Never Change

Chapter 23

Adam Taurus snarled, narrowing his eyes.

He pushed against his former mentor who had dared to stop him from finishing what he'd started.

They rapidly traded blows back and forth, Adam gritting his teeth as he tried to force himself on the offensive. Yet she was skilled, incredibly so. Raven had always been like that.

She kept him on the backfoot, slowly chipping away at his aura. She used a red dust blade to launch a torrent of searing fire at him.

Adam shrank himself as best he could, holding Wilt horizontally and absorbing the energy into his blade. He tanked the rest with his aura, grunting slightly as he felt the burn.

But the woman sheathed, quickly switching blades, and an ice dust blade popped up. She swung it ferociously, launching a torrent of ice that froze his left arm.

He growled, slamming his frozen arm into her block, which served its purpose of shattering the ice, but he ended up receiving a painful boot in the chest in return.

He stumbled backwards, blocking the tirade of swings that came afterwards with his blade, Wilt absorbing the power. Striking and sheathing three times in quick succession, he unleashed a trail of fire following his blade, and he managed to force her backwards, and go on the offensive.

Adam fired Blush at her multiple times, the semiautomatic firearm forcing the woman to block expertly, as she deflected the bullets with her blade.

He rapidly hurled Wilt like a red saw, causing it to spin speedily in the air. The human blocked with her blade, even as Wilt's bloodred blade glowed with absorbed power. He jumped in the air, catching it, before slamming it down, unleashing a wave of red energy, and shattering her dust blade.

The woman rolled away, redrawing another blade from her sheath.

"Funny how this has come to bite you in the ass, huh?" Adam sheathed his bloodred blade, keeping his hand on the hilt.

Raven narrowed her red eyes through the mask, growling "You were never grateful for the training I gave you."

"Why did you come? The strong live, the weak die," Adam quoted, drawing a snarl from her, "Those are the rules."

"One save," his mentor scowled, "Those are the rules."

"And yet I never got a save," Adam grunted, "Hypocrite."

"Because taking you in was the save. And you repaid the kindness by leaving," Raven narrowed her eyes, "Joining a fool's dream for faunus equality. All that potential... gone to waste because, like a naïve child, you wanted to ignite some kind of revolution."

Adam grit his teeth, but said nothing more. She had picked up a lonely, desperate bull faunus, and trained him, making him a part of their tribe. Tensions between him and his mentor had been heated when he left the Branwen tribe for the White Fang, who had saved him in the first place. Raven had screamed at him for joining a cause that she saw as useless. At the time, it had hurt him more than he cared to admit.

Through his rose-tinted glasses, she had been his idol back then. Strong, powerful, and he'd used everything from the Iaido style down to the clothes as inspiration. She'd even given him his emblem, a wilting rose, apparently related to one of her former teammates.

But that was it; she wasn't strong, or powerful. She led a tribe that preyed on the weak civilians, content to sit back and watch the world burn. She rarely, if ever, visited her teammates; the world-famous STRQ was fractured, broken. Because of her.

"You were always content to sit and watch on the sidelines, forever too weak to do anything."

That apparently struck a chord with Raven, as she snarled again in anger, placing her hand on her blade's hilt again.