Chapter 2: I Want to Be Better! (Cardin + Yang)

Yang laughed. Cardin winced. He was just glad that he managed to get her alone for this. Really, he was mostly glad that he wasn't being put on a stretcher right now. But despite the girl's laughter he pushed forward.

"I'm serious!" exclaimed the barrel-chested teen, doing his best not to have his face adopt its natural angry and/or smug appearance. "I wouldn't have bothered asking if I wasn't."

Yang had to pull herself together. While she was laughing, it wasn't from any real humour but rather a sense of delicious schadenfreude. "You can't be actually serious."

Cardin was doing his best to not get angry but this was a new concept for him. "I am and you have to do it. You owe—"

Yang grabbed Team CRDL's leader by the collar of his shirt and lifted him off the ground. All play and smiles were gone from her face and Cardin swore he saw her eyes turn red but that had to have been his imagination. "I owe you nothing! You attacked my friends, almost got Jaune killed, and are a discriminating piece of sh—"

"Not me!" Cardin cried, shaking his head and waving his arms in a cutting motion. "You owe your team and friends. I also owe them in a way." The former bully looked genuinely sad so Yang dropped him; even if he was repentant it was still kinda funny to see him fall on his ass.

"What are you saying, Cardin? That I should help train you to beat up unsuspecting fanii? Fanuses?" Yang seemed momentarily distracted by the case of uncertain grammar.

"That's not it at all…" Cardin looked to the side, at his feet, everything but in Yang's eyes. "I want to become strong so… I don't have to pretend."

This piqued Yang's attention. "I repeat, what are you saying, Cardin?"

Cardin clenched his fist and grit his teeth. "I don't want to be the bully but… I want to be important. I really want to help. But I'm not strong enough to help without getting in the way. So I started acting tougher than I was and people fell for it. I didn't have to get stronger; I just had to be mean. People respected me. They feared me. I was important."

"You were a jerk, that's what you were," said Yang, pointing an accusatory finger at the armoured Huntsman-in-training.

"I was but I don't want to be one anymore," Cardin fought to stop the tears from starting; he would get mocked enough as it was, he had no intention of allowing Yang to see him cry. "I want to be strong so I can help and protect other people. I want to…"

Yang punched him in the gut. Cardin doubled over and fell to the ground.

"What… Was that… For…?" he managed to wheeze before he saw Yang extending the same hand in an attempt to help him up.

"You're gonna have to be tougher than that if you want to train with me." The Huntress-in-training looked expectantly at the boy she just knocked down. "C'mon get up." Cardin took the outstretched hand and got to his feet, still somewhat winded. Yang walked back to give him some space to stand. The room would be empty for another hour or so and the rest of Team RWBY were off studying. The blonde girl smirked. At the very least, she would get to kick the everloving crap out of Cardin for a while.

An hour later and the two emerged from the room; Cardin covered in bruises from head to toe while Yang was only a little sweaty. Cardin was unsure of whether or not he regretted this decision when his sparring partner looked him in the eye. "You aren't hopeless but you aren't all too great either. We're going to need to beat you into shape, ya hear? Same time, same place, tomorrow."

As Yang left a bewildered Cardin in her dust to meet up with her team, she made one last parting remark. "Oh and if I hear anything about you or your cronies picking on anyone, the gloves will go on. Understood?"

Cardin's vigorous nod made the blonde laugh as she ran off. Clenching his fist once more, the teen decided he made the right choice and left to return to his team to put some new rules into place. Filled with a new determination, the former bully was glad to move on. After getting the rest of his team to lay off the discrimination, he would apologize to Velvet. He blushed at the thought of it. He wondered if maybe Yang could give him tips on how to ask her out…