Shiro's best efforts at arousing the girls' trust touched something of a nerve with Abel. If these tattoos, or what they meant, rather, were so important to him, why hadn't he confided in his own team? The guardian guessed that the reason lay in the team itself: they had no choice but to trust each other, so their secrets could stay hidden to one another. That didn't exactly sit right with Abel, now that he thought about it. Real teams, the ones in the stories that lasted lifetimes longer than the living people they portrayed, didn't keep things from one another. Unfortunately, Abel wasn't quite sure where to begin with himself. As he listened to Shiro's explanation of his tattoos, Abel knew he didn't have anything quite that powerful. He had managed to put the ordeal with his brother Kane behind him, after all.
Abel's sudden thoughtfulness didn't quite extend to the faunus girls, however. Maybe it was the sickly-sweet smell of the suspicious substance on Abel's jacket, or the weapons sported by both hunters, or the overall situation they were in, but they didn't appear to be on their side just yet. The squirrel still jittered, obviously on the hunt for an opportunity to run, but a strange calm had come over Coral. She looked at Shiro with somber gray eyes. “I...I don't get that confidence. I don't see where your story says how it gets better. For some of us, the reason we're here isn't because of prejudice or tragedy or anything. Myrtle's here because she's got some problem with her quills. They hurt her night and day, and she figured that if she could get rid of them, she'd be able to fully live again. My Mauve used to be a soldier, but a flashbang permanently damaged his ears. Rather than making him deaf, it did the opposite. Now every little noise is agony for him. The doctors gave him pills to deaden his hearing until he could be treated. They told us how the surgery works, you know. A serum targets faunus-specific cells, like those in ears, or quill, or a tail, and makes their membranes impermeable. The faunus parts effectively die off, and tools are used to cleanly remove the dead tissue.”
She stuck her hands in her pockets and looked at the floor, signaling surrender. Seeing this, the squirrel girl went pale, and suddenly bolted toward Abel, thinking that he'd be too slow to stop her. The guardian guided the Ampere in front of her and she smacked into it, eliciting a short, sharp cry and the thwarting of her escape. Abel grabbed her shoulder and tried, mindful of how she must feel, to steer her back toward Coral without hurting her. Coral watched, but did not interfere. “I don't know if your the good guys and the doctors are the bad guys or vice versa, or if anyone's good or anyone's bad. We were all kinda suspicious of this miracle operation, but we decided to try it anyway. We don't have to strength to stop you, none of us but Pop and maybe the guards, so I guess we'll have to hope for the best. Amy, don't try to run. It'll all be okay.”
At that moment, a brown blur with a yellow trail shot from a doorway a hundred feet way or so and zipped past the group of four in the hallway. Just for a moment, as it passed Shiro, it slowed down, revealing a lean coyote girl with scruffy gray-brown hair, lovely but frightened features, eyes totally black but for yellow irises, and the word EMBODIMENT tattooed in a curve beneath an eye. Then Sienna was gone, racing faster than possible up some stairs, out of the shelter, and off the island, speedy enough to make the sea into a road.
Abel blinked, not sure what he'd seen. “Huh?” He grasped at the faint yellow trail, which vanished between his fingertips. A grimace appeared as he attempted to move his wounded arm. “What now? Should we find Sapphire? She went off to follow some doctors somewhere. He glanced at the faunus girls. It wasn't often that he was the only human around. “Um, stay here maybe? From what you said, I guess there are others. Oh! We should call the Vale PD. They can bring boats and get the people off this island.” As he continued, he attempted to keep his face free of doubt. “Bet once you guys tell them what's going on, they'll sort everything out okay.”
-=-=Sapphire and Pop=-=-
A raised eyebrow greeted Sapphire's inquiry. Nevertheless, Pop smiled and quit his stance. “Oh? A huntress who'll talk with words rather than weapons? Well, I'll take it with a grain of salt...I did see what you did to my doctors, after all. But I'll take it. Just don't try any funny business. In the spirit of civility, I'll tell you what my semblance does. It speeds up the rate at which I look at the world, making it look like slow motion to me. I can't move my body at all, but I can take as long as I need to examine everything that's going on and adjust my actions accordingly. And it has a cooldown time of half a second. In the world of boxing I was known as Perfect Jones.”
He took a step toward Sapphire and crossed his arms. “But we're not debating about me. A great scientist, though we're not debating about him either, once said that all theories should be given to children, and that if children couldn't understand them, the theories were worthless. My ideals are easy to explain. I want to provide the option for faunus to become human if they wish. This can be either for personal reasons, as in, they think it's the only way to escape persecution, though I know better, or for physical reasons, as in, a bat faunus has hearing so acute that everyday noises give him migranes. My original plan was to devise a reverse operation as well, to make humans into faunus, but that's much harder from a medical standpoint. Easier to take than make, as they say. The funding for this project came from the savings of my wife and I, for it is my dream. I expect that once I go public, I may receive a Regal Science Prize. Is that good enough for you, miss? If it is, and you'd be willing to talk down your friends, I'd be more than willing to call off my guards.”
