The Badge and the Burden (Rewritten)
The Badge and the Burden
It was called Liberty Point.
It was a smuggler’s cove, to all intents and purposes: a little harbour lying beneath the watch of rocky cliffs, where the waves crashed against the spurs of rock that sheltered a calm pool from the fury of the tides and rendered it a safe place for ships to harbour.
No village lay nearby. No fishermen used this place. Which meant it was ideal for the White Fang to use as a place to moor their clandestine boats, for those members of the organisation who were too recognisable and too wanted to be able to travel on commercial ferries.
It was here that Blake found Adam, standing on one of the rocky spurs that protected the bay, framed against the setting of the sun as he watched the waves crash against the rocks on which he stood.
Blake hopped lightly from rock to rock towards him, careful of her footing and keeping one eye on the waves as she went.
“Adam,” she said, as she got closer to him. “I didn’t think that we were expecting a ship today.”
Adam glanced at her. He wasn’t wearing his mask, which surprised Blake for a number of reasons: first, she would have thought that the salt kicked up from the surf would have stung the burns on his face from where the SDC had branded it; second… Adam almost never took off his mask, certainly not where somebody might see the mark.
Admittedly, they were alone out here, but still… it was unusual for him to do it nevertheless. He feared the risk too much.
He must think that we won’t be disturbed.
I suppose I can’t imagine who would actually come out to the water like this at this time, especially since I didn’t think there was a boat coming.
“There is no boat,” Adam said. “Not tonight.”
Blake had reached his side by now, though she had to look up into his face. “Then why… why are you out here?”
Adam was silent for a moment. “What do you see, Blake, when you look around you?”
Blake was less interested in observing the surroundings in the dying light than she was in working out why Adam was asking this question. “I see… the shore,” she said, looking out across the jagged rocks. “What they would have called a wrecking shore, in the old days.”
Adam chuckled. “Yes. In the old days, before the war, before our people were set free, before airships and technology, people who lived on shores like this would light signal beacons to lure unwary ships onto the rocks to be smashed.” The smile on his face died. “Some of the ships that were lured to their doom were slave ships, filled with faunus chained and shackled and packed like animals in the hold. And when their ships were wrecked… rather than struggle to shore, a lot of those slaves leapt into the stormy seas because they understood that it was better to die than to live as slaves.
“They were a lot like us, those slaves; they understood that sometimes, death is the only freedom that we have.”
“Adam,” Blake murmured. “Why are you talking like this?”
Adam looked away from her, turning his gaze outward across the sea. “Sometimes…” he sighed. “Sometimes, the magnitude of the task that we have set for ourselves, it… it hits me harder than usual. It closes in around me, and I think… I think about what I’ve gotten you involved in and how it will all end for you.” He turned to her and reached out and cupped her cheek with one hand. “I don’t want to see you get hurt, Blake; the thought of any harm coming to you, it… it wounds me.”
Blake smiled, but she gently took his hand from her cheek and enfolded it in both her hands. “That’s sweet,” she said, “but I can take care of myself.”
“I know,” Adam said. “And when I get too afraid, I can come here and look out across the sea and remind myself that sometimes, it’s better to leap into the tempest than to live in chains.”
Blake stared up at him, not only the champion of their race and a hero to faunus everywhere but her hero too. Hers most of all. Her leader and her love. She would never follow anyone else into battle. She would never love anyone else. The two were entirely intertwined and combined in his one being.
“You’re not going to die,” she whispered. “You can’t. You have to live. For my sake. I’ll live for you, and you have to live for me too. We have to live for one another.”
Adam looked back at her, and as he looked, his smile returned, so that his face seemed handsome, even despite the way that 'SDC' had marred it. That smile lingered for a moment, and then faded away once again.
“What’s wrong?” Blake asked.
“There’s… there’s something that I’ve never told you,” Adam said. “Something that I’ve never told anyone.”
Blake waited expectantly. “You… you don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to,” she said, suppressing her own curiosity, now that he had piqued it so thoroughly.
“I’m half human,” he said, the words falling out of his mouth as though, having decided to say them, he couldn’t wait to be rid of them.
Blake’s eyes widened. She could only stare at him in silence while Adam, waiting for a response from her, seemed so skittish, more afraid than she had ever seen him be in battle, as though the prospect of her reaction to this news frightened him more than facing all the might of Atlas.
“H-how?” she stammered.
Adam’s jaw tightened. “My… my mother,” he growled, through clenched teeth. “She was… a powerful woman. The kind of woman who is used to getting what she wants. The kind who doesn’t take no for an answer.
“My father… my father was a pathetic man. He fought for chump change in some low dive in Mantle, risking his life for a handful of lien while humans made small fortunes betting on the outcome of his fights. That’s where my mother saw him; she saw him, and she wanted him. And, as I said, she was used to getting what she wanted. I suppose I should be grateful she carried me to term, before discarding the fruits of her indulgence.”
Blake’s mouth fell open, hanging there for a moment in sympathetic helplessness, trying to find some words to say that didn’t feel utterly, hopelessly inadequate. “I… I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I know that’s not enough, not anything like enough, but-”
“It’s alright,” Adam said. “I don’t expect you to… you don’t have to say anything; that’s okay. I don’t expect you to make it better; I just… I’ve never said it out loud before.”
“You can’t be the only one,” Blake said.
“No,” Adam said. “But all the same… if people found out… I’m a fraud, Blake, not even fully faunus. How can I lead our people to freedom if I’m not really one of them?”
“You are one of us,” Blake said. “You may have a human mother, but you are a faunus. What you’ve done… nobody has served the faunus as well as you, not since the revolution at least, not even my father-”
“A man like me will do incredible things to be seen, Blake,” Adam told her. “Those things that you say I have done, I did them as much for myself as for our people; I did them to… to carve out a life for myself that didn’t humiliate me to live.”
“But you did them, nonetheless,” Blake told him. “Just because you wanted something for yourself doesn’t erase the benefits you have brought to our people. As far as I’m concerned, no one has the right to say that you’re not one of us, no one.”
Adam let out a sigh of relief. “You don’t know how happy it makes me to hear you say that. I was afraid… I was so afraid… I thought that you might-”
“Never,” Blake said. “I’ll never give up on our fight, Adam, and I’ll never give up on you.” She hesitated. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Why did you tell me?” Blake asked. “You didn’t have to. And you were afraid. So… why?”
“Because I don’t want to keep anything from you, Blake,” Adam said. “I don’t want to hide anything from you because you… because you are everything to me.”
The sound of a gunshot shattered the silence.
It came from the building into which the Rosepetals had disappeared.
“Penny,” Ruby gasped.
Rainbow Dash, Sunset thought, and cursed herself. She’d thought that there wouldn’t be any enemies in the building; she’d assumed that they would have taken out the grimm themselves if they’d been around. She’d assumed, and she had well and truly been made an ass of, and now, Rainbow, Penny, and Ciel were separated from the group and under attack.
What did I say? What did I say? I said we weren’t going to split up, we weren’t going to get separated from one another, and then what did I do? I’m such an idiot.
She started to rise from her crouch and was about to head inside after her two stranded teammates when the green grimm lifted its head up from its brunch and let out a roar that blew down the street and gusted even into Sunset’s face, blowing her hair back and chilling her ears.
It had heard the shots – there had been at least one more – and its interest was definitely aroused.
Dammit. Stay safe, Rainbow Dash.
Or just kick their asses.
Sunset strode into the middle of the street and raised Sol Invictus to her shoulder.
“Sunset, what are you doing?” Blake demanded.
“Getting its attention,” Sunset said, sighting down the barrel at the green grimm’s head.
“But what about-?” Ruby began.
“Rosepetal can handle themselves,” Sunset said. “Who or whatever is in there, Rainbow can take care of it. But I don’t think that she needs a giant grimm of unknown provenance interfering in, do you?” She had the plan now. She might be worried about Rainbow – and the others – but she had the plan nevertheless: since the grimm had the potential to smash its way through the wall and into the building much faster than they who had to go in through the door and down the corridors could reach the Rosepetals, the thing to do was kill the grimm here and now before it could get in Pyrrha’s way, then go help the Atlesians out. “Professor Goodwitch, I don’t want to sound like we need the help, but-”
“Of course, Miss Shimmer,” Professor Goodwitch said, as primly as if they were back in a classroom at Beacon and Sunset had just raised her hand to ask a question. She pushed her glasses back up her nose as she strode – strutted, would perhaps be a more accurate description – out of cover to stand beside Sunset, her riding crop held at the ready.
Sunset hoped that she had an armour-piercing round loaded as she doubted that fire dust was going to do much to that bone mask at this range. Okay. Let’s see what makes you so special. “Hey! Over here!”
The grimm, which had been slouching towards the building where the Rosepetals were fighting against who knew what, stopped and looked at her.
Sunset fired. She fired a fire dust round, which burst like a crimson fire on the grimm’s green-glowing mask but didn’t seem to do much more than irritate it a little bit.
At least, if the way that it threw back its head and roared into the enclosed space above them before starting to charge was any indication.
“Ruby! Let him have it!” Sunset snapped as the grimm barrelled down the street on all fours, making the road shake as its massive paws thumped down, tearing up the stone with its white claws as they dug into the road.
Crescent Rose unfolded with a series of snaps and hisses. Ruby planted the scythe blade in the road, digging a furrow into the thoroughfare as she opened fire, the thunder of her shots echoing through the listless air. Blake fired too, the snapping shots of her pistol forming the minor key to the major theme of Ruby’s sniper rifle.
Shots bounced off the green spikes that covered the grimm’s neck and shoulders, doing no visible damage to them; the same was true even when they appeared to be striking the black flesh that should have been soft enough to penetrate. Sunset fired again, and another fire dust round blossomed on the grimm’s shoulder. She fired a third time, and this time, she must have fired an armour piercing shot, which bounced off the creature’s bone mask without cracking it.
The grimm roared again as it closed on them.
Professor Goodwitch flourished her riding crop ahead of her before making a swishing motion as if she were swatting a fly. Instantly, the grimm was picked up and flung aside, swatted indeed by an invisible hand that lifted it up and tossed it back first into a tall tower just beyond the terraces into which either the Rosepetals or Jaune and Pyrrha – and the fact that neither of them had emerged at the sound of the fighting gave Sunset the uncomfortable thought that they might be having problems of their own – had ventured.
Seeing what the grimm did to the building it landed on justified in her own mind Sunset’s decision to focus on the grimm before it could entangle itself with her allies: its impact was enough to shatter the side of the building and probably some of the floors as well, bringing down a pile of rubble on top of the monster as the upper floors collapsed. It lay there for a moment, in the hole that it – and Professor Goodwitch – had made, half-buried, glaring balefully at the huntresses with its unusual, luminous green eyes.
Then it began to stir, shoving the smashed bricks and abandoned debris off itself as it rose onto its hind legs, growling as it stalked out of the ruin and back onto the street.
It threw out its arms on either side as it let out a spittle-flecked roar of defiance, as if it wanted them to see that it wasn’t harmed by aught that they could do to it.
And in the process, it exposed its chest, lined with those green veins.
Sunset ran forwards a few steps, and as she ran, she leapt, and as she leapt, she teleported.
There was a flash of green light as Sunset reappeared about ten feet off the ground, level with the grimm’s exposed chest.
Her face twisted into a rictus snarl as she thrust Sol Invictus forwards, impaling the grimm through its vein-lined chest with the sword-bayonet.
She fired. She pulled the trigger until she had no more bullets left, pumping rounds into the black-and-green substance in front of her, and then, when the bullets ran out, she activated the spear extension to ram her blade deeper into the dark demonic substance that formed this monster.
As Sunset hung in the air, holding onto her weapon as her legs dangled above the ground, she looked up into the white, bony face of this unusual creature of grimm.
It didn’t look like it was about to die, unfortunately. But it did look in some pain and quite a temper.
As the beowolf raised its left paw, Sunset tapped herself on the right shoulder of her jacket, using her aura to activate the fire dust that she had stitched into the fabric.
The fires had only just begun to burn upon her shoulder, with no time to spread onto her arm, when the grimm hit her.
The sideswipe flung her sideways; Sunset hit the ground with a solid thwack that filed away at her aura before she rolled down the black street, extinguishing her flames as she went.
Lucky I have more than one layer of dust, Sunset thought as she clambered to her feet. Sol Invictus was still lodged in the grimm’s chest, a source of irritation to go along with its burnt and smoking paw. Both were making the grimm growl and snarl as it walked forward, a little more tentatively now than it had been moving just a moment ago.
It might not be dead, but it was definitely hurting. A few more good hits might be enough to bring it down. Sunset drew Soteria from its sheath over her shoulder, holding off on activating the dust infused into the metal but ready to do so if necessary. Her mouth opened to form the word, “Ru-”
Ruby didn’t need telling. She had a hunter’s instinct on the battlefield, and she didn’t need Sunset to tell her that the grimm was hurt and vulnerable. Before her name had half left Sunset’s mouth, she had launched herself into the air in a burst of rose petals, Crescent Rose trailing behind her as she soared, spinning towards the grimm.
The grimm which… raised its arms to defend itself, ducking its head so that it could cover its face and chest more easily?
What the…? Not even Alphas are that smart. Since when do grimm protect themselves?
It shouldn’t have been possible, yet it was happening right in front of Sunset’s face: this grimm was putting its paws up – it was even favouring the one that it hadn’t burnt on Sunset’s phoenix cape – like a boxer defending himself from the blows of his opponent or a kid trying to shield his face on the playground. It put up its paws, its bony protrusions protecting its more vulnerable regions, and as Ruby rematerialised from the cloud of petals, she slashed furiously, repeatedly, swiftly against the bone spur-covered paws and did… nothing. Sunset had expected to see her partner soar through the grimm, slicing it in half with a single stroke of Crescent Rose; instead, it was only sheer momentum and a degree of will that was keeping Ruby in motion as she swung her scythe at impossibly swift speeds, beating against the grimm’s guard like a wave battering against the shore during a hurricane or a wind hammering a mountain and having about as much effect.
The grimm growled as it swatted Ruby aside as if she were a particularly annoying fly, one whose buzzing could cause annoyance but whose sting was nothing to be particularly concerned with.
Ruby flew backwards through the air with a squeak, her cape flapping as she flew headfirst towards the ground.
Blake caught her in a flying leap, materialising even as the clone she had left disappeared, catching Ruby in her arms before landing nimbly upon her feet, a slight smile upon her face as she set Ruby back down upon the ground.
“Thanks,” Ruby said.
“Anytime,” Blake replied. “But watch yourself; this thing is smarter than it looks.”
“And tougher too,” added Ruby.
Professor Goodwitch slashed at the air with her riding crop again, and all the rubble and debris that she had caused when she flung the beowolf into the building was now picked up and flung at the beowolf, colliding with the back of its legs and knocking it to its knees with a yelp of pain.
Blake dashed forwards, using her grappling hook to vault onto the side of the – by now half-demolished – building before leaping gracefully onto the back of the green beowolf. She planted her feet amongst the green spikes erupting from that tar-like body and swayed as the beowolf swayed, maintaining her balance and her poise to perfection as she fired three shots down into the bull neck of the grimm.
Then, as the grimm roared in angry agony, Blake leapt off its back, flipping as she went, her long and tangled, wild black hair flying all around her face as she landed before and facing the green-tinted grimm. Gambol Shroud switched to sword form as she stood, blade in one hand and sharp scabbard in the other, but both hanging by her side as she stood before the grimm, a small figure in white facing the incarnation of darkness.
I hope you’ve got something clever in mind, Blake, Sunset thought as she started to run forward. It was because she trusted that Blake was, indeed, about to do something clever that she ran rather than teleporting; but she ran towards her in case it was not so.
It was sometimes hard to tell with Blake.
The grimm snarled into Blake’s face and raised its unburned paw to slam her into the ground.
The claws descended.
And Blake vanished, leaving behind a perfect copy of herself forged out of ice; a copy which, as soon as the grimm’s middle claw touched it, exploded outwards into a block of ice that encased the grimm’s whole paw within it, trapping it and leaving it straining and huffing in its efforts to get free.
The real Blake ran up the trapped limb, slashing with both her blades as she went. “Ruby!”
“Right!” Ruby cried and surged forwards in another petal-trailing charge straight at the green-hued grimm.
And this time, it couldn’t bring its paw up to shield itself because its paw was encased in ice. Crescent Rose sliced cleanly through the trapped limb and scored a deep line across the beowolf’s chest, revealing even more luminescent green substance within.
Ruby even managed to snag Sunset’s Sol Invictus as she traced a green-blooded line across the grimm, grinning triumphantly as she tossed it towards Sunset, who sheathed her sword and used a touch of telekinesis to make the gun soar into her outstretched grasp.
The beowolf howled, throwing back its head and bellowing out its rage to the enclosed sky, but that only provided Blake an opportunity to jump athwart its mouth, one foot resting on each jaw, and fire directly down its green-glowing and blood-stained gullet with her – once more in pistol form – Gambol Shroud.
The grimm shifted; Blake lost her balance, one foot slipping off the jaw as she tumbled down into the beowolf’s mouth. The jaws slammed shut on a clone of fire, exploding in the mouth of the grimm to crack its bony mask even as the real Blake leapt away clear and unharmed.
Sunset raised one hand, stretching it out as the green glow of her magic enveloped her open palm, illuminating the rubble which she picked up with her own telekinesis. Where Professor Goodwitch had used hers like a hammer, slamming it into the grimm from behind to knock him to his knees, Sunset preferred to levitate much the same mass over the grimm’s head before she dumped it on top of him, knocking it flat onto its stomach with a pile of bricks and stones and rebar pipes piled up on top of it in a small mountain.
Ruby made another dash forwards, as everyone closed in around the green-eyed beowolf which, with only one forelimb, struggled to rise from beneath the weight piled onto it.
Ruby perched just behind the cracked and splintered boned mask and placed her scythe upon the face of that dread creature.
She pulled the trigger, and the scythe-blade of Crescent Rose snapped backwards, neatly dissecting the grimm’s face.
Smoke began to rise from its body as Ruby flashed a V-for-victory sign.
“Good work, Miss Rose, and a fair example of cooperation amongst the three of you,” Professor Goodwitch said, in the same tone that she might have used to critique their performances in sparring class, because apparently, she couldn’t turn it off. “Although-” She stifled her own words, as her green eyes widened behind her half-moon spectacles. “Miss Rose!”
The dead grimm beneath Ruby’s feet wasn’t simply turning to smoke. It was moving. Not in a conscious way, but not in a ‘dead frog kicking its legs’ kind of way either. Its body was vibrating, rumbling like an indigestive stomach, the black form of the extraordinary beowolf bulging in places, shrinking in others, the layer of rubble lying on top of it rising and falling with the movements of the corpse, the green-glowing spikes burning with a greater intensity now as the grimm’s black skin boiled, and the green lines became blinding in their brightness.
“Uh, guys?” Ruby murmured tremulously. “What’s going on?”
Sunset stepped forward. “Ruby, get off-!”
Too late. The grimm exploded underneath Ruby’s feet, throwing the rubble under which it had been buried up into the air in a fountain of debris, throwing Ruby up into the air with a startled cry as she was tossed into the dark shadow of the half-wrecked building behind her, tossing up an enormous amount of some strange green goo that must have been causing all of the green that had been so distracting and arresting about this particular grimm.
Sunset threw up a shield around herself, Blake, and Professor Goodwitch as debris and slime of indeterminate toxicity rained down upon them. She could feel both through her emerald shield, the vibrations echoing through Mountain Glenn and through Sunset via her connection to the magic.
The rubble bounced off her shield to land in a circle all around them. The green goo stuck to the magical barrier, only to plop to the ground once, the rain having ceased, Sunset let it drop.
She began to speak, “Professor, do you-?”
She was cut off by a startled cry from Ruby, coming from out of the darkness within the newly-minted ruin.
“Ruby! No!” Blake yelled, her cat-eyes seeing something that alarmed her as she ran headlong into the shadowed part of the tower that remained intact.
Sunset teleported, leaving Professor Goodwitch behind as she rematerialised inside the building, her night-vision and the light of the torch taped to the barrel of her gun sweeping through the darkness.
First, she found Crescent Rose lying on the ground.
Next, she found Ruby, disarmed and squirming in the grip of Adam Taurus.
He held her by the scruff of the neck, smiling as she beat at him futilely with fists that seemed so much smaller now than they normally did. In his other hand, he held his red sword, glowing in the darkness.
That sword. That damn sword. That terrible swift sword that haunted Sunset’s dreams. That sword that had nearly taken Ruby’s life once already, and now…
And now…
And now…
Sunset bared her teeth in a snarl. No. No way. No how. No way was she going to suffer this, not a second time, not ever again.
Twilight – Equestrian Twilight, Princess Twilight Sparkle – had, presuming upon the right to act as Sunset’s conscience, to squat upon her shoulder like the better alicorn of Sunset’s nature, counselled her against seeking the death of Adam Taurus. But Sunset’s question still stood: what was she supposed to do instead? When it came down to it, when it became a question of his life against the life of one of her friends, what other choice did she have?
He had almost killed Ruby once, and now, he threatened her again.
No.
“Adam, don’t!” Blake yelled as she raced towards them. But she was too slow and too far away.
Adam’s lips curled into a sneer. “I have been merciful to those who did not seek this battle or this war, but this child has brought a weapon-”
Sunset teleported up into his face and brained him with the stock of Sol Invictus. She slammed the wooden butt of the rifle – and that, Ruby, is why I made it out of wood instead of something that would break as soon as I did this – into the side of his head, causing him to drop Ruby as his head snapped sideways and he began to stagger in that direction.
She used the word ‘began’ because, before he had taken more than half a step, Sunset had grabbed him by the arm.
She didn’t look at Ruby as she teleported away again.
She was going to end this. And she was going to make sure that he didn’t hurt any of her friends again by taking him somewhere far away before she did.
“Sunset, wait!” Blake yelled, stretching out hand towards her before both Sunset and Adam disappeared in a burst of green light. A burst of magic.
It would have been really cool if it hadn’t meant that Sunset had just disappeared before their eyes with no idea of where she was.
“Sunset,” Ruby murmured, staring into the empty space where her team leader and their adversary had been. She glanced at Blake. “Where did she go? And… and why?” She had a feeling that she knew why, just like she had a feeling that Sunset wouldn’t have done this if it had been Pyrrha here instead of Ruby.
If I’d been in the other building and Pyrrha had been out here, you would have stayed and let her help you fight him, Ruby thought mutinously. She liked Sunset a lot, and she thought that Sunset liked her too, but she wasn’t stupid, and she knew that Sunset respected Pyrrha in way that she didn’t respect Ruby, for all her affection. Sure, Pyrrha had never come close to death on any of their missions, which was unfortunately not something that Ruby could say, but still…
It’s because of what happened at the docks, isn’t it?
Sunset, why do you have to do stuff like this?
Would you even be Sunset if you didn’t?
“She’s taken Adam away… to protect us,” Blake murmured. “I have to find them!”
“Miss Belladonna!” Professor Goodwitch shouted as Blake disappeared before anyone could stop her, the clone that she had left behind vanishing as the real Blake… they couldn’t even see the real Blake anymore. Ruby didn’t know where Blake was going or how she thought that she was going to find Adam, but as she scooped up Crescent Rose off the floor – Adam had caught her by surprise and knocked it out of her hands before she’d seen him coming in the darkness – she knew that she wasn’t going to be left out. She was going to find them too.
She’d gotten all of three steps before she felt an irresistible force, almost as strong as her sister when she was in mothering, overbearing mode, yanking her backwards so hard that she fell onto her behind and skidded along the floor that way.
“Oh no you don’t, Miss Rose,” Professor Goodwitch said, leaving no doubt as to the source of the invisible hand that was restraining Ruby.
“But Professor-“ Ruby began.
“Think for a moment,” Professor Goodwitch snapped. “What Miss Shimmer has done is incredibly foolish, what Miss Belladonna has done almost as much so; should you compound the fault with more folly? What about your other teammates? What about our mission?”
Ruby looked up into Professor Goodwitch’s face with wide, round eyes. “But… Sunset and Blake…”
“Once Miss Nikos and Mister Arc return-”
“Professor,” Pyrrha said as she and Jaune emerged from across the street and dashed over to join them. “Ruby… where’s Sunset? And Blake?”
Ruby bowed her head. “Adam… Sunset grabbed him and teleported away. Blake went after them. We don’t know where they went. We don’t know where Sunset went or how Blake thinks she can find them…”
Pyrrha’s face was pale. More than usual. “I see,” she murmured. “Then we… then we must trust in their skill, it seems, and hope.”
As she ran through the dead streets of Mountain Glenn, trying to ignore the devastation and all that that entailed to her feline-eyes, trying to ignore the stench of death and decay that assailed her nostrils, Blake sheathed Gambol Shroud across her back.
She had to find Sunset. She had to find her before Adam… she had to find her before it was too late.
You idiot. You stupid, thoughtless idiot! What were you thinking?
Blake wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Sunset hadn’t been thinking.
How can someone so smart be so consistently stupid?
She needed to find Sunset before it was too late, but… but how?
Height. If she got up high, then she could see better; the darkness was no barrier to her; she could just see what was going on, provided the buildings did not obscure her view.
Blake flung out her hook, and the trembling of her hand did not affect her aim so much that she couldn’t land it where she wanted it, atop the roof of a tower, and swing upwards, letting her momentum carry her up until she could jump off another wall to land nimbly upon the roof itself.
Now she just had to- there! There, the flame in darkness! There was burning out there, on another roof, the burning of Soteria, the burning of Sunset’s jacket, both of them burning in the night like beacons guiding her.
It was a way off, but she knew where to go.
Sunset, whatever you do, don’t die.
No sooner had Sunset materialised with Adam than he flung her away, cuffing her with one angry fist that threw her off his jacket and tossed her aside. She hit the ground and rolled away, scrambling upright as fast as she could. She kept her eyes, enhanced by the nightvision spell, fixed on Adam, but he made no move to attack her while she was prone, or even once she got up. He seemed a little confused, turning this way and that as he examined his new surroundings.
“Where are we?” he muttered.
Sunset couldn’t exactly tell him. She hadn’t teleported with any sense of where she was going, and so, she supposed she ought to think herself lucky that she hadn’t materialised half inside a wall or something. Although that might have taken care of Adam a little easier, I suppose.
Sunset tried to hide the amount that so much rapid teleportation had taken out of her from Adam Taurus as she looked around. They were still in Mountain Glenn, not surprisingly, on top of one of the many high towers that littered the dead cityscape. She could see the plaza where they had emerged from the Nightmarket to the northwest, and she thought that she could make out activity at the railyard to the east. A lot of activity.
You’re moving out, aren’t you? This is all just about delaying us long enough for you to go.
Well, that was fine by her, just fine. Adam had threatened Blake, he had threatened Twilight, he had damn near killed Ruby, and she was done! He was a danger, a mad dog, and she was going to end this, here and now.
No Fluttershy, or Cinder, or anyone else was going to save him now.
Adam looked at her. “So you’ve brought me here so you can kill me where no one else can get in your way,” he observed. “Or have you told yourself you’ve brought me here where I can’t hurt anyone else? We both know that’s not the real reason. You showed your real reasons last night. You want me dead because I threaten you, because I scare you, because I make you feel small, like I made the people who brutalised me, who burned my face, feel small. They hurt me to regain their power, as you will kill me to regain yours. Be honest with yourself.” He smirked. “Or don’t. Either way, don’t expect me to go down without a fight.”
Oh, I’m counting on it. Sunset set down her gun – it was empty – and placed one hand upon the shoulder of her jacket. At the deftest touch of her aura, the fire dust infused within the leather ignited, the flames of red and yellow – flames the same colour as her hair, blending with her burning locks as they cascaded down her back – spreading from one shoulder to the other, spreading down the jacket to her waist, consuming it until it there was not a scrap of black to be seen.
And as the jacket burned, Sunset took it off and ostentatiously tossed it aside. It lay burning on the rooftop as Sunset stood in her cuirass and tank top, in her vambraces and her wedding gloves, facing Adam Taurus.
She needed to have the jacket off for her strategy to work, but there was a part of Sunset that wished she’d kept it on. Without it, she seemed a slightly frail figure compared to the commander of the White Fang, with slender arms and an eminently breakable waist. As the scar on her belly twinged sympathetically, and she had to fight to resist the urge to touch the mark on her armour where he had run her through, Sunset thought that the flames had made her look larger, stronger, more powerful than she was.
Sunset fought to ignore such feelings, to ignore all fear and doubt, as she drew her sword. Soteria’s blade was as black as everything else in this mausoleum to Vale’s failure, but when she passed her hand over it, the fire dust she had imbued into the metal ignited, lighting up the space around her.
“Is that why you hurt Blake?” Sunset demanded. “To regain your power? Did she make you feel small?”
Adam’s face was inscrutable behind his mask. Each red line stood out upon the white like a scar. For a moment, he just stared at her, the line of his mouth unmoving and everything else about his face invisible.
And then he raised the scabbard of his sword, pointing it at Sunset like the gun that she guessed it also was, and fired.
Sunset leapt aside, but not quite fast enough to avoid a grazing shot that scraped across her side and twisted her as she hit the rooftop, taking a sliver off her aura – already a little diminished by the hit that grimm had given her – in the process.
Adam charged, his red blade gleaming. Sunset scrambled up and rushed to meet him; she had no choice; if she stood to take it, he’d probably bowl her clean off the rooftop with the sheer force of his onslaught.
Adam charged, and Sunset ran to meet him, their blades drawn back.
Adam swung. Sunset parried, just about making it in time. Her burning sword met Adam’s crimson blade with a metallic clack.
You don’t have the muscle to meet force with force, Pyrrha’s voice echoed in Sunset’s head. You’ll need to yield before greater strength and turn your weakness to your advantage.
And so, as Adam pressed against her with all his might, Sunset stepped back and, yielding before his greater strength, half-sidestepped out of his inexorable path. Adam, caught by surprise, stumbled forwards, and as he stumbled, Sunset grabbed her burning jacket with her telekinesis and hurled it into Adam’s face.
Sure, Adam Taurus was a more formidable opponent than Bolin Hori, but they both needed to see to fight, and they both needed their aura to survive, and so, as Sunset’s jacket embraced Adam’s face, wrapping around it like a towel, Sunset felt confident that the same trick – used on two different people – would work twice.
She stepped back, retreating to the edge of the roof, and both her hands glowed green with telekinesis as she levitated Soteria out of her physical grip.
She had hoped, she could confess to herself, that Adam would be frightened. She had hoped, a cruel hope perhaps, that the flames that were presently licking his face and consuming his aura would stir some memory in him, a memory of the brand that scarred that same face, and cause him to… to lose his composure the way that Sunset lost her composure whenever he was around.
It didn’t happen.
He just stood there, as though being blinded while flames burned in his face was nothing at all to him. He was still and silent, as though he had been petrified instead of blinded.
Have it your own way, tough guy.
He could play the strong, silent type all he wanted; he could act like none of it bothered him all he wanted; he could do whatever he wanted, and it didn’t matter! Sunset was in control of this fight now, and she didn’t have to be afraid of him anymore.
She was going to cut his aura into little pieces, and then… and then, she would banish the nightmare from her mind.
With telekinesis, she swung Soteria, the black sword wreathed in golden flames, and caught him on the hip with a solid blow.
Adam flinched but did not cry out. He barely moved, only wavering a little as the sword struck home.
Fine. Sunset wasn’t one of those who needed her enemy to suffer before she killed them. She just needed him to die.
She hit him again, moving Soteria with her magic to come at him from behind, knocking him forward this time. Then she came at him from the front, then the other side, then back to the right, then behind, then forward; she waved the ancient Mistralian sword deftly in the air, striking him from a different place, from a different angle. Soteria traced fiery figures through the air as it moved, obedient to her will, higher than she could have held it, faster than she could have wielded it, and most importantly, keeping her well away from Adam Taurus as she assailed him, striking at him again and again while he had no clue-
He parried Sunset’s stroke with his own crimson blade, the red tongue flickering to knock flaming Soteria aside.
Sunset stared, wide-eyed, unable to believe what she had just witnessed.
He… he…
He got lucky, that’s all.
Sunset drove the sword at his back, point first. Adam turned swiftly, the red blade singing, and once more parried the stroke. Sunset lashed out at him twice more from the same direction, and twice more, Adam parried before Sunset pulled Soteria back. She guided the burning blade over his head before bringing it down upon his shoulders, but he raised his own sword, and Soteria rang off it with a great clang that echoed off the rooftop.
How the-?
“They took my eye when I was just a boy,” Adam snarled. “I laboured in darkness so deep that not even the eye they left me with could penetrate it! So I learned to listen. To listen for the sound of your sword through the air.” He parried Soteria again with contemptuous ease before he raised his scabbard-gun to point directly at her. “And to listen for the sound of your breathing.”
He fired.
Sunset raised her hands up before her, conjuring a shield of magic which stopped the bullet harmlessly in its tracks.
But she couldn’t conjure a shield and hold up a sword and jacket with telekinesis at the same time. Soteria clattered to the ground. Adam tossed his gun up into the air where it spun, lazily, as with his now-free hand, Adam ripped Sunset’s jacket off his face and threw it aside.
Adam caught his gun again. “Did you think one cheap trick would be enough to finish me?”
The honest answer was ‘yes,’ but Sunset endeavoured to retain an impression of sangfroid as she summoned Soteria back into her hand. “Well, I thought it would be a start.”
He charged at her, sword raised.
Once more, Sunset charged to meet him; once more, Sunset seemed to take his blow squarely on Soteria before attempting to slip away, to sidestep out of his path before he drove her back right off the roof.
This time, he was ready for her, seeming to let her go before he swung at her with a sideways slashing stroke. Sunset took the blow, wincing in pain as she rolled with the strength of the stroke rather than resisting it, landing on her shoulder – that hurt a little bit too – and rolling away before coming up onto one knee.
Adam raised his gun-scabbard to fire at her again.
A spark of magic leapt from Sunset’s finger, even as Adam’s gun barked and flared; the shot hit Sunset square in the chest, and even her breastplate couldn’t prevent her being knocked backwards, just as it couldn’t stop her aura from taking another hit. But Sunset’s spark of magic hit too, knocking the gun out of Adam’s hand and sending it sliding across the flat grey roof on which they stood.
Adam lunged for it, but as she lay on the ground, Sunset pointed her finger at the discarded gun and fired another spark of turquoise magic. Her spell struck the weapon, which turned with a flash into a plastic pink flamingo lawn ornament.
Thanks for that… singular image, Twilight.
Adam picked up the flamingo, staring at it with what Sunset – as she picked herself up – could only describe as a nonplussed expression.
Bet you’ve never seen transfiguration before, have you?
Then he looked back at Sunset, and as he threw the lawn ornament away, that nonplussed look swiftly turned to an expression of rage.
And now he’s mad.
He came at her, his red blade swinging. This time, Sunset did not sidestep. He was ready for that now, obviously, so it was time to try something else. This time, she stood her ground, not even moving to counter charge; she merely stood her ground and hoped he didn’t notice the green glow around one hand.
The flames made it hard to see the glow around the blade itself.
Adam slashed wildly. Sunset parried with Soteria, holding the blade in place with telekinesis – the fact that her fingers were still around the hilt was largely for show – and because she was matching magic against his strength, not muscle, she was able to hold him off and had one hand free to throw a punch at him.
He caught her by the wrist with his free hand.
Sunset smirked as – still holding her sword in place with telekinesis – she put her fingers to her restrained forearm and with her aura activated the lightning dust infused into the metal of her vambrace.
Adam released her, recoiling with something like a yelp of pain as the bracer sparked and spat and shocked him. Sunset fired a bolt of magic from her palm, but he blocked it with his sword, and it did him no harm.
“I’ve got a few new tricks since you saw me last,” Sunset growled as she summoned her sword back into her hand with telekinesis.
“Clearly,” Adam grunted. “But do you think that will be enough to save you?”
With my aura levels starting lower than yours, I’m honestly not sure, Sunset thought. “Maybe I just want to delay you from getting to my friends, the way you want to delay me from getting to that railyard.”
“The last time we fought, you wanted to kill me.”
“I still want to kill you.”
Adam smiled. “You would have had more chance if you weren’t alone.”
“A friend taught me something,” Sunset replied. “Even if it wasn’t quite the lesson she intended: taking a life extracts a price from you, it puts a burden on your shoulders. A leader takes that burden on themselves; she doesn’t force others to carry the weight for her.”
Adam snorted. “Are you so naïve as to think that Blake has never taken a life before?”
“I’m not going to make her take more.”
“You won’t have a say in the matter for much longer,” Adam growled, and then he came at her again.
He attacked with a furious lunge, slashing wildly but swiftly, his momentum unrelenting as he never stopped, never let up. His blade clashed with Sunset’s sword; he drove her back, he beat down her guard if only for short intervals to strike at her; sometimes, he even let down his own guard to let Sunset strike at him so that she would leave herself open to a strike in turn. Their blades clashed, the blood-red sword and the black-but-burning blade striking each other, sparking off one another, each cleaving off some of the aura of the other.
Sunset wished that she had more of an idea of what state his aura was in. She wished that she could check on what state her own aura was in. She took a deep breath. She was panting a little, and sweat was making her top stick to her back and her gloves to her hands and arms. But she wasn’t done, and considering it was Adam Taurus she was up against, Sunset was inclined to think that she was doing pretty well.
But judging by what she could see of his face, he didn’t seem to think he was doing too badly either. In fact, he was smiling.
And as he stepped back, retreating all the way to the edge of the rooftop, Sunset could see why.
The sword in his hand was glowing so brightly. It glowed as red as blood. He had been charging it all this while.
Everything had depended on Sunset bringing him down before he reached this point, and she had failed.
And now, he was ready.
Adam’s smile became something vicious to behold, and then the world turned as red as blood.
Sunset froze. She couldn’t have moved even if she’d wanted to, with everything turning so slowly, but it wasn’t just that. The world had turned crimson. Blood had descended over her vision. Everything was red except him; he was as black as Mountain Glenn had been just a moment ago, and he was coming straight for her, and she was frozen.
At least Ruby isn’t here this time.
Adam charged her, his blade readying for a slashing stroke to cut her in half, and Sunset’s eyes were drawn to him, to the black form with that deadly blade; it was like she was a rodent hypnotised by a snake, and the snake was poised to devour her.
She was so drawn to Adam that she didn’t even see Blake vault up onto the roof until she had bodily slammed into Adam from the side.
The blood-red effect dissipated in the same instant that Adam’s charge was disrupted, and Sunset saw Blake knock Adam off course, staggering him sideways before she leapt away from his furious counterstroke.
“Blake!” he snapped, confusion in his voice. “You… you came back?” His voice trembled with anger. “You came for her?”
Blake didn’t reply, but the unwavering look on her face was answer enough.
Adam roared in anger as he charged at her, Sunset forgotten.
And as Blake leapt to meet him, Sunset lunged for her gun.
Blake ducked away from Adam’s first blow, leaving a shadow behind to take the slashing stroke from Wilt while she thrust Gambol Shroud up towards his side. Adam turned, too fast for her, the way he had always been too fast, parrying the thrust and slicing down at her.
His blow sliced into the ice clone that Blake had left in her place, trapping his sword in the sculpture. Blake skidded away, switched Gambol Shroud into its gun mode, and fired four times.
She couldn’t miss, and he couldn’t use Wilt to take the shots.
It was time to end this.
Adam, hit in the chest, staggered backwards. Blake lunged for him, kicking him backwards, slashing him with Gambol Shroud – now a sword again – knocking him backwards and onto his back. She stood over him, sword pointed at his chest.
“Do it,” he said.
Blake’s eyes widened. “Wh-what?”
He was smiling at her. “Do it,” he repeated. “You’ve chosen your side, and I’m your enemy. So do it, and show Atlas what a good little dog you are.”
Gambol Shroud trembled in Blake’s hand. She ought to do it. She ought to strike at him, drive her blade through his aura and put an end to this. He wouldn’t stop. He’d never stop. Even if he was put in prison, he’d just find a way to escape, and he’d keep killing, and he’d keep coming, and… and she didn’t have any way of restraining him anyway. She ought to do it. He was a monster now. Whatever else he’d been, whatever he had been to her… he wasn’t the man she’d fallen in love with. He wasn’t the hero that she’d thought he was. He was wild, and he was dangerous, and he had to be stopped.
She had to stop him.
But…but she couldn’t. Her sword stuck in the air as though it had turned solid all around her. She could barely move at all.
Because he’d let Fluttershy go and shown her that the man she had once known and so admired was still in there somewhere, if only she could find a way to reach him.
And because she… because he…
“It’s alright, Blake,” Adam whispered. “I know that you’ve always been weak.”
He grabbed her by the ankle, his hand reaching out as swift as a striking serpent to pull her off balance. Blake cried out as she was pulled to the ground, and then Adam was on top of her, his fists flying, pummelling her face as he wrenched Gambol Shroud out of her hand.
He laughed as she raised her hands to shield herself, beating her guard away as he crouched astride her.
“Don’t be afraid, my love,” he snarled as he raised her own sword above his head to strike her. “I’m going to set you free.”
Gambol Shroud hovered above her like a bolt of black lightning, its point aimed for her heart.
Adam’s face was twisted into a snarl. “This isn’t-”
BANG!
Sunset was terrified. She couldn’t have said what exactly was terrifying her – was it what she was doing, was it Adam, was it fear for Blake, was it some admixture of them all? – but she was terrified. She was having to use magic to keep the barrel of Sol Invictus steady, balancing it level with telekinesis so that she hit Adam instead of Blake by accident as she fired.
But she fired anyway. Her first shot broke his aura, and she kept firing. She shot him six times, six rounds booming out of her rifle as fire red blotches appeared on Adam’s black jacket, blood spurting from the wounds and mingling with the red of the wilted rose on his lapel.
She fired until she’d used up all her rounds, and even then, she pulled the trigger a couple more times because she wasn’t quite convinced.
Adam was still, seeming to stare at her a while as blood dripped from his mouth. Then his head dropped, his chin touching his chest. And then he fell sideways, lying still on the rooftop by Blake’s side.
I take this burden on myself.
Thank you, Twilight, for teaching me that I should do that, even if it wasn’t exactly the lesson you intended to teach me.
She had killed someone. She took no pleasure in that, not even when that someone was him. Sunset felt cold inside, as though it had turned to winter in her soul. She had taken a life, and she would have to live with it.
But Blake wouldn’t have to live with it, and that was the important thing.
That – and to save her – was why Sunset had fired.
To spare her life and her soul both.
Blake scrambled away, getting out from under Adam’s… Adam’s body. There were tears in her golden eyes, and Sunset could see that she was sobbing.
“Blake,” Sunset murmured.
Blake ignored her, standing over Adam’s still and lifeless form, looking down upon him.
“You were everything to me too,” she whispered. “Until… until you weren’t the same person anymore.”
Sunset approached her cautiously, warily, uncertain of what kind of reaction she would receive from her. “Blake,” she said softly. “You can hate me if you want to, but-”
“Hate you?” Blake asked, looking over her shoulder at Sunset with her eyes so damp. “Why would I hate you?”
Sunset’s brow furrowed. “You loved him.”
“Once,” Blake said. “But the man I loved died long before you pulled that trigger.”
She knelt by Adam’s side, removed his mask – exposing the brand that had seared his face and removed one of his eyes – and closed the other.
“Your fight is over,” she whispered. “Be at peace, Sword of the Faunus.”
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Loved this chapter. Great work!
Adam is DEAD!
Fans disliked the way Adam died in the show, but I liked it because I disliked Adam since the moment he was introduced, and seeing him die here and now is like a comeupance for all the bullshit he did in the show.
Really interesting twist on Adam's final fight. The difference in Blake's backstory and Sunset taking responsibility made for a really cool interpretation of Blake.
Holy shit, so many things won’t happen or change now, because Sunset killed him already. Sienna can now live longer than 20 seconds in her first scene.
Excellent chapter. You are advancing the plot in a much different way than in the show.
Now... I don't know what will happen next. Very interesting road you have us traveling down.
There was no other way it could have ended, Adam. The relief from your presence on Blake's shoulders, the end of your mad crusade....and the start of Sunset's willing suffering for others. May you find peace in the embrace of whatever deity will have you.
9550249
"Disliked the way he died in the sh-"? REALLY? I thought it was perfect. Not that he died, not really, but because it was a huge character growth moment for Blake AND Yang. Something tells me those "fans" couldn't appreciate the reasons behind that whole fight even if it was explained to them.
9550459
I agree and said the same thing, but the amount of shit thrown my way made me realized that some people just can't be reasoned with.
I think at this point it's obvious that Sunset X Blake is a thing in this story and I love it.
There's a difference between killing in self-defense, and killing someone already defeated and at your mercy. What Twilight feared was what choosing to execute Adam would do to Sunset. When some people say that when pursuing vengeance you must dig two graves, it's because the person that emerges at the end of the journey wouldn't be Sunset Shimmer anymore.
But this was different. Adam would have never stopped, ever. Sunset stopped him when he was about to kill someone dear to her, and so this was the ultimate act of Loyalty. She saved her best friend, (and perhaps more than a friend to her). At this point in time, I believe that Princess Twilight is about to face Tirek, where she will have a fierce battle of her own and where she will sacrifice her magic to save her friends. So I ask, what greater act of Loyalty and Friendship itself is there?
A single monster, a villain, has been defeated to save tens of thousands of lives. Yang won't lose an arm. The White Fang has lost their powerful leader, and Cinder has now lost a considerable amount of influence over them. And above all, Blake is finally free.
This was a magnificent chapter! Well done my friend, well done! And on the same morning that the next and final season for MLP premieres! What a day!
Now I’d like to imagine a full-blown fight between the Salem and Ozpin faction in Beacon, meanwhile at an unknown location, Torchwick and Neo are eating popcorn, enjoying the show.
Woot. Dead Adam.
So, it Sunset going to claim his sword as a trophy on the wall like she wanted?
Also, I'm getting he feeling that aside from the Grimm Eclipse lab, there's a good bit of supernatural weirdness going on in Mountain Glenn...
9551003
Is that what the green beowulf was from, the game? I figured Dr Watts was running Tiberium experiments.
>the flamingo
I remember an old d&d encounter where the MVP move was a humble grease spell cast on the cult's sacrificial dagger.
While the party battled through delaying shenanigans, the cult leader completely failed to pick up a dagger for a minute and a half.
Getting murdered was probably welcome relief from the embarassment.
Good chapter. I like the way you’re having Sunset influence the other characters with her brains and charisma... and good old fashioned pragmatism. Sunset uses every tool at her disposal. She doesn’t beat Adam through power, but though versatility, cleverness, and having brought as many toys as she could manage with Pyrrha’s mom’s money.
Just ask Batman. Money is the best superpower. Although magic doesn’t hurt! Loved the pink flamingo!
9550249
9550459
It was more due to the fact that where once Adam completely steamrolled over Blake and Yang, suddenly they had him on the back foot at every turn. It was a complete 180 from the prior encounter, and it felt... well, off, considering neither of them had really learned anything new that people could see. It felt more like they had to nerf him just to give the main characters the win and the "happy ending".
At least here, we can see an improvement in Sunset's skills, and she didn't fight alone. Here we can see an actual reason for him being bested, even if it was him getting cocky and forgetting about Sunset at the end of the fight.
9551003
Personally, I’d take the sword and use it. Have her black one be a back up.
9552009
Comparing to Volume 3, yeah? Blake still struggled against him alone in Volume 6 like she did at Beacon (Gambol Shroud got destroyed, after all), but the difference is that Yang fights a lot smarter now. She's seen Adam's semblance in action, and her new arm is stronger than her organic one. Adam never really fought both of them at once before anyway. He wounded Blake at Beacon, which allowed him to maim Yang when she came charging in. Yang trains a little with her father, and when she fights after leaving to go find Ruby, we see her fight a lot...calmer, let's call it. Less prone to being rash and relying entirely on her semblance. Yang's presence is what makes the fight in Volume 6 different.
9552009
Obsession drives people to madness, and with madness comes actions that A) aren't thought completely through and B) are actually weaker because they've put too much focus on vengeance than on being prepared.
So what's the actual reason for a wooden stock? Because as the food fight episode demonstrated, any material is sturdy enough to use as a weapon if you have aura. She could have just as easily made the stock out of metal or plastic or hard candy and it would have had basically the same durability.
9704765
I wrote this fic in tandem with watching volumes 1-3 (more or less) and I didn't realise that was how it worked when I came up with Sunset's weapon (I'd only seen up to the end of Initiation or maybe Jaunedice arc by that point).
Well, fuck
Sunset's arsenal is reminding me of the Mandalorians from Star Wars, that's not a good thing. In Rebels, Kanen talks about how the Mandalorians came up with all these tricks and weapons to fight the Jedi, and how they still lost. That's how I'm feeling about Sunset right now. Like she's getting all these gizmos and gadgets that she's borrowing from different people: a little bit of Pyrrha, a little bit of Cinder, and then adding her magic on top of that. It is too much. She has a lot of tricks, but that's all they are, is tricks. Sooner or later those tricks are going to run out, and she will be left defenseless.
If Dark Souls taught me anything, it is that Sunset wouldn't have lasted long enough for Adam to need to use his semblance. Even with the handicap of him not being able to use backstabs.
Didn't watch the show and don't know how dust works, so I can only say I feel like the dust in her jacket should have run out with a single charge per area, or at the very least have the explosion damage be directly proportional to the amount of dust used. She did make great use of her lightning dust. Then again, I'm kinda bummed Adam doesn't use dust now.
I mean, I'm not saying Sunset should have been killed. The rabid dog needed to be put down, his old self and Blake needed peace. However, she could have learned how to use her magic close range, couldn't she? Sacrifice power for shorter channeling duration. P sure that would have been all kinds of epic.
I wonder if Adam have human siblings of Faunus descent, after all, when a Faunus and a human do it, it's 50/50.
Now than i think of it, is Adam the son of Reeve ? Because from what i had seen when i was bored and so i had read the latest chapter of the beta version , it would fit her.
Also it could make any issue between Reeve and Blake much deeper.
You know, it make sense for someone having worked in the mines, especially since he likely doesn't have the same night vision as Blake.
Damn.
I loved this fight.
But damn, Adam is dead.
He also became a martyr, so the Butterflies are going to flap their wings so hard it will likely cause a Bloody mess later.
Also, i ship Blake and Sunset.
Magnificent rewrite! You have truly done Adam's character justice, the kind that he deserves. And now he is finished. He will never threaten an innocent life ever again.
Furthermore, let this achievement banish all doubt from those who say that Blake is still a member of the White Fang. Even Cardin cannot protest any more. And regardless of everything that is yet to come, I do hope that Sunset gets a medal for defeating the wanted terrorist leader, Adam Taurus. Blake should get plenty of recognition as well. Even Ironwood will want to personally congratulate them.
It will also say a great deal to the world how Adam Taurus was defeated by a pair of other Faunus, instead of humans. He can't become a martyr if he was defeated by another Faunus, especially those who are not Atlesian. If Rainbow Dash, the protege of Ironwood, had defeated him, it would have been a very different story.
10975801
Well, if Blake join Atlas, he can, since there can be the narrative than it was the fault of "the greatest traitor of the White Fang ".
Here the perfect reason of Blake not joining Atlas !
The sword falls. I cannot help but feel like Adam and Sunset had more in common then she would have liked to admit, considering that he was spot on in regard to reading her motivations for wanting him dead... the question remains if fear makes Sunset cruel like Cinder through.
10976446
It doesn't.
Cinder enjoy giving pain.
Since so many of Sunset's combat moves involve teleporting up to point blank range and unloading, she needs to up her arsenal. A pair of hand-cannon size pistols maybe, or a good old shotgun or even a explosive charge powered piston-pile driver (to get through the really tough grim) would be a good idea. A revolver rifle/bayonet just doesn't cut it anymore.
10977295
Well, Sunset just doesn't have the muscle or the reflexes/skills to use those weapons in close range and teleporting in close is still done more out of necessity that choice, she is still at her best at mid range.
I do agree that Sol Invictus is almost a peashooter at this point. It made sense before, when Sunset was broke and keeping her magic under wraps, that she would need a cheap do-it-all weapon, but now that she has Soteria for short range and is able to really show her magic blasts for mid range it is left obsolete.
Sunset should upgrade it into a heavier caliber weapon with more modern features, like clip reloading so she isn't as constrained in her rate of fire. Maybe remove the bayonet to control the weight and use it for mid-long range and armor piercing, which seems to be her biggest weakness. Lady Nikos has the money and I am certain she would be more than happy to pay for a Sol Invictus Mark 2 .
10977573
This is especially important since as it had been prove a lot of times, the magic of Sunset, while good and giving her a edge, is far from enough to allow her victory against a prepared elite student and/or a a older well trained one.
Like, she is the second best of her year at Beacon after Pyrrha, but if Weiss could use her summoned creatures and warrior, she would beat her for example (the fact than Weiss incomplet summoning was able to cut a big robot in one hit when a other needed a lot of the Vytal festival tournament fighters including Velvet trump card to be put down show how OP it was).
Sunset is in pure combat skills far better than Jaune, but she is still mid level at best i think, although the fact than she couldn't use fancy techs and didn't really used that much of her magic forced her to quickly adapt herself.
And since her magic can be contested by others elite students or older mid-ranks ones if they are prepared to fight her (and then there is our favorite genderbend Achilles who was taken by surprise but still won), needing to reinforce herself throught a better gear is really necessary.
That aside, i really, really hope the Vytal festival will happens.
NO! Don't tell me that black-yang shipping is cancelled!
Seriously, I don't want any spoilers and I liked this chapter even if it cancels one of the most important scene for my favorite shipping.
Well, I'm glad that bastard is dead. Blake and Sunset did take him out together, but Sunset made the killing blow (or shot, rather)
Sunset has no reason to fear Adam anymore.
Question is, what will Twilight think, the princess that is, (considering Adam would've killed the human Twilight if it weren't for Sunset)?
Bruh, can you stop? Why is it that Sunset always has to be saved by someone? Why can't she have a 1 on 1 fight? Why is she using so many retarded means to fight when she has other ways, better ways, to fight? Why does she know only 5 spells? What have you done with Sunset? Mate, you made her utterly usless. Why is she getting "hypnotized" by Adam's attack? Is she retarded?
Edit: I've read the rest of the chapter, and i'm so glad that Sunset decided to kill Adam, i just wish she would have done it in an 1 on 1 fight, so we can see how much stronger she became after their last encounter, but alas, she had to be, yet again, saved by someone.
No, don't tell me that Adam died like that. Sunset couldn't even fight him on her own without Blake saving her ass
Well Sunset’s quest to kill Adam is finally over. Not sure her nightmare is going to end just quite yet though.