Yang Xiao Long sat lounging on the couch with her legs outstretched and her elbow resting on the arm of the furniture to help prop up her head; lilac eyes affixed to the television screen and enjoying the professional wrestling bout that she had turned on a little while earlier. Her choice in viewing had succeeded in driving the rest of her housemates to the safety of their own rooms; with Blake quietly reading in the alcove of the upstairs hallway while Weiss had decided to turn in for bed early after an arduous day of classes. To Yang's knowledge, her younger sister Ruby had been upstairs in the bedroom that they shared playing video games, but it sounded like she was taking at least a temporary break from that as the blonde-haired girl could hear the tumbling of footsteps coming down the stairs at a speed that could only possibly belong to her baby sis.
The four young ladies were all students attending the prestigious Beacon University, and they had the luxury of being able to rent their own house just off-campus rather than having to resign themselves to dormitory life. Most of the credit for this could go to Weiss, who was the one to come up with the idea in the first place and was able to put up the largest share of the lien required to rent out the domicile that was modest but still enough for all four girls to be able to live in comfortably. Yang often mused on how nice it was to be such good friends with the daughter of one of the wealthiest entrepreneurs in all of Remnant. All of them were in their junior year except for Ruby, who had only just begun her freshman year of college but had already become friends with Weiss and Blake due to how often she'd visit her older sister at school; the campus being rather close to where the two sisters lived with their father in between semesters and during the summer.
"Yaaaaannnngggg!" Ruby exclaimed as she suddenly appeared from around the corner wearing her pajamas and a toothy grin, catching her big sister slightly off guard from the rather abrupt nature of her arrival; indicated by the way she flinched when hearing her name get called.
"What is it Rubes?" Yang asked before suddenly remembering the time. "Oh and keep it down! Blake is trying to read and Weiss is trying to sleep, and honestly I don't know which one would be more pissed at us for interrupting."
"Oh! Sorry!" Ruby's tone was now more hushed, and she cast a quick glance back over her shoulder just to make sure that neither of their other two housemates were on their way down to scold her for being too noisy.
"So what did you need?"
"Well…I kinda couldn't help but notice that we're all out of hot chocolate. So I was thinking that maybe you could, you know…go out and get some?" Ruby asked in a tone of voice too innocent sounding for Yang to buy; her facial expression reflecting that as she narrowed her eyes at her younger sister as if to tell her that she already knew what the answer to this question was going to be. "Oh please Yang? Pretty, pretty please? It would be the perfect thing to have on a night like this and I'm really craving it right now!"
Of course it was the perfect night to have hot chocolate, which was all the more reason that Yang detested the idea of going out to purchase some. It was just past ten o'clock and there was a light snowfall taking place that had been going on since this morning. Cold weather was one of Yang's natural enemies, having hated it since she was a child while Ruby on the other hand could barely contain herself with excitement whenever there was enough snow on the ground to go out and play in. This happened to be just as true of the smaller, dark-haired girl now that she was a college student as it was when she was in kindergarten.
"If you want it so bad then why don't you go out and get it? The store is only right down the block and you've got a car. Besides, I'm trying to watch a match here!" Yang retorted, suggesting instead that Ruby go out and pick up the hot chocolate herself. Truthfully, she rarely ever minded running simple errands for her sister like this when she asked her to, but the combination of the snowy weather along with her very important television appointment was enough to make this one of the few times when she was resistant.
"I'll record it for you! Pleeeaaaaase? You know I don't like to drive at night, and it'll only take you like ten minutes tops! I'll even pay you back for the hot chocolate!" Ruby only continued to plead in the hope that she could convince her wonderful big sister to make this late night run to the convenience store for her so that she could quench her thirst for the toasty beverage.
When she saw that Yang still appeared stalwart, the diminutive girl was left with no other choice but to resort to desperate tactics.
"Yang…"
"Ruby, you can wait until tomorrow to get—" Yang started, but when she turned her attention back to where her younger sibling was standing, she had to stop herself short and let out a sigh of defeat. She had never been a match for those puppy dog eyes, and she couldn't bear to look into those adorably pitiful pools of silver and still say the word "no" to the person they belonged to. "Alright, alright, I surrender! You can put away the weapon now; I'll go and get you your hot chocolate." The buxom blonde relented as she threw her arms up and stood from off the couch.
"Oh thank you, thank you, thank you!" Ruby squeaked with delight as she zipped across the living room and threw her arms around her sister in a tight embrace. "Have I ever told you that you're the best big sis of all time?"
"Maybe, but it couldn't hurt to mention it a bit more often." She ruffled Ruby's shoulder-length hair and flashed her a teasing smirk before heading over to the nearby coat rack and grabbing her preferred winter jacket from off one of the hooks; slipping into the heavy, silver-colored garment in order to protect herself from the elements outdoors which she harbored no love for. Yang honestly had no clue how Weiss could stand living in a place as frigid as Atlas for so much of her life.
"Alright, just remember that if I'm not back in fifteen minutes, then it means I probably froze to death and you're just going to have to live the rest of your life doing all the things I never got the chance to do in order to honor my legacy." Yang joked as she slipped her feet into a pair of snow boots that she kept by the front door, sharing a chuckle with her baby sister who looked back at her and playfully replied.
"Yang, you might want to make sure you have some other people on standby to carry out your plans, because I don't think there will ever be a day where I'm ready to go streaking during the middle of the Vytal Festival."
"I wouldn't want my sweet, innocent, baby sister doing something like that anyway! I guess I'll just have to call up Nora and hand that one over to her then." Yang smirked as Ruby giggled again; the idea of their much more capricious friend running naked through the streets packed with festivalgoers sounding much more realistic.
"Just hurry up and get back here so you can do it yourself!" Ruby instructed, to which Yang gave a mock salute before bidding her sister goodbye and walking out the front door into the unforgivingly freezing night. Well, it wasn't really that cataclysmic. The temperature was hovering around twenty degrees Fahrenheit, and there was a light breeze which added to the nippiness of the atmosphere, but what was just certainly unpleasant to most was more or less the cold and clammy embrace of death to Yang. She was born for summer, not this cruel mistress they called a season.
Crossing her arms across her ample chest to try to keep as warm as possible, she jogged from the front door to the driveway where her Jeep was parked so that she could hop inside. During the winter months, as much as it pained her to do so, she kept her beloved motorcycle in the garage at her father's house since they didn't have one here and she'd rather keep it from sitting out in the snow on occasions like this. She found it odd that their rented house was designed to have a driveway without a garage, but she chalked it up the way all the houses in this particular neighborhood were situated rather close together to maximize the use of space.
Her dad's old Jeep was still more than reliable enough to see her through however, and she started it up with no desire to stay out any longer than was absolutely necessary. She was going to drive down the block to the store, grab the hot chocolate for Ruby, and if she was lucky she'd get back before the match she was watching had even ended.
The small, electronic chime sounded again as the automatic doors slid back open, and Yang bristled upon stepping through them and back out into the sharp coldness that now surrounded her. In her hand was a plastic bag containing the hot chocolate mix that she had just purchased from the mini-mart, and the tall blonde was more than ready to get into her car and get back home so that she could be out of this intolerable weather.
But as she jammed a hand into her pants pocket to fish out her keys, she had to adjust her grip upon the handles of the bag, which caused it to become lopsided thanks to the weight of the cylindrical tin full of easy-to-make hot chocolate that Yang had gone out of her way to retrieve for her little sister's enjoyment. She had already decided to be generous though and not charge Ruby for the whopping five lien that she had to pay for it with out of her own wallet. Before Yang could correct the imbalance of weight, she heard a soft clang as the aluminum container fell right out of the bag and landed on the asphalt of the parking lot, and she cast her gaze downward just in time to see it start rolling along the ground.
"Oh no you don't." A slight smirk appeared on her lips as she realized she was scolding an inanimate object. Regardless, she started gaining ground on the runaway beverage mix until she planted one of her feet smack dab upon a small patch of ice; her traction disappearing completely and causing said foot to glide forward and kick the can with enough velocity to send it zooming the remainder of the way across the parking lot.
"Hey! Get back here!"
It was too damn cold out for Yang's liking to be getting outwitted by a tin of hot chocolate that wasn't even really hot chocolate yet. She gritted her teeth with annoyance as she stomped – this time being much more cautious of any icy obstacles – towards the object of her ire that had finally come to a stop and nestled itself in a mound of snow that was just adjacent to the parking lot. The heat-craving blonde was growing more impatient by the second as she bent over to pick it back up, but as she stood back upright something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye.
Turning to pinpoint exactly what it was, her gaze fell upon the alleyway separating the convenience store from a hardware shop that was closed for the night. It was only there for a fleeting second, but there was no mistaking the flash of color in the moonlit darkness that she saw in the narrow passage. From Yang's perspective, it had looked like whatever she had gotten a glimpse of had disappeared into a large box situated near a dumpster, and what confused her even more was that she could have sworn that the color she had seen was a bright pink.
Yang took a couple of seconds to glance over her surroundings, uncertain of how to proceed. She could simply return to the parking lot, get back into her Jeep, and drive home to snuggle back up on the couch to watch the remainder of her wrestling program, but something was nagging at her to go investigate whatever she had briefly seen in the alley. Tentatively, she started stepping forward towards the opening of the split between the two shops, white snow crunching softly under the soles of her boots to provide the only sound other than the occasional car passing by on the road. This was either going to be the dumbest thing she'd ever done, or…well truthfully, she wasn't really sure what positives could be gained from this, but she maintained her approach nevertheless.
"Hello? Uhh…is someone there?"
No reply came, and Yang hugged her arms against her chest both to ward off the cold and to try to steady her nerves from how uneasy this was starting to make her. Anyone who knew her would testify – under oath no less – that Yang Xiao Long was not the type to falter easily, but there was something undeniably creepy about this whole situation. She could remember plenty of scary stories that she had heard about beautiful, young women disappearing in the night that would begin just like this, and this particularly shapely maiden had no intention of imitating such fiction tonight.
"Look! I know you're in there! So you have until the count of three to show yourself or I'm calling the police! One!...Two!..."
Yang set her jaw and clenched her fists as she bellowed out what she hoped sounded like an intimidating threat to call out from hiding whomever it was that she believed to be hiding in that alley. If nobody came out then she wasn't entirely sure what she would do then, but fortunately she didn't have to figure that out; her mysterious lurker did Yang the courtesy of revealing herself.
The tall, golden-haired girl wasn't really sure what she was expecting, but it definitely wasn't this. Her lilac-colored eyes lost their sternness and were at once replaced with sympathy as she watched a small frame crawl out from the cardboard box that looked about big enough to be for a refrigerator; a positively bantam-sized girl in ragged clothes and a fearful expression on her dirt-caked face. Yang also located the source of the color she had seen which tipped her off to begin with; the entire right half of the girl's hair being a prominent, light pink hue.
"Oh my gosh…are you okay?" Yang asked after taking stock of the poor girl's state, the question hardly even requiring an answer as it didn't take a genius to deduce that clearly this girl was anything but okay. She started walking towards the much, much shorter girl, but it only took two steps from Yang before the apparently skittish vagabond quickly backpedaled to keep space between the two of them. Yang couldn't help but notice how much fear seemed to be emanating from the girls' eyes that were almost entirely a milky white save for her large pupils. What in Remnant had she gone through to wind up here?
"Hey…you don't have to be afraid of me. Umm, my name is Yang. Yang Xiao Long. I want to help you, if I can." She said in the hopes that it might calm the other girl down some and make her aware that she isn't a threat. Yang couldn't declare it to have smashing results, but if nothing else the pint-sized stranger ceased retreating and allowed her to close some of the distance between them. "Do you…have someone I can call for you? Is there anyone you know around here that can come get you?" Yang asked, hopeful but not quite expecting there to be a positive answer to her inquiry. Her assumption was proven correct when the partially pink-haired girl shook her head to indicate "no."
"Alright, well…I mean, I'm sorry to ask like this, but…are you homeless?" The visibly forlorn facial reaction that she got in response was enough for Yang to glean the answer again. She glanced to the side at the refrigerator box that the girl had crawled out from. Surely she couldn't have been planning on spending the whole night there in this weather. "Umm…do you want me to call the police? They can probably find you a warm place to stay for the night." Yang's offer was almost immediately met with a horrified expression from the homeless girl who frantically shook her head once more. Honestly, Yang couldn't blame her either. She'd read news reports – or perhaps overheard Blake talking about news reports – about investigations which found that one of the biggest victims of police abuse were the homeless, who often had little to no means of recourse and thus were easy targets. If this girl had been through abuse already of some sort, as Yang somewhat suspected, then of course the idea of police custody would be a non-starter.
"Okay, no police. I understand." This was getting tougher and tougher for Yang to figure out what to do. This girl had nobody in the area, possibly even the entire city, who she wanted to come and get her; and she seemed to have a deep fear of being handed over to police for them to mistreat her due to how vulnerable she was. Hell, she hadn't even spoken a single word to her this whole time. She didn't know this girl's name, but one thing that Yang at least did know, that she was certain of, was that she could not in all good conscience abandon this girl. And so she made a decision.
"I know this might sound strange, but if you have nowhere else to stay besides…well, this box…I could take you back to my house and you could stay there for tonight. It's only right up the block too, so it'd be a short drive and all that…if you want to go." Yang nervously proposed as she rubbed the back of her head through her wild mane of bright sunshine, thinking about how her housemates might react to this and hoping that she wasn't making a huge mistake. She couldn't tell if it was necessarily a good think that the silent girl's expression had turned to one of surprise, and notably one of her eyes had become a creamy brown color now.
A few more seconds passed between them and just the sound of the wind lightly blowing felt deafening to Yang as she curled up into her winter jacket again to keep warm, immediately feeling guilty for doing so as the much smaller girl had no such jacket and visibly shivered from the chill. It was a pitiful enough sight that it compelled Yang to remove her jacket and ignore the shouts of her heat-deprived body so that she could extend her arm out and offer the protection from the elements to the homeless girl who again seemed surprised by this offer.
"Take it. It doesn't mean you have to come with me, but you could use it more than I could right now." Yang told her with a soft smile before the girl took the coat from her hand, giving a nod of gratitude as she slipped the insulated garment on herself. Yang felt a little bit bad for what she did next, but the taller and more full-figured blonde couldn't help but laugh just a little at how big her jacket was on the other girl's much smaller frame; it looking like a young child had decided to play dress-up with some of the clothes from mommy's closet.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh. I just didn't really think about the fit before I gave it to you." Yang tried to explain in the hope that the girl would understand, and the reply she got was an indignant pout that was soon replaced by a small smile as she blinked and now possessed one brown eye and one pink. The wind breezed through the alleyway again, and this time it was Yang's turn to shudder without layers to cover up with, which prompted the quiet new wearer of the jacket to start walking towards the one who had just given it to her, nodding her head again to let Yang know that she was amenable to the idea of returning with the kindhearted blonde to her home for the night.
"Really? That's great! Come on; let's get the hell out of here then. When we get there I'll even make you some hot chocolate!" Yang said cheerfully as she held up the container of beverage mix that she still had in her hand while the oddly matched pair of girls made their way towards the yellow Jeep that awaited them in the parking lot. Only a few seconds later was the engine starting up and were seatbelts being clicked into place as Yang was more than ready to get back home after such an unexpectedly eventful trip out to the store. She still had one more question though that she was hoping to get an answer to.
"By the way, I never got your name or anything. What would you like me to call you?"
The girl paused and her eyes looked around the interior of the vehicle for something she could use, not long before glinting a bit as they landed upon the window of the passenger's side door. She let out a deep breath upon the glass to create a splotch of fog that she then took a tiny finger to in order to squiggle out a written response.
"Neo."
A/N: Thank you all for reading! If you enjoyed the first chapter and want to see more, please follow/favorite this story and leave a review! It lets me know that people like it and it also helps bring more eyes to it!