Chapter Text
The full moon overhead cast Haven Academy’s rooftops and distant walls in shades of blue and silver-white. Adam could see from where he was standing the only two other dim sources of light besides it on campus rounds. One from Lionheart's office, and the other coming from the foyer inside Haven's Great Hall. He could see figures milling about, passing by, and waiting at some of the windows, faint, distant silhouettes of indeterminate gender or disposition.
The fact that people were inside at this hour in the first place meant the plan had worked.
Just as hoped. Everyone on the staff roster was gone, save Lionheart.
What if they hadn't taken the bait?
He hummed, reaching up toward his face to adjust his mask. There was no point in wasting time on hypotheticals.
Besides-
It's not my problem either way.
Whether or not Branwen and the children had shown, this night was Haven Academy's last to live.
The rest?
Hazel's business. His and Fall's.
Adam Taurus stood in the courtyard as he dropped his hands behind his back, listening to the wind move through the colonnades. The buildings were dark. No lights shone in the dormitory outbuildings. No guards patrolled. No cameras moved.
He waited. One minute. Two. The Silhouettes moved on, deeper inside the Great Hall, dipping out of his view.
Adam put a finger to his ear.
"Perimeter team, West treeline." They'd have dropped a few trees to block the Eastern roadway by now. "I want you as a picket. I don't care if it's a curious deer or a Beowolf or a student or Huntsmen or an old lady doing some late-night foraging. You see movement, you report it, then delay its approach or stop it cold."
An unnecessary precaution.
A habitual one.
"Voss, take your squad to the auxiliary building on the other side of the Hall. I want it set to blow. Willa—up. The highest point you can reach not on the CCT towers we're gonna be bringing down tonight. You're Overwatch. Take Pell and Shrike with you; Shrike can fly if she needs a better angle." He turned, surveying the dozen-plus operatives still milling in the courtyard's shadow. Men and women. Some in full tactical gear, Aura-activated, carrying real weapons that they knew how to use. Most were rank-and-file. Armbands and Uniforms Rifles. Sidearms. The courage of the recently radicalized and the weapon proficiency of the minimally trained and highly enthusiastic.
He needed them anyway. Warm bodies holding lines and pulling triggers still won battles. They always would, led properly. "Everyone else—defensive positions along the main approach. I want earthworks. We don't have Sandbags. Tough. Fill crates with dirt. Dredge up the pavement if you have Aura. I don't care what it looks like. I care that it stops bullets, helps keep you alive, or stops or diverts foot and vehicle traffic. Loot the dorms, empty dressers, take anything you can find that looks useful. I'm sure the students here have all sorts of contraband, equipment, and tools tucked away."
A chorus of nods. Salutes.
He returned them.
They moved. Everyone moved when he spoke. That was the thing about Adam Taurus that the Schnees and the Councils and the Huntsman Academies would never understand: he didn't lead through fear alone. He led because when he said do this, the people who followed him believed—genuinely, fervently believed—that the doing of it would bring them closer to a world where Faunus didn't kneel. Fear was the mortar.
Faith was the stone.
He walked the perimeter himself as it took shape. Checked sightlines. Made adjustments.
Found a firing position where a riflewoman, Coral, had placed herself. He moved her six feet left, behind a stone planter that would eat small-arms fire. He redistributed two of the better trained fighters—a Fox Faunus with a halberd and a heavyset crocodillian man with a battle-ax—to the forward positions near the outer dormitories, where they could intercept anyone trying to flank the Great Hall or intercept anyone trying to break out of it. He handed out the missile launchers personally. Two of them. Shoulder-fired, Atlas military surplus, bought on the black market through a chain of contacts so long that the original seller probably thought they'd ended up in The Crown's hands. They went to his best marksmen, soon to be positioned on the high ground, and he told them exactly what he expected.
"Shoot down anything in the air that isn't ours. Anything. Bullheads, airships, I don't care if it's a civilian cargo shuttle or private plane or a Nevermore—if it enters our airspace, you bring it down to the ground."
They nodded. They understood.
He found Ilia last, kneeling and fumbling with a shaped charge in her hands.
One notably not planted on the truss she was supposed to have moved on from half a minute ago ago.
"Ilia."
She flinched at the sound of his voice, turning her head around to face him. He couldn't see her eyes behind the mask, but he didn't need to.
He understood what she was going through.
Maybe better than anyone else in The White Fang.
"Almost done with this section." She reported.
"You're doing fine." He crouched beside her. "We're on time. And she has me off balance, too."
She nodded stiffly, cheeks oscillating between pink and green and red flushes. He planted a hand on her shoulder and felt her stiffen.
Ilia worked her jaw, and his fingers squeezed down lightly on her clavicle. "I forgave you for the Menagerie Debacle already. That was all on the Albains. We'll get another shot at Belladonna, and soon."
He watched the emotions on her face play out without a single change in expression. Merely complexion.
Embarrassment. Anger. Fear. Longing.
He squeezed tighter. "Yeah?"
"..Yeah." She exhaled sharply through her nose, planting the explosive. He clapped her on the shoulder, rising back up to his full height.
"Good girl."
He stalked off.
He did not notice the way her jaw tightened after he turned away.
(X)
The setup was complete by the time the portal opened inside the main hall.
He felt it more than heard it—a bass-register infrasound hum that resonated in his horns and made the fine hairs on his arms stand up. Raven's Branwen semblance, no doubt.
One moment, the hall was empty; the next, a crimson slash hung in the air within, and through it came Cinder Fall and her people, and Hazel Rainart, and then a woman he didn't recognize, and then scuttling from wherever he'd been before to be behind them all, Lionheart, looking like a man attending his own funeral.
Adam watched the portal close from outside. He could see fragments of movement through the tall windows—silhouettes shifting, the warm glow of the hall's interior lighting. He'd positioned himself on the eastern side, close enough to the windows that he could be inside in thirty seconds, far enough that he couldn't be seen.
And he waited.
It didn't take long. Voices inside, raised. The sharp crack of a weapon being discharged, the concussive pop of a shotgun. Then more. A staccato rattle of gunfire. A deep, resonant boom that shook dust from the windowsills and made the glass of the windows shake, and through those windows, Adam saw a flare of orange light—fire, dust, or Fall's semblance, or all three at once—roll across the ceiling of the hall.
The fight had started.
He crossed his arms, leaning against a stone pillar, and listened to the shape of it. At first, the sounds were sharp and contained—distinct impacts, individual weapon discharges, the clash of metal on metal. This was fine. Expected. Cinder's team against a handful of students and an allegedly washed-up Huntsman. The plan called for a quick, decisive takedown, after which Cinder and Raven would move on to the Basement to drag out whatever trinket or bauble that existed on Remnant capable of attracting Cinder's genuine, unabashed attention.
Five minutes. Maybe ten tops.
Enough time for the inside team to neutralize the opposition, enough time for everyone's charges to be checked, enough time for everyone to leave before the building came down, and the campus to be lit up brighter than the twilight sunset happening on the other side of the planet at the flick of a switch.
Five minutes passed.
The sounds didn't stop. They escalated. There was more fire. A wall-shaking impact that Adam could feel through his boots from here, followed by a roar—human, male, raw, coarse.
That would be Hazel.
There was a shrill crystalline shattering, like a window the size of a car detonating into fragments, and then a heavy sustained barrage of projectile fire that went on for six, seven, eight seconds straight, far longer than any under-control engagement should have allowed for.
Then another eardrum-rupturing roar.
Then more gunfire.
Adam began to pace.
He checked his people by radio. The perimeter—all clear. The treeline—all clear. Overwatch—no contacts in the airspace, clear skies. South positions—quiet. Everything outside Haven Academy was operating exactly as he'd designed it. His operation was perfect. It was the other operation, the one he hadn't designed, the one he'd been told to stay out of and trust, that was apparently falling apart inside the building he was supposed to have blown up five minutes ago.
Part of him was tempted to just drop the fucking thing on all their heads, regardless of who was still stuck inside or not.
He radioed Ilia. "Are the towers set to blow?"
It took her four seconds to respond. He counted.
"Charges are set," she said. Her voice was flat. Controlled in a way that wasn't quite right. "My sections are done."
"What's wrong then?"
Silence. One second. Two. Then: "I just have a bad feeling. I don't know what's taking everyone so long. This was all supposed to be over already."
She didn't know.
That made two of them.
Adam stared at the Great Hall, at the now flickering lights in the tall windows, at the shadows that moved and clashed and moved again behind the glass. Another impact shook the structure, and a section of decorative stonework crumbled from the upper facade and shattered on the terrace three feet from where he stood.
The fight was approaching the seven-minute mark.
Seven minutes. Against what were allegedly supposed to be students and a single professional Huntsman.
He put a finger to his ear.
"All squads, hold positions. I'm going inside. Ilia—you're in charge. Standing orders apply."
He selected six of his people. Not his best—those were holding the more critical positions—but good enough to add weight to whatever was happening inside without stripping the perimeter to nothing.
He drew Wilt two inches from Blush. Just enough to break the seal between blade and sheath. The red edge caught the moonlight and drank it in, and Adam eyed his reflection in the crimson steel.
He breathed in:
Exhaled outward:
Then he went through the doors.
The Grand Hall of Haven Academy was built for ceremony. High vaulted ceilings. Columns spaced at processional intervals. A mezzanine gallery wrapping the upper walls. A floor of polished stone designed to echo footsteps and magnify the voices of headmasters and dignitaries.
It was not designed for what was happening inside it.
Adam came through the doors with Wilt seated in Blush, the White Fang operatives fanning behind him, guns raised, and he read the room, as of yet still unnoticed.
Near the shattered remains of a display case, there was a blonde girl in a brown jacket and yellow top, fighting Mercury Black. She fought like a brawler—feet planted wide, center of gravity low, her fists driving forward in hooks and crosses that were amplified by the twin gauntlets strapped to her forearms. Each punch discharged a shotgun shell from the barrel nested between her index and middle fingers, and the concussive blast that accompanied every impact doubled the kinetic force of an already devastating blow. She fired on contact, the shells cycling with a mechanical chunk-chunk as fresh rounds rotated into the chambers, and the recoil of each discharge fed back into her stance, letting her redirect her own momentum mid-combination—a right cross fired, the recoil kicking her shoulder back, which she converted into a spinning backfist that came from the opposite direction and fired again on impact.
Something about her was—
Familiar. Barely. A half-recognition, like a face seen through rain. He'd seen her before.
Beacon.
She wasn't winning, he could tell.
And Blake wasn't here.
...Not his problem. Black would be fine, or he wouldn't be, and Adam wasn't particularly invested in either outcome.
In the center of the Hall, he saw The Branwen's clashing as fast-moving blurs. At the speeds they were moving, trying to keep track would only make him nauseous. Adam moved on.
Raven could no doubt handle herself.
By the far wall, near the stairs to the lower levels, he saw a blonde boy—tall, armored, young enough that Adam could see the baby fat in his jaw even from across the hall—fighting Cinder Fall. Her back was to him.
He wanted to cross the room toward it. He wanted to bury Wilt in her spine while the boy held her attention, twist, and share in the boy's righteous fury, indignation, and triumph.
The boy staggered as he caught a glancing blow on his shield that spun him half around and dropped him to one knee, and Cinder's amber eyes blazed with light, and for a moment, Adam's feet actually shifted, and he angled his feet-
And he stopped himself.
With difficulty.
He scanned past them. Past Emerald Sustrai, whose twin revolvers were cycling rapid fire at a dark-haired girl in a red cloak—Ruby Rose, some part of his memory supplied, the silver-eyed girl Cinder had been so fixated on—and past a pair of students he didn't recognize and didn't care to, clashing with Hazel.
Adam made a fist and made his choice, gesturing for the men flanking him to support Cinder's pet as he bent low, forward, readying himself to lunge and bring down the girl with the hammer as she held it aloft for an overhead swing, guard exposed.
His head turned.
Just slightly. Just enough that the rightward edge of his field of vision passed the center of the hall again, then swept across the debris field of another shattered display case, landing on a girl in a blue dress, holding a rapier, hair the color of white snow.
His view of the world collapsed in on itself. All that remained of it was her face. It came closer, closer, closer, and Adam realized it was because he was getting closer to it, closer, closer, the edges blurring, the periphery dissolving, the world contracting until all that existed was the snowflake emblem on her back and the name it represented and the scar that burned.
Wilt came out of Blush.
He didn't feel the draw.
What he did feel was the impact of his shoulder as he checked the woman with dual blades aside, because she was in the way.
And what he'd savor forever was the felt impact of Wilt crashing onto that rapier's edge, the sound of it and of the girl's knees splintering the tile floor as he drove her onto it.
Adam's lips peeled back into a snarl.
"Schnee."