The embodiment of passion - Ookamigirl00 (2024)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

In the end all he could mutter is a simple “oh”, after getting stabbed in the back and chest. His expression had been purely uttered in surprise and relief. Despite the two girls not knowing that last part, he hopes it stays that way forever. He couldn’t place this burden upon her, not after all the things he had done, even if none has been really his fault.

He gets ripped violently away from his thoughts, as the pain abruptly intensifies once Yang and Blake tore the blades from his body and blood began to gush freely from his wounds. He immediately knows what he must do, he had been hoping this fight would end with his death since the beginning, there was no other possible outcome for him, this one considering his options is the best for him.

Adam Taurus slowly and struggling to not collapse face down into the dirt, walks until he reaches the edge of the cliff, a raging river roars below the place where Yang had tossed Wilt moments before he got stabbed. He falls to his knees unable to take another step and looks up into the sky barely able to focus his fading sight. He regrets all his sins.

Betraying the Belladonna family, the White Fang, murdering Sienna, cutting Yang’s arm, the attack on Beacon, and how much he had harmed Blake which he will never forgive himself for. He loves her so much, but that damn witch had used him as a weapon against his will and made him hurt her in the worst possible ways. He hates himself for being so weak and not being able to break free.

Not wanting to waste any more time nor to risk it by Blake and Yang having a change of heart and come running to tend his wounds, he allows himself to fall forward and into the river that looks like a bottomless abyss in which he deserves to fall and be swallowed for all eternity.

As he falls, he ends up looking upwards for a moment and his unfocused eye could make the shape of his precious Blake getting farther and more indistinguishable, a sudden hit on his back against the rocks blasts the little air he could get into his lungs, one of them is badly punctured and filling fast with blood.

And then he meets the cruelly cold raging waters, immediately the currents pull him all over the place, sometimes smacking him hard against large rocks or pieces of wood that cut his frigid skin.

He could feel his body wanting to fight this and make it to the surface to survive, but he resists knowing it’s the pull of that witch, to make him go to her side once more. To make him into a weapon once more and use him to eliminate all those that dared to oppose her.

Not wanting to suffer that same fate he breathes in letting water fill his current minimal lung capacity, but gods it burns his insides so bad, he barely can resist the urge to scream. He just wishes that his agony ends quickly but knows he doesn’t deserve even that.

However it seems that life might grant him that wissh, the last thing he sees is a large shadow making his way towards him and the only thing he can think of is a Grimm coming to have him for lunch.

Adam doesn’t realize that someone takes him out of the waters and fights the current to take him into the shore.

That someone is a man that stands over seven feet tall, with mismatched eyes due to heterochromia, the top of his iris is green while the bottom is blue, the right side of his hair is black and the left side white. He has wolf ears atop his head that are a contrast to his hair being the contrary color on that side, despite that he isn’t a faunus, he possesses other characteristics that no faunus would have. Two wolf tails that followed the pattern of his hair, and long sharp with claws instead of normal nails. But what is more bizarre about him is his teeth. Two rows of them each row contains a double set of fangs, sixteen in total. His face and arms contain several scars of different sizes.

Carefully he carries Adam into the shore and sets him down, Wilt is nearby, impaled on the sandy shore. He had spotted the sword going down river and stopped his journey to retrieve it, he waited for a while to see what else the water would carry, when he spotted Adam. Deducing that Adam is the owner of such a rare sword seeing the color of his clothing and a quick inspecting of Blush, he could see that the rifle served as a sheath for the sword. A sword possessing such reddish colored metal isn’t a common sight.

A quick assessment of the body in front of him gave him a list of several of the issues that would prove a challenge. He knew that his heart wasn't beating without checking for a pulse, his acute hearing detected no sound, nor the sound that lungs made when the inhaled and exhaled air, what’s more the man’s chest looked somewhat inflated… he had purposely breathed in water….

This makes him wonder why he wanted to die so badly. He looks down at Adam, who doesn’t look to be older than 25-26, of course it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that he had a rough life, the huge SDC branding over his left eye is a testament to that. He knows who the faunus in front of him is, the famed terrorist called Adam Taurus, the faunus had a reputation that had been heard through Remnant.

A moral dilemma presents itself, either try to save the life of the one that seemed to want to die, one that had caused so many deaths and misery or simply let him pass on and bury him somewhere where he wouldn’t be disturbed. The more he looked at Adam’s face, the more he was leaning to not let him to die, he wasn’t sure why, but something told him that to let him die would be simply wrong. And he trusted his instincts.

He tackles the most important matter at hand taking the other’s jacket off using the zipper at the front, pulling it down it reveals very pale skin underneath that’s freezing to the touch and several scars but most importantly the two stab wounds that had slowed down bleeding due to the cold water.

With a sharp claw he reaches the side of his chest that contains the lung that had been punctured and slides it between the man’s ribs with the precision of a surgeon, not soon after a gush of blood and water gets expelled, the pressure contained in the lung easing away.

Focusing next on the other lung filled with water and giving CPR to Adam. It takes him a couple of minutes and attempts, but he manages to bring him back to life. Thought slowly and weak, but the beating of his heart is there and that’s what matters.

Second matter to address is the proper care and dressing of the wounds, to not allow infection to develop and allow them to recover. He digs through his medical supplies looking for bandages, disinfectant and some thread and a needle. He also starts a fire and begins to boil some water as he accommodates Adam to lie on his side, to apply pressure on both his chest and back to control the bleeding.

Once the water is boiling intensely, he lets it cool down a bit before he begins cleaning the wounds, careful to not cause the bleeding to go out of control. After that he applies a disinfectant that is used for deep injuries before he begins sewing the wounds, this earned him a moan of pain from Adam, but he doesn’t wake up.

He continues to work as fast and carefully as he can, he is no doctor, but he has plenty of knowledge on how to treat injuries, many times having to be his own doctor. When he is done with the last stitch, he applies another ointment over the stitched injuries.

Satisfied with his work, he strips Adam of his remaining clothes and quickly covers him with a blanket over his more sensitive parts, the man wasn’t conscious or anything but nonetheless he deserves to keep some dignity.

He keeps looking for wounds and broken bones, his left leg had been twisted luckily no broken bones there, he treats the cuts that he finds on his legs finding more old scars there. Going back to Adam’s torso he sees the many whip marks that adorn his back not unlike his own back, a crisscross of mismatched etched lines. He shakes his head to not let his thoughts wander into more dark places he doesn’t want to be right now and focus back into his work.

He feels Adam’s chest again finding broken ribs, but there is nothing he could do there, at least none of them is puncturing any of organs, that would have been a pretty difficult situation.

And that’s when a barely perceptive detail manages to catch his eye, the work had been done with such care and precision that any normal person would have passed it as something completely normal. What gave it more away is that from that area from his body no blood was coming from the deep cuts and now that he looked more carefully and paying more attention to detail, he could see it. The part where his right shoulder joint connected to his arm, just a bit below it, the skin is a slightly different color and that’s when he knows that Adam’s right arm is not a normal arm.

Leaving the arm alone he checks once more that every wound had been properly taken care off, before he wraps Adam in some blankets to keep him warm, gently he allows his tails to rest over him providing more warmth as he places Adam’s torn clothing near the fire to dry, he grabs Blush (a rifle) and Wilt (a Chokuto) to inspect the weapons better for any damage. He takes the chance to rest for a bit, he needs a break before hitting the road again and making sure that Adam gets stable enough to start making his way back home.

His thoughts in the meantime take him to think of the torture and the agony the man besides him had gone through. His actions and ways make more sense knowing that he had seen the evidence embedded in his body and made his thoughts wander to his own terrible past experiences and the course of his life, his past, his present and the future. He can finally understand why he felt this urge to save the life of the terrorist… looking at him felt like he had been looking at a mirror, making something stir deep inside him.

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

The tall man doesn’t sleep at all during the night making sure Adam would survive until morning arrives. When it does and he is certain that Adam’s condition is stable within the gravity of his injuries, but also knowing that Adam will most likely need to have surgery and a blood transfusion he searches through his pack and finds a scroll; quickly dialing a number and waits a few rings later someone picks it up at the other end.

A surprised voice greets him “Lord Vicious is everything alright? You normally don’t make calls unless it’s important, is..”, before the man at the other end could keep talking, Vicious interrupts him “I’m alright… but there is someone else with me that needs a doctor, Rozen'', he says with a very deep and monotonous voice.

Rozen understood what was being requested of him. “How bad is that person? Are there broken bones, stab wounds?”, he asks. “Two stab wounds on the chest, very close to the heart, broken ribs, an injured leg, his breathing is bad… he was dead when I found him”, Vicious answers. “We are not that far my lord, do you want us to pick us to pick you up, where we dropped you?”, Rozen asks. “Yes… Rozen the person is Adam Taurus”, he says, silence greets him for a few moments before Rozen speaks again. “I am sure you have your reasons Vicious… I will prepare everything for possible surgery”, “Thank you”, says Vicious as the call ends.

Vicious turns his attention back to Adam and changes the dressing over his wounds and puts his clothes back on, now that they are dry.

He packs everything on his camp site and secures Wilt and Blush to his side, before picking Adam bridal style making sure to keep his head against his chest and not letting it drop, keeping him wrapped in a thick blanket. Due to the cold weather of Altas, some snow had begun to fall.

He begins the long walk to the secluded beach he had been dropped at. He travels at a lower speed than he normally would not wanting to upset Adam’s injuries and making sure not to bump into someone or something else while carrying the unconscious man.

They arrived in the early afternoon, the warship he had requested waiting for them not far, a small boat with some men ready to transport them to the ship. They had already been informed who's the person that Vicious is bringing, none made a comment on it or questioned his choice, they saluted him showing a lot of respect. Several gasp shock and exchange looks of horror once they see Adam’s face and the branding over his left eye.

The situation is pretty much the same once they arrive on the warship. Adam is placed on a stretcher and immediately taken to Rozen. Rozen is the royal doctor and surgeon, he has black hair that reaches his shoulders and kind brown eyes, he is of average height and pale skin.

He’s currently wearing blue scrubs. He decided to go together with the crew and Vicious to investigate some reports of strange grimm appearing on Anima.

It had been decided that Vicious would be scouting alone for the moment to help their warship keep a low profile, if he encountered any type of problem along the way reinforcements would be called from the ship. Grimm also attacked their kingdom, they would take any opportunity to learn about different kinds of grimm to protect their home better.

Rozen immediately starts to work, the first thing he notices is the brand, he shakes his head in sadness. Very gently he reaches Adam’s left eye and opens it, not surprised to encounter a gray colored iris that is no longer functional and a red colored sclera. “Such brutality”, he says, in understanding why Vicious had decided to save the faunus' life. “It’s not the only thing that has been done to him”, Vicious warns him, Rozen is not surprised to hear the warning, the eye is just the tip of the iceberg after all.

With Vicious help he carefully unwraps Adam out of the blanket, before taking his clothes and bandages off.

He gasps when he could see the rest of Adam’s body, the wounds and the old scars, sympathy fills his heart. Rozen quickly goes to wash his hands with soap and warm water again. Vicious does the same but keeps his distance, sitting on a nearby chair in case Rozen needs any type of help.

Rozen grabs a mask and an oxygen tank along with some sedatives, the man may be unconscious, but he doesn’t want to risk it. Putting gloves on he grabs several gauze pieces and cleans Adam’s face before placing the mask over him to help him breathe easier.

He keeps using gauzes and sterile clothes pieces along with some saline solution to make sure that Adam is completely clean and there is no other type of debris that could pose a threat, he does ask Vicious help to clean Adam’s hair and horns with some water and soap.

Satisfied that Adam is clean, Rozen changes his gloves for a clean pair, then he looks for a vein on Adam’s right arm at first, before Vicious tells him to use the other arm, it’s then that he notices that Adam’s right arm is indeed a very well done prosthesis. Taking Vicious advise he looks for a vein on Adam’s left arm, finding a good one, he pierces it with a catheter that contains various terminals to connect different iv bags, he connects some fluids to hydrate him as well as some antibiotics, he takes a small blood sample and uses a machine to determine Adam’s blood type, they have a good supply on board including several rare types.

As he waits for results, he begins to work with the wounds and looks at Vicious stitching job. With a careful inspection he determines that the wounds have been properly stitched. The injuries that contain tissue that looks with any slight indication that they aren’t healing properly and could cause an infection he scrapes it off until he reaches the healthy part making sure that it is clean before bandaging again.

The machine suddenly beeps with the results, Rozen asks Vicious to read them for him out loud, busy with cleaning Adam’s wounds. This time some luck is on the faunus side, he doesn’t have one of the most uncommon blood types which is good, but his blood showed what Rozen was expecting, low blood cell count and a high quantity of white blood cells. The man is anemic and apparently his body is fighting the beginning of an infection.

When he is finished cleaning the wounds, he goes to look for some pints of blood to give Adam a transfusion. “Lord Vicious (Vicious make a low noise with his throat, making Rozen start over), my apologies, I know you don’t like me calling you Lord over and over, but we are outside of home (He gives up explaining when he sees that Vicious truly doesn’t not care)… Vicious I have to ask you to leave, he needs some surgery, now that we know the blood type, I will call you back when I am done to report how the procedure went ”.

Vicious gets up and nods, he holds the door open for several nurses that will assist Rozen during surgery to enter as he leaves the room.

Vicious decides to go and take a shower and call back home to inform his mate what to expect when he arrives back.

Several hours go by, Adam is very lucky that Rozen was able to operate him by making several small incisions with specialized equipment. The doctor feels confident that the faunus will be able to recover without any future consequence.

Rozen informs Vicious of the success of the operation and tells him that he can now go see him in a recovery room.

When the king arrives, he finds several soldiers guarding the entrance to the room, respectfully they get out of the way and let him enter, when he does the two soldiers that are inside leave. Approaching the bed he can see that Adam still has the oxygen mask and his body is covered mostly by bandages, including his left eye, his left leg has been placed on a brace and some tubes have been connected to his chest to make sure no left-over blood or fluid cause any issues.

Sitting on a chair in the corner Vicious remembers the conversation he had with Xiang, his wife. At first she had been surprised not understanding why he didn’t execute the terrorist on site, but that changed when Vicious described what he had seen, she had agreed on Adam being brought to Haruna kingdom. The ship sailed as soon as surgery was over.

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

The trip to the port of Haruna takes almost 4 days. Vicious and the crew members make sure that the presence of Adam Taurus remains private. Once they arrive at the port, Adam is transported to the castle inside an ambulance, a white sheet has been placed over him, this would cause everyone that saw him to think that the person underneath has sustained terrible burns or other types of serious injuries.

Vicious takes the ride in the ambulance alongside Adam. Not an uncommon sight in the city, the king has been known to accompany his men if possible whenever they get seriously hurt.

The city is a mix of oriental and western influence. There are buildings constructed completely out of wood with roofs similar to those of a pagoda, others are made out of stone, concrete or steel. The roads are composed of a strong mix of rocks and concrete instead of asphalt. There is also a strong presence of nature within the city, huge trees, rivers and creeks to name a few, all existing in harmony along with the inhabitants everyday life.

Reaching the castle Adam is taken to a private section of it to recover, Rozen makes sure everything he needs to survive has been properly installed. The tubes that had been previously placed on his chest to prevent the fluids on his lungs causing either pneumonia or any other type of infection have been removed. All that remains is for his body to rest and recover at its own pace.

A few days later Adam begins waking up, the fingers of his left arm start moving slightly then they start closing and opening forming a fist. His head moves from left to right moaning.

The nurse that is watching over him approaches quickly. She is about to call the others when his eye suddenly snaps open and he glares at her. Before she could try anything, he manages to break free from the leather straps confiding him to bed, she freezes on the spot.

The previous person that had come to change his bandages did a very sloppy job and they weren’t fastened as they should. He doubles over in pain and groans; his chest feels on fire. “Stop, your stitches will become undone!!!!”, she says forgetting who she is speaking to and approaching to restrain him.

He takes a sudden look over himself and when he sees his right side…notices that his right arm is not there, he gasp in shock and confusion and glares at her again before speaking “What did you… do to me!?, he said angrily, his voice raspy and his throat hurting a lot. “Please just stop, okay, I am here to help”, she pleads, a guard suddenly bursts into the room to help control the situation, which doesn’t help at all.

Not expecting it and a bit wobbly Adam suddenly launches himself from the bed right at the guard and catches him by surprise with a strong punch to the jaw, ripping the catheter from his left arm in the process. This makes the man stumble in pain and Adam hits him again, this time a punch to the stomach which makes him gasp for air, finally a blow to the back of his head takes him out.

The nurse panics and tries to run to the door, but a blow to the back of her head also takes her out. Adam falls to his knees, everything around him moving in circles making him feel sick, his chest is pure agony every breath he takes almost like acid is being poured to his lungs.

He takes a few moments to steady himself before getting up with difficulty, the pain on his left leg almost making him fall. Walking over to the fallen guard he takes the man’s weapon, it’s a glaive, with a gun integrated at the side of the hilt, not the best choice for him right now, but it can help him as a walking stick. Adam checks him again and finds a small knife in his pocket, he takes that too.

He makes it out of the room slowly, looking at his surroundings, finding them empty. Unknown to him the nurse had a device in her pocket that she had activated, a silent alarm letting the others know about the danger and clear the area. The queen and king are the only ones right now that will confront him.

Adam decides not to stay still, a vacant hallway normally means bad stuff by his experience. And right now, he has a huge disadvantage. He only has his left arm and he is hurting all over, he doesn’t dare to take a moment to check his injuries.

He needs to get out of here, he can’t end being used as a weapon again. He doesn’t know where he can go once he does but that doesn’t matter right now. Limping he keeps on advancing, walking through a large stone hallway, the place has intricate golden railing at the edge and statues carved, plants formed part of the decoration including some bonsai and small waterfalls falling through some sections of the walls. He takes no attention to detail, he feels very tempted to stop to take a drink feeling terribly thirsty, but he decides against it, not wanting to waste any time.

He sees some stairs at the distance and moves towards them, however he stops a few feet away from them, he knows and feels that he is being watched. Adam does his best to stand straight and ignore the pain. “What do you want!?”, he says in a low voice that promises retribution if anyone dared to block his path. “Where do you think you are going boy!?”, a female voice answers him back.

He gets ready for battle expecting either a human or a faunus, he however gets the shock of his life when neither appear before him, but a mostly golden colored kirin appears before him, a huge one that is, she easily makes him look tiny towering over 14 feet in height.

She has huge horns like a male deer, cream colored adorning her head like a crown, golden scales and fur, some black patches covering her whole body piercing slit red eyes stare menacing back at him, stirring a lot of unwanted memories inside him about someone whose eyes changed to red when angry and almost managed to kill him… sadly she didn’t succeed and he is in this mess right now.

“Well?”, the kirin speaks revealing sharp teeth on her maw. “Just great, why couldn’t I simply die at that time, why everything has to be so difficult for me… even dying?”, he thinks to himself. “Out of my way this is not your business beast!”, he says, not letting his inner thoughts let be known, trying his best to glare back at her with his single icy blue eye.

“Beast!?, You should watch your tone young man, you are in my domain, I am the ruler of this land!”, she says her scales and fur bristling, her lips peel back showing her sharp teeth in all their glory, making her look incredibly intimidating, but not to a man that simply has a death wish.

“Let me pass and you will know nothing more about me!”, he says trying to reason with the kirin.

“And where to? To cause more misery and pain Adam Taurus!?, the kirin says.

Adam shoulders slump when he is forced to remember all the terrible things he had done, he then gives her a look full of weariness and self-loathing, a look that makes her remember someone else during a past time. “My death is the only thing I desire, and you are on my way… you had me brought here with a purpose… and I refuse that purpose… I won’t be your prisoner, your slave, your puppet, your weapon, I won’t be those things anymore, I won’t be yours or nobody else… I refuse to be used again!”, he said the last part with a scream launching at her, forgetting about the pain.

The kirin parries his blow with her scaled tail, the glaive almost getting ripped from his left hand. She lowers her head using her horns, making him parry, the glaive glowing red as he absorbs the energy. The kirin looks suspicious at the glow, but she doesn’t have time to wonder as Adam attacks with a series of furious slashes.

Despite only having one arm left, he is pretty good at it, using his torso making him wince every time he did and his legs to adjust when needed the strength and direction of the attacks. He tries to save bullets not knowing how many the glaive has and what he will encounter later.

As he moves, he can feel the stitches pulling at his skin, some of them even popping.

The kirin finds an opening and she charges, Adam is forced to put the glaive in front of him, resting it against his right shoulder to avoid being hit directly by her horns. But the force of the hit is too much for his legs, he focuses and as the kirin approaches once more he uses his semblance, it's not as strong as it normally is, but it’s enough to catch her by surprise.

A red arc of energy cuts her left collarbone deeply, causing her to roar in pain, she had her aura up, but she wasn’t expecting this half dead man to be able to pull such an attack. The kirin front legs buckle and she drops on her belly looking at him in disbelief despite the pain she feels.

Unfortunately, as this happened because of her previous attack his back painfully hits against a wall making him bite his lips until he bleeds to avoid letting out a scream. He begins coughing making a wet noise, blood dripping from his lips into the ground, almost unable to breath.

Adam closes his eyes for a moment trying to get his bearings and collect his thoughts, which is hard when every breath you take feels like your lungs are being ripped to pieces.

After a few long minutes he manages to open his eyes and looks at the kirin… no… it’s no longer that beast from before, but a woman is in front of him instead of the kirin. He knows that they are the same being by the wound she is clutching on her collarbone and the red eyes as before. He could see that she has long blonde hair that she keeps in an intricate bun, her clothing is pretty ornate befitting of a ruler, and of course the flower silk robe she is wearing is being ruined by her blood.

When she begins to stand, Adam quickly grabs the glaive and surprises her that instead of pointing the weapon at her, he points the edge to his throat, making her stop on her tracks. “Are you so desperate to die young man?”, she asks.

Adam stays quiet for a moment before answering. “You wouldn’t understand… and as you said before, before I can be used to cause pain and misery again, I will end it”, he says in a tired voice and then plunges the glaive towards his neck.

Before the glaive could hurt him a hand grabs the handle and with force the glaive gets thrown away, plunging into a wall.

Shocked Adam looks to the owner of the hand and is surprised to see a man almost as big as Hazel standing before him. “sh*t…”, he says feeling immediately frustrated and angry, gritting his teeth he focuses all the strength he has left in one effort, while looking at the mismatched eyes of the man standing in front of him.

Despite knowing he will fail he refuses to back down and go down quietly. He grabs the pocket knife he took from the guard and charges focusing what little aura he has left. He is not surprised that his attacks failed, the man without much effort catches his hand, squeezing enough to make him release the knife.

Not letting go he raises Adam from the ground to his eye level. Adam tries to kick the man, but this fight is completely one sided, he is too weak to be able to do any real damage and his legs aren’t long enough to reach him, not when he is being held at arm’s length.

“Stop”, he orders, making Adam stop his trashing for a moment and look at him, doing his best to glare back but the man shows no kind of emotion on his face. However despite not showing emotion his mismatched eyes felt like a predator was watching.

”Let me go!”, Adam orders back, before he begins trashing again. He stops when a shock of electricity courses through his whole body, making him gasp and lose control of his limbs. Once Adam is no longer moving, Vicious approaches the bull faunus to him inspecting him. A hand going over the blood-stained bandages on the faunus's chest, Adam desperately wanted to fight back and get away not liking at all being touched by a stranger.

“Dearest?”, the woman is standing by their side, compared to Vicious she looks pretty tiny, but she isn’t a short woman, standing 5”11 feet tall.

Vicious looks back at her and sees her applying pressure to her wound before he could say anything. “I am alright this won’t kill me”, she says to ease his worries. “What will you do about him? He only has a deathwish.”, she asks.

“Deathwish is not to be granted…”, he says, before looking back at Adam that’s trying to keep glaring at him despite his fading consciousness. “We will talk later… when you are stronger… don’t attempt to escape anymore… no matter what you try... I am faster and stronger… I will hunt you down”, he says as a warning.

Adam tries to talk back to the man to demand that he be executed, but he doesn’t have the strength to do anything and can only watch as he gets dragged back to the room he was previously in. The guard and nurse he had knocked down before regaining consciousness while he loses his own.

Chapter 4

Chapter Text

When Adam wakes up a whole day has passed, he isn’t alone this time. There are no leather straps holding him down to the bed, he tries to sit up but stops when he notices that Vicious is sitting on a nearby chair with a stack of papers on a table besides him.

They lock eyes in a silent staring contest taking place before Adam breaks the silence first. “Why am I still alive?”, he asks, Vicious stares at him for a bit longer before speaking. “Why do you want to die? You purposely breathed water into your lungs when I found you.”, he chooses not to answer Adam's just question yet.

Adam frowns, staying silent and doing his best to keep himself calm, there is no way he will win a physical fight against the man in his current condition. “If you knew that I tried dying, why bother saving me?”, he asks, not giving the man an answer, two could play this game.

“Prisoner, Slave, Puppet, Weapon… who did that?” the question asked by the taller man struck Adam deeply unwanted memories filling his mind, his eyes became unfocused.

All the terrible things he had done came back hunting him and suddenly it became hard to breathe, his lungs feet like they had a flame lit inside of them, unknown to him a panic attack was taking hold of his body.

A big and warm hand being placed on his back brought him back to reality, he didn’t notice but he sat up in his desperation clutching his chest, the panic attack made him lose control of his body almost making him collapse back into the bed. Vicious took notice and placed a hand on his back to stop him from hurting himself; his other hand was grabbing the stump where Adam’s right arm should be. “Breath slower”, Vicious commanded.

Adam became aware that he was hyperventilating. He has no choice but to obey, the hold on him is firm but gentle, he knows there is no chance of him escaping.

It takes him almost 20 minutes to control his breathing back to normal, the effort leaving him completely exhausted. “Sorry”, Vicious says startling Adam, he really was not expecting any type of consideration by his captors more less an apology, it makes him feel confused. “Why… Why am I still alive?… I just… just want for it to end”, he says in a broken voice, it almost sounded like he was begging to be killed.

Despite not being able to show any sign on his face or tone of voice of compassion or empathy Vicious does his best to offer some support. “You will be safe here… nobody will use you anymore…”, he says, Adam did not believe any of those words. “Why should I believe you? I am always used or left alone”, he said with anger in his voice, he twists his body some causing some pain to get away from Vicious.

Vicious knowing that he is trying to fight a losing battle decides to leave picking up the papers by the table. “It’s not a lie… rest now”, he says before leaving the room and Adam alone with his unwanted memories and his feeling of guilt.

Adam tried to escape several more times in the following month and a half, but like promised the king always hunted him down or some others that weren’t part of the regular guard. This frustrated Adam greatly, he felt like he had been forced to play the game of mouse and cat, always losing to the cat.

He had been so close to either escape or take his life but at the last second, he was always stopped, making him wonder if Vicious was getting any sort of sick pleasure from this stupid game.

But the king never laughed at him or made any fun at his expenses, Vicious simply dragged him back to his room… and despite his attempts and bad behavior Vicious had granted him a bigger area to roam... well threw him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes to bring him to this bigger area, when he tried resisting.

He had been given a room, but it also had a small garden that contained a small pond and several plants and trees. Some animals even visited this area, some birds, squirrels and cats… the cats reminded him so much of Blake, he tried ignoring them, but they always found ways of crawling into his lap or his bed. From what he could learn the king was fond of animals and liked cats a lot.

But going back to the room he had been given, it contained several windows, they weren’t barred and he could freely look outside or sit at the window sill. He even had a small balcony where he could look out to some parts of the city or to the port and mountains far away. His room also has a small table for him and two seats, a bed, a small bookcase with some books and a small fridge that contains snacks and drinks.

The queen sometimes visited him trying to talk to him and verify how his recovery was. In turn he gave short answers keeping himself as far as he could, remembering how he had wounded her the day of their fight.

This whole situation confused him greatly. He is a prisoner… yet this place doesn’t feel like a real prison, yes he couldn’t leave but he wasn’t being starved or beaten almost to death like it happened back at the mine or with his other captors.

Nobody lashed him with a whip or beat him up when he did things that he wasn’t supposed to, he wasn’t confined to a small metal cage, he could spend his days exercising if he wanted to in the small garden or doing other things. It made him wonder why… or if this was simply a set up to gain his trust so they could use him.

So, caught in these thoughts that he didn’t notice Xiang entering the room carrying a case, she clears her throat, startling him, he turns to face her, looking at the case suspiciously. “How are you doing today?”, she asks. “Fine”, he says, giving his typical answer. “That’s good to hear”, she tells him, before walking to the table and sitting down, placing the case on the table, a calico cat appears walking up to the queen meowing and demanding cuddles. Chuckling Xiang picks up the cat, placing her on her lap and petting her head, making the cat purr almost immediately.

“Will it always be like this Adam? We don’t have any ill intentions towards you. We can help you but only if you lower those walls that you have built around yourself and let us in”, she said using a calm voice while looking at him, Adam meanwhile is looking at the ground unable to meet her eyes. “I’m not worth the effort”, he says in a low voice.

Xiang sighs at his response before speaking again. “Adam I might not know much about you and your life history, what you have gone through… but I know how you feel because…”, she pauses thinking of her choice of words and noticing that Adam is looking at her, she knows she has his attention. “Because my beloved Vicious was just like you, you mentioned that someone used you in the past and I am guessing they made you commit terrible acts, things that you didn’t wish to do, am I right?”, she asks.

Adam doesn’t answer her, he doesn’t know what to tell her because her words are true, he was forced to commit so many atrocities and crimes that … that it made him hurt more than any type of wound or torture could, his behavior was all Xiang needed to confirm what she suspected. “Vicious was ordered in the past to kill me and my family… he killed my previous husband… he was a very kind and loved king his name was Ashford”, says Xiang, remembering their happy moments together.

Adam looks at her in shock. How could she refer to Vicious as her loved one after he had killed her previous husband? He is about to ask her if she was insane but she holds up her hand to him in a stopping motion.

“The story doesn’t end there, you see I hated Vicious with all my heart and soul and wanted nothing more than to see him die and pay for all he had done, he had taken my previous husband’s life before he and I could even have a child together. I wanted to tear him to pieces, kill him the same way he had killed Ashford. Many times, Vicious had come very close to killing me. Not only that Vicious had killed thousands of people, he destroyed whole towns. But imagine my surprise the day we could finally have revenge, when Yamato my son held a sword to his head to end his life… small children came running to protect their father from getting executed. They didn’t think twice to risk their little lives to protect their father like he had done for them a thousand times. He was forced to obey the orders of a tyrant to be able to keep his family from harm, because even death wasn’t an escape”, she said those last words wiping a tear from her eyes.

“What we found in the place his family was captive at, was a nightmare”, she said, shuddering at the memories. “At first it was extremely difficult when we took them out of there, the fights were constant between him and my son and among other family members from both sides. But as time kept passing and other situations kept on happening Vicious showed us, he was not a monster he never was, he is actually one of the kindest persons that you could ever meet… of course the damage is already been done, he cannot express emotion and what he desires as a normal person”, she finalizes her story looking at Adam.

She could see that he appears to be lost in thought with what he had heard. She sighs and gets up from the chair taking the cat on her arms. “Adam what’s in that case if for you, alright… please let us help you, you are young and have a full life ahead of you, you are worth the effort”, she walks to the door and leaves the room, on the other side she is not surprised to wait for Vicious waiting for her, she knew he had heard the whole conversation and the things he did, still pain him greatly.

However, she simply walks up to him placing her hand on his cheek caressing him softly, he leans into her touch closing his eyes and relaxing placing his hand over hers. After a few more moments, she pushes herself upward to the tip of her feet to kiss him and he returns it, circling his arms around her waist, when they separate, she smiles at him. “I love you, never forget that, you aren’t a monster, beloved”, she says reassuring him.

Vicious nods at her words, before glancing at the door then looking back to her. He nods to himself and still with her hand on his, he leads the way back to their quarters for some afternoon tea which he knows Xiang is very fond of. The cat on her arm purring happily.

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

For a long time, Adam contemplates the case placed over the table, while playing the conversation with Xiang on his head over and over. Trying to find any hidden meaning or ill intentions in her words, but the more he thought it became clear to him he couldn’t find anything.

Giving a sigh of frustration he decides to inspect the case she brought him. When he opens it, he gasps in shock and surprise, not expecting its contents at all. Inside there’s a brand-new metal arm to replace his old one.

However, this is not the item that shocked him the most, the case also contains his weapons Wilt and Blush, they look clean and polished. He grabs them with his remaining hand and with a quick flick of his left thumb in a shift movement Wilt comes free from Blush, before the rifle could fall into the ground he grabs it with his hand and places it on the table, catching Wilt in mind air and holding it looking at the edge.

A quick look at the blade and he could see no cracks or dents on it, what’s more the edge looks even sharper and has a darker crimson hue than before. Setting the blade down besides the rifle he stares at them in disbelief that he had been given his weapons back.

Inspecting the case once more he notices that there are more items. A box containing all the items necessary to give maintenance to his weapons and another bigger box that is full of different dust ammunition for Blush. The final item is a folded piece of paper, he opens it and reads it’s contents which is are written in neat cursive, “Put the arm on, don’t use your weapons to kill yourself or cause issues, I will come see you later”, at the bottom of the note it was Vicious signature.

Adam stares at the message for a few more seconds before he bursts out laughing. The note of the letter had been so Vicious like, so emotionless and dry. He stops before giving a sad smile, shaking his head. Remembering what Xiang had told him about the king. It makes him wonder if there is still hope left for him and if he should let these people help him out.

Sighing again he decides to obey the orders he was given on the note this time. He gets his shirt off exposing all the scars on his torso before picking up the metal arm from the case and attaching it to his stump, almost immediately the arm begins to work. He tests it by picking up several items off the table and making other complex movements.

Satisfied with the dexterity the arm has he picks up Blush and Wilt from the table. Walking to an area with a bit more space he sheaths Wilt inside Blush, before suddenly sheathing and unsheathing his sword several times in a matter of seconds, very hard for the eye to follow. Nodding to himself he begins to practice several Iaido katas to warm up.

He practices for an hour or so when he feels being watched. Looking behind him he is not surprised to see Vicious leaning against a wall watching him. They stare at each other for a few seconds before Vicious nods and signals for him to follow opening the door.

He doesn’t wait for Adam to respond as he makes his way down the hallway. Adam signs for what feels the hundredth time and complies, he picks up the belt and some ammunition but doesn’t bother picking his shirt up, knowing that he probably doesn’t need it and dashes behind the taller man.

His intuition proves to be true when they end up in an indoor arena after walking several empty hallways and stairs. The arena’s floor is the size of a football field at least and made out of earth and grass, it has several stone walls of different heights, pillars, holes and other obstacles.

However, they are not alone in this place, he could see Xiang along with other people in the stands. Two of them he recognized as having been responsible for catching him when Vicious wasn’t around to do it.

He looks back at Vicious that has moved to the center of the arena waiting for him, he can see the man place his right hand at back of his neck before a ripping sound reaches his ears, he stares dumbfound as Vicious take out his spine out of his body and right before his eye since the other doesn’t work, the vertebra morph and form a scythe.

Adam looks at the scythe then looks at Vicious in disbelief. “Ready?”, Vicious asks him, snapping Adam back to reality. Nodding Adam takes his stance placing a hand over Wilt’s hilt, taking a deep breath, he suddenly burst into motion dashing directly to Vicious, when he is a few meters, he changes directly moving to the left and quickly unsheathing his sword and slashing at Vicious side, the scythe meet Wilt in a parry, before quickly changing direction aiming to the faunus abdomen, parrying Adam immediately regrets doing so, the strength of the blow almost tears Wilt out of his hands and pushes him back several feet, the sword glows red as he absorbs the energy from the hit.

With shaking arms he has no choice but to jump to the side dodging a blow and quickly being forced to participate in a quick dance of dodging swipes quickly from different angles, he is starting to feel overwhelmed. In first place due to the lack of use of his weapon had made him a bit rusty and second Vicious is moving with such speed and grace nobody his size and weight should be able to.

Cursing at his predicament Adam demands more from his body, focusing his aura and muscles he begins to show his skills. Like he did in the battle with Yang and Blake three black and red colored clones appear attacking Vicious from different directions. The king spins his scythe slashing the first clone, the second one he parries before kicking it with both feet and the third one he jumps into the air to avoid it and swings his scythe vertically slashing it.

Adam moves in quickly and in a bold moment he closes the distance between them instead of aiming high as he normally would, he drops in a crouch and once he close to Vicious he goes for his legs. Thinking that someone as tall as him would be more preoccupied with protecting his torso than legs. A hard clang is heard, a bone whip like structure has blocked Wilt’s strike to Vicious right kneecap. Not that surprised seeing already how Vicious produced his scythe, Adam watches twin tail bones protruding from Vicious tails.

He dives into a roll dodging the whips strikes, the king moves in pursuit. Adam thinks on how he can use the arena to his advantage. He let’s Vicious to get close and uses one of the holes on the ground falling into it allowing Vicious to pass before attacking from behind he uses the strength of blush firing wilt out of it scabbard to deflect the tailbone coming at him before grabbing his sword and swiping it at his opponents back, another clang is heard, Adam’s sword and hair glowing red.

He stares at Vicious back feeling annoyed for a few seconds before jumping backwards moving out of the way, Vicious had manipulated his spine out of his body and morphed it like a piece of armor, thickening it enough to stop Adam’s blade. Before reabsorbing it back into his body.

Cursing he gets out of his hiding place before Vicious can trap him in there. Concentrating his aura on his legs, it gives him an extra boost as he jumps into the air, twisting he fires blush to change of direction using the recoil from the rifle.

Using a pillar as a pivot he keeps on putting distance between himself and his pursuer. While thinking on his next strategy.

Suddenly the similarity of this situation hits him as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over him. He misses his next foothold and if it wasn’t that Vicious was on the lookout, diving forward to catch him, Adam would have probably ended up with several nasty bruises, he was gaining altitude with each jump.

But Adam doesn’t notice anything due to currently suffering from a panic attack, being haunted by memories of his last fight with Blake. How he was forced to chase after her in the forest, how she had used the trees to try and get away from him, how he called her a coward and almost cutting her down, by sheer luck he was able to take control of his body enough to make a swallow cut, just damaging her trench coat. And how no long after that, when he had managed to corner her by the waterfall, after breaking Gambol Shroud he attempted to stab her, like he did in Beacon.

He gets pulled back to reality when a large hand hits his back a couple of times and someone calling his name. He blinks a couple of times adjusting his blurry sight. That’s when he notices that he’s sitting down on the ground, being propped up by Vicious' knee. He can feel the king’s hand over his shoulders. Xiang is also there taking his hands in hers, she tells him something but he can’t quite understand her, until she repeats her words a couple of times.

“Adam!! Adam please you need to breathe! Come on breathe!!!”, and he suddenly lets out loud gasps, his lungs feel like they are burning up… it’s so similar to when he was dying, drowning in the river, getting pulled further from the surface… the water is tinted red with his blood… and he lets water in, he didn’t want that witch to use him to hurt Blake anymore… no he has to drown and die… no matter how much it hurt...how cold and alone he feels… he has to... A stinging pain in his cheek grounds him again, pulling him away from unsavory memories.

Xiang apologizes for slapping him, before she places his left hand over her chest. “Look at me, we need to get your breathing back to normal. Breathe with me, okay.”, she says and she takes a breath, he does the same, copying her actions several times. Until his breathing is back to normal, he then takes his hands away from hers, embarrassed at how he lost control and how she the queen had to intervene to help him. He is also aware now that Vicious has been quietly propping him up. And the way his clothing is drenched in sweat, clinging to him.

Unsure on how to respond he thinks of making his way to his room and disappearing, preferably if the ground opens up and swallows him forever. He places a shaking hand on the ground and pushes himself up. He struggles to get up, his legs are shaking badly and he feels dizzy, there’s a dull pain on his chest and back, a reminder of the twin stab wounds he received that fateful day. His vision blurs for a second time, his head throbbing, an arm wrapped around his midsection stops him and everything goes black.

“I will take him to his room… could you fetch Rozen?”, says Vicious as he gently moves Adam’s body to carry him bridal style. “Poor dear, I wonder what exactly triggered this attack, he was doing fine”, a frown is placed on Xiang’s face as she speaks, not wasting a single moment she goes to find Rozen, while Vicious carries Adam to his room. Hopefully the familiar setting will help to calm him down when he wakes up.

Chapter 6

Chapter Text

Adam awakes with a blood curdling scream, fighting the arms pinning him down to the metal table in the lab. He uses as much strength as he can muster to escape his captor, kicking his legs trying to hit something, his captor is saying something to him but he can’t hear a thing over the beating of his own heart and fear. He doesn’t want to be experimented on again, get his body tampered with, contaminated with foul things that hamper his ability to control his own body and actions. The faunus keeps twisting and turning to free himself until a sharp pain on his left shoulder followed by a pop makes him stop.

Adam gasps in agony, the pain taking him back to the present and noticing he is not over a cold metal table nor he is surrounded by laboratory equipment. He is lying over a bed… his own bed and he is in his room.

He looks at the Vicious that is holding him down, the king lets out a sigh, his face emotionless as always thought. “Can you hear me now? Adam?”.

Adam simply nods, eyes still wide in terror at the visions of the past that plagued him. A wave of pain makes him flinch, he looks to his left side and notices that his left arm is hanging limp.

“Your shoulder dislocated… my apologies but you started glowing… I couldn’t risk Xiang and Rozen.”, Vicious motions for Rozen and Xiang to approach.

“Mr. Taurus, let me look at your arm okay? I was the one to take care of your injuries when you first arrived, but you can’t remember me, every time I have treated you, you have been unconscious”, says Rozen approaching slowly and showing Adam his hands that are currently empty.

Not knowing what to say Adam just nods, not moving allowing Rozen to approach to examine his shoulder, holding back showing signs of discomfort.

“Alright, this will be easy since you don’t have a shirt on. I am going to touch you and feel the shoulder okay? Just to verify no broken bones, then I am going to put it back in its place. And I need you to relax, I don’t want to cause you unnecessary pain”, Rozen makes sure to explain to Adam everything he is going to do, in an effort to keep the other man as calm as possible.

Slowly Rozen begins to inspect the swollen area, a purple bruise starting to form. After a careful examination and determining that there is not a fracture he looks at Adam. “I am going to set it now Mr. Taurus, but before I do I need to know how you wish to deal with the pain. I can apply an injection that will make you fall asleep, I could also apply a numbing ointment and give you some painkillers and anti-inflammatories”, he asks, waiting for his patient to make a choice.

“I don’t want to sleep right now…”, Adam answers, not looking at him focusing on staring at the floor. He didn’t want to deal with unpleasant nightmares now.

“As you wish, I am going to set your shoulder now Mr. Taurus, on the count of three it will be done, please bear with me for a moment”, Rozen takes a hold of Adam’s shoulder and arm, counts up to three as promised, another pop echoes in the room as the shoulder is returned to its place.

Adam gasps in agony and curls into himself, holding his throbbing shoulder, tears gathering at the corner of his right eye, it feels as if he was getting stabbed again. He takes several shuddering breaths holding the impulse to yell and curse out loud.

“I am going to apply the numbing ointment, it will feel cool to the touch”, says the doctor not wanting Adam to be startled at being touched suddenly. Just as Rozen said, the ointment feels cool, luckily it starts working almost immediately, letting Adam breath easier. Rozen approaches him once more with several pills on his right hand and a glass of water on his left one. “Take these please, they will help with the inflammation and pain”.

Slowly Adam does as he is told, he shoves the pills into his mouth, before taking the glass of water and swallowing.

Rozen exits the room for a moment to look for a sling for Adam’s arm, it will take a while before he can use it again. Meanwhile Vicious and Xiang take a moment to speak privately outside the room.

The trio enter the room again, when Rozen comes back with the sling. Gently he approaches Adam and helps him place his left arm in it, adjusting the strap. “I will come back in a few hours to check on you Mr. Taurus”, he says before exiting the room.

Xiang and Vicious approach Adam once more. “Adam I know that what has happened to you is not easy, but don’t forget we are here to help you get better, you need to....”, Xiang is suddenly interrupted by the faunus.

“You don’t understand what I went through, you weren’t there!”, Adam snaps at her and Vicious. The memories, the trauma are way too fresh. Before he can begin a rant and discharge his pain into her, Vicious steps forward looking at him, making Adam shut his mouth, bracing for a punishment and more pain.

Vicious surprises him by doing none of that, instead he speaks to Adam in his normal monotone tone. Adam would have expected him to at least yell at him. But then he is hit with the memory of Xiang’s words about the king. “She does know… she handled me at my worst… and still does, even when my hands will always be stained in red….”, he says while still maintaining eye contact with the faunus.

Xiang places her hand over Vicious shoulder reassuring him, then she looks at Adam. “I would advise you to allow a professional to help you... (A glare by Adam makes her raise her hands in defeat) but I know you share a lot in common with my beloved here, at least you could try speaking with someone that has experienced a lot of things you have”. Sighing, she bids both a good afternoon before leaving to attend some of her duties.

Instead of leaving alongside her, Vicious behaves completely unpredictable to what Adam is expecting.

He creates a chair for himself using his tail bones, including a back and armrest. It was a bizarre thing to watch, how the other could manipulate and expel bones out of his body without tearing the skin or bleeding, heck he didn’t rip out his clothing at all while doing so. Placing a leg over the other the king grabs a stack of papers and begins to work.

“Why are you staying?”, asks Adam curious. He is sure that the man has better things to do than stick around.

“To watch over you… and to talk if you desire so”, Vicious answers his question while reading the papers in his lap.

Adam is tempted to ignore the man and just let it be, it’s not like he could order the man to get out of the room, it’s not his castle. But as time passes curiosity wins, burning intensely within him, sighing he gives in. “How did you… how did you end up like this?”

At first the king doesn’t reply for a long time, continuing with the paperwork. Adam thinks he won’t get an answer, a few moments later Vicious complies.

“Because of... the woman that birthed me”, he says while looking at the floor, no longer paying attention to the papers anymore.

Adam wasn’t expecting that answer, a familiar ache throbs in his heart at how he ended up in a bad place in the first place. He wants to ask more but he debates if he should or not, Vicious decides to elaborate his answer.

“She had… a sick obsession with my grandfather… and my father… but couldn’t have them… so she forced herself on my father... she wanted a lover that would obey without questions”, the king pauses for a moment letting Adam digest the information, by looking at the faunus face he could see a myriad of emotions, disgust, disbelief and anger.

“What… Did she… Did you..!?, so many were the thoughts running through Adam’s mind at the revelation, that he couldn’t form a proper sentence. He feels as if he is going to throw up.

“No… I ran away before she could complete her plans… my littermates didn’t have that luxury… they were sold as merchandise… none of them had the looks and one was an “useless girl” without a name... but that didn’t mean I was safe… I ended up running to hell… literary… the man that owed me shaped me into a killing machine”, the last bit he says with a dark tone showing.

Adam swallows nervously, eyes wide in shock, his heartbeat ramming against his ribs. He hesitates to ask, but feels like he needs to. “How did you get… out of the abyss? How did you maintain a will to live? ”, the last questions he asks almost as a whisper staring at his hand, as if expecting for them to become tainted by blood any moment.

“Many times… I wished to die…end my existence… but I couldn’t… my children kept me going… despite none of them being the result of free will… my family and precious Xiang”, the words that weren’t spoken resonated a lot with Adam and his situation. Being alive had caused a lot of suffering but seeing the king before him gives him some hope.

The king finally asks. “Tell me Adam Taurus… what broke you?

Adam swallows again gathering his thoughts. “I …”

Chapter 7

Chapter Text

“I… I was stolen as a child from my mother’s side… my parents were fighting… my memory is fuzzy… there were other kids with me that day...and… and”, Adam has to pause for a moment to gather his thoughts, the events occurring so many years ago.

“And then we were surrounded by a lot of grimm… but there were people with them controlling them”, he closes his eyes, the memories turning even darker.

“They ordered the grimm to kill the others, there was a lot of blood and screams, but I wasn’t killed… they told me I would be useful to her, she wanted me”, Adam then grabs his right arm looking at the prosthesis longingly. “I lost my arm that day… one of her minions cut it off to make everyone believe I was also killed and devoured by the grimm”, he says shuddering, the pain of that day had been terrible, the amount of blood he had lost, how his severed limb laid in a pool of blood twitching, the dying screams of the other children, the scent of blood in the air.

The shaking of ice in a glass snaps him out of it, he looks at Vicious that is offering him a cold glass of water. He hesitates for a few moments before taking the glass and taking a long drink. The faunus quickly hands the glass back to Vicious. “More?”, asks the king, receiving a nod from Adam.

He gets up to refill the glass, taking the chance to give Adam some minutes of respite, knowing that memories like that are a heavy burden upon the soul.

“Is your mo… the woman that gave birth to you, is she still alive”?, Adam asks in curiosity.

Vicious walks back to Adam with the glass filled once more and gives it to the faunus. “No”, he answers, looking at Adam directly, the faunus could detect something dark within those eyes, as if reading his thoughts Vicious elaborates. “We tore her to pieces with our claws and fangs”, the king says for the first time, not struggling to voice his feelings or having to pause to gather his thoughts, flashing his teeth.

Most people would shrink back and squirm upon hearing that answer and the amount of sharp teeth in Vicious mouth, but Adam gives him a small and sincere smile of approval. “Good. What about the one that tortured you?”.

A hint of anger and blood lust shows in Vicious eyes and voice. “Someday...What happened next?”he asks, turning the focal point of the conversation back to Adam, which the faunus accepts, given that his questions have been answered.

“ They took me to her… to Salem…”, he said with a bitter voice, the revelation picked Vicious interest. He knows that she is the grimm queen and had his encounters with her in the past, his old master making deals with her.

“She wanted me to become a tool for rule humans, faunus and end those who opposed her. I became an instrument of chaos and destruction... I was also sent to hunt down those with silver eyes… I harmed the people I loved the most”, he says, voice filled with regret, pain and self loathing.

“By... free will?”, asks the king looking at Adam already knowing the answer, but wanting to make a point across.

Adam takes a moment before shaking his head getting the message. “No… she did something to me… but I can’t remember what exactly”, he says growing, combing through his hazy memories of certain periods of his life. But it’s like a fog, he can’t remember and it causes him to feel helpless.

He can remember very well many instances that he caused pain and misery but he can’t recall how she had managed to make him obey. He knew he had struggled and tried resisting and was punished because of it. Vicious voice breaks him out of his thoughts.

“It’s sufficient… for today”, he knows how overwhelming it can be to revisit old memories, so he won’t ask Adam anymore to share details of his troubling past at the moment. They revisit the topic another day.

“Are you going to tell her too?”, he asks referring to Xiang.

“Only if... you wish to”, is the reply that he receives. He pauses for a moment to contemplate his options, in the end he concludes that at least he owes her this much, after his previous outburst.

“It’s … alright for her to know”, he says nodding.

He feels worn out by today’s events, his body still hasn’t recovered from the panic attacks nor the spar he had with Vicious previously and his injured shoulder. He leans back into his pillows, planning to close his eyes for a little bit, but he unwillingly falls asleep.

Quietly the king continues working on the papers he had previously brought, reflecting on what he had been told today. And keeping watch in case Adam has another panic attack.

Chapter 8

Chapter Text

A couple of days have passed by since Adam’s shoulder dislocated, his arm is still resting in a sling. Training with his weapons effectively would be somewhat of a hassle with just one arm, he could still fight with one arm using Wilt and Blush, but the weapons were used most efficiently with both arms. Otherwise he would need to move even quicker and compensate with extra movement interchanging weapons.

As a way to improve his mental state, Xiang invites the faunus to take a walk within the perimeters of the castle. The day is ideal for a nice walk in the gardens and open spaces inside the walls. There are a few clouds in the sky that every now and then cover the sun, causing a pleasant temperature. In her small talk Xiang told Adam that rain will probably occur in the afternoon.

Today he’s wearing an black eye patch, big enough to cover his eye and brand. And a long sleeved button up black shirt and jeans and boots.

Xiang opted today for a more casual outfit, a sleeveless crimson colored dress with black accents, a simple braid, golden hoops and knee long black boots.

It’s strange not seeing her with any of her elegant gowns or her usual elaborate hairstyles, as well as the antlers he had seen when she had turned into a kirin. It seems like there are no reunions for her at the moment with important people, not that it matters to him.

He had experienced a couple of panic attacks and nightmares, several times waking up screaming. At the start of his stay in the castle, he had just a few, but that’s because of the drugs used to keep him sedated, his severe injuries, and also at that time his mind was busy with plots of escaping or ending his own existence. He didn’t have the chance to truly feel the weight of all things he had done, and now it was crushing him.

At times simple actions would cause an attack leaving him with a sensation of humiliation, weakness and powerlessness. Rozen had explained to him that he wasn’t weak nor he should feel ashamed. Trauma affected people differently and he shouldn’t judge himself so harshly.

Vicious had been spending the nights in his room making sure Adam didn’t injure himself lost in a panic attack. He had no idea how the king spent the night without sleep, simply working on documents or using some kind of device… a small portable computer or a tablet. They still haven't picked up the conversation from the other day.

Xiang spent several hours of the day with him. Meaning he had scarce hours of privacy, it made him feel like a burden, a child not to be trusted with himself.

As if sensing his thoughts Xiang calls to his attention waving her hand in front of him. He curses, he has been spacing a lot on his thoughts and Rozen also commented that it was normal for it to happen.

When he looks in the direction she is pointing he observes a group of people including the two guys that chased him when Vicious was busy, all of them were involved in an intense sparring session.

As they watched the battle Xiang explained to Adam who is who.

One of them is a very tall muscular man with short spiky black hair, golden eyes and a well groomed shadow of a beard and mustache. Currently he is only wearing black ripped jeans, fingerless gloves and boots. What is curious about the man is that a long scaled tail protrudes from his backside, which he uses to swipe at his opponents, between punches and kicks. He also has several scars adorning his body, including whip like marks on his back. His name is Mizer.

The next one is called Sinner, Xiang tells him his nickname is Sin-Sin or simply Sin, the man has sea green eyes, a medium dark skin, purple hair which is styled in a fishtail braid and few freckles on his face. His legs are rather long, he is fit but his muscular structure is smaller than that of Mizer. He is wearing a charcoal tight fit short sleeved top with dark blue jeans and a bandana tied around his neck the same shade as his eyes. This one has very pointy and huge black colored wolf ears and two tails of the same color, Adam thinks that he might be related to Vicious, but he doesn’t know since Sinner has never bothered to speak to him.

These two are the ones that were in charge of chasing him when the king wasn’t around to do so.

Then there is a woman named Rosso, what's more eye-catching about her is that she is wearing a blindfold. Her skin is white as well as her hair, the bottom half of her scalp has been shaved short, the top half of her hair is held in a high ponytail that cascades down to the middle of her back. She is wearing a dark red backless halter top, black leather pants, black leather gloves and Adam has to do a double take on her shoes, the heels of her red combat boots are the cannons of a gun, he isn’t sure if it’s for decoration or if they are an actual weapon. White scales covered her arms, she has a snake tail and unexpectedly wolf ears, he sees her open her mouth for a moment and a forked tongue comes out flicking.

There is also another girl who is much younger and smaller than the other three, around 8 to 9 years old. Her hair is silver almost white in color, it’s being held in a messy bun and her eyes are pale lilac. This one also has canine ears, though they appear to be longer and pointier than those of the other ones, and one… two… three… four, Adam counts 7 bushy and fluffy looking tails. She is wearing knee long black shorts, a pale pink turtleneck and black and white sneakers. Her name is Ghost.

Adam wonders what type of faunus are these, because as far as he knows faunus are only born with one trait and these guys have several, including Xiang herself. He had seen her hands change into sharp reptile claws and the same horns of the time she turned into a kirin appeared in her “normal” body, but some days like today, those features aren’t visible.

Also what’s up with their names, he wonders. Why name someone after sins, misery, ghosts… and Rosso is completely white, why name her red?

As he is about to ask why all of them show more than just one animal trait than regular faunus the sparring stops when the group is aware of Xiang and her companion.

“Hello kids!”, says Xiang happily to them as she waves. After her greeting the four of them go to greet her properly and investigate the man walking besides her.

The greetings vary from “Mama Xiang”, by both Mizer and Rosso, to “Mother” by Ghost and Sinner simply walks up to her and hugs her, she returns his hug immediately.

“Rosso and Ghost, this is Adam, you haven’t met him yet, the faunus that your father rescued from the river in Argus”, she says motioning to Adam.

Rosso chuckles. “Oh the troublemaker that dad or my brothers chased when he tried escaping?”

Adam blushes feeling somewhat embarrassed at her words, she couldn’t see him of course but the others could.

Before he could counter her remark, Mizer approaches him looking at the arm on the sling, easily towering over Adam more than a foot in height. Adam resists the urge of taking a step back and stands his ground.

Mizer flicks a forked tongue at him several times, which Adam is not shocked to see, considering he saw Rosso doing the same. His golden eyes focus on his arm, his slit irises narrowing to barely perceptive slits. Tasting the air he nods. “Well it seems that your arm is recovering nicely, it tastes well”.

Adam blinks looking confused. “My arm… it tastes well? How?

Mizer chuckles “Let’s say I am able to taste the scent particles in the air and I tasted the ones you emit to know, Rosso can do it too”, he explains. Making Rosso flick her tongue again.

Adam feels for a moment that another layer of privacy has been peeled off.

“Don’t feel bad about it dude, we just want to check that you are doing okay”, says Rossos in an attempt to cheer him up, the particles in the air informed her that Adam’s mood had shifted.

“Don’t be so hard on him sweethearts”, says Xiang in warning but using a motherly tone.

“Of course not mama Xiang”, says Rosso, smiling playfully at her.

“When is father coming home?”, asks Ghost.

“He should be home tonight I hope, he went out to investigate something with Yamato”, she says to the child, smiling at her and patting her head. “Did you need something little one? Did something happen?”, ask Xiang.

The girl shakes her head “I just wanted to ask him if he wanted to train with me today”.

“Oh so that’s why you were here with your older siblings. Tell you what darling, would you like to come with me and Adam here, have some tea with us later and I promise I can help you train later”, she says.

The girl’s mood lightens at hearing Xiang's words. “If you have the time it would be great”.

“I would love to Ghost… where are your siblings Vex and Hex at?”, she asks curiously, it was rare to see Ghost without her other two siblings.

“They were going to see Rozen for Hex medicine”, at her words Xiang stiffens for a moment before she frowns.

“Adam please could you stay with them for a moment, I need to check on Vex and Hex real quick”, she says, walking fast to where Rozen clinic is located.

“sh*t, she must be here”, says Rosso grimacing, the mood in the group turns sour instantly, Ghost especially catching up with what Rosso said, Adam feels completely lost.

“I hope the hag is not there”, says Mizer, eyes narrow and a puff of smoke comes out of his nose.

“Who is this hag?”, asks Adam.

Ghost answers his question and a disgusted expression adorns her face. “The woman that gave birth to me…”.

Chapter 9

Chapter Text

“Your birth mother, you mean? Didn’t you just call Xiang mother?”, not that any of this situation mattered to him. But then again if he is going to stay here and it seems his stay might be a long one, it’s best he could understand what is the situation.

“She is not my mother, she never will!!! That woman is the worst, she didn’t care if me or my siblings got tortured, she would have let me die as soon as I was born… but father, even if he isn’t my blood he didn’t let me die… he didn’t let me…”, the last part she said almost sobbing.

Adam feels his chest aching, a lot of emotions sitting within him. He looks at the others not knowing what to say, his intention wasn’t to upset the girl. Suddenly he gets hit by an unexpected memory or better to say the lack of memory. He blinks slowly processing his thoughts. “I can’t remember my parents faces… why?”, he says almost quietly but the others with sensitive ears heard him.

The other day when he was speaking with Vicious about his past, he mentioned that he remembered that his parents fought the day he was kidnapped by Salem’s minions but now that he thinks about it, he didn’t dwell on how they looked, nor the looks of the kids that died that day.

“Hey Adam are you okay?”, Adam blinks, focusing again on his surroundings and looking down he spots Mizer’s tail wrapped into his middle. “What…?”, he looks confused at Mizer.

“You zoned out and then your knees buckled”, explains Mizer to Adam. Making the faunus frown again.

“Was it a panic attack?”, asks Rosso.

“I.. I am not sure… it's just that... I can’t remember my parent’s faces anymore”, he mutters in embarrassment, what the hell is he doing sharing his personal thoughts like that.

“Ah”, says Rosso, clicking her tongue catching Adam’s attention. “Intense trauma can make you forget things or repress memories”.

“Maybe you need to wait for some time to remember”, she adds.

He nods, staring at the ground, before he looks back at the young girl that he almost made cry. “I apologize… it was not my intention to make you upset”.

Before Ghost can reply to him, Rosso intervenes. “Don’t be so harsh on him Ghost, he didn’t know about the family situation”.

The girl is quiet for a moment before she nods. “It’s okay, Rosso is right you didn’t know… I am sorry for snapping at you”.

Adam is about to tell her that she doesn’t need to apologize to him, when Xiang reappears with two teens. She is carrying a young boy in her arms, he is resting his head on her shoulder. A taller girl is following close behind her.

Both of them have pale silver colored hair and the same length about shoulder long. The girl’s eyes were green and the boy’s yellow.

The girl is wearing some baggy green pants and a cream colored crop top, along with high top cream and yellow sneakers. She has 2 black wolf tails and black wolf ears, there are several silver hops on her right ear.

The boy is shorter than Ghost, he is wearing cargo pants, a yellow jacket and a white shirt underneath, his shoes are the same style as the girl but solid white. Unlike the girl he has only one single tail the same color as his hair, and two ears also pale silver colored, they are pinned back against his head. His yellow eyes are puffy and red, it seems like he had been crying, his breathing heavy.

Ghost gasps worried and immediately runs towards Xiang, Rosso, Mizer and Sinner follow her closely, Adam decides to stay where he is not wanting to intrude. Still he is close enough to listen to what they are saying.

“We gave him a dose of his medication, he should recover soon, right sweetheart?”, she says while looking at the boy in her arms. He nods still breathing somewhat agitated, his eyes open wide.

“What did she do to him?”, asks Ghost angrily.

“Verbal lashing, you know how she is, but don’t worry I have dealt with her.”

“I can take him Mama Xiang”, says Mizer approaching her. “Come on little brother, we can play some board games, read a book or whatever you want while we wait for father”, Mizer speaks gently to the terrified teen in Xiang’s arms, lowering himself to eye level. For a moment he hesitates, before he flings himself into his older brother hugging his neck sobbing.

Mizer adjusts his grip on the boy so he wouldn’t fall from his arms, he nods to Xiang before he begins walking away, followed by his other siblings.

Ghost pauses for a moment looking at Xiang. “Mother can we have tea and train another time?”

Xiang flashes her a bright smile before nodding. “Of course sweetheart, whenever you wish to”.

Xiang watches the group leave, before letting out a sigh and her shoulders slump. Damn woman, if she had never wanted to raise her kids or be involved in their lives, why is she always such a pain.

This time Adam is the one to seize her attention clearing his throat. “Should I go back to my room or...?”, he asks unsure on how to proceed.

Xiang looks at him shaking her head. “There is no need for you to go back yet if you don’t want to, I was about to suggest going for some tea. What do you think Adam, would you like to join me?”

Adam nods after a little while, he doesn’t want to go back to his room yet, he rarely gets to see the inside of the castle, if you count the amount of times he tried to escape.

“Excellent. Those two were Vex and Hex, Vex is the girl and Hex is the boy”, says Xiang leading the way.

He stops for a moment before looking back at Xiang. “I made a mistake, I made the one named Ghost angry…”

Xiang looks at him, raising an eyebrow. “What did you do?”

“I referred to the wrong woman as her mother apparently”, he explains.

“Inola, she doesn’t care if they live or die, she would allow them to be taken and tortured for all she cared. However she is always the first to deliver painful words to them when they cross paths, she is infuriating… if she would just pretend that they didn’t exist and leave them alone”, says Xiang in anger.

Adam frowns hearing the information. “Why?”

“Let’s sit down and talk”, she says as she begins walking again.

Chapter 10

Chapter Text

The duo keeps walking through the castle grounds, passing through a garden with several fruit bearing trees that he has never seen before and a fish pond, he stops a second observing the fish closer. One type of fish, their bodies look like they are made of glass and crystal, they have a very faint coloration, so light that you could see right through them to the bottom of the pond, but unlike transparent fish curiously, the insides of the fish aren’t visible. There are others whose bodies are composed of armor like plates, their colors however remind him of a lot of koi fish, some of them were only white and black and their markings look skeleton-like.

Xiang notices that he has stopped and smiles at him. “Do you like them? The transparent ones are called Murano and the ones with the plate like scales are known as Gauntlet fish”.

“I have never seen these types of fish before… Where am I, Xiang? Why do the faunus here have some many animal traits? What…?”, he stops when Xiang raises her palm.

“You are in Mythos and we aren’t faunus”, she points to a door, where one of her offices is located, before walking to it and opening the door, holding it open for him to enter.

“Mythos?”, he says frowning thinking where in remnant this place could be located. Her second answer intrigues him also. “Not a faunus you say?”.

He enters Xiang’s office taking a look at it. The walls are medium grey, there are two dark blue heavy duty sofas and a couple of armchairs the same color, a large dark brown coffee table in the middle. A bit further there is a kitchenette and a small dining room set with four sturdy chairs and an equally sturdy table, the same shade of dark brown as the coffee table.

At the furthest corner there is a large desk, with a laptop and neat paper piles. Behind it there are bookcases filled with books of all shapes and colors.

This office was decorated in darker colors mostly, but the natural light that enters through the windows makes it lighter.

In one of the walls there are two large maps, one of whole remnant and another one with the dragon shaped unnamed continent. At least that’s what he has always understood that this continent was inhibited, but as he looks at the map he can see that it’s a political map divided into kingdoms.

Xiang approaches him and knows what he is thinking. “From Argus that is on Anima, you were brought here to Mythos continent”, she says pointing to the different continents with her finger, then she moves to mark Haruna in Mythos. “And within Mythos, you are now in Haruna”, she explains.

Adam blinks slowly trying to comprehend the information that he had been told. “It has been taught that the unnamed continent… Mythos nobody lived there… well here”.

“When the gods of light and darkness punished humanity we were untouched and isolated since we didn’t involve ourselves with humanity’s ambition, magic is strong here within my kind, unlike humans and faunus, because of that we don’t have the need for a semblance”.

She walks into the kitchenette looking into the cupboards and placing a kettle in the fire. She takes two cups for tea and a teapot and places them on a tray, preparing other supplies to take into the coffee table once the tea has been brewed. She is happy to find that some sweets have been left per her request on the counter.

Adam stays where he is observing the map, before speaking once more. “What are you Xiang?”

“My kind refers to themselves as were-beasts, we are older than humanity and faunus and live a much longer lifespan, we can live several millennia. We can transform at will into different types of beast, depending on the lineage. You saw my other complete form, my bloodline is mostly composed of kirins, dragons and other kinds of scaled creatures”.

Adam is shocked at the revelation. “Wait you mean you can live thousands of years… just how old are you?”, he blushes suddenly at the impulse of his question. “Sorry… I”.

Xiang bursts up laughing having to place whatever trinkets she had on her hands for fear of dropping them. “It’s okay Adam”, she says when she gets a hold of herself, using the back of her hand to dry the tears that had gathered on the corner of her eyes. “I still don’t reach the 1,000 years old mark, I am currently at 746”.

Adam is blushing madly, embarrassed, seppuku doesn’t sound so bad right now, if only he had Wilt with him.

Xiang shakes her head smiling. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you, but it was so funny”. She takes the tray to the coffee table. “We were created by the Gods of Light and Darkness. I daresay many thousands upon thousands of years before they started their bickering, then we were forgotten after that, and they focused on competing and all that mess, my kind didn’t wish to be involved in their feud either. Please have some tea and some sweets”, she says pushing the tray closer to him.

Adam inspects first what type of tea is it and since it’s lavender he decides to add a bit of honey and picks up a blueberry scone. He lets out a satisfied grunt of approval when he bites into it, it’s delicious.

“So what other questions do you have?”, asks Xiang after a while, letting Adam enjoy the tea and treat.

Adam thinks for a moment, if he should ask for more lore or about the “children” he met today.

“Were none of those we met yours?”, he asks, finally making his choice.

Xiang shakes her head. “Not by blood at least, Vicious and I haven’t gotten around to have children of our own yet. Time was needed for him and his family… Well they are my family also now, they needed time to adjust… most of the mothers died for one or other reason. The situation with Inola is pretty complex”.

Adam finishes his tea and pastry, he chooses to refill his cup and pick up another pastry, a lemon bar.

“Unfortunately none of those children were conceived willingly by either of the parts, different drugs and substances were used for it”, she sighs while Adam looks at her shocked, that means that…

“The hands of everyone prisoner was tied, death wasn’t even a mean of escape, the man that imprisoned Vicious and his family practices necromancy and is very powerful, he killed a lot of Vicious pups, but the consequences would be had been dire if a pup died, if it wasn’t by that tyrant’s hands.”, she looks at Adam and he has a horrified expression on his face.

“Why… why would he...?”, he can even finish the sentence, the lemon bar has fallen from his hand into the table.

“Power, the man if we can call it that, always wants more and more, to control everything. He wanted to create more warriors like Vicious, take over Mythos and then the rest of the world. And he’s still trying, the battles are brutal, his goals seem similar to those of Salem.”, she explains.

Chapter 11

Chapter Text

Xiang’s looks upwards, her brows furrowed in concentration, silently she gets from her seat and walks to the kitchenette, she fills the kettle with water to brew more tea, this one has more lavender and chamomile. “We will continue in a moment Adam, I apologize but Beloved is unsettled, his aura is normally undetectable when he is here, but he must have found out what happened with Inola and the children”.

Adam tilts his head to the side hearing Xiang’s explanation. It causes him to remember something, it was one of the ways he had tracked Blake.

Closing his eyes Adam concentrates, breathing in and out slowly. His aura expanding out first within the confines of the office he is currently at and then beyond, it crosses the garden which they came through as it does he can feel different auras and their states, for some reason they are moving hastily across the garden. And then he stops when he hits a wall made out of pure bloodlust, he shoots up from his seat gasping for air, clenching his throat with a hand, the other arm on the sling pressing closer to his ribs. The feeling had been akin to what he felt when he drowned in Argus.

“Oh goodness are you alright Adam?”, asks Xiang startled by Adam’s sudden movements, almost dropping the tea in process.

He takes a couple of deep breaths to calm his racing heart. He is not drowning, he is on solid ground with Xiang in her office, he repeats that sentence several times in his mind, he doesn’t want to have another panic attack, not right now. “Is he safe? The amount of bloodlust I felt on his aura is insane”.

“Believe me when I say that we are.”, she walks back to the coffee table with a huge cup of freshly brewed tea and a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

The door to the office opens quietly and slowly, Vicious steps inside his face not betraying how he is feeling on the inside, gently he closes the door. But Adam can certainly feel the bloodlust permeating from Vicious being and then he freezes when he sees Vicious predatory eyes. They are not their normal blue and green color, but two different shades of red, the iris is crimson red and the pupil is dark wine, they seem to be glowing.

Vicious is currently wearing a skin tight black leather suit with belts and a few zippers through it, as well as black combat boots and fingerless gloves. His mid back length hair is contained in a high ponytail.

Adam without meaning to start to shake, his breaths quicken, his skin pales several shades and he begins swaying on his feet a panic attack begins. Xiang approaches, standing in front of him and grabbing his arms forcing him to focus on her and her calm red eyes. “You seem to have seen a ghost, why don’t you sit down? Beloved won’t hurt you.”

Adam nods, fighting down the terror he feels and obeys without question, not having the will to, he clasps his hands to stop them from shaking, his palms sweating.

Vicious looks like he is about to leave the room not wanting Adam’s panic attack to get stronger, but Xiang links her arm to his, not letting him go. “Come one Beloved I made you some fresh tea”.

He doesn’t resist as she takes him to the sofa opposite to Adam, the sofa creaking when he sits down. Xiang reaches for both his cup of tea and hands it to him. Before placing her cup closer. She spies Adam still shaking a bit looking warily at Vicious. Xiang takes a step further to calm both and to keep Vicious from fidgeting with his free hand, she plops down on the tall man's lap, drinking her own tea.

“Boys please take deep breaths alright, Vicious my love your eyes are red as blood right now, I know you are furious but that’s affecting Adam, the room is thick with bloodlust”, she says grabbing his huge hand on hers,placing her now empty cup of tea back in the table and tracing patterns on the back of his hand with her finger.

Vicious downs his tea quickly placing it on the table in front of him, before lowering his head and burying his face in Xiang’s blond hair, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths like she told him to, taking in her scent, his other hand resting on her lap.

Xiang takes a look at Adam and sees that the faunus has calmed down enough to sink back into the sofa.

The trio stays in complete silence until Vicious raises his head and his eye color is not red anymore but still pinkish.

Xiang looks up at him and smiles before kissing him. “Better Beloved?”

Vicious nods, he looks at the table and knowing what he wants Xiang reaches it for him. She grabs the cigarettes and the lighter, lighting one for him, almost immediately the scent of cinnamon floods the office. Which is a complete surprise for Adam, all the cigarette scents he had felt before stank badly.

Thanking her, he takes the cigarette into his finger and takes a long drag, before he speaks. “I apologize, if I frightened you Adam… it wasn’t my intention”.

Adam shakes his head. “It wasn’t you… it was… your eyes and your aura”, he stops taking a sigh, it's still painful to talk about it, but he has to. “The day you found me dead, I had two stab wounds, one was from Blake and the other from Yang.”

He takes a deep breath and closes his fists to stop them from shaking, before he continues. “When we were ordered to make Beacon fall, I cut Yang’s arm off and stabbed Blake”, unconsciously he tightens his fake arm closer to his body. “They loved to make me remember the pain and the trauma of having my own arm cut off by doing the same to other people.”

He looks back at Vicious, his eyes are still pink, but they have gone back closer to being red. “I am not afraid of you, it’s just that when Yang activates her semblance, her eyes get red and they glow and the bloodlust you were projecting reminded me of one of Salem’s men called Tyrian Callows”.

“That would be the serial killer scorpion faunus?”, asks Xiang.

Adam nods in confirmation.

Vicious observes him for a moment thinking how to phrase his words and connecting the dots. “ Was Tyrian… the one to cut your arm?”, and just like he thought Adam tenses, he lets out a sigh to calm himself before answering the question.

“He pushed me down into the blood filled ground and used his tail to stretch my arm out, as another one of Salem’s men cut it off, using a jagged edge blade slowly to make it look like a grimm bit my arm off”.

Xiang, knowing the conversation is taking a darker turn, gets off her husband’s lap and stands beside him. “Adam is it okay for me to remain in this conversation, are you comfortable? I can step out if you need me too, I know you are sensitive about your past”

Adam is about to tell her that this is her office, he wasn’t about to quick her out but stops for a moment considering his choice of words. Taking into account that the queen, the ruler of this country he is currently at, has allowed him to remain in this place and recover and right now she is even offering to leave her own space so he could feel comfortable the action humbles him.

Adam tries to smile at her but it comes out strained, not her fault at all. “It’s okay, it’s just...”, he swallows what remains of his pride before he finishes his sentence. “It’s just hard, especially when I didn’t think I was going to live”.

Xiang refills all the teacups before sitting down. “It will be alright, you are going to be fine, don’t forget we want to help you”, Vicious nods at her words agreeing completely.

“Thank you”.

Chapter 12

Chapter Text

“So what happened after?”asks Vicious as a continuation of their previous conversation. He presses the cigarette stub against the ashtray, before taking another one from the cartoon, quickly lighting it with the lighter and taking another long drag.

“I woke up in Salem’s castle strapped to a metal table, then her men began to experiment and torture me”, the faunus says the last part in a whisper looking at the ground once more, hugging himself with his prosthetic arm. “They did everything they could to make me hate humanity”

“For a while it worked. I helped them into luring silver eyed warriors for them to kill, playing the part of an injured and lost child, but I grew sick of it, I didn’t want to anymore… even if I got hurt for refusing. So they sent me to another hell…”, he shudders at the memories.

“The dust mines is it?”, asks Xiang.

“Yes, any mistake I made, I paid dearly, the overseers made sure that no matter how small or big the mistake was, the punishment would be harsher that it would be for anyone else”, he sighs, looking at the duo in front of him, the king’s eyes were still a strong pink color almost red.

“Tell me something, why the brand in the eye?, Xiang asks looking back straight at him.

Adam sighs again looking at the floor for several long seconds before answering her question. “Stupidity on my part I thought I could run away that I was strong enough to do so”.

Xiang got up from her seat and began pacing across the room to control her temper.

“Eventually after several years in that hell, I managed to escape after I killed some of the guards, I accidentally discovered my semblance while holding a pickaxe”, then he lets out a bitter laugh before he continues. “An illusion of freedom no matter how much I ran or tried to hide I was found, I was dragged back into her lair to be tortured and trained”.

Xiang walks to the kitchenette and grabs a pitcher of water from the fridge along with some empty glasses. She offers one glass of water to Adam, he takes it and downs the glass quickly. He is somewhat startled when Vicious speaks not expecting him to do so.

“The ones that hurt you mostly were always humans, with the exception of Callows?”, thankfully the king’s eyes were not focussed on him but on the third cigarette that he is currently igniting. Xiang’s eyes despite being red and having blond hair looking like an enraged Yang didn't trigger his memories so much, because Xiang didn’t so much project her rage or bloodlust with her aura like Vicious did.

“Yes, as I stated before she wanted me to hurt humanity… but also the faunus”.

“How did she manage to make you hurt the faunus too”?Xiang sits down once again.

“She did something to me but I am still unsure what it was exactly, my thoughts and actions weren’t my own. When I was “released” and saved by the White Fang after being left for death by my human owners, I slowly climbed up the ranks, befriended important people…. And I met Blake and her parents Ghira and Khali Belladonna as well as Sienna Khan and Banesaw. ”.

He serves himself more water and drinks it wishing that it would be some kind of liquor instead.

“I climbed through the ranks slowly pushing to more violent means to deal with human oppression and they were accepted by most of the members. The mentality of the group changed, human casualties weren’t that frowned upon, not when so many faunus were suffered or perished because of humans”.

“However Sienna Khan stood in the way to take down Haven’s Academy which failed thanks to Blake and her friends, after Mountain Glenn and The Fall of Beacon the White Fang suffered heavy losses, but the grudge against humanity grew in those two instances. I assassinated Sienna and blamed it on a human assassin”.

“She used you to create a further division within faunus, those that wanted to obtain equality through peaceful means and others using violence and between human and faunus, they would be more hesitation and distrust to work together to face the threat of Grimm and eventually Salem”, he nods in response to her observations.

“Who were they to you, the people you mentioned by name?”

Adam smiles bitterly. “They were my everything. Khali was like my mother, Ghira and Banesaw like my fathers, Sienna was like an older sister… and Blake was and is the person that I love the most…but all that is over”.

And the admission hurts terribly, how much he had lost, all that could never be. A lump forms in his throat and moisture begins to gather at the corner of his unbranded eye, he had lost the ability to form tears on his left eye, the tear ducts burned and cauterized. He furious blink willing the tears away before they could shed.

“Do you wish to stop Adam?”asks Vicious, avoiding looking at the faunus directly.

Adam shakes his head. “No I will be alright”, he takes several deep breaths to steel his resolve. “After Haven’s Academy failure I went back to the White Fang HQ and murdered several soldiers and some high ranking officers to throw the organization in chaos. Then Salem ordered me to follow Blake and her friends to murder as much of them as I could, especially one with Silver Eyes called Ruby Rose”.

“They used my feelings for Blake and twisted them into a sick obsession, if she wasn’t going to be mine, nobody else would have her. I made sure that she was alone to hunt her down, in the process I murdered some guards atop the Radio Tower in Argus. We fought and almost ended her life but by luck Yang had arrived. She threw her motorcycle at me, the hit made me jolt into awareness of what I was doing, however I couldn’t control my body nor my words. I struggled against myself and managed to hold back avoiding causing fatal injury to them”.

He takes a deep breath looking up at the ceiling, his voice weary. “When Yang managed to disarm me and later when she and Blake managed to stab me, I was incredibly grateful, I could finally let go and be free, I would never be someone else's puppet or weapon, I wouldn’t cause any more pain nor misery”.

“Now it’s more clear to us why you tried taking your life so many times. But now you have a second chance at life Adam, it can be different now”, says Xiang trying to cheer Adam up.

Adam looks at her and then down into his fake hand. “I still don’t feel sure if I deserve a second chance, all the terrible things I did…”.

Xiang sets up and walks to him, placing a hand under his chin. “Yes you do, you aren’t a monster Adam, you can’t undo the things you did in the past, but you can make them better, it won’t be easy. Beloved is doing very well with his second chance, I don’t see why you shouldn’t be able to”.

“The guilt will never go away… it just gets easier to breathe”, offers the king as insight on his current situation.

Xiang gives her husband a huge smile. “Everything will be alright!”.

Adam nods at their words, when he then remembers something Xiang told him previously. “You mentioned magic, you don’t need to use dust at all?”

“Dust is still used here, but we don’t have to fall back to it, like the rest of Remnant does”. Looking at him she smirks before taking a deep breath, releasing it and causing a small stream of fire to come out of her mouth, startling Adam, he wasn’t expecting the light show.

Vicious follows suit placing another cigarette on his lips and a small electrical discharge exits from his finger lighting it.

Adam grimaces “I remember you electrocuted me. But then what about your bones?”.

“From my father”, he clarifies.

Adam lets out a yawn, feeling exhausted with the whirlwind of emotions he was subjected to today. He still has some questions but that will be for another day.

Chapter 13

Chapter Text

Thanks to the medical technology and treatment in Haruna Adam only needs to use the sling for a week and has been told that he needs rehabilitation for his shoulder for 2 to 3 months. The normal treatment available for those that could afford care back in the other continents could be for several months and even up to a year in more severe cases.

One important step taken in his healing is therapy, several times a week he reunites with Rozen and discusses several important events regarding his past. Rozen is not a certified mental health worker but Adam doesn’t trust anyone besides Vicious and Xiang with this matter. However being the good doctor and avid learner he had delved in the topic of mental health to offer the best care he possibly could. And it doesn’t hurt that he is also in charge of Vicious and some of his kids therapy.

Another major issue that has been addressed is his lung, the one that got stabbed twice, the previous surgery that Rozen had performed helped heal a lot of damage.

As he regained more independence and health back, Rozen had advised him on what exercises he could perform to slowly regain his normal stamina or even more, including practicing with Blush and Wilt. He had noticed slightly on his short spar with Vicious that his breath shortened somewhat and then the panic attack hit him before he could analyze the situation.

It would have been impossible for him that he would come out unscathed from getting stabbed twice in the same place. But Rozen had also assured him that he would heal and he could go back or even get stronger than before.

Adam cannot abandon the castle but he has been allowed to exit his room and take a walk inside certain areas within its walls. He has taken this newfound freedom to explore more gardens, libraries (he even borrowed a couple of books), some of the training areas among other things.

More importantly he met other people, but that it’s not all. He learned more things about Vicious and of his family drama. Like he isn’t the king of Haruna, the king or future king is Yamato, which is Xiang’s son but he is also son to a cousin of Vicious, a guy named Blaze meaning Yamato would be Vicious nephew or cousin? He isn’t so sure.

He met Yamato himself a couple of days ago, the same Yamato that apparently in the past held a sword to Vicious' head, the one that Vicious tried to kill. And now they are thick as thieves.

Despite that Vicious is still a king because he had gone and conquered a couple of kingdoms that had been making the life of Haruna and several others difficult. He united them under one and christened it Baikal, straightened things up (a few idiots ended dead after trying to challenge him and the remaining one were smart enough not to try anything funny at that time) and promoted (forced) changes to customs that would be considered barbaric. Every now and then he went to his kingdom to oversee some matters (including handling idiots that craved to make things go back as they were) but mostly he lets one of his offspring run things.

Adam ponders all this as he stretches then he breaks into a light jog intent on arriving at one of the training arenas after warming up. His arm is free from the confines of the sling and he plans on getting fit again. He doesn’t know what he will do in the future but so far he has concluded that what is best for him is to take one day at a time.

Three quarters to his destination he hears some noise and looks behind him, to find the girl called Ghost running behind him.

“Mister Adam”, she greets him in a relaxed voice.

“Miss Ghost”, he acknowledges her, once he does she speeds up a little to match his speed.

“Are you going to train today at one of the arenas?”, she says while looking at the weapons strapped to his hip.

“Yes”, he answers after a moment of deliberation and mostly out of curiosity.

Ghost looks at him directly before speaking again. “Could I please join you sir?” The girl has an odachi sword hanging on each hip, the scabbards are lilac and silver.

Adam nods before asking.“And what do you hope to gain by tagging along?”

Ghost gives him a small smile while blushing a little. “Well maybe a mentor… and I have heard that you practice Iaido and none of my family practices it... so…”

Her words make him remember when Blake made the same request, when she asked him to teach her how to fight. And for a moment he is transported to the past. He shakes his head to rid of the memories, the past is no more, he needs to focus in the future.

The duo arrives at the arena and Adam turns to face her. “What do you know about Iaido?”

“I found a book in the library that explains some of the basic movements but it doesn’t go further into detail, so I am not sure if I am doing it correctly”.

“Alright I am going to show you some basic kata and I want you to follow”.

The girl nods enthusiastically and does her best to follow his lead. He stops every now and then to correct her. Once they are done and at Ghost's insistence Adam agrees to spar with her.

Walking to the opposites of the arena they take their respective battle stances and then they launch at each other at the same time. Ghost has to roll to the side to avoid a fast slash from Wilt, following the movement she draws Lux (the blade of this sword is white) and Ombra (the blade of this sword is black) and slashes them aiming to Adam’s side.

He is quick to parry using blush and wilt in a x form before pushing her back. She staggers and he slams the pommel of Wilt on her stomach, Ghost lessens the blow using the pommel of Ombra to absorb part of the impact. Still she is left gasping for breath, Adam thinks of giving her a moment to recover, she is still young and there is no reason to push her too hard.

He is surprised however that Ghost doesn’t take the moment to catch her breath but she is back to attacking. Now he is the one that has to dodge as she moves in a flurry of swipes and slashes. “I am not made out of glass Mr. Adam”, she says grinning.

Adam smirks at her. “If you say so”.

The faunus decides to be more aggressive with his attacks and Ghost responds. Soon their fight moves to complex footwork, stabs and slashes one trying to make the other stumble.

Adam pushes her more and more due to his age and experience he causes her to commit an error, she makes swipes both swords at him too wide for her to parry back quickly.

Using the opening he fires Wilt using Blush, the pommel hitting the pit of her stomach making her lose focus and cough for breath. He follows by using the butt of Blush and hitting her right shoulder making Ghost let go of Ombre and Ghost tries to attack with Lux to make him back off, but he slaps the weapon aside with Wilt and suddenly steps close to her, swiping her foot at her legs fast and hard, causing her to lose balance and fall on her back.

Ghost falls with a yelp and quickly feels the cold tip of Wilt on her throat. She looks up and sees Adam looking down at her with a small smirk but not one of mockery. “You win Mr. Adam”.

He sheats Wilt and once more restis his weapons on his hip before he offers his right hand to help Ghost up. “You have a lot of potential, miss Ghost”. He is feeling a bit winded due to the past injuries to his lung.

“Please just Ghost”.

“Then you can call me Adam”.

“Alright Adam, can we train again tomorrow?”, she asks expectantly.

Adam nods, it would be good for him to have a sparring partner closer to the level he is right now and slowly build himself back up.

Hiding in one of the roofs not so far away Vicious, Xiang, Mizer, Rosso, and Sinner are looking. They have been betting on who would win that fight, Vicious and Rosso won the round, sharing the loot while hearing the disappointed groans and complaints from the others. The next bet to take place is how long it would take for Vex and Hex to join their younger sister and Adam. Vicious said a week, Xiang 2 weeks, Mizer a week and a half, Sinner took a gamble and signed tomorrow, Rosso said a month.

To everyone's surprise the bet has to be forfeit since right then and there. The two teens arrive running to the arena with all types of questions since they had been observing the fight too and they finally ask Adam to let them join him and Ghost next time. Adam remains in stunned silence for almost 2 minutes until he recovers, he gives them a nod as an answer, not believing the situation yet.

A movement made him look up towards the roof, where he spotted the group of people looking down at them, Rosso and Sinner grin and give him the thumbs up. He fights the blush that threatened to overtake him, how long had they been watching, he dares not to ask.

The kids turn to the direction he is looking at before waving, Adam feels mortified.

Chapter 14

Chapter Text

Adam trains almost everyday with the trio of kids, though Ghost remains the only one to ask to learn Iaido from him, the other two simply wish to better themselves with their own fighting styles.

He also spars with others he had already met. The sparring sessions allowed him a more private glimpse on his new allies… friends (yes they are his friends)... abilities.

For starters Xiang beat him when they fought again, she argued that previously he caught her by surprise on their first fight. Besides he was wounded and she didn’t want to accidentally murder him.

Her weapon of choice is a three section staff with a hidden blade at both ends, the staff is fireproof which she took advantage of in their match, breathing fire on it and turning it into a flaming nightmare. The name of the weapon is Ifrit, but Adam insists on calling it “The Flaming Nightmare”.

Rosso is not blind like he previously thought. The woman is actually an albino and uses thick bandages during the day to cover her sensitive cherry red eyes. She is an excellent shooter with or without a blindfold, during the day she fights using her hearing, at night she can take the blindfold off, but she doesn’t always do it.

She belongs to a class of warriors called gun mages, a subdivision of what would be a weapon mage. She made a demonstration on how uttering a few words some tattoo-like markings appeared on her body and she called forth different firearms, she could also make her shoes change to host a different array of guns as their heel.

Rosso has taken him under his wing to help him sharpen his shooting skills, he doesn’t possess her acute hearing but he does have a great aura control that allows him to inspect his environment. He can use an ability similar to echolocation with his aura, which is how he fought and chased Blake without having to use his sight and compensated when necessary to protect his blind side.

Adam isn’t bad shooting at a distance, despite only having only one functional eye, which could mess up with depth perception, but Rosso showed him a few tricks to get better.

Rosso gifted him a pair of handguns to carry around for extra protection. He also received several throwing knives from Sinner in a previous training session, he too has trained as a weapon mage. Unlike Rosso, Sinner uses a larger variety of weapons.

He now needs some new clothing to accommodate the extra weapons and keep them hidden from sight.

Mizer of all things he considered the man could be, battle mage isn’t among them. Imagine his shock sparring with the man and he starts casting spells left and right. The experience is not different to fighting against someone with a weapon with multi dust cartridges or against multiple people, but he could cast the spells at a rapid rate using both his voice and manipulating his inner magic and the magic all around the environment.

For the moment Vicious has declined sparring with him again, giving him time to build himself back up and avoid a potential panic attack.

For that reason today he is planning to go and spar with Mizer.

The trio of kids are busy with their classes and won't be around to train with him until the afternoon.

He takes a communicator from his pocket, the device is very similar to a scroll and texts Mizer, hoping the man is around and not busy. As he pockets the communicator, it buzzes loudly, he is about to take it back out when a loud explosion rocks the place. He doesn’t duck or move to take cover, his first instinct is to draw out his blade as he does, he parries a hit from a spiky tail, he pushes back at the teryx before it can try to claw or bite him. The grimm let’s out an annoyed sound and stupidly tries again only to be cut in half by a quick movement from Adam.

Adam jumps back dodging another attack while doing so he casts a quick glance at his surroundings there are flying grimm invading the air space from the castle. Determined he takes a stance, after taking a deep breath verifying that his aura is active he explodes into motion. His target is a group of teryx that are looking for a place to land.

Adam sprints to the trunk of a nearby tree using the trunk as leverage; he is upon them in an instant, too fast for them to react and slashes them to pieces. When he lands he takes the communicator out and reads a warning message that some grimm have slipped past the defenses in the borders and are within the city and the castle. The citizens are urged to act with caution and if necessary and able to help in taking them out.

The sounds of fighting, roars, magic, dust and explosions fills ears. Making up his mind he chooses to honor the orders of his guardians, well friends, there he said, and stay inside the perimeter of the castle defending it. Taking in another breath to steady himself he uses his aura to feel the inhabitants of the castle, grimm have no aura but the people do. He searches for those that seem to have taken damage or aren’t that strong.

He finds one not far away from him, not wasting precious time he sprints jumping over tiled roofs and stone walls. When he arrives he finds a couple of workers from the castle that have banded together shielding an injured soldier with a deep wound on his stomach.

One of them has grabbed the soldier’s weapon, a two handed sword and she is brandishing the sword to keep the grimm at bay. A young looking man is using a metal bar to help her put, while the remaining two girls are tending to the soldier’s wound, tearing what clothing they could to wrap around the wound and keep staunch the blood flow.

A pack of griffon and sabyr has them surrounded. Adam shoots Wilt out of its scabbard with Blush, this time the blade instead of aiming to stun it pierces the lunging sabyr’s neck, with a quick tug he frees the blade as the grimm disintegrates. He fires Wilt in the open mouth of one of the griffon’s, he parries a couple of hits from the grimm to charge his semblance. He doesn’t use it yet, saving it if the situation turns dire.

Instead gathering his strength he throws his sword in a spinning motion cutting down several of the grimm. Two sabyr that didn’t get hit jump at him, he ducks under the first one avoiding it’s claws and fangs before punching it hard enough to puncture it’s abdomen with his metal fist, the grimm falling with a heavy thud and dissolving. The other one as the sword is approaching Adam, he waits for the precise moment to interrupt it’s motion using his metal arm, kicks the hilt of the sword and impales the grimm’s head. He gathers his blade and sheaths it, having gotten rid of the nearby grimm.

He looks at the group of people near him. “I can open a path so you can get to safety”, nodding, the two girls that had been tending the soldier gently drape his arms over their shoulders, while the girl with the broadsword and the man with the metal bar guard the back. Adam leads them to where he can sense a high concentration of people.

He takes care of any grimm that dare to approach them. Unsheathing Wilt for devastating slashes, too fast for the naked eye to follow and resheathing it once more ready to cut.

Successfully he takes the group to a large conference room that is being fiercely protected by soldiers, he is left in awe by the number of people that have taken their beastly forms and the size of several of them, so far he has only seen Xiang’s form, he doesn’t know who is who since he hasn’t seen them change, maybe using his aura he could figure it but there is no time to waste.

He takes off again being used to fighting alone, he is not sure on who he could ask for help or if he is overstepping boundaries. And then he isn’t alone anymore, Mizer lands beside him, in his right hand a staff with a double headed ax at each end, made out completely from bones and almost as tall as him. He seems to have discarded his shirt , only wearing short pants that reach mid thigh, that show very muscular legs and more scars and he is also barefoot.

Adam does a double take but the words die on his tongue. It’s not his business but he can’t help to wonder why the hell Mizer is fighting barely wearing any clothes or shoes for that matter. Mizer looks at him with intense golden eyes. “Still alive I see”, he says in a teasing manner.

Adam just nods unsure on how to respond. Mizer places a hand over his shoulder smirking. “Good job protecting the people, let’s take the trash out!”, he takes off, Adam following him closely.

Chapter 15

Chapter Text

The duo tear to pieces any grimm they find, Adam takes a second to catch his breath as Mizer scans the area for any potential threat, in the large open courtyard they are in. Several trees and plants populate the area, along with a fountain. The floor is made from soil and grass, there are pathways made from stone.

To the inner edge of the courtyard there are small buildings and after them they grow in size. To the outer edge there is a thick and tall wall made out of solid stone that acts as a barrier to the outside world.

The potential threat comes from the ground to their side, when a humongous grimm breaks to the surface, collapsing with its action a wall that leads outside.

The grimm it’s nothing like he has ever encountered before, he has seen a picture in a book a very long time ago. But it doesn’t compare to seeing it in real life, it’s the size of a humpback whale.

It has a long body like a worm that it’s covered in several bone white spots. A white skull with sharp points at the top, it ends in a beak, empty eye sockets, horns at each side of the beak and red veins that run all over the surface of the skull. The grimm’s skull opens up in the middle and an almost invincible vertical line appears in the top of the skull and it goes down all the way to the throat, revealing rows and rows of sharp teeth and two fleshy appendages with growths that resemble claws. The throat opens up like a voracious maw. The skull and the throat maw open 180 degrees. The tail of the grimm has two barbs at the end.

“Is that a…?”, Adam doesn’t even finish asking his question before Mizer answers.

“A gluttony grimm, probably not alone”.

As if on cue from the hole it made beowolves begin pouring out and from the wall three goliaths much bigger than the average elephant bull enter.

Mizer smirks his upper fangs showing. “Time to party!”, he exclaims excitedly, Adam could feel the bloodlust radiating from Mizer’s aura.

The gluttony lets out a loud screech saliva flying from its mouth… mouths? And moves to attack them.

Mizer leaps forward to meet it, in the process Adam understands immediately why Mizer didn’t bother with shoes today. His feet turn into razor-sharp talons covered in scales, fur and tough skin. One of those talons' feet leave deep grooves in the skull of a beowolf, using the collapsing body of it as leverage Mizer makes his way to the gluttony. The other grimm move to intercept him.

Adam adopts a stance, gripping the handle of Wilt firmly and Blush, he takes off in the blink of an eye sprinting at a great speed, leaving the imprint of the sole of his boots on the soil, raising dust and small stones off the ground. He infiltrates within the beowolves group inner circle and unsheathes his sword, decapitating six that were on his path. He sheats Wilt and spins changing direction unleashing lightning fast strikes, more beowolves fall down defeated.

A goliath swings it’s tusk as him, Adam parries with Wilt slightly out of it’s scabbard, the blade and his hair glowing red, as he slides back several feet. The other two goliath charge at him and join their companion. Swinging their trunks and tusks at Adam or trying to squash him with their massive feet. Adam has to resort to daring maneuvers diving and jumping, spinning and ducking at the last second to avoid a hit from ending him, also using the opportunities that arise where he can parry to charge his semblance.

Meanwhile Mizer is looking for an opening on his opponent’s guard. While it’s true that the grimm doesn’t have plating covering all its body, the skin is very tough. Capable of stopping high caliber bullets and blades, even breaking them.

And it doesn’t help that this grimm could be more destructive and grow bigger than the goliaths, he has to stop it from burrowing again to gain a deeper entrance within the castle. He thinks of ways that the damage can be kept at minimum.

The gluttony coils and then darts at him, using it’s body like a spring, Mizer begins muttering low on his breath jump rolling away from it’s path as it nears him, when the grimm lands it slides some meters away, instead of burrowing into the ground as it intended. Mizer had covered the area in thick ice, before he jumped.

Enraged the grimm turns to look at him and then rolls much like a crocodile does when twisting to take out a piece of flesh from its prey, with the intention of trampling him, taking down some of the plant life, leaving deep indentations on the ground whenever a part of him that had plates pass over. With its actions it takes down one of the buildings, it crumbles like it was made out of eggshells, offering no resistance.

As it rights itself it receives an intimate kiss right in the top of it’s skull from one of Mizer’s axes, small cracks forming where it gets hit, making it’s head slam to the ground from the impact.

“You son of a bitch did you really have to take that down!? Wasn’t the wall and the freaking hole in the ground good enough for you, you oversized slug!?” says an enraged Mizer, as he lands in front of him, baring his fangs at the grimm.

The grimm screeches again but instead of attacking with it’s maws it whips it’s barbed tail at Mizer. The battlemage uses his weapon to parry the attack, when he does the grimm rams at him several times with the sharp points of it’s skull. Earning a pissed off shout from Mizer. He twists both ends of his staff and it separates in two parts, he holds a double edged bone ax on each hand in an x formation. And with that he meets gluttony’s attacks, like if he is locking horns with the grimm. His talons burying on the ground to prevent getting pushed back.

The gluttony alternates between ramming Mizer and trying to bite him with his maws, especially with the throat one.

Adam is currently holding on for dear life with Wilt impaled atop one of the goliaths' back, said goliath is bucking around trying to dislodge him. So far his attempts to cause them to impale each other with their tusks have failed, and he is keeping the other two at bay using Blush to aim shots at their eyes, but he knows that will not hold them off forever. They are old and smart grimm.

The grimm he is hitching a ride in, knows that and adapts. It rears high enough to cause it to fall on it’s own back, Adam has to high tail it to avoid getting crushed by tons of weight. The trunk of a goliath catches him on the stomach and he is sent flying, crashing against the hard ground. He is lucky to have had his aura active, just some bruises and definitely bruised ribs.

However he can’t linger on the pain as they don’t give him that luxury. Gathering his feet under him, he has to do several backflips to earn some distance between him and the grimm.

He winces when he sees that the gluttony has taken down a building and caused further damage to the courtyard. He has to hold back his laughter when Mizer is berating the grimm for causing more damage.

He cannot help but feel giddy and elated, it’s been so long since he has participated in a real battle. There is no need for him to hold back, it’s true that he is still far off from the body condition he had prior to his brush with death but he is working on it.

He takes another deep breath to ground himself and attacks. He extends his aura to his sword to make it stronger. As he nears the grimm he focuses his attacks on one of them, he will have to do this slowly, there is no way he can bring the three of them down at the same time. Once he is near his intended target Adam moves as fast as he can, two clones emerge from him, he delivers the first strike and they follow, targeting the same tusk, before they merge back to him.

A pity truly that he is not carrying the dust embedded bullets with him, just normal ones. “I just need to work harder”, he thinks.

With the constant strikes to the same area the tusk begins to weaken. Knowing it’s only a matter of time, Adam ignores the other attempts to defend their herdmate and dares to stay in place to unsheathe his sword, strike at the tusk, sheat it again and repeat five more times, until it’s weak enough that he can break with a kick. He places his weapons on his hip and grabs his heavy prize, using it to parry another attack, despite not having his sword he absorbs the energy. Gladly he slides back several meters back.

The goliath make the mistake of thinking that they are the intended target for the tusk Adam has harvested. Instead he grabs the broken tusk and places it over his shoulder like he would with a pole used for jumping and runs to the gluttony. As he approaches he uses the melting ice left behind from Mizer’s previous casting to increase his momentum.

Gluttony doesn’t even see him approach, Adam is being realistic and hopes his idea might cripple it. He times it and when the gluttony rears back to slam down again against Mizer, his throat maw opens even more… are those it’s damn ribs starting to show?, Adam doesn’t want to even think about it, he gathers his aura and surrounds the huge tusk with it and throws it using his semblance. As expected the tusk pierces the throat maw by the side and lodges inside at an awkward angle successfully jamming the maw from opening and closing any further, since the tusk has a curvature at each end, Adam made sure to break it at an appropriate length. It looks like a badly made piercing.

Sadly it doesn’t kill it, it lets out loud screeches of pain and it’s body squirms, its intent of getting deeper into the castle forgotten as it tries to get the foreign body off it’s maw.

“Really Adam? Did you even bother disinfecting it before making that piercing? We don’t want the poor thing getting tetanus”, says Mizer laughing.

“Ah what poor service I have provided, hopefully we won’t get sued”, says Adam with a smile.

“We? It’s not me just who did it and without consent from the client, I expect that you will hear from it’s lawyer soon”, says Mizer as he evades a charging goliath. Using his talons he climbs to the one that attacked him face and uses their wicked tip to puncture it’s eyes, the goliath makes a trumpet of pain and shakes its head trying to dislodge a laughing Mizer, who uses his axes to climb up further onto it’s back. Hacking and lashing angering it more, he gives Adam a look.

Adam catches on with what Mizer is doing and engages the other two goliath keeping them busy. He takes the opportunity to recharge his semblance.

After a couple of long minutes Mizer jumps down and comes to stand beside Adam, he breathes a fireball to the blind and one tusked goliath's face. And it charges at them in its confusion not watching where it’s going. Adam and Mizer dart back, but Adam lets one of his clones in his place for the goliath to follow, it’s going to cost him aura, since he won’t be reabsorbing it back. It impales one of the other goliaths on the side, making both of them go down trumpeting in pain, the impaled one dissolves in black smoke.

Not letting the opportunity go to waste, they work to deliver the killing blow to the other one, Mizer makes sure that the grimm cannot get up by cutting deeply into the back legs. Adam jumps to one of the remaining trees and into the air, letting himself fall down as fast as he can, one hand firmly grasping the hilt of Wilt and the other hand securing Blush in place.

His hair and horns glow bright red, the rest of him fades to black, the background turns red. In a heartbeat he unleashes his semblance, Wilt comes out smoothly from his sheath and releases a red arc of energy that collides with the back of the neck fallen grimm, at first it resists some but his semblance prevails in the end. The head of the grimm rolls away from its body, as the grimm remains dissolves in a whirlwind of wilting rose petals, their scent fills the air.

Adam lands staggering on his feet short of breath, it’s been a long time since he had needed to use his semblance like this. Then there is a screech and he turns in time to see that the gluttony grimm has become free from the improvised piercing, probably when he killed the goliath and talking about goliaths he stares as he sees that more of them have entered through the wall, along with beowolves and another Gluttony is entering the castle using the same hole the previous one opened.

Adam fights to stand upright and continue the fight his legs tremble with the effort. A hand on his shoulder stops him from taking a step and he finds Mizer smiling widely at him. “Take a rest you did good Adam, I will take care of this… Xiang might not be happy about having to redecorate the place, in my defense I did try to keep damage at minimum”.

Adam stares dumbfoundedly at Mizer, thinking that the other man is completely insane and then Mizer does something even crazier, he reabsorbs the bone weapon to his body, approaching the grimm completely weaponless. Cracking his knuckles, he smirks at the approaching grimm. “You assholes have been trying to take a piece of me the whole day, come and get it if you dare”.

Without hesitation grimm pounce at the offer, several beowolves surround him but the smirk never leaves Mizer’s face, instead it turns feral. A purple spark appears and it grows until it envelops Mizer and the grimm near him in a blazing inferno. Adam shields his face from the heat and makes his aura shield thicker.

When the flames die down none of the grimm remains. Just a very long body, serpentine like, no that’s wrong, it’s a long body, lizard like, but very long, the body is covered in pitch black scales and silky fur, a dragon but the head is nothing dragon like, it’s the head of a wolf minus the ears, in their stead there are numerous horns crowing him and fringes in where the wolf eras would go from the top of his head to the back of the lower jaw.

Like a lung dragon this one also has two whiskers that almost brush the ground. The tail is long, it has the same length as the body. The dragon’s size rivals that of the gluttony.

And then he turns and winks at him, Adam stares at Mizer’s golden eyes with his mouth hanging open.

The creatures of grimm move to rid of this new threat, Mizer roars in challenge, making Adam feel his own bones resonate with the vibrations produced by the roar.

Chapter 16

Chapter Text

Mizer dashes forward to meet the grimm head on, he grabs it with his front legs the top of the skull of one of the gluttony to stop it from opening and wrestles it to the ground, slamming it to the side. The second one had gone underground, most likely to attempt a sneak attack or get away.

Mizers see that the one on his hold is attempting to bite him with it’s second maw, so he gives it something to chew on. He breaths purple flames down it’s open maw, down its throat, burning it’s insides and making it shriek in agony.

Mizer throws it’s burning body to the group of beowolves to get rid of them, before he runs to the hole that the other Gluttony made and he breathes fire into it too. Crystals violently emerge from the ground and that’s when Adam takes notice than whenever Mizer’s flames have touched the ground, the soil has turned into crystal formations, there is even some glass, solid stone that have either melted or have turned into crystalized rocks.

The gluttony underground emerges trying to escape the flames, but all it’s body is smoking and full of burns, pitifully it slithers wanting to escape using the broken wall, Mizer doesn’t allow it. He grips the grimm with his talons and bites down hard at the back of its neck, tearing the flesh taking a big chunk off and breathing down flames into the open wound.

Gluttony almost immediately stops it’s movement and then explodes in a cloud of black smoke as it dies.

Feeling a sudden presence by his side Adam attacks but stops himself when he realizes that he is in no danger. Sinner and Rosso, they don’t look too concerned with the destruction of the courtyard.

“Are you alright Adam?”, asks Rosso, looking over him for wounds, she has removed the bandages from her eyes.

“Just a couple of bruises, nothing is broken”.

Sinner gives him the thumbs up and looks over to his brother, who in that moment decides to sprout freaking wings from his back and take flight, letting out his flames on the grimm foolish enough to come close. Giving chase to the goliath that were retreating.

“Welp, that will be a pain to clean up, the good part is that there will be more material for the craftsmen”, says Rosso with a shrug.

“Sinner will take you to see Rozen, the situation is under control, there is hardly any grimm that can withstand Mizer’s flames and father made a number on them too. I am just gonna verify none of the small ones escaped”, she mutters some words for a spell, the tattoo-like markings glow and a high impact rifle appears on her hands and takes her leave.

Sinner places a hand on Adam’s shoulder to signal him to follow, placing his weapons on his hip he obeys.

The night has one more surprise in store for him though. As they are passing one of the open hallways he hears a beast howl in the distance, the howl having sounded almost like a roar and then a flash of thunder. Far at the distance he spies the silhouette of a huge wolf with two tails, he can’t make out the colors and details, because Mizer passes over them and roars, catching his attention and the wolf is not there anymore when he looks again.

Chapter 17

Chapter Text

Rozen declared that none of his injuries were serious, just some bruised ribs. He had been given pain medication and allowed to leave for his quarters to rest, with orders to rest at least two days since his aura had gotten low during the fight, almost to the point of aura depletion.

He heard that the attack produced no casualties. Just material damage that they were working on quickly to fix.

Xiang personally thanked him for protecting the workers and the soldier. The soldier is on his way to recovery and also sent his gratitude to Adam.

A couple of days later he walks by the courtyard where he and Mizer fought against the grimm. He stops for a while, observing the workers as they fix the wall and the miners that are carefully removing the crystals left behind by Mizer’s flames. It brings a sense of deja vu when he was a slave in the SDC mines. Only that here nobody is being forced to work against their will and nobody is being punished for making the smallest mistake.

The crystals are hard to break and there are some dense clusters, but coincidentally they are useful in crafting weapons, armor among other things or so he has been informed. Xiang didn’t get mad that the courtyard would have to be remade. New trees, soil and rock are being placed.

Rozen had explained previously to him that Mizer’s flames could get extremely hot and cause the formation of crystals, when the flame gets in contact with the different minerals in the soil. He was even told that Mizer’s flames could create dust crystals when they turned white or blue, it didn’t always happen, but when there was enough magic in the air naturally or Mizer’s own inborn magic it did.

Mizer hesitated using his flames nearby buildings and important areas because he couldn’t breath out a normal yellow/orange flame on his own, for that he had to cast a spell.

The temperature his flames could reach was the reason for his wardrobe choice, he mostly wore special clothing that could withstand them. And all his fire resistant clothes had been at the seamstress minus what he wore, which apparently was a bathing suit, something about having a busy week.

Adam’s favorite trio of students for the remainder of this week had to take an extra hour of classes to make up for the lost time because of the invasion. Apparently they had also gotten involved in the fighting and required rest. So no training with them while they were busy catching up.

When he leaves the courtyard he is heading to the arena alone to train. The fight the other day had been a good exercise and gave him an idea on how far he has come along.

As usual he starts by stretching and warming up.

He feels himself being watched not long after he began but, no matter how much he tries he can’t find anyone watching him, he has turned in all possible directions acting like he was warming up. With the breach the grimm made the other day in the castle it makes him feel on edge. Frowning when he still doesn’t spot anything and trusting his instincts, he grips Wilt’s handle ready to fight, then he feels a hot breath atop his head.

Looking up he stares in awe, right above him there is a huge wolf head, the mouth centimeters from his face. Just how, did the wolf get behind him without making a sound? Not a few seconds ago he had checked in that direction. This wolf could practically swallow him whole and he is no small man.

The wolf right side of its body is black with several white areas, the left side is a reverse mirror image, being white with some black areas. The ear on the right is white and the one in the left is black. The two wolf tails follow the same pattern as the body. And the eyes he knows them very well, the mostly emotionless but predatory green and blue eyes.

“Vicious?”, asks Adam with a bit of uncertainty.

The wolf opens his jaws slightly, yup the amount of teeth and fangs confirm Adam’s suspicion that this is Vicious.

Without making any noise and Adam wonders how someone so big is capable of doing it, Vicious walks to the opposite end of the arena, facing Adam.

Having an idea on what the king wants, Adam takes a stance, spreading his feet apart, gripping Wilt’s handle and Blush.

When Vicious reaches the other end of the arena, without any warning sign he sprints to the faunus at high speed, with extended claws, tearing the ground leaving deep marks, small electric discharges exiting his paws, the loose soil rising from the ground in a cloud following him and growing in size. Adam readies himself to jump out of the way, when Vicious slams on the breaks, the dust cloud enveloping them, forcing Adam to close his eye, a small dust devil forming, surrounding the faunus.

Adam is already used to fighting blind, he slightly takes Wilt out of it’s scabbard to stop several projectiles aimed at him, charging his semblance. By the noise they make, it seems like they were peebles or small pieces of bones given Vicious abilities. He extends his aura to pinpoint Vicious location but to his surprise he cannot feel it anywhere. And yet has to protect himself from the projectiles coming from random directions.

He forces himself to keep a cool head, the dust devil hasn’t settled, slowly it’s growing in strength. He cannot hear, see or sense Vicious with his aura. The dust devil particles flying around him, the sound of static electricity and the wind are messing up with his senses, he is able to detect the projectiles when they are near him.

Concentrating he searches for something that might give Vicious away, the man always had a slight scent of blood on him but that doesn’t help right now, the dust surrounding him makes it impossible, moving scents all over the place.

He turns to the left side and parries a massive paw, he had sensed a slight change in the speed of the winds in that direction. “Good”, is the simple praise he receives for his efforts.

As he struggles with the weight of the paw he is blocking a swipe from Vicious other paw comes at him, he braces himself for the hit, his aura protecting him as it connects to his side. He grips his weapons tightly as he regains his balance and exits the dust devil.

When he opens his eye he can see Vicious standing near the dust devil and then the thing divides in two and Vicious is running once more to him. His tails each one protruding a long tail bone are facing opposite directions and the dust devils are following them. “The hell, you can control the wind too!?”, Adam asks exasperatedly.

“No”, is the short answer he receives. And suddenly the tail bones move forward, one to the left and the other to the right, the dust devils right after them. Adam curses and jumps back. An electrical discharge flows underground and zaps him, his hair becoming frizzy and curly.

Adam lets out a surprised yelp but he doesn’t stop moving. The energy he has been able to accumulate for his semblance he uses some and an arc of red aura slams against one of the dust devils breaking it’s formation. He moves swiftly towards the wolf and produces a clone when he is near, as he expects Vicious attacks the clone slamming it with his head, Adam losing aura because the clone doesn’t get reabsorbed back to him.

He uses the precious seconds available to him and goes for a quick strike to Vicious right shoulder, he unsheats Wilt fast and in the blink of an eye he delivers 4 fast slashes, unfortunately there is a noise of Wilt hitting something solid. Vicious had raised a shoulder blade from his body to meet Adam’s attack.

Not wanting to give up, Adam aims Blush to the wolf face and fires several times, forcing Vicious to dodge. He follows after the wolf pretty much like Vicious did when they first sparred trying to not give him any distance, a bold move considering that Vicious could eject the bones from his body suddenly. Adam just hopes that given the lack of distance will give him a chance at an opening.

He tries connecting a hit to Vicious’ back only to be blocked by parts of the spinal column turned to spikes. He runs to the king’s underside but when he slashes upwards the rib bones stick out to stop the slash, almost losing Wilt in the process.

Adam tries and tries again to land a solid hit but to no avail, he knows he is still no match for Vicious and that he is allowing him within his personal space to gauge his growth.

The match ends when Adam swings his sword at Vicious back legs only for the wolf to do a backflip, change size while in the air to a much smaller one, catching the faunus by surprise and ram him in the back when he was dodging, mistaking the area he had available to dodge Vicious.

With a groan Adam lets himself fall forward short on breath, Vicious tail bones prevent him from falling flat on his face and they help him lower to his knees. Vicious turns back to his normal form releasing Adam after he is sure he is not going to topple over. “You did good”.

Adam sighs tiredly running his fingers through his hair, noticing how fluffy and curly it has become due to the electricity. He digs in his pockets fishing out his communicator and activating the selfie mode, then he begins to laugh at seeing how ridiculous he looks. He looks more like a ram than a bull faunus. He holds his belly letting out a wheezing laugh not having recovered his breath yet, shaking his head he speaks “This is going to take a while to tame”.

He continues laughing for a while, when he thinks he is about to stop he continues again and he relishes the feeling despite feeling dizzy and short of breath.

A water bottle is offered when he is able to control himself, slowly he begins to drink. He needs a shower badly and some after rest. His whole body is covered in dirt. Curiosity however override those needs. “I need to know how. If you can’t control the wind, how the dust devils were following you, how did you even form them?”

Vicious hand emits a visible electrical current on his hand the loose dust on the ground hovers around his hand. “Electricity attracts dust”. With the sparks still noticeable so Adam can see, the dust begins spinning fast around his hand.

“So the wind is because you made the dust move with your electricity?”, asks Adam intrigued.

“Yes”, he stops but due to the residual static electricity some particles hover the air still. Approaching Adam he calls forth the electricity again making a pulling motion several of the dust particles in Adam’s clothing detach themselves and follow Vicious hand motion.

“I had never seen something like this before”, Adam exclaims in awe.

“Your semblance has a lot of potential… you are an expert manipulating aura...think outside the box”, with those words the king retires, leaving Adam to ponder his words.

Adam does as he walks back to his quarters for a shower and some rest.

Chapter 18

Chapter Text

Taking Vicious words to heart Adam experiments with his semblance, working hard with time he develops new uses to his semblance and aura. Two of the developments that makes him feel proud is that he can fire his semblance with Blush and when he runs out of bullets he can shape his aura and place it inside the rifle’s chamber and magazine to fire it as he would a bullet. As long as he has enough aura he will never run out of ammo. Rosso has been of great help during the process of trial and error.

His lung capacity has improved as well, he rarely reaches a point of feeling short of breath. It helps that some nights he has been taken out for patrol, always in the company of Vicious or one of his children. He wears a mask or some kind of disguise when outside the castle walls, the general population still doesn’t know that he is in Haruna, more less that he lives. They are still planning how to handle revealing the information to the public. Xiang and Vicious as well as Yamato have assured him he won’t be imprisoned.

Adam tries not to dwell on darker thoughts on how the situation could turn out for him. How would the people that wanted him dead and made several attempts on his life, react to learning that he was still alive and kicking? What if Salem and her minions find out that he lives? Will she try to take him under her control again? What if Blake, Ghira, Khali and the rest of his former friends and family decide to hunt him down? What if it comes to blows if they find him?

He takes a deep breath to clear his thoughts and focus on the task at hand. Tonight he is patrolling together with Vicious and Mizer.

He stays walking by Vicious’ side as Mizer patrols the sky near the tree canopy, he is in his humanoid form and has simply sprouted his wings. He had been curious how clothes didn’t get ripped to pieces when they transformed or sprouted a sudden body part. The explanation had been quite simple magic. Enchantments are placed in all the clothing fabricated in the kingdom to prevent it from getting destroyed easily. Otherwise people would be walking around naked, unless they used a partial transformation to cover their modesty, which apparently is what some people preferred.

The topic at least took his mind of the darker thought he had plagued his mind earlier. He is about to ask more questions when a sharp cry from Mizer made him look up as the dragon hybrid swoops down into the trees followed by another one and then a couple of roars and thuds. Adam is about to sprint and help when Vicious' heavy hand on his shoulder stops him. The wolf ears turned forward catching all the sounds, he sniffs the air, then he shakes his head in an amused manner, despite his face showing no emotion, Adam had gotten better at reading the king’s moods.

“There is no danger, we have a visitor”, he explains taking his hand from Adam’s shoulder, “just stay by my side, she doesn’t take that well to unknown males”, he adds. Adam obeys, curious to who this visitor might be as the roars and thuds continue.

The pair come up to a clearing and find Mizer that has a woman almost as tall as himself trapped in a headlock with some difficulty, a purple and black tail that ends up in three sharp points is wrapped around his neck. Both Mizer and the woman have some scratches and bruises on their faces and bodies. The woman lets out a pissed roar showing a double row of teeth that looks very similar to that of Vicious.

Names being called in a stern manner “Mizer, Mortemia” from the king makes the dragons stop and reluctantly let go of each other while acknowledging their names being called by saying “father”.

So that answers the question Adam had on the tip of his tongue. He takes a better look at the newcomer now that she isn’t busy wrestling her brother.

Her hair looks very soft, feather-like, a color combination of purple and black, she has two spiral silver horns over her head, buried under the wild feathers of her “hair”, he can barely spot what looks like wolf ears and her body is very muscular, a little less than her father and brother. Purple and black feathers cover her chest and she is wearing a red miniskirt with two belts, a black choker with a red stone, black wristbands, open toed ankle boots, revealing sharp claws. She has a few scars here and there, the most prominent one across her nose, a beauty mark on her left cheek and her eyes are silver in color, she is a silver eyed warrior!

Adam had not been expecting that one. It never crossed his mind that someone here would have silver eyes, if Salem knew. Guilt eats him away as he remembers the times he had been forced to kill or capture silver eyed warriors for the witch.

When he looks at the woman again he notices that she is booking at him warily. Vicious places a hand on his shoulder again. “This is Adam Taurus a friend”, Adam feels incredibly humbled by the introduction, he feels like he doesn’t deserve to be called a friend.

And then she approaches him, fangs poking slightly from her lips, her eyes narrowed as she examines him and he sees her like Mizer did when taking his scent, she tastes the air with a forked tongue. Adam remains still heading Vicious warning that she is not a fan of strange males, he wonders why but doesn’t voice his question. “A pleasure to meet you, miss Mortemia”, he says in greeting. The woman doesn’t say anything back, just observes him before giving him a small nod.

Vicious approaches his daughter before wrapping his arms around her hugging her close. She doesn’t hesitate to return his hug, burying her face in his neck. “Papa”, she says in a whisper. “I missed you”, says the king, placing a kiss on the top of her head.

Adam feels like he is intruding on something private and thinks of turning around when Mizer clears his throat looking at him. “Let’s keep patrolling while they go home”, he says. Adam looks back at Vicious, who nods at him before turning his attention back to Mortemia.

Adam and Mizer turn into the other direction. Once they are at a distance Adam thinks on how to ask why they were fighting but Mizer beats him to it. “She should have stayed and not left her kid alone like a coward, visiting every now and then it’s not the same!”, he says, swiping his claws against a tree angrily, startling Adam.

“What happened?”, asks Adam.

“Mortemia couldn’t stand being around unknown males and she decided to leave us and her only surviving child behind, we could have helped, she doesn’t understand how lucky she is to at least have a living child!”, explains Mizer angrily, another tree suffering to his wrath.

Sensing that there is more to the story Adam places a hand on Mizer’s arm to stop him. “Mizer, I know I don’t have the right to ask, it’s not my business, but you and your family have helped me a lot and I want to return the favor even if the only thing I can do is listen”.

The dragon lets out a low growl, spending time with him, Adam knows it’s not one of aggression, he takes his hand away from Mizer arm and waits for him to decide. Mizer looks at him with a haunted look and begins to speak. “Mortemia whenever she gave birth, the children got killed by male soldiers because they weren’t what that man wanted, Mortemia developed an intense hate and phobia to unrelated adult males, it didn’t help that the conception was against her will”.

Adam is horrified by the tale he is hearing and goes pale as a sheet.

“She became extremely aggressive whenever she gave birth trying to protect the pups, but it wasn’t enough… when we managed to escape, the damage to her mind was already done and she attacked any unknown male that approached her, almost killing several… back when we were captive and Mortemia had to go out in missions she earned the name “The devourer of men”, she would kill men and many times devour their remains… now you have to understand that while we were trapped there was barely any food and we had to resort to cannibalism of the guard and soldiers we killed and more”, Mizer looks at Adam with tired eyes.

Adam starts feeling sick but he fights against it, he nods rigidly for Mizer to continue.

“To avoid any of our own being raised from death by necromancy we either had to burn the body to ashes or devour their remains…father always tried to made sure that his dead children would get eternal rest, sometimes he failed”, Mizer says looking at the ground in torment, tears filling the corner of his eyes, Adam has to take hold of a tree because of his trembling legs.

“I… I had to devour my own ch… children and my mate’s bodies… I failed them”, he finally confesses allowing the tears to run free. “Mortemia doesn’t realize how lucky she was, her lil son is still alive, she can still hug him, while I lost my own and.. and.. sob… she left because her behavior was rubbing off on Raijin”. Staggering Adam makes his way to Mizer and hugs his friend fiercely, only reaching his chest, Mizer is almost 8 feet of height as his father is. “I’m so sorry, you didn’t deserve that hell, none of you did”, Adam says barely holding his own tears back.

Mizer takes comfort into Adam’s hug, but the pain still remains, it still feels raw. His knees are slowly buckling, but before he can fall and bury Adam under his weight a pair of strong arms hook under his armpits supporting him. Both turn to look at Vicious, Mortemia is nowhere to be seen.

Adam let’s go of Mizer and Vicious wastes no time in wrapping his arms tightly against his son. Mizer buries his face in his father’s neck sobbing.

Sinner arrives and places a hand on Adam’s shoulder giving him a sad smile, beckoning him to follow. “Thank you Adam”, says Vicious as Sinner and Adam leave them alone.

Adam follows Sinner feeling his heart shatter, these people that referred to him as his friend had such terrible experiences. He feels that what he suffered is such a little thing compared to these people, most of them have hundreds of years worth of it, his suffering is insignificant in comparison. Despite that fact Sinner keeps his hand over his shoulder in an attempt to deliver comfort.

Hesitantly Adam asks, “Sinner did… did something happen to you too? Is that why you don’t speak?”, he says looking at the other man.

Sinner stops walking before looking down at him and smiling sadly nodding. Gently he reaches for the bandana he always wears around his neck and takes it down. He exposed his heavily scarred neck to Adam. Adam’s eyes widen in horror, before he can ask what happened, Sinner shakes his head and very slowly signs with his hands that Adam has learned enough horror for one day, the story will be told another day. Adam is still not fluent enough in Mythos sign language to follow all the gestures and their meaning at normal speed.

Adam looks at the ground feeling ashamed. “I am sorry I am so useless, you guys had it worse than me and yet...”.

Another hand on his shoulder stops his self-deprecating speech before it could gain strength and for the first time ever Sinner gives him a serious look, shaking his head. He opens his mouth to argue but a wheezy, raspy and broken ceases with his effort. “No… Adam...”, the voice had been so low it might have been confused with a whisper. Adam stares dumbfound at Sinner as long as he knew the man he never made a sound.

Sinner massages his throat with a hand for a moment to alleviate some discomfort before placing the bandana again where it belongs. He gives Adam another look shaking his head before he tugs him back in the direction of the castle, back to their home.

Chapter 19

Chapter Text

There is some tension in the castle with the arrival of Mortemia, particularly coming from the male guards and staff, they stay out of her way. When Adam crosses paths with her, he simply gives her a small nod in greeting and keeps on his way as the days turn into weeks, she nods back at him as well.

Adam is wet to the bone, the rain had been merciless pelting down on him, he hadn’t been wearing any waterproof clothing, there had been no need for it, the patrol started off with a clear sky with no sign of rain for kilometres. And then there was a boom at the distance that became closer as minutes passed.

Moments later the rain and the wind started, the storm lasted for 20 minutes or so, more than enough to cause some flooding with its intensity and drench him. At some point he had to take refuge under Mizer’s large draconic body as hail started to fall, the scales and fur offering the much-needed protection from the ice spheres falling from the sky.

Taking pity on him Mizer sent Adam home early when the hail stopped and the rain lessened in intensity, Adam feels like a rookie underestimating this region’s climate. Haruna is close to the sea of course storms would roll unexpectedly whenever they wanted and without previous warning.

Sighing and listening to the wet splatter his footsteps make; he fantasizes with a hot shower and a warm bed. So distracted by the tantalizing idea that he almost doesn’t notice, but thankfully due to most of his life being in danger of getting killed, honed his instincts and he catches a faint whimper which makes him look up towards the roof.

He gasps when he sees what is happening, there is a tiny dark dragon (well tiny in comparison to the forms of the others he had seen, this one is as tall as great dane but thicker, heavier and longer), slipping down the terracotta roof tiles, the tiles are slippery due to the rain, the height the dragon is slipping from is comparable to an 8 story building. If his knowledge is correct this one is a child, he curses and begins sprinting as fast as his wet boots allow him to, the little one let’s out frightened noises it’s claws losing their precarious hold and slipping down fast, it’s wings don’t appear to be helping it fly to save itself.

Adam doesn’t even think about it; he activates his aura to protect himself and dives to cushion the child’s fall. Despite the aura protecting him, his breath is knocked away with the impact, the dragon weighs several hundred pounds. His back is going feel great in the morning he muses as he lays on the ground dazed, the frightened dragon over his back is stunned, its weight pinning Adam against the ground in a puddle of water. Some terracotta tiles shatter as they fall around them but by pure luck they don’t get hit.

Eventually Adam hears shouts and splashing running steps and then there is a wet thud nearby. He turns his head slowly and sees Mortemia has landed nearby them; her face is pale and frightened. She moves to grab the dragon lying on top of Adam’s back when Rosso appears and stops her, shouting for someone to go and wake Rozen up. Rosso kneels by Adam’s side and with Mortemia’s help slowly they take the stunned child slowly off him, supporting the long neck and limbs. The faunus feels like he can breathe easier now that the extra weight is gone.
He tries to move but he is stopped by Rosso who places a gentle yet firm hand over his back. “Don’t move, we need to make sure you aren’t hurt, I know you can take more than that but we have to make sure”, she tells him gently. The little dragon seems to have recovered from its shock and has shifted back into a little boy in Mortemia's arms; he whimpers the words “mommy” over and over again. She does her best to comfort with cooing noises.

Rozen arrives running dressed in his night clothes and falls to his knees by Adam’s side, since he is the one that took the brunt of the impact. He starts by checking his spine, ribs and head, satisfied that there is no palpable damage he instructs Rosso to help him sit up slowly and bring him to the clinic for a deeper check up.

Rozen turns his attention to Raijin; it seems that this is the child Mizer told him about. The little one has hair that is dark red with some black parts, feather-like his mother and stunning silver eyes, he appears to be 5 or 6 years old.

Rosso helps him stand up from the ground, supporting part of his weight as he is limping slightly and accompanies him to the clinic. Adam sits down on an examination table while Rozen and Mortemia arrive with the still crying child.

A female doctor approaches Adam, she has short ginger hair and toxic green eyes, a long serpentine tail with fiery colors is curled around her leg, some scales adorn other parts of her body. The shape of the scales indicate that the woman is a spiny bush viper. She is wearing blue scrubs and black shoes. “I am Uma, I shall tend to you while Rozen checks Raijin better”.

Rosso, knowing that Adam is still wary around strangers, stays by his side as Uma conducts all kinds of tests and checks up. His right leg has a small sprain that should heal within the next couple of days as well as some bruising in his back and legs, nothing serious. Raijin’s claws or scales didn’t pierce his skin due to activating his aura prior to catching him.

The doctor prescribes him some painkillers as well as a salve for the bruises, before allowing him to go back to his room, after taking a dose of the painkillers.

Rosso goes with him, leaving him on his own when she makes sure that he is going to be fine and has helped him take off his drenched boots and socks. Adam goes for a quick shower, examining the bruising on his back and legs, where most of the child’s weight rested, he applies a bit of salve and crashes on his bed, not even bothering to dry his wet hair, he did place a thick towel over his pillow to avoid getting it wet before laying down. As he drifts off to sleep, he wonders what the child had been doing on the roof on his own.

He is awakened hours later by knocking on his door. He shouts to give him a moment, wincing as he gets up and quickly goes to the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face. He feels tired and not quite awake yet. Combing his fingers through his hair he opens the door coming face to face with Xiang, the woman unexpectedly wraps her arms around him in a tight hug muttering thank you over and over, kissing his cheek while he stays paralyzed. “You saved him, you saved Raijin!”, she exclaims, letting out a loud sob.

Those words cause Adam to snap out of it, the exhaustion and the brain fog he still feels from last night banish. “Is he alright now? What happened? Why was he on the roof?”

Xiang takes in a shaky breath to calm herself, before letting go of Adam and smiling at him. “I didn’t know what had happened until I woke up this morning. Mortemia had gotten up during the night for some tea, she was having nightmares and she left Raijin fast asleep, she was in one of the small kitchens with Rozen when they heard his screaming, she took up fast to her room and saw the window open, when she looked down, she saw you catching Raijin. Apparently, he had nasty nightmare and, in his confusion, when he woke up, he took off to escape through the window, not quite awake when he did so, normally Mortemia would have noticed something was amiss but she hasn’t been sleeping well.”, she pauses, letting him absorb the information.

“He is okay now just shaken up and a little bruised… but if you haven’t appeared I don’t want to imagine what would have happened, he is still a baby and can’t fly that well yet”, upon hearing her, Adam breathed out in relief.

His name is suddenly called, and he looks at the hallway and sees Mizer walking up to him. “Are you alright!?.”

“I am alright, my aura protected me from the worst, just some bruises and a leg sprain, no broken bones”, he says knowing better than to lie and say he came out completely unscathed.

“Thank you for saving my nephew, take a couple of days off to heal, the weather will probably be miserable again tonight and the following ones”, he pats Adam on the shoulder and turns to leave before he remembers something.

“Ah father sends his thanks, he isn’t here right now, he had to go to Baikal to tend to some matters”, after saying this Mizer leaves, Adam blushes causing Xiang to giggle.

“I will instruct a servant to bring you breakfast now and lunch later, you must still be tired from last night… also there is a chance Mortemia might thank you in her own way”, says Xiang giggling again.

Before he can ask what she means Xiang is already walking away.

Shrugging he closes the door and turns around, he lets out a surprised yelp when a familiar feathery tail scurries out of his window leaving behind in the windowsill two clumps of golden, red, and spotted feathers that appeared to have belonged to a golden pheasant.
But they aren’t just random clumps of feathers, as he takes them into his hand, he notices that Mortemia made a brooch and an eye patch with them.

He looks outside to thank her but she is nowhere to be seen. He touches them gently with his finger noticing the sturdiness and quality of the materials used to make them.

A knock on his door shakes him out of it and he places the gifts on his desk before opening the door. A servant brought him breakfast, Adam thanks him and sits down to eat, exhaustion getting back to him as he does. When he is done, he walks back to his bed and lies down, sleeping claiming him almost immediately.

Chapter 20: Chapter 20

Chapter Text

The next couple of days Adam is feeling constantly tired, his head and body hurt, his appetite has lessened and night terrors plague his dreams, causing him to develop dark bags underneath his eyes.

Rozen and Uma check him out again but there are no injuries, infections or anything that can explain why he is feeling like this. The only thing they can think of is that he is getting a cold due to the exposure to the rain.

Bed rest, proper meals, calming teas, plenty of water and painkillers is all they can prescribe at the moment, since he doesn't present a fever. They keep a close eye on him for any changes in his condition.

Vicious is back from his trip and immediately checks on him.

Adam receives frequent visits to his room at least keeping some of the boredom at bay, besides the obvious visitors Xiang, Vicious, his trio of student, Rosso, Mizer and Sinner, he receives the unexpected visit of Mortemia and the shy Raijin that thanks him for catching him when he fell, they don’t speak to him much but they stay sitting together in one of the available chairs of the room keeping him company for a while.

His infirmity state breaks six days later, almost like he wasn’t sick to begin with. He doesn’t complain about his good fortune however he is given the warning to not go out on patrol yet just to be sure.

He kills time with light training sessions or walking within the castle walls. The night terrors go away as well as the bags under his eyes, now that he could have proper rest. He meets more of Vicious’ children as well as some of Yamato, apparently it spread up that he had saved Raijin and some of the other kids became eager to meet him.

Unfortunately his happiness doesn’t last, on the eight days after he got better, he wakes up from a nap with a killer headache and an urge to vomit. A stabbing and burning sensation in his eyes, especially the left one attacks him.

Despite feeling so bad, he feels an uncontrollable impulse to get up from the bed and walk to the hallway after grabbing his weapons. Staggering, he gets up from the bed and walks slowly outside.

The hallways are completely deserted, he continues walking unbothered, his mind enveloped in a fog and he feels like he is underwater, his senses muddled but at the same time sharp.

He isn’t sure where he is walking or why he is doing it. And then he hears children's laughter and his body follows the direction there. It is when he reaches them and unsheats his weapon that he notices what is wrong with him, it’s the same as when he fought Blake and Yang his body is moving on its own and his eye zeroes on Raijin and his silver eyes. The children have stopped playing and are looking at Adam with wide eyes, trembling.

He manages with a lot of difficulty to yell at them to run away from him before he takes the first swing at Raijin, the little one sadly having experienced attempts on his life, dodges again and again, just barely and desperately as Adam continues his assault.

He is fighting with his body to slow the speed of the swings but it's hard, especially because of the pain that has spread all over. He notices that the other children had run away, his body doesn’t make any attempts to follow. All his efforts are focused on killing the silver eyed child in front of him.

Regardless of Adam’s efforts to avoid harming Raijin, the little one has sustained several cuts, none of them fatal yet, but they are starting to wear him down enough for him to be driven against a corner.

Besides him a glass window explodes into pieces, a raven flies right through, not even a second later his body moves to parry a sword swing that would have taken his head off with a clean slice. The raven has been replaced by a woman with long black unruly hair and red eyes. She is using an odachi, the blade has a blue blade, the corner of her eyes have flames. He knows this woman he “worked” briefly beside her when they “followed” Cinder and Salems “orders”, the infamous Raven Brawen.

Raven gets in between the child and Adam blocking any further attacks, Raijin kneels down in the corner too tired to run, his tail hugging himself and eyes filled with fear and tears, which breaks Adam’s heart into a million pieces. But there is nothing he can do just hope that the infamous Raven Brawen is able to stop him.

Two triggers are pressed and their blades clash against one another, their respective owners rushing to grab them, a furious battle of high speed swipes and sheathing and drawing swords begins.