CHAPTER 6

EMBERS

Yang awoke to a frozen house. Her breath frosted in front of her face with each exhale of her lungs and a thin layer of ice covered her window. The thin blanket she had used to sleep did nothing to block the cold, and she quickly donned jeans and a jacket for the first time in months. When her toes began to feel numb she was forced to put on her old boots, her socked feet slid into the well worn leather easily.

She opened her bedroom door to see an empty hallway, she quickly let go of the freezing doorknob and stepped out of her room. She looked down from the stair case into the main downstairs room. She saw no sign of Glas, but the door was open and a blizzard had blown some snow into the room up to ten feet within the door. Yang walked back into her room and grabbed the single left gauntlet of Ember Celica from her dresser. She struggled to place it on her wrist but was able to with time. It was the first time she had worn it since Beacon was attacked, she realized.

Expanding the shotgauntlet into the firing mode, Yang cautiously proceeded down the stairs and swept the kitchen and her father's study. Not a soul was in the downstairs area, and there was no sign of Glas. Yang turned to the open front door and proceeded to look outside. A blizzard was falling, and the open door had rendered the insulated walls and roof useless.

Yang stepped onto the first few feet of snow and walked into the open door frame and gazed into her front yard. She stopped partially because of confusion and unease.

There were dozens of snowmen in her front yard. Irregularly placed and all seemed to be facing each other. Yang slowly stepped out from the safety of the cabin to the white fury of the blizzard. The snow was so dense Yang could hardly see twenty feet in front of her, but she stepped close to the first snowman.

It was taller than her and had a name in its chest, someone had placed tiny rocks into the center ball of the snowman, and also given it eyes and a mouth. The first snowman was named "Jaune". Yang studied its face, the eyes were too far apart and the mouth wasn't long enough. She moved one more rock to the side to get Jaune's half-smile perfect.

Yang continued down the lanes of snowmen, passing Nora, Sun, Sage, Neptune, Ren, and many others before discovering four more that were separate from the rest of the group. These snowmen were different than the others. They didn't have names on the chests, but instead had detailed designs into their heads and faces. The shortest one had silver rocks for eyes and had a large tree branch that bent at a ninety-degree angle leaning against its back, The second one had icicles for hair and blue flowers for eyes and a gash over the one on the left, the third had dandelions for eyes and a bow on its head, the fourth had a circular crown that rested just below its red-leafed hair and had what seemed like rolled-up balls of green grass where the eyes should be.

Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Pyrrha.

Yang was nearly certain that she was dreaming at this point. Her nightmares had stopped but she never believed that they would go away completely. Maybe this bizarre winter scene was her minds steady regression to insanity. Yang shut her eyes and attempted to block out the substitutions of her friends, the bitter cold, the snow and gusts that buffeted her every few seconds. She tried to tell herself to wake up and move past the visions, she gritted her teeth and clenched her left hand, feeling her right hand tense as well. A voice behind her broke her concentration.

"Hey, Yang!"

Yang turned to see Glas in his traveling Jacket working his way through the irregular flurries to stand by her side. His rifle was across his back and he was wearing stronger boots than she had seen him wear before. When he finally reached her he gestured to the snowmen in front of them.

"Do you like my work?"

Yang wasn't surprised. If anyone had done something this weird it would have had to be the enigma by her side. "Why did you make them?" She found herself asking, more to herself than to him.

Glas left her side to go stand next to the snowmen with her sister's scythe. "Well, I figured since your friends left you and you were feeling lonely, I could remake them for you." He gave her a warm smile, seemingly genuine.

Yang did not mirror the image. Glas was beginning to irritate her. Yang forgot about her promise to her father, she refused to tolerate Glas' antics anymore. Not holding back her obvious scorn at his work, she spat "Why the hell would I appreciate that?"

She gestured angrily towards the collection of frozen copies. "These aren't my friends. And making snowmen copies of them won't bring them back."

"Then what would bring them back? Laying in bed all day?" Glas retorted, staring her down.

For a while the only sound between them was the whistling wind between the two bodies locked in a battle of wills. Yang, desperately thinking of ways to block the attempts this strange man was enacting. Glas was patiently waiting for a retort, he wanted to see Yang rise up and challenge him, like she would have before she lost her arm. Finally Yang broke the intense silence between them, but she did not back down in stance nor did she drop her gaze.

"You wouldn't understand. Even if I was there and trying to find them, most of them wouldn't want to be found, especially Blake." Her stare transferred to the snowman with the likeness of Pyrrha, "And some of them can't be found."

Glas nodded, "True, but that would never have stopped you before. If Blake ran away, you would just let her leave without searching?" Yang's subtle grimace and shrink let Glas know that he had guessed correctly. "Ahhh," He sighed, "I see. She's done it before, but now that you're the victim, you feel abandoned, not necessarily like she ran away but she left you behind."

Yang's blond hair began to shimmer. "Glas. If I were you, I would stop talking about Blake. If you don't know me, you would know nothing about her, so stop psycho-analyzing both of us."

Glas had felt her bend a little, and he decided to push harder. "What's wrong, Yang? Never lost someone before? I have!" He took two steps closer to Yang. "I know that Blake, Pyrrha, Weiss, or any of your friends wouldn't want you to waste away in bed, so why disappoint them and, eventually, yourself?" Glas took careful notice of the snow steaming off of Yang's body and hair now.

He left Yang to go back to the snowmen. He stood by Pyrrha's and grabbed his rifle. While holding onto the circular portion of his weapon, he flicked a small switch with his thumb. Blades on both sides of the rifle's long muzzle appeared and extended outward. The muzzle folded in on itself several times to finally form a two-handed broadsword, a claymore. More slender than Qrow's sword, but just as long, if not longer.

Looking at Yang, he pronounced clearly, "Pyrrha is dead." With a smooth stroke he cleaved the topmost sphere of the snowman into two. "And Blake left you." He brushed off the facial features of the faunus snowman. "Weiss left all of you." He completely pushed the third snowman over. "And finally, Ruby went off to save the world." He did not alter the fourth snowman, but when he looked back at Yang he was pleased with his results. Yang was positively radiating energy. The snow within five feet of her was beginning to melt and her hair was a beacon through the storm. He had to drive the nail into the coffin. Possibly my coffin He thought, nearly retracing his steps. "They are all gone, and for some there's nothing you can do, but for others it's not too late to chase them down, Yang. But instead you've lost faith in yourself." Glas took a deep breath and braced himself, "I wonder what they would think of you staying in bed all day. They certainly wouldn't recognize you as their former teammate."

Yang blasted towards him in a blaze of yellow fury and scarlet eyes. Melting all the snow in her path and burning the atmosphere around her. Her left hand slammed into Glas' chest, sending an explosive dust cartridge into the man's torso. The larger mercenary was sent skyward, flew for nearly twenty feet, and crashed behind the tree line in the forest. Yang watched the impact sight, but nothing seemed to leave it. Jumping into the air, she chased her prey. She wasn't done with Glas Lir just yet.

Yang landed in the crater that Glas had left. It was a few feet deep and about five wide. And it did not have Glas in it. Yang rotated her head, scanning the ground for any signs of where the man traveled to. She couldn't find any footsteps, it seemed like Glas had floated directly from where he crashed to some other location. There were no indentations to support that he had jumped somewhere nor tracks to indicate he left by foot.

Yang was still searching when she heard a gunshot. Instinctively she somersaulted backwards, forgetting that she only had one hand. Her left arm gave out and she collapsed, but still had managed to dodge the blast that impacted with the crater. Now the hole was even more charred than before. It took Yang seconds to analyze the new blast zone and deduce the direction the shot had come from. As she began to sprint towards where she believed Glas was, a figure melted out of the white-out flurry.

Glas had leaped from wherever his vantage point had been and was now speeding towards Yang with his sword drawn. Yang held up Ember Celica and felt the impact of the blade on her left arm. The two combatants held their pose there, staring at each other over their interlocked weapons with gritted teeth. Yang pushed his blade away and to the ground, making his face inches from hers and in front of her elbow. Firing, she used the recoil to speed her arm backwards and cut her elbow into his jawline.

Glas reeled but was quickly able to recover. He dodged two more punches from Yang and then swung his rifle like a bat to send the shining blonde backwards. Yang took the time to jump behind a tree and rethink her strategy. Glas had his white jacket on, and that gave him an advantaged camouflage in the storm, while her hair was shining through what must have been most of the flurries. Yang decided she couldn't let her opponent fall back to long distance, he would just take pot shots at her with his rifle until he finally got lucky.

Peering around her hiding spot, she tried to locate Glas. Scanning the forest was almost useless because she could only see the trees that were within twenty feet of her. Far off she spied a muzzle flash and she quickly withdrew her face. The tree exploded into splinters where her head had been and a growth of ice crystals quickly spread over the surrounding bark. Yang sighed, of course the gun would be able to fire dust cartridges. More explosions rocked the tree and Yang knew he was firing into it trying to destroy her cover.

She leaped into the branches of a tree just adjacent to her, nearly falling because she still wasn't used to balancing without her right arm. Hopping from tree to tree, Yang was hoping to get to the spot where she saw the muzzle flash. As she swung from one branch to land on another, a blinding flash appeared from a source behind her and a wave of heat washed over the back of her neck. She did not turn around to investigate, she knew the marksmen was still shooting at her. Not slowing down, Yang leapt from one branch to another nearly immediately before the last branch would burst into flames.

As Yang was in mid-leap for another tree, her desired landing branch was splintered by a shot from Glas' rifle. Falling to the forest floor, she rolled to absorb the impact and continued sprinting towards the tree where she knew Glas was. She launched a blast towards his assumed position and was pleased when the branch exploded and the figure landed on the forest floor awkwardly.

Yang took advantage of his momentary weakness and charged a second time. Glas only had enough time to register the golden comet streaking towards him before he was crashing through the canopy of trees and flying over the forest. Yang watched his arc and jumped into the air, blowing explosive rounds behind her to control her trajectory and assist her with her leap. She followed the falling man and flew high into the air over the forest. She felt alive for the first time since Beacon, she was fighting, she was kicking ass again, she was doing what she had been born to do. And she loved it.

Glas looked towards the ground that was rapidly approaching him. He stabilized himself in midair, fired his rifle in the opposite direction he was traveling to slow his descent. Knees bent, legs loose, weight forward. He went through the mental checklist for a successful landing. As his feet touched the ground he rolled through a soft snowbank and used his momentum to pop up onto his feet, right next to a snowman. He was back by the cabin.

He looked towards the sky when he heard explosions and beheld Yang streaking towards him, a maniacal smile on her face. What the hell did I unleash? He braced himself for the impact and swapped his rifle to the sword form.

Yang crashed into the front lawn of the cabin with explosive force. Blowing the snowmen apart and causing the storm to temporarily abate. Glas beheld a miniature sun on the front lawn that melted all the snow on their side of the cabin. Yang cackled and pumped her lone gauntlet. Glas did not show doubt but instead moved to a defensive combat stance, there was no way he would win if he charged Yang.

Yang lept towards Glas and the two exchanged blows. It was an even fight, for every move that Yang would use on Glas he was able to deflect it. For every tactic that Glas enacted in an attempt to gain the upper hand, Yang was able to stop his machinations by pure strength and tenacity. One in every few strokes would break their defenses and impact on the fighting warriors, but most were blocked or dodged.

Glas felt his arms losing strength and his strokes slowing down. He needed to do something desperate or he would be forced to stop soon. He charged with his shoulder into Yang's stomach, taking her off guard. Using his temporary advantage, he pressed his blade into Yang's throat and pulled on her single gauntlet of Ember Celica, Yang had to back off and lose her weapon or risk hurting herself on Glas' blade. She jumped backwards, letting her left arm slide out of the shotgauntlet. Glas triumphantly cast the metallic glove backwards and advanced towards the unarmed girl.

Yang surprised him by also charging. She raised her arm seemingly to strike his face. When Glas shifted his weight to defend above she rolled below his stance and quickly grabbed his wrist. Using her leverage over him, she pulled him over her back and twisted his arm, forcing him to drop his weapon as well. She kicked the sword away and acrobatically vaulted on top of the supine Glas to pin him. She kneeled on his legs, holding them down with her weight and held her left arm cocked back, threatening. "Give up?" She asked Glas triumphantly.

Glas grabbed the front of her sweater and with help from his legs threw her over his head. The two fighters sprang up and once more rushed towards each other. Glas leapt into the air, spinning with one leg extended, while Yang pushed all of her remaining strength into her left arm. Yang's powerful punch smashed into Glas' chin, and Glas' heavy boot connected with Yang's lower rib cage. Both felt their aura's give out and leave them. Yang saw the yellow webbed light fade across her body and she noticed the same thing happen on Glas' body with silver light. Glas fell to the ground on his face and Yang collapsed next to him.

Both stared at each other, panting and trying to get their strength back. Glas finally broke the silence, "You fight well, Yang."

"I know. If I still had two arms you wouldn't have lasted a minute." Yang stated between deep breaths. Glas knew that if he didn't take advantage of this moment she would slip back into her existentialistic funk. He stood and offered her a hand to help up. She looked at it for a few seconds and looked back at him suspiciously.

"I'm sorry for being such an ass, Yang," Glas apologized. "I knew that that would be the only way to see your old fire, and I wanted to behold it in person. I didn't mean what I said about your friends."

Yang mused over his apology before finally taking his hand. Glas took that as an acceptance and pulled her up. "It's too cold to stay out here. Let's go inside." Yang nodded in agreement, her hair and eyes had already returned to their natural color. The duo retrieved their weapons and plodded over the burnt ground and slush to the cabin's front door. Glas closed it behind them while Yang went to the kitchen.

"Weiss used to brew this tea that would help your aura come back faster. Wanna cup?" She asked Glas who happily accepted. "There's one catch," Yang continued while pulling down the kettle and an assortment of herbs from a cupboard.

"And what is that?"

"You have to answer my question. How did you leave the crater without leaving tracks? And you have to admit that I'm a better fighter, and you're an asshole."

Glas chuckled, "I'm an asshole who can't beat you . . . yet." He gave the blonde a cocky grin before becoming serious again, "but I am impressed with you. Most people don't notice small details like footprints, or lack thereof, in battle.

Yang smirked, she had enough reasons to pay more attention to tiny details while fighting people for the first time. The compliment was still welcome regardless.

"I used my semblance." Glas stated.

"What is it?"

"Teleportation."

That surprised Yang. If she had a teleportation semblance she would take advantage of it. She had only met one other person with a teleportation semblance, that pink-haired heterochromatic-eyed bitch who knocked her out; and she assumed her mother as well. She would never have to walk anywhere. The sheer recreational purposes for such a skill would be worth however much energy it required. "I'm surprised you actually told me instead of saying it was a secret." She bluntly replied to him.

"Well maybe I was being secretive to elicit your attention."

Yang paused for the most minute fraction of a second, but succeeded in portraying a confused visage. "Why would that make me interested?"

Glas had to fight back a smile, "Oh sometimes when people don't share details the other party will try to figure it out themselves, sometimes they'll even watch them from a bedroom window."

Yang had the self control to not blush and the decency not to deny it. "You were someone my father had never mentioned before and yet had been a friend of his for some time. On top of that you refused to tell me almost anything about yourself, which is more than enough to warrant suspicion."

"I agree," Glas conceded. "Would you still like to know my story?" He asked cautiously.

Yang looked up from the mixture of herbs she was beginning to boil. The last thing she had expected was for him to willingly tell her the infamous story. "I would appreciate that yes."

Glas sat down at the dining table and began tracing the grain of the wood with his finger. He didn't make eye contact with Yang, and she was sensitive enough to not force him to start.

He began with, "I don't know my own birthday." Yang thought that was a weird introduction. "I was dropped off at an orphanage when I was a newborn. The only thing that was with me was a note saying my name and my father's and that he was from Vacuo."

Yang was giving him her full attention now, she found herself studying his facial features, the short stubble that didn't match his silver hair. A singed patch just above his left ear (Yang admitted she probably did that today). A scar that traced his jawline. Laugh-lines next to his eyes despite his young age.

"I was never adopted, but the caretakers at the orphanage were really good to me. None of them lied to me and said that after I turned five I would still have a chance of adoption, most knew that I would rather hear the hard truth, that most kids who aren't adopted during infancy don't get adopted at all, than be told that I would still probably be adopted.

"They let me go to a school that wasn't in the orphanage and when I showed adeptness with building mechanical things they were the ones who helped me find the apprenticeship I told you about. That was when I was around nine years old." Glas turned his gaze back to his listener and locked her eyes, Yang quickly dropped her attention back to the whistling tea kettle.

"Here's where my story starts to sound like yours. I was always desperate to go and find my father. I don't know why, I just wanted to know why he didn't want to raise me. I was happy with my life in Vale, but I was curious about my origins. I became rather obsessed with it, really."

Yang poured the tea into two cups and brought one over to Glas before returning with her own. She could definitely relate to that aspect of Glas' life.

Glas smiled his thanks and sipped before continuing. "Anyway. Obviously a nine year old couldn't travel all the way to Vacuo by himself, so I started saving up to by an airship ticket, but my wage was barely able to pay for a lunch outside the orphanage. So when Qrow came into my shop that's why I asked him to teach me how to fight. So I could instead walk to Vacuo. Qrow trained me for seven years, He helped me design my weapon and your father helped me train in the last portion of that time.

"When I was seventeen, I became a legal adult and graduated from school. The owner of my shop had given me a graduation present of about five-hundred lien that he had held onto for me for the trip to Vacuo; he knew about all that. I thanked him and everyone else and set out to find my father.

"The trip wasn't so bad, I was able to hold my own with the majority of the grimm that attacked me. Some fights I had to flee but I made it to Vacuo in one piece and three-hundred lien still with me. I began to ask around for any men named Lir. I had begun to feel hopeful and had these glorified images of what he would be like in my head, was he a hunstman? Maybe he was a professor at some academy. I actually thought he would be an engineer for the Vacuo military and that my mechanical talents were hereditary at one point.

"When I tried looking for him, no one knew who he was. But one day I was eating in a dingier part of town, and this guy taps me on the shoulder. He asked me if I was the one who was looking for the Lir guy, I said yes and he said he knew where he was. I followed him, too excited to notice that the homes had started to get trashier and the people rougher.

Glas took another drink before progressing. "I followed him into this one home, and these four guys were playing some card game. The house was a disaster, it smelled like cheap beer and cigarettes. The guys looked at me and asked who I was. My guide said I was the one looking for Lir. When he said that, one of the guys stood up and walked over to me.

"He was short, fat, dressed in stained tank top and torn jeans. He smelled like tobacco and sweat and his two top canine teeth were fake. His hair was a dusty brown and graying on the sides but we shared the same eyes, and it had finally sunken in that this low-life degenerate was my father.

"He asked me why I was looking for him and I told him that I was his son. He laughed and asked if I wanted to throw the ball, to bond, he mocked me in front of his friends. Turns out he had lived in Vale for most of his life but moved to Vacuo the year before I was born. When I asked him who my mother was all he responded with was 'I don't know. I've never been married, she was probably some whore I picked up in Vale.' He was losing the card game and then asked me how much money I had on my person. I responded with none, that I only payed with credit cards but his friends held me down while he frisked my pockets. He found my money and took all of it. Then they kicked me out of their house and told me to leave."

Yang realized she had been holding her breath and hadn't taken a sip of her tea yet. She quickly guzzled it before it got cold and waited patiently for Glas to continue his story.

"My entire purpose in life had been to find him. I had trained for seven years, saved up for the trip for twelve, and traveled for another year before finally meeting him. And he robbed me.

"It crushed me. I had no more drive, no more motivation to do anything. I went back to Vale but became a bum. I lived in the old man's apartment above the shop, I still worked there from time to time but I didn't pay rent. I stopped talking to Qrow and your father and became a recluse.

"The old man was the one who got me out of it. He would tell me I was wasting away, that who I came from does not define who I am and it was my decisions that affected my life. That I was letting something that was entirely out of my control decide what I would be.

"So, I took his advice to heart. I didn't want anyone else to go through what I had to. I wanted to make this world a better place. Since It was too late to become a huntsman I decided to sell my services to them, If they needed anything I would help them. In a way, my old boss and Qrow were my fathers and mentors.

"So here I am. Helping you realize the same thing." Glas finished with a content smile on his face.

"What thing?" Yang was genuinely curious.

"Your purpose in life was taken from you. It was to protect your friends through mutual adventures but now they're gone and you're crippled. You don't think you're strong enough to live your adventurous life but there are other paths you can achieve that goal through Yang. You have other destinies to fulfill. And no more moping about losing your right arm, it's clear that you don't need it to still be a great fighter."

Yang was silent for a long time. She agreed that she needed to do something, to get moving again and pick herself up. "What do you think I should do?" Yang asked.

"Well." Glas sat back in his chair. "You could go after your mother, but she doesn't want to be found and it's usually better they stay unfound, take it from me. You could chase after Ruby and help her fight the people that brought this unto you. Or you could go find Blake in Vale."

Yang weighed the options in her mind. She didn't want to go after her mother just yet, tracking down Ruby seemed like the right thing to do, but she couldn't leave without trying to find Blake first. Then again, she didn't even know if Blake was still in Vale. Her feline friend could be anywhere by now. Yang sighed, "I have to check to see if Blake is still in Vale. I need to know why she left." And if she's okay.

Glas smiled. "Let's do it, then."

Yang raised an eyebrow.

"Oh come on! You didn't think I would miss out on this adventure did you? I help out hunstmen. Consider this as me getting to know the newer generation." He laughed.

Yang couldn't help but smile. It was fantastic to have a plan again. "Okay, when do we leave?"

"Slow down there, Yang." Glas raised a hand. "Before you do anything you're going to have to get back in shape. And if you want I can build you a new hand, but it will take some time."

Yang's eyes widened. "You can do that for me?"

Glas nodded, "I could have it done in a few weeks if I work fast. Any requests for it? Functions, design, et cetera?"

Yang smiled, "Make it yellow. And thank you, Glas. I think its time I finally rearmed myself."

"Its good to meet the Yang I've heard about." Glas smiled.

Yang winked back at her new partner.