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A quick Cross-Fic I typed up for fun and giggles, being the massive Fan Boy I am. Thanks to Homer for feedback.
-Hector
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My name is Yang.
My world is fire and Dust.
Once, I was a huntress. A Grimm slayer who hunted for a righteous cause.
As the world fell, each of us in our own way was broken. It was hard to know who was more crazy. Me? Or everyone else?
Yang stood over the view of a burning horizon from the south side of the hill she was parked on. Having parked and propped up her trusted Bumblebee bike for a brief moment, she let its engines cool off in the breeze as she took in the scene of a tranquil wasteland.
Wind was carrying the desert's dust on a cool breeze. It was interrupted by a small voice that seemed to be both right behind her and off in the distance.
"Hello? Where are you?" Yang didn't flinch. She would normally whirl around and take aim the second she had reason to think she wasn't alone, but this voice was familiar to her. So much so, she tried to simply ignore it.
"Where are you, Yang?" The question repeated, this time almost playfully. It was joined by a small band of voices, most of which were just whispers in her ears.
Here they come again. Worming their way into the black matter of my brain. Her ears began to burn and throb from irritation as the voices interrogated her with endless questions, never waiting for answers. They only stopped to call her a liar, killer, or traitor, swelling in volume. The first voice spoke again with a betrayed cry.
"Help us, Yang! You promised to help us!"
Yang felt a tiny set of feet scurry around the back of her boot and try to run away. She raised her foot and stomped on it with the speed of a finger snap, trapping it alive under her heel.
Looking down, she eyed the beast beneath her foot and scooped it up in a single, swift motion. What she held in her hands was squirming with a minor sum of life remaining.
It was a Grimm. They were colossal when she was a girl on the once alive planet of Remnant. The brutal beasts ruled the wilds and tore hunters to unnamable shreds. Now, they were all as small as this one, if still alive at all.
Yang thought of a time the little black beast might have skewed her friends with its bony horns or tried to bite her in half. She then shoved its head into her mouth and chewed on it mercilessly.
While she ground its little skull between her teeth, she noticed the voices had left her alone - for the moment at least - and tried to think of reassuring thoughts.
I tell myself they cannot touch me. They are long dead. The thought did little for her, useless to her throbbing nerves or ailing mind.
The Grendel in her mouth twitch its legs for the last time as she caught wind of a noise off in the distance. One that triggered a nasty collage of memories that dripped with blood and Dust-o-line gas. It was the angry vroom of a war car's screaming engine.
She swept up her bags of rummage from the ground and tossed it over her shoulder while mounting up on Bumblebee, flipping her engine's switch ON and revving her up with an urgent turn of the wrist.
If someone was surfing the sand in an automobile like she was, they were probably as dangerous as her, and she had no interest in meeting a living body that fearless.
In a second, she was tearing her tiers on the dunes again, leaving her peaceful hillside alone to become a happy memory. Racing for the horizon, she listened to the pursing roars of a dust-o-line engine joined by two more, then a whole pack.
Yang heard war cries chime in with the screams of engines. Looking back, a line of battle ready vehicles sprinted over the sands and began to flank her. Riding up behind her was a band of powdered, white warriors with skin inked in red tattoos all across their faces.
War Fangs.
Yang spat when she saw their flag waving with the sign of Immortan Adam. One armored buggy came up on her left with a boy clinging to the car's trunk. He was covered in Grimm stripes all over his bone-white body.
He caught her attention as he stood up brandishing a spear. Yang wondered how long the boy planned to survive the wastes bringing sticks to gun fights. She pulled out her sawed off shotgun and began to take aim at his person.
When the boy heaved his stick, the javelin's point went head-long into the ground and Yang felt a massive force erupt in front of Bumblebee.
A flash of light followed and then the deafening sound of an explosion before Yang felt herself become kissed by a ball of fire and wrenched loose of her bike, tossed into the air like a shred of tire.
Bumblebee lost contact with the ground and flew into the air after her, the two of them spiraling on their way back to the ground, where they landed with a vicious tumble.
As cars parked all around her, Yang started clawing the ground in her effort to stand. Bumblebee had landed practically on her back, pinning her in place for the War Fangs to easily latch up and drag away.
I am the one who runs from both the living and the dead. Hunted by terrorists. Haunted by family I couldn't protect. A woman reduced to a single instinct:
Survive.
...
The Branding Room at Citadel was sealed off completely with nothing but pipe sized holes on the ceiling that reached the surface. It was always hotter in there than anywhere on the surface, and the humidity was so thick it made the air around the oven's mouth shimmer.
The tips of steel rods were being bathed in a dust-made fire. They showed the symbol of Adam: A skull burning within a ring of fire.
Whenever new slaves came in, they were subjugated to the searing ends of these branding sticks. Only a few were dumb enough to resist, and still fewer would ever manage to wiggle off their hooks and make a pointless run for it.
The Skin Artist, seated on a leather seat scared by the heat, watched as Yang was hastily dragged by her feet that held her feet to the floor as they went to string her chains on the table.
He wiped his head and took a swig of sweet aqua cola - halfway to its boiling point, but still refreshing enough- as he started to rev up the ink pen to his tattoo machine.
She gave them hell the whole time, but bleeding in squirts as the Skin Artist went along. He calmly mopped up whatever squeezed out before it could block his work from view.
As he went up along her neck with his jagged patterns, Yang's head of hair started to become a bother while he worked on her neck, and eventually he gave a signal to one of the boys.
"Get out the sheers."
Yang's pupils shrunk to red specks when she heard a steady buzzing sound. Looking up, she saw the jittering teeth of an electric razor's rusted sheers being brought to her scalp.
Yang lashed out with a sudden burst of vicious spirit. Wielding newfound strength, she kicked the boys gripping her feet away and rolled off the tabletop, taking the Skin Artist's stylus with her as well as her chains and a pair of War Fangs.
The boys felt around the floor in a daze as they tried to find their bearings, but Yang was on her feet before either were able to stop her. She turned and saw one of the boys who'd been holding her legs trying to block the exit as one ran at her with a crude bone knife.
She sent the armed boy a punch that dug its knuckles deep into his eyes, blinding him in a flash. She bulldozed over the other boy and charged down the hallway with speed strong enough to knock anyone in her way onto their ass.
Yang just kept running. The corridors were tight, unlit, and full of War Fangs. They looked up from sharpening their blades or biting their fingers to notice her struggle and join the thrilling chase.
A hallway of bronze pipes neared that was flooded by water that reached down to the knees. It held her feet to the floor as she tried to run, resisting with large awkward steps.
Halfway through, the hallways exit suddenly filled with a crowd of Fangs that had heard the fray from farther down.
With powdered boys from the front and behind, Yang went for a dangling chain and tried her luck going up. The chains binding her hands made climbing awkward, but not slow enough to get her caught.
Above, a room of green and sunlight was caged by thick steel bars. She climbed to them and began searching for a slight opening she could try and squeeze through. Looking up at the sky, the light of the sun was suddenly blocked by a pair of eyes that appeared before her. Silver, familiar eyes.
"Yang?" asked a ghost. "Is that you?" She gawked at the sight of her sister, who was not wearing the fatal injury on her skull that was drilled into Yang's memory.
For a moment she forgot where she was, dumbfounded to see a vision of her sister not tainted by scars or open wounds.
Why couldn't her brain be this kind to her more often? She hated seeing her sister's forehead coated in blood from the day she lost her.
"Where were you?" The ghost asked. Yang had nothing to say. A War Fang leapt up from beneath and latched onto Yang's dangling leg. The extra weight pried Yang's fingers loose from the bars and she was yanked back into the water below.
Submerged completely, Yang saw Ruby again beneath the water's surface and again the ghost entranced her. She forgot to try holding her breath as the ghost smiled devilishly and spoke to her.
"Help us Yang. Help us. Help us. Where were you, Yang? Where were you?" Shaking free, Yang remembered her need for air and escape. She leapt from the water and forced her way past the floundering bodies.
One particular Fang tried to spread himself out across the door but Yang charged him with her chain binds up and caught him by the neck.
The Fang tried to break free from her grasp but only backed up into a wall 'till his head collide with rusty steel piping. Yang wrapped the chains around his neck and swung him back toward the pool of angry War Fangs.
She sprinted down the hallway in giant strides, not looking back and hardly looking forward. Her vision was a messy blur of colors as the ghosts of her past repeatedly forced their way into the present.
Even when she closed her eyes she saw them walking toward her, their eyes wide and full of betrayal.
"Help us. Help us. Help us. Help us." Ruby chanted as she walked straight at her. Yang just kept running, hoping maybe the ghosts would be knocked over by her sprint. But they only kept coming.
"You let us die!" Shouted her father. He stared at her with eyes wide open, like he was staring into hell as she ran from it. Yang didn't stop, bashing doors in her way open with her shoulder.
"You let us die!" Screamed her mother, her teeth bearing and brow sharply furrowed. She had a look of such betrayal. It terrified Yang.
None of them stopped. The accusations and screams all built up and up as Yang began to see nothing but faces of the dead. Then suddenly, a door burst open and the light of day shone in her eyes, waking her from the trance.
She was at a sheer drop. The door overlooked a massive kingdom built in the green-topped mesas of Citadel. War Fang chants and shouts echoed behind her. With no other option, Yang stared at the dangling steel hook of a car crane and jumped.
Her chain binds locked onto the steel hook's curve and Yang dangled from it like the worm of a colossal fisherman as the War Fangs called for her from the door's threshold angrily. The hook swung back and forth from Yang's weight, teasing the War Fang's with her feet every time she swayed their way. One Fang caught he leg while leaning out the door only to lose his own footing and plummet from the doorway.
"WITNEEES!" screamed the War Fang on his way toward the ground. The others followed in his Bravado and leaned out with open arms and steel canes as they tried for Yang's feet. Yang searched for her next move but wasn't fast enough. The Fangs grabbed hold of her legs and dragged her back through the doors.
Yang struggled with them the whole way back but soon she was being held by both her shoulders and gagged by a filthy cloth someone tied over her mouth to stop her from biting. She watched the sun and clawed for it as they pulled her back inside, closing the doors and sealing away the light.