CONTENTS TITLE PAGE PROLOGUE CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER NINETEEN CHAPTER TWENTY CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE EPILOGUE ABOUT THE AUTHOR TEASER FOR GENLOCK COPYRIGHT Sun Wukong had been back in Vacuo for a month already, but it was only now that he felt like he was truly home. It was nighttime in the city, and Sun was on a dark street facing off against three goons who were up to no good. At least he’d assumed they were up to no good when he spotted them stalking a woman out of some new nightclub downtown. Sun had trailed after them silently, but they somehow noticed him anyway and turned to confront him. They were a strange trio. The woman on the left had spiky pink hair and a loose black robe over a white tunic. The broad guy in the middle wore a green muscle shirt, cargo shorts, and sandals. The lanky guy on the right had a brown jumpsuit and combat boots, with a brown patterned bandanna covering his hair and ears. The only things they had in common were matching silver armbands around their right biceps and masks on their faces. At least they weren’t the creepy Grimm face masks that some members of the White Fang wore. These were just average gas masks with large eyepieces and big, round filters in the front resembling pig snouts. You didn’t see people wearing masks in Vacuo every day, or any day really. Sun bet they got pretty sweaty inside. “Aren’t you out past your bedtime, kid?” said Pink. “I’m kind of a night owl,” Sun said, yawning. A lot of people in Vacuo were, simply because the desert cooled down in the evening and that was when walking and breathing didn’t make you want to die. Until it got too cold, like it was now, and you started to question whether it was a good idea to go around with your shirt open all the time. But this was late, even for Sun. It was almost dawn, in fact, and he had to get back to school. He didn’t want to make a bad impression his first week at Shade. Or, rather, he didn’t want to make a bad first impression even worse. Well, this shouldn’t take long, he thought. Once they stopped their verbal sparring and started the real fight, things would go pretty smoothly. These clowns didn’t even have weapons. “Night owl? Looks more like a monkey to me,” said Green. “Why were you following us?” That was from Brown. It was hard to tell because of the jumpsuit and bandanna, but Sun thought Brown might be a Faunus. He carried himself like he was taking in more of his environment and knew how to move within it. That was a trait everyone had to learn in Vacuo at some point if they wanted to last there, but it came more naturally to Faunus, like Sun. Part of it was their enhanced animal senses; part of it was the fact that they had learned to be on guard around humans and aware of their surroundings. If Brown was a Faunus, that would explain how the group had detected Sun pursuing them. “Why were you following that woman?” Sun countered. He glanced behind them and was glad to see she’d gotten away while their attention was on him. Pink cracked her neck. “You’re about to find out.” “Okay, go ahead and tell me. That’s why I asked.” Sun waited a beat. “Oh, was that meant to be a threat? You should have followed it up with something menacing, like shaking your fist angrily.” Sun demonstrated. “Are you guys new at this?” The group advanced toward him. “Wait!” Sun held out his hands, and they hesitated. “I don’t want to hurt you guys.” They looked at one another and laughed. “It’s three against one,” Pink said. “Really? Count again.” Sun put his hands together. He closed his eyes. And he focused. As always, he started with an image that centered him so he could use his Semblance: a desert willow, green and flourishing with white, rose, and violet flowers. He had seen it once, when he was traveling with his clan across the vast Vacuo desert looking for a new place to live for a while, when their previous settlement had become too attractive to Grimm. Sun, only seven at the time, had been frustrated. “We should stay and fight,” he had said. “Why don’t we?” “Not everyone here is as strong as us.” His older cousin Starr Sanzang put a hand on his head and ruffled his spiky hair. “Or as hotheaded as you. Ow!” She yanked her hand away and shook it, pretending to blow on it. Despite himself, Sun grinned, but he wouldn’t be so easily distracted. “I’m tired of running. We should pick a place and stay there. Keep the Grimm out.” “We’re on our own out here,” she said. “Most of our clan doesn’t know how to fight, and they aren’t interested in learning. It’s not how we do things.” “Maybe if they had learned, my—” Sun swallowed. “More of them would be alive.” He hated the way his voice trembled. Starr pretended not to notice. “One day what you want may come to pass. But not today. Try to get some rest.” He took her advice, the way he usually did, but just as he drifted off to sleep he spotted the tree. Its leaves had a golden glow in the evening sun. The sight had filled him with a strange peace, and a sense of purpose, that he hadn’t felt in a long time. That’s the perfect place to stop, he had thought. I would defend a place like that to my death. Why are we still going? He drifted off to sleep, and when he woke, he asked Starr about the tree. She didn’t know what he was talking about. No one did. It seemed no one else had seen it, either. “You must have dreamed it,” she had said. “It sounds like a nice dream.” “I didn’t,” Sun insisted. “It was real.” But from that time on, the tree had been his alone. He remembered every detail of it vividly, too vividly for it to have come from his imagination. He remembered it better than he did his parents’ faces. And whenever he pictured it, he felt that calm again, that purpose. It had led him to discovering his Semblance, Via Sun. Two glowing clones of Sun flared into existence, one facing Pink and the second squaring off against Green. That left Brown—whom he figured was both the leader of the group and the most dangerous. Why? Because he was hiding the most. Brown slashed a hand toward Sun. “Take him.” “Which one?” Green asked. “The real one,” Pink said. “These are just flashy illusions.” Sun directed one of his clones to punch Pink in the face. She blinked and looked more annoyed than hurt. “That’s no illusion!” Green reached for clone Two. Sun’s clones were physical manifestations of his Aura, every bit as capable of inflicting damage as he was. But it could be difficult to control them, especially while he was fighting. They were better suited to giving him the element of surprise, extra pairs of hands, or emergency backup when he needed it. Unfortunately, he couldn’t sustain them long, and they couldn’t take much damage, as they drew Aura from Sun himself. If he kept them going too long, or tried to create too many clones, it usually weakened the Aura shield protecting him. But he’d improved a lot with training, and his Semblance was a lot stronger than it used to be. Sun whipped out his gunchucks, Ruyi Bang and Jingu Bang, spinning them as he and Brown circled each other slowly. At the same time, Sun was fighting Pink and Green through his clones. Pink was some kind of boxer, dancing around and jabbing with her fists, which One was managing to block. Meanwhile, Green was trying to grab Two and wrestle him to the ground. Brown had some kind of martial arts training similar to Sun’s—but he wasn’t nearly as good. Sun leaned back as Brown did a high roundhouse kick; he felt a breeze as his opponent’s booted foot swept past his nose with a lot of power behind it. Sun flicked his right gunchuck to loop it around Brown’s ankle and pulled him out of his stance, hitting him with the closed gunchuck in his left hand. The man took the full blow, but it didn’t even faze him. Sun continued to pull Brown by his leg, using the momentum to spin him around in a circle. But the man quickly regained control and twisted in the opposite direction, yanking Sun toward him. Brown grabbed Sun’s shoulders and pushed him facedown into his knee. Sun saw a rainbow of colors. Clones One and Two fizzled out. Oh, that hurts. Brown kicked Ruyi Bang out of Sun’s hand, and his partners closed in on Sun. Sun used Jingu Bang to fire a Dust round at Pink, but the woman went kind of blurry all around the edges and Sun’s shots went right through her.