Chapter 15

"So… what did you guys net today?" a guy in a tophat said.

"Uh… we got… a random scroll…" A girl held up a beat up scroll.

"And?"

"And… another random scroll…" the same person held up another scroll, but this time with a little sticker on it.

"Is that al-"

"We also have this… trolley of suitcases… That we stole from a random rich girl…"

"Really? What the fu-"

"And another scroll!" This time, a scroll covered in glitter was held up.

"You… You…"

"No need to thank us, boss." The delinquent who presented the goods smiled proudly. "It's the least we can do for-"

"You imbeciles!"

The whole room froze. The two goons opening a suitcase with a snowflake symbol on it in froze.

"We're out to steal dust! How much of it are you going to get from scrolls and a suitcase?" The tophat-wearing man said, wrenching the suitcase out of the goon's frozen hands. "Why'd you even steal the…"

He opened the box.

Inside, plentiful glass vials of fine, high quality dust lay. As his hands trembled, the glass clinked against each other cheerfully.

"Suitcase…"

"Nevermind. You guys did fine. But next time… Actually rob the right place, you fucking idiots!"

…

Weiss wandered the streets, looking at her dead scroll. When her stuff was stolen from her early in the morning, when she still hadn't woken up from jet lag, her scroll had been crushed underfoot by the airport attendants. After handing her some compensation and calling the police to report the theft, they tossed her out on the street to find lodging on her own after she failed to prove her own identity.

Really.

"Such impudence." Weiss huffed, stomping down the street in her heels. "I would stab them with Myrtenaster if I wasn't in…"

…

"Hey, boss?"

"…Yes?" Adam seethed, brushing twigs out of his hair. The group was walking out of an alleyway onto the main street.

"We probably won't find the guy. I mean, if he's a huntsman, he's probably left to do… missions or something. We may as well help that person."

"Stealing dust for humans?" Adam snarled, turning on the masked White Fang member. "How far do you think we've fallen?"

Nobody was listening to Adam anymore. All of their visions locked onto a girl with a white ponytail and a signature snowflake symbol on her dress.

"We got a plan to kill her?"

"Do we have any other plans?"

…

"No, I'm telling you. The internet is wrong!" Kojiro shouted into his scroll, keeping a sharp eye on a figure slouched in the alleyway. Said figure was holding a gun shakily and intermittently firing at Kojiro, who deflected the bullets with his Katana.

"You're supposed to first dry your tea, then put it in a collinder, and then put it in the teapot. You don't just toss leaves in there like a psychopath."

Some indistinct muttering came out of the scroll. Meanwhile, gunshots echoed in the alleyway.

"What? Junior says that he makes tea with tea bags? And that I'm wrong?"

More mumbling came out of the phone.

"Take your time and reload, please." Kojiro said calmly. "I'm kind of in the middle of a conversation, so if you could shoot at me after I finish this important debate, I would appreciate it."

The gangster looked at his comrades, bleeding and stabbed in several vital organs. Then, he looked at the man talking about tea on a scroll with just a few splotches of blood on the corner of his robes.

"We're just selling drugs and stealing in our little corner!" He shouted. "Why do you gotta kill all of us?"

"…Tea bags are just an easier way to do what I just described! It's a method discovered in the Song dyna… well, you can't find that in the history books."

"Neo, did you just tell Mizu to argue with me about tea just so you could get out of preparing it?"

This time, there was silence across the scroll.

"I'm still here, you bastard!" the figure shouted, firing thrice in a row, suddenly enraged by the person that just nonchalantly came in and busted all of their operations.

"Thanks for staying alive, by the way." Kojiro said, "Without you, I won't be able to get in my bullet deflection practice in."

The gangster's heart sank, and he felt as if he was falling down an abyss. His legs felt like they were numb and floating, and his heartbeat rose to a drum's persistent thrum as it pounded and echoed in his head.

"I was… just… practice? We were… jus-"

A quick hit on the head finished the job. Kojiro walked away slowly from the unconscious man, flicking his sword and getting rid of some of the excess blood before sheathing his weapon once more.

"Now, as I was saying about adding sugar in tea… it is heresy!"

Some muttering in the phone proceeded as Kojiro walked towards the last member of the gang he had ambushed in that alleyway. A girl wearing a beanie slowly shuffled backwards, holding out a suitcase in front of her, as if that would protect her from the sword that had felled all her comrades.

"S-stay back! I've got dust!" She shouted, holding a vial of red powder out in front of her.

"That's my dust, you dirty… rapscallion!" A voice shouted. A white symbol appeared beneath the suitcase, levitating it into the air. Kojiro turned to see a very annoyed looking girl run into the alleyway. The girl grabbed the vials of dust, loaded some into her rapier slowly, as if inspecting the quality, sighed happily.

Kojiro knocked out the last gangster, before turning to see… the person that he had beaten up some days ago.

"Oh, it's y-" Kojiro began.

"You!" the guy carrying the red katana shouted. "I finally found you!"

"Boss, the plan! We were supposed to just… hit her on the back of the head after she went into an alley!"

"Wait, you're with the… White Tooth people, right?" Kojiro said, looking at the goons filing in behind the guy.

"I'm not with the White Fang, I am the-"

"Great. Now, take me to your leader."

"I am the l-"

"This…. Adam Tartar sauce guy?" Kojiro said. "Am I saying it right?"

Kojiro's scroll only played the sound muffled laughter. Junior was probably having an aneurism.

Adam Taurus looked at Kojiro. Then at Weiss. And he grinned.

"Well, now that you all are in the same place… I can take out you both at once!"

"Why does he want to kill you?" Kojiro asked, looking at Weiss. "Who are you, anyways?"

"Schnee…" the White Fang members hissed. "Schnee…."

"That just… means snow in German." Kojiro said, scratching his head. He did learn a bit of German in Chaldea, after all. "Are you guys German?"

"We're the White Fang, not… whatever that is!"

"Attack!" Adam shouted, rushing forward, his red katana arcing across the dark alleyway. Kojiro blocked the blow, deflecting it off to the side, before swinging his own odachi. Adam's sheath came up to block the attack. Meanwhile, the gun-carrying attackers fired at the pair, while two members carrying swords came up

"Do you need reinforcements?" Kojiro's scroll said. "I hear lots of gunfire."

"It'll be good practice." Kojiro said, deflecting a katana strike and several bullets simultaneously. One slipped through his guard and clipped his robes. "Damn it."

Weiss chose this opportunity to wave her rapier in the air, do a little twirl, close her eyes, concentrate, and then create a glyph in midair. The bullet stream halted, blocked by the ethereal barrier. Then, fireballs shot out of the glyphs at the goons.

Kojiro, meanwhile, blocked another attack from Adam.

"Your attacks have not improved at all." He said, looking at Adam with a disappointed expression. "I thought you would have trained after I beat you last time."

"I don't need training to beat you, human scum!" Adam snarled. His eyes seemed to glow red as his attacks rose in ferocity. Scars were carved into the bricks of the alleyway. His footwork was hasty yet strong, sending tremors through the ground and causing dust to fall from the masonry. Kojiro, however, remained as calm as ever.

"Brute strength will get you nowhere." Kojiro advised, stepping into his guard after a particularly ferocious strike from Adam. "Use that brain of yours more. You'll win more that way."

"Don't lecture m-"

He was cut off by Kojiro stepping into a spin and putting a two-handed swing to his face. Adam was sent flying headfirst into the wall to his right.

"Well, that'll teach you to be cocky."

A muffled sound came in from the wall.

"I'm not done yet you-ow! Stop interrupt- ow!"

Using the flat of his blade, Kojiro slapped him a couple more times before Adam's aura shattered. His body went limp after another kick, sending his head deeper into the head still imbedded into the bricks.

The gunfire stopped. Weiss looked at Kojiro like he was either insane or some sort of clown.

"You all done? Any of you want to challenge me after this guy?" Kojiro said, a sad expression on his face.

None of the goons budged. They remained frozen, their clothes singed and smoking.

"Can you guys at least tell me where Adam Taurus is?" Kojiro said desperately, his grip tightening on his katana.

The goons fled.

"Damn." Kojiro said, sheathing his katana again. "That wasn't really even satisfying."

She looked between the man that could have been Adam Taurus and the insane man that took him out with… a couple of attacks.

Gathering her thoughts, she looked up at the figure… only to see…

"Sasaki Kojiro?" she yelled, taking a step back.

"That is my name, yes." Kojiro said, raising an eyebrow. "Wait, how did you…"

"You were featured several times on the news, you know?" Junior's voice said from his scroll. "There was that temple, and the whole gang thing, and then that thing at the docs, and the great nevermore massacre…"

"T-the scroll's still on?" Weiss muttered. "He never even stopped the call?"

"What, was I supposed to?" Kojiro said, shrugging and looking up to the sky.

Weiss was completely silent now. Kojiro walked towards his truck, one with a huge storage container on its back.

"See ya around, I guess."

Weiss looked at what might be Adam Taurus and fumbled for her scroll.

"Wait, you still need to call the police!"

She ran after Kojiro.

…

"You really have the temple? You really stole it? You were the one who did it? L-like in that book by Crystal Anderson?"

Kojiro sat down and leaned against a temple pillar. The truck's container walls had fallen into ramps that one could walk onto the temple gate with. Beneath the moon, Kojiro sighed as he sipped the tea Neo had bought him.

"It's still too sweet, Neo." Kojiro said, casting an irritated look at Neo, who put away a spoon guiltily.

Weiss sat down on one of the stone stairs, absolutely dumbstruck.

"What did the book say about me, anyways?" Kojiro said, stroking the painted wood of the temple pillar.

"Well, I haven't read it since I was a child, but it described you doing it with a telekine-"

"I just stole it brick by brick." Kojiro said. "I took it apart, made Neo create-"

Neo tapped her parasol on the ground.

"Right. Keep your semblance a secret and all that."

Neo grinned, before vanishing in a cloud of pink glass shards.

The two just stared at the place below the street light, where Neo had been standing.

"Well, you're not doing a great job yourself, either." Kojiro grumbled. "Besides, semblances are just annoying to deal with anyways. It's like fighting Caster with all of these guys. Why can't things just be as straightforward as fighting Fafnir?"

The rest of the night continued onwards, with Kojiro telling three different versions of the Tsubame Gaeshi story, something about guarding a temple, and all sorts of other fairytale-like occurrences to an increasingly confused Weiss.

They had forgotten to call the police at the end of all of that.

…

Adam dug his head out of the wall.

He had heard the man's name, finally. Sasaki Kojiro…

He shook his head, shaking his horns free of the brick fragments. Reaching into the wall, he retrieved the shattered remnants of his mask. The red had been completely marred by the red dust of the bricks. He looked at the fragments for a while, for once, absolutely calm.

Taking out a strip of cloth, he tied it around his eyes.

"I won't put on my mask… Until I defeat him!"

As Adam stared up into the sky dramatically, he heard the howl of police sirens in the distance.

"This is the police!" he heard somebody shout. "Freeze, Adam Taurus!"

Ears still ringing from his impact with the wall, Adam suddenly realized that the police sirens were sounding… right in front of the alleyway.

Quickly, he ran away.

"Man, he may have been a terrorist." One of the cops said, looking at the roof that Adam escaped onto. "But that outtake was so cringey. How old is he, like twenty? And he's still not past his edgelord phase?"

"To think I was afraid of this guy. Call in the helicopters!"

…

"…And what happened after you killed that… Goetia?" Weiss asked in morbid curiosity.

"He obviously revived and challenged me to another duel to the death, this time in the caster class." Kojiro said.

Neo yawned. She had heard his backstory several times already.

"At this point, I don't know whether you're just insane or this actually happened. Because no insane rambling could be so… badly narrated." Weiss said, cleaning her nails with badly disguised concern on her face.

"Believe what you want. What you think is true is of no concern to me." Kojiro said. "Today was a disappointment. Since I didn't find Adam Taurus, I'll train until the day that I do."

Kojiro walked to the stairs of the tea parlor to the tiny patch of roof that the corner occupied.

"Then, he might give me a suitable challenge." He muttered.

Neo began typing in her scroll as Weiss processed what Kojiro said.

"But you just defeated him!" Weiss seethed. "Even my sister couldn't find him! And you did! You… you…"

"That's not Adam Taurus." Kojiro said from the stairwell.

"Why not?" Weiss says. "Do you even know what he looks like?"

"No." Kojiro said. "But I'll be able to tell through his swordsmanship. That man's sword was hasty and overly violent. No man that has evaded the law for this long would fight so impulsively."

…

"I'll do whatever the fuck I want!" Adam shouted, sending a beam of his semblance through a wall. "Your half-baked plans can go die for all I care!"

"Oh, my." Cinder chuckled. "Leaving so soon? But I do know that we have a… common enemy. Sasaki Kojiro, was it not?"

"How do you know that?" Adam snarled. "And how are you going to help me kill that fucker?"

"I possess powers that you can't even imagi-"

Adam rushed towards Cinder, rage blazing in his eyes. He wasn't going to be patronized by some… some… wannabe exotic dancer!

A wall of flames shot up in front of him.

"How… impulsive." Cinder said, smirking. "All brawn and no brains. How did a person like you… ever become a leader?"

…

Neo handed Weiss a scroll right after the whoosh of sword cutting air began to echo across the street.

"He doesn't really have a life, is kind of insane, and he only really wants to look for strong opponents."

"And yet, you still follow him for some reason."

Neo typed quickly this time, slightly eager for conversation.

"Well, he is strong. The strongest combatant I know."

"Does he actually believe what he's saying?"

"To be perfectly honest, I don't know. But he says it with such certainty. Anyways, it's funny to watch people get confused about it. Did you know he actually has four different versions of the swallow story, two different versions of his death, and one more story about slaying an ocean god?"

Weiss sighed and chose to ignore that last sentence.

"He may be strong, but he isn't stronger than my sister!"

"If your sister fights anything like you, she'd be toast in a couple of attacks."

"That is definitively not true! Winter is-"

As the two devolved into childish comparisons of their perceived older sibling figures (even though one of the participants was thirty-something, and thus too old to really be considered a child), a warehouse was burned down. And an alliance was begrudgingly formed between two groups.

…

"Hey, Kojiro." Qrow said through the phone. "Can you pick up my nieces from the airport? They're leaving in five minutes."

"And you couldn't call me earlier"

"I- eurgh- forgot." The sound of vomiting and splattering of chunky liquids echoed in the background.

"You do know my only vehicle is the truck with my brother in it, right?" Kojiro asked, already leaving the tea parlor. Weiss, meanwhile, grabbed her own suitcases and made to follow Kojiro.

"And where are you going?" Kojiro asked.

"I need you to drive me to the police station." Weiss said snootily. "If they captured the group that stole my suitcases, then they should have my personal belongings."

"Winter? Is that- No, wait. That voice is too young." Qrow's voice said. A burp followed the statement. "Oh, go-"

Kojiro winced at the sounds of vomit and the scroll clattering onto what sounded like bathroom tiles.

"Who are you and why do you know my sister?" Weiss shouted.

…

"Uncle Kojiro!" Ruby shouted, running up to tackle Kojiro with her semblance. Kojiro sidestepped it and watched as Ruby ran straight into the side of his truck. "Urgh… Zwei… not the face…".

"I call riding with your temple! "Ruby squealed, recovering from her concussion almost immediately.

"Did you actually steal that thing or not?" Yang asked as Kojiro complied and opened up the back of the truck.

"If I said I did, would you believe me? Also, no using your weapon around my brother." Kojiro said, already heading back towards the driver's seat.

"You have told me told me the story before, and I still don't believe… you…"

Yang stared at Weiss. Weiss stared back.

"Who are you supposed to be?"