were no humans to seek righteous vengeance against, duh.

Dominic frowned. Well, that's just another reason to not wipe out humans in my new world. They'll be a constant reminder of why faunus solidarity is important, why faunus unity - under my guidance - is the only suitable order.

"Like, some people would look at you and say 'with his red hair, he looks like his brother, and we don't like his brother, so we shouldn't like him', but that ain't fair at all to you or them."

Dominic regarded Sun curiously, then pulled a strand of his hair into view of his eye. His hair dye was completely run out, probably from his little dip into the bowels of the ship. "What do you mean, not fair to them?"

"They'd be missing out on their chance to be friends with a nice guy like you, just because of silly discrimination!" Sun explained as he began to pace around the ship's deck. Dominic's keen ears and eyes strayed from Sun for a moment to regard their humans. Steady breathing and stillness assured him of their slumbers being deep enough to provide their faunus watchers with a private conversation. "I mean, how can you get friends involved in one's shenanigans if you don't got friends, right?"

Dominic nodded. Exactly right, Sun was. Sure, Dom could fight human oppression alone, but it was easier and better with his faunus comrades at his side. "I don't think faunus on faunus violence is anything but a result of human interference. You wouldn't have been at Haven fighting Adam if Haven wasn't a tool of humanity's oppression of Mistral's faunus."

"Man, I went to Haven. I gotta disagree with you about that. I mean, the headmaster was faunus."

Dominic wanted to come up with some witty retort, but after a minute of evaluating the entire - the entire - strategy behind attacking Haven with his White Fang, it really seemed that Haven was just the target that Cinder Fall had chosen next. It had been her choice, not his, and he'd just accepted it because of course it was a human-built institution. Conveniently close to his new throne.

But it had been run by a faunus.

Man, being so preoccupied by that Belladonna girl nonsense really blinded me to the goal… He'd been paying so much attention to events unfolding in Menagerie, waiting up all night for reports and news, that'd he'd failed to pay attention to his own operation; to his own role in Cinder's schemes. He could have contributed more to Cinder's planning. He could have reached out to Lionheart himself, made another faunus an ally in Cinder's scheme. Maybe even gotten Cinder to ignore Mistral and go after Atlas!

Sienna might have gone for that.

"The attack on Haven was… a mistake. In a lot of ways."

Sun shrugged. "Yeah, but it was foiled - by yours truly," Sun said and did a quick little flex, "so it wasn't as bad as the attack on Vale. Which was really bad, so that's a high bar, but at least not many people died. Just the faunus headmaster who was sort of evil, I guess." Sun stopped pacing. "Why was Headmaster Lionheart evil? Why was he helping blow up his own school? Why did he get so many of the huntsmen in Mistral killed off?"

"Maybe he wasn't as in control as you think, maybe that was the only thing he could really do to help the faunus." Dominic said, thinking about how clueless he'd been about Lionheart's role in the attack. If he hadn't been so focused on Blake, surely he would have stopped to wonder about that.

Sun shook his head. "I don't think so. It wasn't like the school was teaching us how to torture and maim faunus. It was, and hopefully will soon again be, focused on fighting the grimm. He has grandkids, you know. We found them at the school before we flew up to try to reason with the prince. Fucking soldiers branded them! I know I'm talking to the choir on this one but who does that?! But I gotta believe maybe Lionheart was doing it for them or something that made sense to him, rather than just wanting to hurt people for the sake of hurting people."

Dominic seethed at the thought of faunus children being branded. There was certainly no reason to hurt people for the sake of hurting people, when there were so many humans who deserved hurting!

"Making me feel like the wrong side won, if the victors are branding people. You heard the speech Cinder made to the world, before Vale fell, yeah? The people in charge cling to power. Who do you trust?"

Sun immediately gestured to his team. "I mean, first and foremost." Sun looked at Dominic. "I trust until I get reason not to."

"Trust should be earned." Dominic replied. "You just took me on with open arms. You know that lunch we had? The entire time I was trying to figure out where your teammates were hiding to back you up in case things went bad, but I'm starting to think-"

"Scarlet and Sage were with Cammy working, Neptune was apparently having tea with his cousin."

"-you were alone."

"I wasn't alone." Sun grinned, "I was with you!"

"Who you had no reason to trust!" Dominic sighed, infuriated at Sun's blase approach to his own personal safety. "Are you just that confident in yourself? Your teammates all thought I was the man who, scant days prior, had fought and threatened to explode a mountaintop with you on it."

"But you're not." Sun replied.

"I could have been!" Free of Ghira's semblance, of his overwhelmed singular mind, he wasn't anymore, though he had to be cautious to think his actions through more carefully lest he fall back into his old habits. There were things in his past he was proud of - standing up for faunus rights, fighting the good fight - but there were also stains on his soul.

"So?" Sun asked, "just because we met under bad circumstances doesn't mean Adam and I can't get along, too."

Dominic put his face in his palms. "And if the Crown Prince were here, magically, would you smile and… you totally would, wouldn't you."

"I'd defend myself if he started tossing hands at me!" Sun protested, his argument supporting Dominic's assumption that, yes, Sun would definitely want to make nice with the man who'd declared war on their species, even while Sun mimed karate-chopping an imaginary assailant. "Otherwise how would we get back to peace?"

Murder, Dominic thought, but then mentally reprimanded himself. Sun-sensei was teaching him, he had to fully listen and consider the man's (ridiculous) views and determine how they'd brought him success. Somehow, Sun's capacity for trust and naive goodness had got him this far in life. I mean, on one hand it really helps me make new friends, but on the other hand, it just sounds so stupid when I hear it.

He stared at Sun, who was whistling idly while gazing out at the sea.

Dominic rolled his eye. At least Sun was better than Ghira Belladonna.

Sun stopped whistling. "Hey, we've probably got a few hours before the gang wakes back up. Mind if I pick your brain on the black-haired beauties?"

"Cinder?

"Yeah, Cinder." Sun said, then added, "and also maybe Blake like did Adam ever say anything about her and what she likes and you know that sort of thing stuff."

"So my choice is between sitting up here with you talking about girls or diving into the murky depths of our sinking ship? Thanks, I'll get Neptune's pills from medbay." He looked Sun over, who was now purposefully looking out at the flat horizon towards Vacuo, or perhaps towards where his namesake celestial body would eventually rise back up into the sky. "Then…" Dominic sighed. "I guess I can tell you everything you want to know about how to appeal to Blake, even if that's a terrible, terrible move."

"You talk about her like she's awful, but she was good enough for Adam."

Dominic bit his tongue until he tasted blood. He wanted, he wanted so desperately to correct Sun on the nature of his prior relationship with Ghira's daughter. But they were stuck in the middle of the ocean, and he really needed Sun's cheerful disposition to counter his own gloomy mood. When we disembark, he promised himself, when we get off this edifice of human opulence, then I will break all his ill-conceived notions of Belladonna virtue. Because the only thing more valuable than learning Sun's secrets would be breaking his devotion to the Belladonna family.

"We also need to talk about your choice in fashion." Sun added. "You always look like you're dressed for a funeral. Not really team SSSNCD's style." He flaunted his open shirt, running his hand along his abs, then flexed. "Gotta give the fans something to put on their walls at home, ya know? Gotta try peacocking it up!"

"Sure. I'll get the pills, then we can paint our hair, try on clothes, and talk about cute girls all night long!" Dominic said in a curt sing-song pitch as he strode down the stairs.

When did I join his team? He wondered as he dove back into the darkness.

---

ILIA / BRAZEN

Thursday Morning, Day 22

Brazen sluggishly followed the rest of the internment camp faunus towards the mine cave. Just outside, at the wooden picnic tables, he noted that Ilia was already waiting, alongside three of the children, having been tasked with preparing bowls of faunus kibble for the rest of them. "You're serving us breakfast?" Brazen asked Ilia as he sat down. He exaggerated the motion of poking through his bowl of kibble with the wooden spoon, as if looking for something wrong with it. "Do you even know how to cook?" He poured water on the kibble, watching as it soaked in the moisture and puffed up.

Ilia rounded on him, his seated height giving her the opportunity to smack him on the shoulder, standing behind him. "It comes in big burlap sacks. No cooking involved."

"And yet, here I am, not trusting that you've somehow ruined its preparation." Brazen joked, before taking a few soggy spoonfulls into his mouth. The rest of the table, realizing he was just japing with Ilia, also began eating. To soften the blow to her ego, he exaggerated slurping up the gooey remnants that stuck to the bowl, "ah, a delicacy. You know the humans care when they use the freshest ground-up peels and pits."

"They pulled me off mining duty today." Ilia said as she ignored his display, her tone concerned and her voice a low whisper. "They said they had other work for me, and the three girls."

Brazen's hand that wasn't holding the bowl to his lips formed a tight fist under the table. He looked at her intently.

"They… said they'd looked at my file and knew what I've done." Ilia continued. "I'm a bit scared…"

Brazen wanted to comfort her, to protect her from whatever horrid thing the humans had planned, but he wasn't keen to tip his hand to his captors so readily. He had aura, sure, but no weapon, and the humans currently thought that they had the advantage. "No word from Ghira?" Was all he was able to say.

Ilia shook her head.

Well, Brazen thought, it seems neither Ghira nor I are able to ensure her safety today. He looked at the three young girls that were taking empty kibble bowls away to be cleaned. Brazen couldn't imagine the humans were vile enough to desire someone that young. No, they're keeping the ones with the least chance of being useful miners up here for domestic chores. Probably. Hopefully.

If the humans did anything untoward towards the little children - I'll be breaking my promise to Farsigan to let them live, just like I'll be breaking the nerves in their necks. He didn't think it would come to that, though. The guards hadn't shown much interest in lechery so far, enjoying tormenting the faunus in more basic ways: insults, whips, the shock collars, and humiliating them with substandard living conditions. If they'd been as depraved as the Mistral city guards had been, they probably would have done something this many days in. But that didn't mean Brazen would let his guard down, he was just finding it impossible to intervene without his impending plans being put in jeopardy.

Brazen rose from the table. "You'll be fine," he whispered to Ilia as he passed by her, before heading into the mine opening to retrieve his safety gear. Some faunus had claimed particular outfits as 'theirs', since they'd had to make small modifications. In his case, he'd had to bore a couple holes in the top of his helmet for his horns to sneak up through. Once he was suited up, he got on the elevator platform with a dozen of his fellow inmates and descended into the darkness, lit only by their helmet lamps and the intermittent blue spark of a collar. Pondering whether to abandon his schemes of a quieter escape plan in order to stave off whatever Ilia was about to endure, he decided against it: he had to have some measure of faith in Ilia's own strength.

---

In addition to leading her three little helpers in performing domestic tasks around the camp, Ilia was also given another duty by the human guards after they'd read her file.

As she nervously stood idle next to her mining safety equipment two humans swaggered into the mine entrance to approach her. "Amitola. You won't be digging today. Or cleaning. We've got different work in mind for you."

Ilia went rigidly still. Part of her dared hope that Ghira had somehow succeeded, that she was being released - or, at least, not going to be forced to go down to do the same job her parents had died doing so many years ago. Granted, the SDC didn't give them much in the way of protective gear like we're getting here… Adam is right about that, if nothing else. If Ghira wasn't pulling strings to have her released from custody, though… the story of what had happened to the women, to the girls, that Adam and his brother (if such nonsense were to be believed) had saved from the city, plus the incident after she, Ghira, and Adam had been captured on the beach, was fresh on her mind.

Human men were almost as bad as human women!

"The dossier we got about you says you went to school in Atlas, that you'd passed your Level Ten examinations before an incident where you assaulted several female classmates and were expelled. Is that true?" The soldier asked, holding a brown folder open to read from. Ilia wanted to set fire to the incriminating documents, but what point in that was there if all the humans knew it already?

"Those bitches got what was coming to them. They laughed about… about how my parents died."

"In a mining accident, of all things." The soldier said, "which makes how well you're handling your current work so well… I guess you faunus are just naturally subservient, or don't really have any sense of empathy or something." He looked at the other soldier, who nodded in agreement.

Ilia grit her teeth and looked over at the wall of mining picks. She judged how long it would take for her to grab one and plant it into his skull, wondered if he had his aura unlocked, wondered if he'd be able to drop the dossier, pull out a shock control, and zap her with it before she could murder him.

But no~o~o, she reminded herself, Ghira is counting on me to behave, to be better. More than that, Blake… Ilia might not be sold on the idea of peace between races, but she was sold on Blake believing in it.

Ignorant of her internal struggle to not murder him, the soldier continued. "Right, I had a point. New work. You're not gonna mine today. Since your records state you passed your Atlesian Level 10 academic examinations at age fifteen, then you've technically got a standing field medical licence by Mistralian army standards. Follow me."

The soldier led her to the same bus she'd arrived on herself nearly a week prior, which had today delivered a couple new downturned faces, leaned in and grabbed a light brown paper-wrapped package. He tossed it to her. "Put that on, and complete this list for all the other faunus by the end of two days from now." He handed her a clipboard, which had multiple copies of a single form that had blank spaces for patient name, gender, age, vital statistics, medical history, and current level of fitness and health; he handed her a heavy black handbag, which contained several basic medical instruments. "Once you're finished, hand it in to the mine owner. Or just toss it at the front door of his cabin and knock to wake him up, I don't give a shit."

"You want me to do… checkups on everyone?"

"No, just the faunus. Especially that bandaged guy that came in with you - his output is really low compared to everyone else and we want to know how bad his injuries or whatever are. At least make sure none of them have anything infectious that can get into the rest of the rabble." The soldier thought for a moment. "I think that's everything I was supposed to do. Oh, I guess you could refuse the job, in which case we might find someone else to do it, but you're the most qualified one we know of and honestly it is just a regulatory policy thing that the mine owner has been complaining about lately, so this is mostly just to shut him up a bit. So if you don't do it, we'll find another one of you to do it - but without the technical medical license in their favour." The human grinned, "good thing we're not liable for malpractice on animals- Hail Jupiter for that!"

Ilia snarled back at him. Nice to know they cared so much about their prisoners' welfare that they were satisfying the regulatory policy with the basic medical education she'd been given in highschool. Still, she could probably identify health problems better than any of the prisoners she'd gotten to know so far. "Yeah, fine, fine, I'll do it."

"I'm sure you'll like it better than doing actual work, you lazy scum." The soldier said, waving her away from him towards the rest of the faunus. "Alright, get to it." Then he marched off back to the wall to do whatever it is the humans did all day while not accosting her and her people.

Ilia walked back over to the faunus building to put on the outfit in the package. Taking it out, she sighed. It was going to be a bad day.

"Really?"

---

"Dominic!" The shout echoed through the tunnels, deep into the pitch darkness. "Dom, where in the mines are you?"

Pulling himself out of a nice hole he'd excavated, Brazen smirked at hearing Ilia calling out his not-name. He took a few steps away from the vein he'd been tracking down, getting clear of the cloud of particulate so that he could lift up his filter apparatus from his mouth long enough to call back, "I'm down here, Ilia!"

"Where is 'here'?"

"Just follow the little markers I left on the wall - look for the little triangular carvings on the right side of the walls!"

After a few minutes of listening to her and two others shuffle and scuffle their way down to where he'd situated himself, he finally saw the beams of their headlamps flicker down the cave. He let his own beam blink a couple times while pointed in their direction to let them know they were close. Two other faunus, a pair of the more capable men in the camp, entered his cramped cavern space.

"Why are you so far down here?" One of the men, Hytosei asked, looking around warily. "Alone…"

"Gives me time to think," Brazen replied, "and as for why here, I've been following signs of a particularly rich mass of asbestos. Normally it forms from geological shearing events in silicate rock, so I made my way to the base of where tectonic movement saw the land rise up to create the cliff the mine's cave entrance is in. After getting my bearings I was able to find the densest area of shearing, then it's just been a matter of digging around a bit to find an area that was dry enough to have not deteriorated the fibres large enough to exist beyond host matrix rocks, since those are easiest to weave into textiles; not to say there's not also a substantial amount of smaller fibres here suitable for use as concrete reinforcement or mechanical brakes."

He'd been listening to Farsigan a lot about rocks.

The other faunus just looked at him blankly, while sounds of Ilia, quietly cursing and hissing at how she had to clamber over boulders and jutting rocks, continued to echo down into the passage.

"So why are you all down here?" Brazen asked, but his question was sort of answered for him the moment Ilia came into view.

"We just came to escort the-" Hytosei nearly managed to suppress a little giggle, "- nurse. She's here to give you your checkup."

Ilia, dressed in a red-and-white outfit that would not have been out of place being for sale in the cosplay aisle at Mistral's Toys 'N Us sextoy boutique, managed to stand tall (at least, as tall as she could stand) in her miniskirt and dainty white nurse cap. In her hand she held a black leather purse from which she immediately pulled a stethoscope, while a form-loaded clipboard was held against her torso by her arm.

"Thank you for the help, guys." Ilia said through thin lips. "I'll be fine from here, if you want to get back up to reasonable depths."

"No problem, Nurse Ilia," Hytosei bowed low, very low; his eyes did not stray from the ruffled edge of the miniskirt as his perspective shifted.

"Happy to be of service." Brazen tried to remember the second man's name, but drew a blank. One of the problems of trying to stay relatively incognito was that he had avoided his usual sociable ways - handicapping his natural charisma and leadership potential while he'd been putting an escape plan together and hiding his identity. Reasonable precautions, when he couldn't be certain that none of the other 'prisoners' weren't secretly in league with their human captors. Even faunus terrorists had to be wary of rats, after all. His mind flickered for a moment to traitors like Blake Belladonna and Tukson in Vale, people who had sold out their own people to get accepted into the lowest ranks of human society. At least their complete lack of creditable respectability was somewhat cancelled out by heroic people like Farsigan and (hopefully) Cinder who aided the faunus in their righteous crusade for justice. I'd rather have my people be unified in the cause of righteous rebellion, Brazen thought sourly, but at least having some well-positioned humans allied to our cause helps out from time to time.

Hytosei and his fellow finished leering at Ilia and high-tailed it back the way they'd come, leaving Ilia and Brazen alone.

"Dom, is there somewhere nearby that is… less cramped?"

Brazen nodded, pointing at a small crevice nearby. The faint splash of water could be heard from the opening. "There's a little waterfall through that crevice that opens into a rather nice area." He led the way, hopping through the cold spray of the waterfall as quickly as he could so as to not get his bandages soaked. "The waterfall also keeps the air-borne mineral hazard particles from following us in here, so it is safe to breathe." He yelled through the spray as he pulled out his electronic air quality tester, which now registered as green: all good. He removed his helmet and mouth filter, placing them on a nearby flat rock that served as a nice table, then decided to take off his safety padding as well, wanting to relax a bit; this seems like it will take long enough to make the chore of putting this all back on worthwhile. Ilia came through after him, less quickly since she wasn't as surefooted or acclimated to the terrain. He listened to her walk over to the rock and take off her own mask, paying her little heed as she approached him while he had looked around the chamber to make sure nothing had changed; it wouldn't be the first time in his life a grimm had tunnelled its way into a mine shaft.

"How are you feeling, Adam?"

"Oh, it's Adam again already, is it?" Brazen said, "and here I thought we were making progress on that."

"I'll call you Dominic when others are around, but only because it means less trouble for us that way. I'm sure it wouldn't reflect good on Ghira if the humans knew he had begun harbouring you again."

"Well, if that's how you want to-" Brazen rounded on her, but at that point actually noticed that the waterfall had soaked through her cheap nurse outfit. Her cheap, very white, now very transparent nurse outfit.

Ilia noted how he redirected his gaze to the ceiling. "Oh please, you can't get flustered over this. Not like I've got any tits to speak of. I blame my lizard skin… wet nursing young is more of a mammalian thing, after all."

"You seem to be wet and nursing just fine right now!" Brazen replied with a checkered laugh, his demeanour a little rattled at seeing her nearly-bare chest so casually. "So what is with the outfit and this whole checkup?"

Ilia filled him in on how it had come about, finishing off the tale with "and so I got to choose between mining and not-mining. Easy choice. I did checkups on Hytosei and Thrip first, then figured I'd come to do you."

Thrip, Brazen thought; that had been his name. It was good to know that at least Ilia had been working on learning their names. His mind raced. Yes, he thought, this could work to my favour. Hearing that the entire medical policy had been at Farsigan's insistence made him think his human ally had planned it all out. He'd known about Ilia's background as well, and must have deduced that the soldiers would have her make the rounds through the camp's population. He knew Ilia and Brazen were close, and so had set this all up so that Ilia could have an excuse to be going from one prisoner to the next. Discreetly. She had a way to spread the word about their impending escape.

Or he'd just been bored and had spent all his free time complaining about minutiae to the soldiers.

"I have an escape plan." He told her. "Mostly all coming together now. Would help if you were amenable to helping out with a few parts of it."

Ilia stopped and sighed. "You're still planning to escape? We should just wait for Ghira to fix things. Besides, it sounds like you're actually enjoying mining. We've been here like a week!"

Brazen faltered. "I - I'm not. I mean, I've done…" He gathered himself for a moment while she smirked knowingly. "It's not like it's energy propellant chemical science or something… it's just finding rocks in a cave. Easy, if sometimes dangerous. I'm allowed to like things!" For good measure, he added a lie, "even if my brother Adam hates it!"

"Oh, does that extend to me, too?" Ilia smired, "because we got along so well on the ship, maybe?"

Wearing his most serene, saintly visage, Brazen replied, "I forgive you that, since your anger was directed only at my dignified, noble sibling, for whom you mistook me. A compliment, if anything."

"But if you're not Adam, how'd you get to be so good at mining? Despite how easy you make it sound, you are ridiculously good at it. Don't think I haven't noticed you filling up everyone else's quota crates before your own - that's the only reason you've barely made quota each day, while kids who chase each other around the first cavern or old ladies who tire easily and take siestas are making their quotas with ease."

Brazen pursed his lips. "Okay, it's not my fault everyone else here is so shoddy at the job. Anyways, I could care less about the quotas - they're pretty ridiculous anyways, and are weight based instead of quality based. Which is why I'm here. This area has a very good chrysotile deposit that Farsigan will have no problems weaving into a full suit."

Ilia wore a look of utter confusion on her face. "Back up a little. Farsigan? Chrysotile? Full suit?"

Brazen nodded eagerly, wanting to share the progress he'd made in scheming for their escape with his once-accomplice; hopefully future accomplice, too. "Farsigan. Mine owner. Faunus friendly. Wants to have actual paid employees, not slaves, but this operation was forced on him by the human government, who'd sort of bankrolled his loan application for restarting his family's mine here - AsbestOz. He's on our side, more or less, so long as we don't kill anyone."

"Adam Taurus has agreed to not killing humans?"

"Dominic Taurus has put together a plan to get everyone safely to freedom without undue violence." Brazen retorted. It felt like he might eventually slip-up in referring to himself as Dominic, rather than as Brazen or Adam, in conversation with Ilia if he wasn't constantly careful… but that was fine. It wasn't like she seemed to believe any of it regardless of his adept attempts at fooling her. "And Chrysotile is the white asbestos, the long woolly fibre rocks - a silicate mass - that are the primary reason for having this mine. Although the raw iron and other ores the asbestos is matrixed into that I've been dumping into the other faunus' quota bins is probably pretty useful, too."

"Why are you getting the woolly rock for the mine owner?" Ilia asked, confused despite his rather thorough explanation of things. "How does that help us escape?"

"Huh?" Brazen wondered aloud; now it was his turn to be confused. "The chrysotile is for after we escape; I need it for a thing back in the city."

"You're making, like, zero sense. You know that?" Ilia said, "what's the escape plan? Wait, what are you planning to do in the city? Attempt to bomb civilians at Haven again or something?"

Brazen grit his teeth angrily while thinking my attack on Haven would have been a success if you hadn't disarmed all my bombs, you treacherous little sneak. But that was in the past. He and Ilia were allies again. For now.

Maybe.

"Farsigan will help us escape, as a man on the inside of the human's operation. Shouldn't be too difficult. I will need your help, though, so if you're in-"

"What are your plans for the city?" Ilia demanded.

"Are you on board with my plan to escape?"

"No humans are going to die?"

"No humans are going to die."

The words tasted bitter in his mouth, but he meant them.

"I have no current plans to kill any humans. Happy?"

"I don't believe you. Adam Taurus not killing humans is like… like the sun not rising in the morning." Ilia replied quickly, "even Sienna had a hard time holding you back from slaughtering humans in the field."

"Well, then I guess that just goes to show you how different I am from my brother, Adam." Brazen replied. "So are you in?"

"I just can't believe you're not going to kill humans. Sorry."

"I don't kill humans all the time!" Brazen exclaimed, "mines, I've even worked with humans."

"Terrorists and criminals."

"Humans, though." Brazen replied, smiling knowingly as his argument held firm.

"Bet you planned to kill them, though."

"No, not always."

"Uh-huh. Name a human you don't want to kill."

"Neopolitan." The name left his lips immediately, without him even really thinking about it before he said it. He could have said some other name… Hazel, perhaps, would have been sufficient, but he'd said Neopolitan's name, instead, and now he felt foolish for doing so as Ilia quickly pursued the lead he'd let slip. Why'd I say her name? It must have been Ilia's casual nudity reminding him of his time spent with Neo or something.

"The woman who tried to murder Blake's teammate on the train in Vale?"

Murder Blake's teammate? Brazen thought; he hadn't heard that story. Of course, Neo hadn't told him much at all.

"I don't know all that much about what she did in Vale… but she was part of Cinder's team during the Vytal operation, and she came to Mistral to find Cinder and get revenge for her criminal partner, Roman Torchwick, who died during Cinder's plan to conquer Vale. Which, by the way, nearly went according to plan and saw definite improvements in the quality of life of faunus relative to human counterparts in that Kingdom."

Ilia held up a hand, before slowly lowering a finger. "One: making everyone's lives shitty doesn't count as an improvement. All you did was lower the average."

"Progress towards equality." He said dismissively. Equality had to start somehow: if that meant knocking humans off their little pedestal to wallow in the muck with the rest of them, then at least they'd be miserable together.

"Two:" Ilia lowered another finger, "you're an idiot. Either you hit your head a lot as a baby, or you're actually Adam having a sick joke pretending not to be." Another finger lowered, "three: you've not told me what you are up to in the city. Four: still not hearing anything about you not planning to kill. In fact, it is becoming difficult to say that Adam Taurus values any life other than his own. If I hadn't clipped the wires on your bombs at Haven, you would have killed everyone. Pretty sure even you would have died in the blast."

Nah, Brazen thought, I'd have won. "I wouldn't kill innocent faunus. Adam's forces at Haven should have been prepared to give their lives for the cause, like they'd sworn to. But that doesn't matter now."

"Okay, so Neopolitan. Why wouldn't you kill Neopolitan? She's human - human nobility, actually…" Ilia revealed, 'sort of your usual target."

Nobility? Brazen thought; Neo didn't act like she was a noble. She acted like she'd lived as a street waif. Maybe it's an act? What did human nobles act like when they weren't at the end of his blade begging for their lives? He doubted himself a little now; what did he really know about his partner? About what had motivated her to work with Torchwick and Cinder? All he really knew is what motivated her to work with him, now. Maybe that was all he needed. "Because she's my partner." Brazen blurted out.

That shut Ilia up.

For all of five seconds.

"Like, partner-partner? Did Adam make a little gi~r~lfriend?" She hissed, rolling the 'r' of 'girlfriend' into an obscene length.

Brazen bit his tongue. This conversation was getting a little off-course.

Ilia held her hands up against her cheeks, squishing her face as she cooed, "do you lo~o~ove her?" In a contemptuous pantomime of gushing over gossip.

"Aren't you supposed to be giving me a medical examination?" Brazen complained.

Ilia rolled her eyes, then grinned menacingly, before settling her face back on one of professional stoicism. "Of course, sir. You're right, sir. I must perform my medical duties."

"You do that, I'll tell you the plan-"

"The WHOLE plan this time," Ilia insisted, "after your last plan I followed, I don't want to be left in the dark about anything you have planned - about anyone you're planning to hurt or harm. Blake wants peace, and so that's what we're going to work towards all the time."

"Ilia, how you dealt with Adam doesn't have to define your mistrust of me." He told her as she knelt to grab a stethoscope from her purse.

She stood up and looked at him expectantly. "This won't work through all those bandages you're wearing." She pointed at his head, "and I can't really reach the top of it unless you bend over or sit down."

Brazen duly sat down beside his breathing gear on the flat slab of rock, and Ilia began to slowly circle around him, her hand unwrapping him like a spool of thread. Once the bandages were clear down to the base of his neck, she took her clipboard out of the watertight safety of her bag with a pencil. "Name: Dominic. Age: …"

"I'd say about early-twenties."

"How do you not know your own birthday?"

"Same way my brothers and I didn't know about each other, same way we don't know our parents." He pointed at the brand on his face.

Ilia accepted that. "Okay, I'm putting down twenty-three."

"How old are you," Brazen asked, "Miss I-had-parents?"

"I happen to know that I'm twenty-one, which is why you're twenty-three because you're definitely older." Ilia replied. "You know, it's not easy for me, being in a mine of all places."

"I'm sure it isn't. You'd much rather be claustrophobically surrounded by Blake, wouldn't you?"

"Why would Adam have told his brother that?"

"Maybe it was just obvious to everyone other than Blake." Brazen replied, "or, maybe Blake knew, too. And just didn't care. How do you know about everyone who's tried to kill Blake's human friends?"

Ilia looked wounded. Brazen didn't like hurting her like that, seeing as how he himselves had had a whole thing for Blake once. But he needed her to stop worshipping the Belladonnas like saints if she was going to be of any use to him and his plans.

Ilia started walking around him again, pulling his bandages off in rings until his full torso was bare. She held the stethoscope up to his heart and listened through it for a few moments. "Just like I thought. No heartbeat. Heartless bastard, through and through." She pulled up the clipboard and began jotting something down. Brazen wasn't worried about the medical report; unless she outed him as being Adam Taurus to the humans, which she didn't seem to be intent on doing, there wasn't much a lie-infused report would do to hurt his plans. "Sex: Female?"

"Just because my chest is as flat as yours, doesn't mean I'm a lady. Besides, if I was a woman, you'd probably be attracted to me, wouldn't you?"

"Oh, so just because I like Blake, girls are fair game for me?" She said, pulling the bandage so that it tightened around his abs. "Also, who're you calling flat? I've still got something up here." She released the bandage and unzipped her top, mumbling "thing's soaked anyways" as she hung it off a rock that jutted out from the wall. Naked above her waist, covered only by her undershorts, she pressed at her body with both hands. "See? Boobs."

"Eh, I've seen bigger."

"On Neopolitan?"

"No, in the men's changing room at the White Fang headquarters." Brazen quipped, "though the flat wooden bench was about as busty as you…"

Ilia angrily picked the clipboard and pencil back up, beginning to scribble quickly as she read aloud: "Sex: None. Hopeless incel virgin. Imaginary human girlfriend. Mental instability probable. Possible dissociative personality disorder, believes he is not a total piece-of-garbage. Possibly victim of head-trauma. Recommend: further head-trauma."

"Hey, some of those things aren't true!" Brazen protested, grabbing at her clipboard. "Maybe the head trauma diagnosis is on point, though. I did just live through a large explosion." She yielded the clipboard easily enough, her grip still slightly wet after her attempt to prop up her lackluster breasts. He stared at the top-most page, but couldn't really make out what she'd written beyond the word 'Dominic' at the top before she grabbed it back. It looked like there was a lot of stuff written on the page, but much of it was possibly just part of a standard form. "What did you write?"

"Ugh, just that you're still pretty badly burned over most of your skin." She admitted. "Though you are healing up pretty well, considering how awful you looked when we pulled you out of the saltwater. Like a blistered sausage, you were." She poked at one of his larger skin blisters. "Disgusting, but still leagues better than you'd expect a man who'd been flash-fried to be only like a week or so later."

"I heal fast."

"Uh-huh, right." Ilia drawled as she put the stethoscope back in the bag, taking out a thermometer. "Let's check your temperature." With his acquiescence, she placed the thermometer into his mouth, lodging it under his tongue. "Has to sit there for a minute."

She looked back at her clipboard. "Okay, while we're waiting for that, I need to find your pulse. Give me your arm." Not waiting, she tugged at his arm and held it, using her other hand to gently press against his wrist. "There it is," she said after a moment. "Guess you're alive, after all." She pulled a small hammer out of her medical purse. She raised it up over his knee and said, "now to test your reflexes." As she swung the hammer down towards his knee, he jerked his entire leg to the side so that her hammer clinked against the rock his leg had been resting on.

"Wow. You know, you're supposed to let me hit your knee with the hammer." She laughed, "haven't you ever been to the doctor's before?"

Brazen shook his head. Because Adam Taurus made a habit of not getting injured, if he could avoid it. He felt a bit of pride in his own competence in that matter, present state of his body notwithstanding.

Also, because doctor visits for faunus weren't covered by the SDC employment contract.

"Right." Ilia said, "okay, well, I'll just list your reflexes as acceptable." She put the hammer back in the bag, then yanked the thermometer out of his mouth. "Thirty nine. That's a bit warmer than average. You might be running a fever." She scribbled the results on her paper.

Brazen wondered if he'd just picked up whatever had hit Neo. He didn't feel sick. He felt fine. "Maybe I just run hot?" He said, hopefully. Was that a medical thing? He couldn't afford downtime for being sick right now! He had things to do!

Ilia swallowed and chuckled in a weird, nervous sort of titter. "Maybe… not like we have a baseline for your vitals. I guess we can check it some other day… unless, when are you planning to escape?"

"Next time a large transport carrier arrives with supplies or to do an ore pick-up. Farsigan will disable local network, then we can take the guards out one-by-one. Make it look like Farsigan put up a fight so he doesn't get any blow-back afterwards, then load everyone up onto the transport for exfiltration. Then you and I make our way to the city to rescue Ghira from whatever mess he is in."

"So we need Farsigan's mineral-wool suit to rescue Ghira? You know more about the mess he's in than your saying?"

"Oh, no, that's for something else. For my thing with Neo, chasing after Cinder."

"Explain more." Ilia said while putting some strange device into his ear, shining a little light as she peered in.

"Cinder has a fire semblance. Asbestos cancels out fire. Lets Neopolitan and I have a chat with Cinder without her having the advantage - which'll be a nice change of pace for our dealings with her. Not sure if Adam told you, or if you heard, but the woman strong-armed her way into getting Adam on-board with the plan in Vale." Brazen summarized, neatly avoiding mentioning how profitable the deal had been at the outset for the Vale Brotherhood, "as for Ghira, I'll be going in blind. But, with you - if you're up for it."

"Ear looks healthy." Ilia pondered what he'd told her. "Where will the other prisoners go?"

"Vale, I figured?" Brazen shrugged. He hadn't actually thought about that detail. "They know this area better than us. I'm sure one of them might come up with something. But I need you to help me take out the guards, and rally the rest of the faunus and get them to figure that out when the time comes for them to leave, I guess."

"You want me to take down thirty armed guards by myself?" Ilia rolled her eyes, "I'm unarmed!"

"I mean, I'll take half." Brazen offered, "that seems fair."

"In all this?" Ilia said, pulling off another round of his bandage from his body. "I don't know how you're able to stand, much less do mining."

Ah, right, Brazen remembered. It was time for him to reveal to her his little trick.

"Wait," Ilia muttered, her mind moving quicker than his mouth as he hesitated in the glow of knowing something she hadn't figured out yet. "Your leg moved really fast." She punched him, swearing as her knuckles rammed into the dim light of his flaring aura. "You have your aura!" She growled, "no wonder you're so much better at mining than the rest of us, you're at full power!"

"Not full power," Brazen admitted, trying not to smile after letting her take the shot despite how obvious it had been in coming. "I lose a good chunk of it when I sleep, and a fair amount of it goes towards speeding my body's healing."

"You sleep?" Ilia mumbled, loudly enough for his faunus ears to hear.

"The shock collar is a decent control device, but it has its flaw: if you don't raise your aura to defend against it, it won't deplete your aura."

"But you'll get shocked!" Ilia retorted immediately, as if that somehow denied his explanation. On cue, Brazen's collar lit up and sizzled as electricity coursed through his damp skin.

Brazen remembered a raid on an SDC facility he, Ilia, Sienna, and several others had participated in years back, where the defenses had included the use of gas grenades. Back when Ghira had just stepped down as leader. "Aura is like breathing, and the collar is like poison gas. If you don't breathe, it can't damage you. If you consciously keep your aura from protecting you, the shock collar will not weaken you."

"But it'll shock me!" Ilia said again, "it'll hurt!"

Brazen looked at her like she was wearing a dunce-cap. "Yes. It will shock you. But in exchange, you get to have your aura. You get to help us escape. Small price to pay for helping all of our comrades escape this place."

Ilia's collar shocked her, and her fledgling aura reserves flared and dissipated.

"Ilia, you're doing it wrong." He said, "the idea is to NOT let it hit your aura."

She mumbled and grumbled.

"Your aura warns you, pre-emptively, of danger. You just have to listen to it and, when you hear it alert you, tell it not to bother."

She grumbled some more.

"Practice it, anyways, and you'll see I'm right."

"See I'm right," she whined, badly imitating his voice, "get shocked all day," she muttered. "This is a stupid plan. I mean, the more you think about NOT breathing, the more you want to. The more I think about not not getting hurt, the more I want to not not not get hurt. Besides, these aren't SDC drones or droids we're fighting up against here, they're people."

Brazen wanted to disagree with whether their captors deserved personhood, but stilled his rebuke; instead, he tried a gentler hand. "Just promise to try it. If nothing else, I guess I might be able to take the guards out on my own. I'll aim to take out the ones guarding the shock collar transmitter in their barracks. Farsigan doesn't know what goes on in there, so he can't shut that down like he can the local comms network. Maybe ask around, see if any of our brethren have an idea of a place to go if freed. Be subtle about it. You're pretty good at subtlety, Adam said." He added the last words after a small pause. Eventually he would convince her. He just had to keep trying to get her to believe that he was someone else.

"I guess I could ask them where they'd go if they weren't here…" Ilia considered. "I don't like this plan."

"Well," Brazen offered, "if you don't like that plan, I can plan~t explosives all over the place and blow it all to the moon."

"How would you do that?"

"Oh, I'm sure I could find a dust vein if I dig deep enough." Brazen lied. He had, in fact, found no traces of dust anywhere in the mines. Ilia didn't seem to know much about geology, though, so playing on her ignorance seemed like a safe bet. "Maybe I already have, but, being such a different person than the person you wrongly believe me to be, I have resisted the urge to go down that path."

Ilia was quiet for a time. Occasionally she would pace about the small chamber, deliberating over what to do. Brazen kept her in his periphery, still feeling slightly awkward around his topless associate. Which was odd, since he was topless, too. Perhaps it was that every time he caught a glimpse of her he was reminded of Neo, began comparing her to Neo, and started wondering where his human partner was now.

Did she miss him?

Was she doing okay?

Had she found Cinder?

"So you've like, never had a doctor's check-up before?" Ilia suddenly asked. She came over to where he sat.

He shook his head.

She touched his chest. "I think I remember the day you got this scar. You and Sienna were taking point on the mission, as usual."

"No, I got that one from a stray bandsaw while cutting some lumber." Brazen lied. He remembered the mission. It hadn't been a deep cut, but it had been one of the last wounds he'd taken.

Ilia gave him a disbelieving scowl. "You didn't have it looked at?"

"I had more pressing issues at the time."

"Just constantly pushing yourself forward to kill more humans, fight the good fight?"

"Everything my brother and I have done, we've done for the faunus." He recalled the surrender of his troops at Haven. Would that all of us were so driven as myselves. He thought about his Choice. Even that, he'd done for the faunus. He'd split himself into three, for the sake of his people.

Ilia looked him up and down. "What sort of education did you have?"

"Mostly technical. Machine use, vehicles. Adam instructed me on how to use a blade in a style similar to his own." Brazen described, sprinkling his words with liberal amounts of truth. "I was a proficient student; our bodies are similar and he was able to teach me how to make the most of it."

"But you've not been taught anything about science, the arts, maths?" Ilia inquired.

Brazen shook his head. "Humans never seemed to be interested in my advanced education," he said; Blake had once attempted to uplift him culturally. She'd taught him to be somewhat capable of reading and writing. He wasn't particularly good at either, but at least his penmanship wasn't sloppy, simply slow.

"So you don't know about medical issues, you wouldn't recognize symptoms of problems in your body…" Ilia said.

"I feel fine." Brazen argued, trying not to let himself get all hypochondriacal after all of the medical examinations Ilia was performing.

"How's your poop? Are you regular? Any sign of blood in your stool?"

"Wha-" Brazen said, taken aback at the strange turn of conversation. "My stool is just this rock."

"It's another word for poop. More medical." Ilia pressed.

Brazen shrugged.

"Blood in your stool is a sign of internal problems."

Brazen wondered if he should be worried. He'd never checked that sort of thing before… he was generally in too much of a rush to do something else to be bothered to examine his own bowel movements before flushing them away or, in the case of his time in the wilds, leaving them behind in the bush.

Ilia seemed to note his concern. "How about the rest of your body? Before your injury, I mean, did you have any strange noises from your joints, any muscle aches? Some people have 'popping' sounds when they stretch. Another thing to ask about is odd lumps. With guys, you have to pay attention to oddities with your testicles as you age, too. When you masturbate, did you ever notice spots of tougher skin on your balls, lumps, anything like that? Strange growths or warts, on your shaft or glans?"

"I never really had time for that sort of thing," Brazen began to say while his face went beet-red; he stopped short of adding 'until recently' to that statement, since it would be hard to explain how he and Dominic had attempted to replicate Bedlam's initial use of Moonbright in the warehouse whilst the latter slept. He generally had better things to do than sit around playing with his own body. He was more interested in getting jacked then in jacking off, and his muscles were proof!

Ilia rolled her eyes, putting on a show of exasperation. "Fine then. I'll give you a bit of a quick once-over. If there's anything obvious, or anything there that's different, I'll be able to notice. I've watched a lot of videos." She grabbed hold of his bandages, and began unspooling him further, testing the limits of his modesty. "Nurse Ilia will have to give you a full check-up, to make up for your lack of medical records in the past."

"Hey, wait, what-"

"Oh, grow up. Nothing I've not seen before. Who do you think had to change your bandages when you were unconscious on the ship?"

"Shelly or Eileen?" He guessed, "Kali?"

"Only sometimes. And not Kali, she had better shit to deal with than your burnt ass." Ilia said, continuing to unwrap him, eventually leaning him forward to stand as she unbandaged his thighs. She made no reaction as his member popped out from its cloth confines. "There we go."

Brazen hadn't really looked at himself much since after his airship adventure, and was not entirely pleased to see how red and raw his body was. Like he'd been sunburned after lying out in the snow for a few hours; peeling skin flaking white on a coarse salmon-flesh pink backdrop. His torso and legs were worse than his groin, which offered him some consolation.

"It did look a lot worse when you first got plucked out of the sea, mind." Ilia comforted him as she followed his gaze to his wide eye. Without hesitation, she grabbed ahold of one of his dangling balls, making him give out a light yelp. "Guess your nerves aren't wrecked, if you still have feeling here. Figure your undershorts protected you a bit better in your crotch from the airship blast damage, which is why you're a bit worse for wear everywhere else. Means at least I can examine you a bit more properly, without being hampered by questions of whether or not something is because of your injuries or is a symptom of a more long-term health issue." She rubbed it between her digits, ostensibly sensing around for any abnormalities, making Brazen squirm. Brazen tried his best to redirect the flow of blood through his body, but, despite his best efforts, failed.

"Oh, so you can keep your aura from getting shocked, but this is beyond your control?" Ilia smirked as his hardening member rose to stare at her face while she finished her examination of his undercarriage. "Don't worry, it's natural. This entire procedure is totally confidential."

"You're supposed to do this with everyone?" Brazen hissed through gritted teeth. He was starting to prefer life having not visited a doctor's clinic or hospital, but he wasn't flustered over the mere fact of being nude in front of Ilia. For one, he wasn't ashamed of his body, with the exception perhaps of his brand; for two, it was Ilia: her eyes were only for Blake, Brazen knew, and from that he assumed that she was a lesbian through and through. Plus, she'd apparently been taking care of him after the airship explosion, so what use was embarrassment now?

"Most of them have seen a doctor lately. At least Thrip and Hyt have." Ilia said calmly. "So all I needed from them was their basic vitals and answers to a few standard questions about whether they felt odd. Speaking of which, I still need to figure out your weight and height."

"Ninety-five point two-five-four-four."

Ilia gave him a look. "Oddly specific. How do you know how many kilos you weigh? How is that a thing you know? Is this another thing like your aura trick?"

Brazen laughed. "No, I just weigh myself in the morning."

Another look. "Are you anorexic? I'd have to make note of that. Or any eating disorder."

"Vegetarianism is not an eating disorder," Brazen said, immediately being reminded of conversations he'd had with Blake, and Sienna, and Banesaw. None of them had ever understood his eating preferences. He considered that vegetarianism and Ilia's lesbianism were similar: matters of inherent personal preference. Some people could digest meat, others didn't. "I don't like the taste, and-"

"How do you know how much you weigh?" Ilia interrupted.

"Scale up topside." Brazen said. "Old mining habit. SDC would change the scales to screw over employees, so habit is to check the scales at the start of each shift. You don't lose that much weight during the day, so it gives you a baseline that you know the humans cannot mess around with. And if you do lose a lot of weight during your shift, then you've got a bigger problem than your quota since you've probably lost a limb to a grimm somewhere along the way."

Ilia looked like she wanted to believe him, at least about his weight, and accordingly scribbled on her little piece of paper. "Okay, and your height?"

Brazen shrugged. "Taller than you?"

"Who isn't." Ilia removed a measuring tape from her medical bag. First, she tried to reach up to measure him but found herself a bit too short. She gave him the measuring tape's end and he held it up. "No, not like that, not to your horn. To the top of your head… No, not around your scalp like a headband you… argh, just give it back to me you idiot."

Brazen wondered if it was professional to call her patient an idiot. Probably not. But it wasn't like he was going to be able to file a complaint with the local medical professional oversight body. Typical faunus problems.

"Lie down on the ground. Flat. I'll measure you myself."

Brazen complied, lying on his belly with his face sideways so he could keep his eye on her.

"Hold your feet together," Ilia said, securing the spool end of the tape measure between his heels as she pulled the measure taut to his head. "Ooookay, I'm reading a bit less than two metres. Let's say one-nine-five or so." Sitting beside his face, she scribbled that onto her paper.

Brazen wondered to himself why he was putting up with this. He didn't want the humans to have any of this information. He didn't care if they had it, but why give them anything?

It's a nice excuse to chat with Ilia, in private, he decided. He needed her on his side again. Plus, she does have medical education. If he was getting sick, and it could be avoided, then he'd only have himself to blame later if he didn't take proactive measures to keep himself healthy presently.

For a minute she just sat there quietly. Looking at the paper, perhaps. Brazen focused on the feeling of the damp rock against his body. A solid, stable surface.

"Adam always said he did everything for the faunus." Ilia said.

Brazen nodded.

"He would always talk about injustice, about the abuses we'd suffered." Ilia went on. "Rallied more undecided faunus to help us. Not just as fighters. Allies. Informants. People doing what they could for the cause." Ilia paused, "the fucking cause." She spat.

Brazen could tell Ilia was upset, but she'd said his name like she didn't mean him for the first time, at least for the first time with sincerity.

"You know what I should have noticed, in hindsight?" She asked, though Brazen felt the question was rhetorical. He was rewarded after a few moments of silence with her continuance, "I should have noticed he was always stuck in the past. Things that had happened to us. Things humans had to pay for. He never spoke about the future, outside of it being used to vaguely better our situations." Ilia grabbed his nearest horn and turned his head to look at her face. "What do you want, Dominic? What does Adam want?"

"We want the same thing. What is best for the faunus. Freedom, equali-"

"Spare me the fucking speech." Ilia interjected, "and tell me what you, the man, want from life."

Brazen thought about the question.

He could say that he wanted answers to all of his questions, and mines, did he have a LOT of questions. Insatiable curiosity.

He could say that he wanted to be remembered long after he was dead, that he wanted to be great.

He could say he wanted to have Neopolitan nuzzling against his chest in a dank warehouse with nothing except each other.

Instead, he told her "I don't know what Adam wants; especially not if Ghira messed with his head. As for me, I just want to be able to live like I'm not a monster." He paused, "but that's hard, when I've been branded like a crate of property."

Ilia yelled in frustration. "Why would the SDC brand both you and your brother like that? Then separate you? It makes zero sense! The odds! You have to understand how stupid it sounds that you are his twin, right?"

Brazen swallowed. "You know what? I'd like to know that, too. That's what I want. I want to know why the Schnees branded their logo onto my face."

"You honestly don't remember?"

Brazen shook his head. He didn't. "Happened when I… when we were too young to remember."

Ilia leaned back, against the slab of rock Brazen had sat on earlier. "Adam never said why he was branded, either. That's so messed up."

Brazen was inclined to agree.

"So… what do you want?"

Ilia giggled.

"It's funny?"

"No, it's stupid…" She said. "I want Blake to love me like I love her. But… she… I feel wrong for it, too. Like, she's so perfect. If she loves me, then I'm stealing that perfection from future generations."

Brazen furrowed his brow.

"I'm talking about kids, dumbass." Ilia explained. "If Blake loves me, then those perfect Belladonna genes go bye-bye, don't they."

"You're worried about her pants?" Brazen said, mistaking the word 'genes' for 'jeans', possibly because he operated on the equivalent of an Atlesian Level Five education (remedial). "I mean, Adam always thought she filled them out rather well, but-"

"No, I'm talking about her genetics. Her DNA, her family tree." Ilia corrected. Seeing his continued confusion, she went on, "girls can't have babies with girls. But I still want a family. With Blake. I want to be part of her family. Safe and happy and warm in Menagerie… but I know what the world is like, so I decided to stay in the Fang. Great decision that was…"

Oh, Brazen realised. He'd never given that much thought. "I know where babies come from," he countered, immediately regretting how it made him sound like a moron.

"You know, the saddest part of all of this is that I think you're somehow actually smarter than Adam, yet you're still so stupid." Ilia laughed again. "So stupid… but…"

Brazen didn't like the way she was looking at him. He couldn't even categorize the way she was sizing him up. Her hand was still firmly clutching his horn.

"What's best for the faunus…" Ilia muttered, then reached forward to get something from the medical bag. "Do you know what this is?"

She appeared to be holding a kitchen baster, but Brazen couldn't figure out why. It had a large black rubber bulb at one end, attached to a clear plastic tube that opened after tapering off to a small peak. He was more confused when she went to the small puddle under the waterfall and filled the baster up with water.

"So something important guys have to do as they age is get prostrate exams, to make sure everything up there is working properly. You don't want to find polyps too late or something. Don't worry - I've seen this done in movies a lot, and even tried a similar toy… I mean, tool, on myself a couple of times. For health reasons, of course!"

Brazen had no idea what she was talking about. He decided to just let her finish up whatever she had to do for his medical checkup; he'd spend his time thinking about what to do if none of the other faunus knew what to do once freed from their collars, and how he and Ilia would get to the city to rescue Ghira and stop the war.

In the middle of thinking about how and whether Neo could help him with freeing Ghira, Ilia stuck the turkey baster into his butt and unloaded it while she sat on his back.

After a short scream of surprise, he managed to gasp a haggard "what are you doing?"

Ilia responded by putting her fingers - when did she put those gloves on - on each side of his sphincter and spreading it wide open, then, once it had stopped pouring out, she probed in with her digits, stroking against his insides. "Oddly clean."

"This is the exam?" Brazen managed to gasp, cought between choking and wheezing.

Ilia hummed an affirmation. "I need to feel for irregularities. Don't squirm or fret, this won't take long."

Brazen gritted his teeth. It occurred to him that this was some sort of test of his resolve.

"You know the worst thing about seeing Blake looking at you?" Ilia muttered rhetorically. "At Adam, if you like? Seeing how she spent all that time with Sun in Kuo Kuana?" After a moment, she answered, "these things." She reached a hand under Brazen's slightly arched body and knocked at his swaying and still-rigid erection. "Knowing that no matter how much better for her I am, I can't knock her up. Can't get that toned belly of hers all plump and round with kittens."

"But that's okay. We can still be together. We'll just have to do a bit of outsourcing. She's got Sun for that, I guess." Ilia continued. "But it would mean a lot more to be able to be on that journey to motherhood with her."

Brazen started wondering what Ilia meant by all this. "What-"

"I think it's a waste for you to spend all your time with some random human slut. I mean, you don't want to end up with human babies from your seed, do you? But at least that's just some human skank's womb being occupied for nine months. It would be even more deplorable, worse for the faunus, if a rare and precious faunus womb were to be put out of commission for that long with no guarantee of faunus offspring. Those pervy guards, the hillbillies we got caught by, imagine how awful it would have been if they'd raped me and put a piece of human filth to grow inside me. I mean, I couldn't abort it - not until knowing for sure whether it was faunus or not, right? And it would probably be hard for me to get a scan in our current conditions. So I'd just have to wait, relying on bad odds of it not being human."

Brazen asked if this was still part of the check-up, but Ilia ignored him. He circled back to his earlier thought - trying to distract himself from what he was feeling - that Ilia's love of Blake made her sympathetic to his vegetarianism. Wait a second, he thought to himself, that wasn't right. Just because some people eat meat doesn't mean they don't also eat their veggies. In fact, as far as he knew, nobody ate meat alone.

Even Sienna and Blake had eaten salads, despite their general adoration of fish and flesh-based diets.

So if Ilia liked girls, that didn't preclude her from also liking-

And just like that, Brazen Taurus started to understand the concept of bisexuality, despite his sorry excuse for a brain.

"Did Sienna know about this whole twin thing? Did Blake?"

Brazen shook his head. "No, no, we only found out about it after Adam took over as High Leader."

"So even though Blake hates Adam, she could maybe be convinced to not despise Dominic Taurus."

Brazen nodded, "I would hope she could be convinced to not hate anyone fighting for the future of our people…"

"Okay Dominic. Let's make a deal. I help you with your escape plan, and in return, you help me make sure Ghira is okay and maybe help me out in my relationship with Blake later."

"Sounds good?" Brazen offered her his hand to shake on the deal.

Ilia reached forward with her hand - the one that wasn't still massaging his colon - but instead of clasping his hand to shake on their accord, she let her hand slip past his to reach for his dick, instead, which she began shaking in a closed fist. "Just one more thing I need to know… I need to know that you've got a certain quality of virility, you know?"

"I thought you liked girls, though?" Brazen asked, still slightly confused, "but you want to be pregnant?"

"Yes, with Blake." Ilia replied matter-of-factly as her hands continued to massage Brazen's nether regions. "But we'll need sperm donors."

"I'm sort of with Neo, though…"

"That's fine. You can knock her up, too, that doesn't matter. She's a human female. Breed as many of them as you like, so long as they're clean. We need to focus on making more strong faunus, right? Best way to beat bad odds is to make lots of bets, right?"

His mind struggled to understand. "Ilia, you still believe in the cause?"

"Of course I still believe in the fucking cause. Faunus are this world's dominant species, right?" Ilia grinned, "I didn't follow your brother because I was won over by his shitty personality. I thought he was right. He just… got too violent. He isn't what's best for the faunus."

"Right." Brazen confirmed. Things may have radically changed for him in the past month, but he still knew facts. If only humanity could see how superior faunus were, all of this violence and discrimination that they'd suffered could have been avoided.

"I hate human women, you know." Ilia said. "They're so bratty and conniving. You think Adam had a rough childhood, mining for the SDC? I had to go to school with human girls. They'd invite friends to parties, while purposefully excluding others. Shaming one another for how they looked, how they dressed, what they ate. Calling each other too skinny, too fat. Then when they found out I was a faunus…"

"You broke their teeth." Brazen remembered the story.

"Only after they broke my heart again!" Ilia shouted. "I hate them so much!" Brazen wanted her to calm down, if only because her anger was making her finger press more than a little too hard into his rear. "So yeah, if you want to date a human girl and make her into a faunus-baby-making machine, I'm all for it. I'll even help you. Yeah, make you a real stud, attract all the girls, get you a fucking human harem… I'll need to teach you the intricacies of the female heart, teach you what you've got to do to make them desire you. Because we're going to redo this world with peace, like Blake wants, so it isn't like we can just enslave them all and make a stable of human chicks to bang until you're wrung dry every day…"

"Ilia, I always thought you were only into ladies. With the whole Blake thing. Guys in the Fang called you a lesbian, or another word… with a 'D'...similar to dick? Daick? No, dyke. I thought that was something you were born as? Or is it more of a choice, deciding who you're attracted to?" Brazen asked, "Adam never really felt attraction like… like sexual, you know? He just always seemed to 'know' that he was meant to be with Blake, but that was just Ghira's semblance, I guess? It's so confusing to think about, but he never saw that choice as being one he needed to make. Not until recently." Brazen realized what Ilia was offering. What she was asking. He wasn't fully certain as to why, but between the idea of having a harem, and her ministrations down below, he was getting excited. Brazen saw a pack of plastic gloves in Ilia's little medicine bag as she reached into it, pulling out a new one.

"Don't get me wrong. I love Blake." Ilia took the glove from him and began putting it on his penis like a condom. "Haha, it looks like a cow udder now."

"Why are you-"

"Just getting a little sample. Easier to examine it in there than if it gets all over this wet cave floor." Ilia said before shifting his head so that he rested his chin against the stone. "You know, that temperature reading was a bit odd, earlier. Let's try again."

Brazen opened his mouth.

Ilia laughed. "No, let's try for a more reliable test."

Brazen grunted as something small and cold slid up where Ilia's finger had been probing his prostate.

She began stroking him again, now through the glove, and Brazen's mind began to race as his brain began wondering where all the body's blood had gotten off to. He felt Moonbright begin to charge up, ever so slightly.

Ilia is an ally first and foremost. A fellow Atlesian, she knows all about faunus suffering, she's been part of the fight for almost as long as Adam was. She even seems to be starting to believe in the difference between Dominic and Adam as separate entities. Doing anything to risk this renewed friendship is too dangerous.

On the other hand…

Screw playing it safe. Use Moonbright. Turn Ilia into a loyal follower like Neo, and then use her to change the world for the better.

It's one thing to use Moonbright on Neo, an enemy, to convert her into an ally… she was human. But to use it on Ilia, a friend and fellow faunus, isn't that a bit too far? Brazen remembered the good times in the White Fang: himself, Ilia, and Blake hanging out in camp, looking up at the stars, dreaming of the better world they would help create for their people and themselves.

Ilia's already turned against the cause once, for the sake of Blake. A guarantee of her allegiance would be comforting.

Ilia needs to be sound of mind if she's going to help domesticate Neo! We need her at her peak performance if we're going to escape this place as planned.

Maybe Moonbright works differently on faunus females, given how much stronger they are than their human counterparts.

His respect for Ilia waged a bitter war against his hormones all throughout his body, as he struggled to decide what to do next.

Ilia pulled the thermometer out of his butt and regarded it with professional curiosity. "Thirty-nine. I guess you are kind of hot after all."