White fang dawn:Eve Taurus

The Birth of a Monster

Some people are born great, others have greatness thrust upon them. In the same way that some people are born evil. But most have that evil thrust upon them. We can condemn these people and often times we should. But it also does us well  to remember why these individuals fell to the darkness. Not what excuses their actions. Instead, what explains them.

Atlas. The birthplace of most of Remnants technology and progression of industry. However. festering in the dirt below, Mantle is a hub of pain, mistreatment and hardship at the hands of the privileged floating on high. And if there is anyone mistreated more than others its the faunus. 

Existing for just as long as regular humans and outcast from the beginning, the faunus are humans with animal qualities. Claws, fangs, wings, tails, eyes, skin. Every faunus has a trait that ties them to an animal and permanently marks them as undesirable. For me and my brother, it was our horns. Our parents horns.

Our luck was bad from day one, we weren't just faunus, we were faunus born in Atlas. Or more specifically Mantle. The scumiest part of the scumiest kingdom, that treated faunus the scumiest. Our parents, Lilith and Adrian Taurus, ran a car repair workshop and from a hang age me and Adam learned to get our hands dirty. 

By the time Adam was 5 he was working with basic tools. Adam was a year older than me and oh man did I look up to him. Still do, even after everything...Adam was so many amazing things and he became even greater. He just became worse things as well. 

People will never remember the Adam that I do. The one who came back to the dinner table covered in car grease and sweat but still smiling. The one who would sit with me until I fell asleep at night. The one that would face the crowds when mum was too ill to buy food. The one who would protect me from bullies. All while he was still a child.

Mantle isn't easy, for anyone, and we definitely could have had it worse at this point. We were still fed and had a roof over our head, we still got put through school. That's the first place we experienced the treatment of faunus without our parents there. Every other day someone would tug on my horns or make mooing sounds or someone would flap a red cloth at Adam and yell for him to charge at it. Kids are cruel though, human kids treat each other like shit. It was when we'd get the shit stick from adults that really stung. That they didn't even feel bad treating a kid like crap. Refusing to serve us at shops, splashing muddy puddles over us with their cars, tripping and shoving us or letting their dogs come up and harry us in the park. It was bearable though. It would get worse.

Adam was 14, I was 13. I was a little more school focused than him, he was happy to work with mum and dad. My goal was to learn a trade that could get my family out of mantle. Get us to Vacuo or Vale, where we'd have it at least somewhat better. I was very hopeful. No matter how much I got pushed around or called worthless, I let myself believe that there were still good people, good humans. I had a few friends, some of them human. Adam had friends but far fewer, and none of them human, he was happier just living in his own world, always smiling, it made him happy.

And then...one car crash later and we were orphans. It felt so surreal, so unfair. We had no more family in mantle so we ended up in an orphanage. Adam dropped out of school to find a job and without him there to watch my back, school just became more and more miserable for me until I ended up dropping out as well.

When Adam was 16 he got a job, in the mines. Manuel work, it was what he was good at. A year later I joined him. I wanted to look out for him as best I could. I knew mum and dads deaths effected him more than he would let on and I had to be there for him, even if I hated everything about the mine. The work broke my bones, the pay was next to nothing, the other employees hated it as much as we did, the foreman abused all of us. But the faunus especially. This was when I really started slipping away from humans. Adam had given up on everything except providing for me and no humans had lifted a finger, even my friends just faded away without care or proper goodbye. It was easy to start hating the humans when they'd done nothing for us. My hate reached a fever pitch on a day that I still recall in perfect detail.

The smog and ash in the tunnels, the grumbling and the sound of cracking stone. The weakness in my numbing arms, the clatter of ore as I lost my footing and spilt the metal in my hands. I remember the Schnee dust company fore screaming at me, yanking my arms and shoving me back down to the floor, making sure to tell me many times how filthy I was. That I was more useless than an animal. I remember Adam crying and shouting at them to stop. Battering one man in the face with a shovel.

I remember...the way they held him down. I remember his screams, ripping through my ears no matter how hard I covered them. The smell of burning flesh. That smell. That awful smell.

I remember holding Adam in my arms as he cried in sorrow and pain and I cried with him.