A/N: This is a bit of a deviation from my fluffier pieces. Expect much darkness.
Standard Disclaimer: All rights belong to those whose rights they belong to, primarily the glorious minds at Rooster Teeth, though quite namely not me. Don't own a thing.
Yang placed one foot in front of the other, very deliberately so as not to falter or break into a run. She needed the time spent on her route to cultivate the rage burning within her.
She'd already passed through her grief, her tears evaporated by the fire that licked about her, setting her blond mane afire into a bright halo that trailed behind her. This was all she had now, this fury that now consumed her very being.
It was all she would need to finish this.
At the destination in question, Cinder was lounging against a small table, arms crossed as she observed her henchmen engaged in their favorite pastime of bickering with each other.
"How could you lose her?" Emerald barked, her pale red eyes flashing.
"I was a little occupied at the time!" Mercury defended himself heatedly. "That little brat sister of hers took ages for me to-"
His words cut off as a deafening boom echoed through the house.
Cinder stood upright, an anticipatory smile on her face.
"Well, well," she purred. "Looks like she came to us after all."
"Was that the front gate?" Emerald asked hesitantly. "The really, really big front gate?"
Mercury shook his head. "So she's strong!" he scoffed. "She'll end up like the others, and then we'll be free to proceed. Beacon's mighty champions, ha!"
Emerald's scathing reply never surfaced as the next explosion took the front door of the house off of its hinges, only to be consumed by a blaze of fire as it pinwheeled across the room.
Yang stood in the doorway, her eyes burning crimson and murder in her gaze.
"Finally," Mercury smirked, leaping to the attack.
His first kick never landed, as the blonde bruiser's hand whipped out to catch his leg in an iron grip. The silver-haired man's eyes widened at the heat that caused sweat to break out on his forehead already, but he never got the chance to react further.
Yang's fist shot forward, shattering his normally impressive aura and crushing his sternum and ribcage with the single blow. She released his leg as he fell backwards, a spray of blood from his nose and mouth leaving a trail behind him as he dropped to the floor, grey eyes wide and disbelieving in death.
"Mercury!" The mint-green girl screeched in anguish as she flew forward, bringing her twin kusarigama around from her back. She abandoned all of her considerable cunning and reflexes that had served her so well in the battle earlier that day with the pair of would-be huntresses that fell to her. Each blade was still coated with the blood of the stuck-up white princess and her little Faunus pal, and she would gleefully plunge them into the torso of this girl next.
As she brought her blades around, Yang took a long step forward, straight into Emerald's charge. She ignored the blades as they darted in towards her torso, instead swinging Ember Celica in a double-fisted strike straight down on the thief's head.
Emerald's weapons flew from her nerveless fingers as she was smashed head-first into the ground. When Yang stood upright again, all that was left of her opponent was a bloody mess above her shoulders.
Cinder's eyes widened as she watched Yang approach. "You seem to have upgraded your semblance," she murmured calmly. "No matter, even the loss of those two is but a minor setback."
The fiery-haired blonde ignored her comments as she stalked forward. "You killed them," she growled, crimson eyes flashing.
"I did," Cinder admitted. "Well, in actuality, you already killed the ones directly responsible, but yes I orchestrated their deaths." She smiled hungrily, her amber eyes glittering in the light from Yang's flame as she activated her own semblance. Her outstretched hands glowed as she summoned her own fire. "I suppose I'll need to get my hands dirty this time."
With a high-pitched whistling sound, the flames erupted from her hands to engulf the advancing blonde bruiser. Cinder grinned evilly as she watched her opponent become consumed by the flames, but it faltered as she saw the figure still moving relentlessly forward. She cut off her attack, startled, as she realized Yang was not affected in the least from the onslaught.
The raven-haired woman grimaced as she took a step back. This might require an even more hands-on approach. Time to use a little dust and go hand-to-hand with this upstart using her own weapons.
She never got the chance. As finely honed as her reflexes were, they still weren't enough to anticipate Yang's sudden rush forward, changing her slow advance without warning.
Yang grabbed hold of both of Cinder's forearms, locking them in an unrelenting grip as her molten eyes bored into the woman.
Cinder grinned back. "Very well, then, I will simply absorb your power and add it to my own. And then, little huntress-in-training, you will still have failed."
"You want my power?" Yang snarled. The heat began to rise, even through Cinder's natural immunity to fire she was beginning to feel it. "You think you can handle all of this?"
The blonde's voice had risen along with the temperature, and Cinder began to feel the first tendrils of doubt and dread, wondering how this girl could still be drawing on power.
"Go ahead and take it!" Yang finally shouted. "I hope you choke on it, you bitch!"
Cinder tried, she really did, but it was akin to pulling in a firehose's flow through a garden hose. She simply wasn't able to handle it all.
But Yang kept increasing the heat, the flames. Cinder absently noted that the room was on fire, the entire house likely, as the blonde's rage-filled inferno began to expand and increase in power as each second ticked by.
"You… you stupid girl!" Cinder choked out, starting to feel the searing heat on her arms where the blonde fire elemental was still holding her. "You'll burn out! You'll kill yourself!"
"I DON'T CARE!" Yang roared. "WHAT HAVE I TO LIVE FOR?"
Cinder's vision became blurry, though she was startled to note that Yang's eyes had gone from crimson to yellow, and the blonde's eyebrows seemed to have seared away. The pain in her arms was becoming more intense until she couldn't hold herself upright anymore. She hung limply from Yang's grasp, panting from the pain that seemed to be enveloping her from the inside out.
"Please," she begged weakly. "Please, I'll do… I'll do whatever you want…"
Her arms were now blackened, the charred skin flaking away in the hot currents swirling around the room, and she was on the verge of passing out entirely from the agony.
"I want you to die," Yang growled softly. Her demand fell on deaf ears as Cinder was finally rendered unconscious.
With a final scream of unadulterated rage, pain, and loss, Yang released her semblance in one last inferno that consumed the entire house.
It took six hours for the fires to cool down enough for rescuers to enter the scene. The iron fence had melted, as had the stone walkways surrounding the house, running in molten rivers down the street until they pooled like cooled lava. The house itself was disintegrated, but in a sunken crater they finally came across a single body.
Yang was on her side, a peaceful smile on her face. The rescuers were able to ascertain that, aside from the third degree burns on her hands and on her forearms where Ember Celica had melted away, the only major trauma were her eyes, her sockets empty and blackened.
Other than that, there was no sign of what had caused her death. Her luxurious blonde mane was still intact and settled about her shoulders like a mantle.
There was also no evidence to be found of the other two accomplices of Cinder, but of the woman herself, there was only a large pile of ash to be found next to Yang's body.
In the end, though, Yang had avenged her sister, her teammates and her friends. She prevented the loss of further life, and stopped a conniving evil force from ultimately causing the downfall of their civilization.
Yang Xiao Long died a huntress.
A/N: So, as I mentioned up top, this is a little different from my other RWBY pieces. It was kinda inspired by a lovely piece I read awhile back by Jefardi called Wrath, but also from the dark and twisted recesses of my mind that can't help but imagine characters I love in extreme torment.
This is a standalone story, however, set in AU and not related to my other AU fluffy offerings starting with Pink Lemonade.
I wish I could properly credit the image used for this story, but I happened to find it on a random tumblr and fell in love with it to use for this story. So, if anyone knows who I can attribute this wonderful work of art to, please let me know.
Whelp, thanks for reading! Back to the fluffy stuff for me, I need a hug after writing this…
Stay shiny!