Cards of Remnant

Chapter 41: Seeing Red - Part 1

"Hey! Adam! Quit staring off into space and get down here, ya lug!"

Tearing his two baby blue eyes away from the cerulean Solitas sky, the young bull faunus merrily grinned as he snatched the walkie-talkie from his belt. The tall teenager's red hair and horns glistened as the sunlight glittered off the snow topping the mine, seeming to echo the boy's youthful laughter as he clicked on the communicator. "Still got a minute left on my lunch break, Gus."

"And the elevator takes a minute and a half to get down here! Armstrong's being even more of an asshole than usual. Word is the SDC's looking to promote a new regional manager and he wants our numbers to net him the job."

"Then he's got nothing to worry about," Adam joked, glancing up at some passing clouds that were white and fluffy in just the right shapes to make the teenager smirk in juvenile amusement. "We pull out twice as much dust and three times as much dime as any other mine in the region."

"That doesn't mean you should push your luck with the human Fortress Whale," Gus sighed. "Honestly, I wish you'd let me set you up with my niece. Fiona would ground your head out of the clouds."

Adam winced. "You and my mother both. But Fiona's not really my type. She's great! But I like a girl with a bit more fire to her."

"Ha! Like I said, you got your head in the clouds. Keeps you from seeing what's actually down here with the rest of us," Gus chortled. "Seriously though, get down here ASAP. Better than looking up at a sky that's mostly just Atlas."

The walkie clicked off.

Yet, Adam delayed walking towards the shaft elevator that'd take him below into the mines. Back into the dust, darkness, and squalor that it felt like he was always subsumed by whether he was at work or back home in his family's cramped hovel back in Mantle. Like many in the Crater, the Tauruses had too many under the same roof with too many mouths to feed. He wasn't the oldest or youngest of his many siblings, but he was old enough to work the same depressing miner job as his parents and their parents before them, and so on and so on.

Was it any wonder his gaze was so often drawn up, up, and away?

"There's enough sky for everyone," he murmured with a smile, retorting to Gus' grumpy words even if no one could hear him.

That vast blue expanse, the same color as his eyes. Remnant was so much bigger than the squalor of his family's overcrowded home. True, from Mantle, one could only see Atlas in the firmament but there were clouds higher than The Shining City. The world was so vast. There had to be a piece of it out there for him. A place where he could be more than just the third Taurus sibling.

His pay usually went to the family food budget that everyone contributed to, but he'd been putting in extra hours and saving up the excess. He'd have to be patient. It'd take years. He probably wouldn't have even close to what he'd need until he was an adult. But once he had enough, he'd be out of there.

To find his piece of that beautiful blue sky. He could almost see it now, in his mind's eye.

Of course, when he finally tore himself away from his daydreaming and got in the elevator, its frame lined with ever-present engravings of Blue-Eyes White Dragons, all he saw were the three red letters painted on the door when it closed.

SDC.

When they opened, he was greeted by a giant hammer.

"GAH!" Adam gagged, pain shooting through his face as he was bashed out of the elevator by a fat, mustachioed Iron Chain Repairman, only his aura keeping him from serious injury. The young bull faunus bounced across the rough floor of the mine, unable to rise up before a pair of Iron Chain Snakes had wrapped around his arms and legs and pinned him to the ground.