Neither Taiyang Xiao Long nor Sun Wukong had any real idea what to expect when they finally broke down the door to the spare guest room where Yang was living now. Somewhere towards the bottom of that list, however, was the aforementioned Yang laying down on the floor and crying, wearing nothing but a towel, while a girl with disheveled pink-and-brown hair and a set of Yang's clothes that are far too large on her sat on the edge of the bed, watching them with a smile.
Taiyang hurries to his daughter's side. "Yang? Come on honey, talk to me." He turns on the stranger at the same time that Sun does. "What did you do to her?"
The girl continues to smile.
"I'm all right." Yang sniffs, regaining everyone's attention. "I'm all right."
"You're not all right." Taiyang states the obvious. "This place looks like a warzone. Who is this?"
"I don't know." Yang says as her father helps her to her feet. "She was...she was on the train with Torchwick before the Breach. And then she just...shows up in here, sitting on my bed, wearing my clothes." She takes an angry step forward towards the girl. "How did you get in here?" she demands.
The girl points towards the door with her umbrella.
"Don't play smart with me." Yang spits, raising her fist.
Taiyang intercedes. "Hold on there, Yang. Let's take this out to the front room, shall we?" He glares at the pink-haired girl. She studies him for a moment, as if trying to figure out where she'd seen him before. Then, as if a light had gone on, she hops to her feet and saunters out the door. Sun follows her warily. Taiyang lingers in the doorway. "You go on and get dressed. We'll make sure she doesn't cause any more trouble."
It takes Yang longer than she would have liked to get dressed. Her chest and back scream every time she moves, and she wonders how long it'll take her Aura to clear up the bruises she can tell are already beginning to form. Getting the stump of her right arm into the sleeve is something she still isn't used to. She supposes it's one of the reasons she puts off taking a shower so much.
A thought occurs to her as she's inspecting herself in the mirror. She limps to the front room and asks, "Where's Zwei?"
Taiyang frowns. "That's a good question." He rounds on the pink-haired girl. "All right young lady, what did you do with our dog?"
She frowns, then makes a fist and hits herself over the head, rolling her eyes back as she does so.
"You did what?!" Yang growls.
Sun springs up. "I'll go and look for him!" he says.
"No!" Yang says. "He's my dog!"
"I'll go." Taiyang says.
"Dad!"
The pink-haired girl watches all of this.
Father and daughter stare meaningfully at one another. Then the father sighs. "All right Yang. Just be careful; this little creature might not be alone."
Yang rushes as fast as she can out the door. She finds Zwei off to the left of the house. He stirs and whimpers as she comes close, and she picks him up gingerly with her arm and her stump. "Aww, what that mean little lady do to my Zwei?" she coos at him, unable to keep the tremor from her voice. Thankfully Zwei doesn't seem to notice. He whimpers again and nestles close to her. "It's okay buddy. I got you." She keeps talking to him all the way back to the front room. "He's okay." she says. "Just a nasty knock on the head." She nuzzles his stomach and he pants happily.
Taiyang and Sun sigh with relief. Yang locks eyes with the pink-haired girl. "All right, creep. Start talking."
The pink-haired girl folds her arms. Everyone glares at her. "Well?" Sun demands after a moment.
She shrugs.
Taiyang stands up. "If that's the way you want it..." he begins ominously.
Yang transposes herself between them. "Hold on a minute dad." She turns to the girl. "The whole time I've known you, you haven't said a single word. I don't even think I've heard you grunting when we fight." The pieces come together for the other two present as she says, "You...can't talk, can you?"
The pink-haired girl shakes her head.
"Well," Taiyang sighs. "That makes getting information a bit more difficult."
"Can you write?" Yang prompts her.
The girl rolls her eyes. She taps her wrist, then, when that fails to get the point across, points at the clock.
"What...?" Yang frowns.
The girl mimes something going around in a circle. Then she points at the clock again.
"It'd take too long?" Yang asks.
The girl nods.
Yang sighs. "Okay, fine. We'll just..." She's about to give up, but something in her tells her differently. "No." she agrees out loud. She takes a step closer to the pink-haired girl. "You're going to answer our questions." The girl looks scornfully at her. "You don't have anything better to do, right? That's why you're here instead of off with the bad guys."
"Yang," Taiyang says. "They might have sent her as a spy."
They all notice the pink-haired girl's reaction is one of just as much scorn as before. "You don't get along with them huh?" Taiyang asks. She shakes her head. "Okay." He scratches his chin. "First things first. How'd you get in?"
She points over her shoulder at the door. "Not this again..." Yang gripes.
"No, hang on." Sun says. He turns to Taiyang. "You told me to shut the door when I came in, remember? And I said I thought I did..."
"So she just walked in here after you?" Taiyang says.
"That sounds about right." Yang says thoughtfully. "Ruby said something about her disappearing a lot when she tried fighting Roman." The girl's face falls a little, but Yang is too caught up in her thoughts to notice. "And when we were fighting a minute ago, I saw her lying on the ground, but something hit me from behind, and just before I fell onto her, she vanished."
The pink-haired girl nods, but holds up two fingers very close to one another. "I'm almost right?" Yang guesses. The pink-haired girl shakes her head and spreads her arms wide. Then she holds up the two fingers again in the space she just indicated. "That's only part of what you can do." Yang says. The pink-haired girl nods again.
"So, what's the whole of it?" Sun asks.
Yang looks at him. "She's not going to give up all her secrets just because she's got nowhere to go." The girl looks almost proudly around the room.
Taiyang clears his throat. "Now for the big one." He gets in close. "Why. Are. You. Here."
"And why'd you put on my clothes and wait for me in my room?" Yang asks. An unpleasant thought arises. "Were you...going to replace me?"
The pink-haired girl shakes her head at Yang, then looks to Taiyang and shrugs broadly. If a shrug could be loud, hers would be. Everyone sighs. "Seriously?" Sun asks. The pink-haired girl stares at him. "Well, I don't think we're gonna get anything else out of her. What should we do with her?"
"I say kick her out on her behind." Taiyang offers. "Or turn her in to the cops. If she hung around with Roman Torchwick, I'm sure she's got a rap sheet."
Yang finds herself studying the pink-haired girl's face. She thinks she's holding it carefully neutral. She can't be sure, of course, but she's certainly not smiling like she tends to. "Dad?" Taiyang looks at her. "This is gonna sound crazy, and...it probably is, but...can we keep her?"
"Yang!"
"Just for like a week or two? If she promises not to hurt anyone, I'd...I'd really like some company."
"Yang, she broke into your home, stole your clothes and assaulted you in your own room!" Sun says. "And that's just today!"
"And besides, you have us and Zwei for company!" Taiyang says.
Zwei wags his tail.
"I know!" Yang says. "But I have...not a good feeling exactly, but not a bad one?" She hastens to ask the pink-haired girl before her father or Sun can interject. "If you promise not to hurt anyone, will you stay here with us?"
The pink-haired girl swings her feet back and forth and stares at the floor in thought. Everyone watches her anxiously. Finally she stands up, looks directly at Yang and offers a curtsy.
Yang breaks out into a smile. "Great!" she says. "We'll get you set up in the guest room. I was in there before, but you're a real guest, so you take priority!" Then, as an afterthought, "Oh, and dad, you might want to confiscate her umbrella. It kind of has a sword inside it."
Taiyang's eye twitches. "Of course it does." he mutters. He strides forward and tries to pull the umbrella from the pink-haired girl. She reacts violently, grabbing it with both hands, her eyes wild.
"Dad!" Yang cries out. "Be careful!"
The pink-haired girl attempts to kick Taiyang in the face, but he takes advantage of her momentary distraction by yanking hard on the umbrella. Tearing it from her grasp, he spins back and points it at her. She's breathing heavily, though Yang doesn't think it's due to overexertion. "You're not bad." Taiyang says. "If you weren't wearing clothes that were two or three sizes too big for you, you might've hit me with that move." She takes a step forward. He takes a step to the side. "Uh uh. My house, my rules. Until I think I can trust you with this, I'm going to put it somewhere you can't get to it. I don't want you stabbing any of us in our sleep."
The pink-haired girl clenches her fists. Yang stands behind her. "Hey." she says quietly. The girl turns her head. "Let's get you some clothes that actually fit, huh?" Yang suggests. The girl looks back at Taiyang. Yang can't see her expression, but she's guessing it's not good. Then the girl turns on her heel and motions for Yang to lead her away. Her gesture reminds Yang of Weiss in those first few tense days of school. She wonders what Weiss is doing now. She hopes she's okay.
Yang tucks Zwei into his bed and takes the pink-haired girl upstairs. "This used to be Ruby's room." she says as she opens the door. "I guess it still is, but...she's not here right now." The pink-haired girl looks around politely but without much enthusiasm. Yang opens up the closet. "I hope Ruby won't mind if we use some of her old stuff." Yang says as she begins her hunt. "I'd leave a note, but it'd probably get lost the moment she came home." She's surprised at how much talking she's doing, perhaps to make up for the pink-haired girl's inability to respond in kind.
There's a tap on her shoulder. When Yang turns, the pink-haired girl tilts her head to the side.
"What?" Yang asks.
The girl frowns, puts a hand above her eyes and looks around the room.
"You want to know where she is?" The girl nods. Yang sighs. "It doesn't matter. She's...a long way away." She turns back to the closet. She sees the glare the pink-haired girl gives her, but she's too wrapped up in thoughts of her sister to give it much notice.
"There's not much left..." Yang says after a little while. "I guess everything else was at Beacon." Just as she says that, she spies something in the far back, almost hidden by the onset of dusk. She puts on her best pulp-fiction voice. "Concealed in shadows..." She spins around, brandishing two hangars. "The Slayer emerges at last!"
The pink-haired girl blinks slowly.
"It's what she called it." Yang says. "It's her Slayer outfit."
The girl buries her face in her hand.
"Don't give me that." Yang scolds her. "They all had names. Mine was called Hunter." She walks over to where the pink-haired girl is waiting. "What happened to your old clothes anyway?"
The girl makes a grab for the hangars, but Yang holds them out of her reach. The girl sighs without making a noise. She arches a hand and makes scratching motions with her fingers.
"They got torn up?" But the girl seems to be done answering Yang's questions. She grabs the hangars and the clothes and begins taking her old clothes (my old clothes, Yang corrects herself) off right then and there. "Hey!" Yang says, trying not to blush. "You're not getting undressed in my baby sister's room!"
The pink-haired girl looks slyly over her shoulder, her thumbs already in the waistband of the pants she's wearing.
Yang does blush at that. "Why not? It... It just doesn't feel right!" She grabs the other girl by the wrist. "You're gonna change in the bathroom." Yang says. But the girl refuses to budge until she's grabbed the clothes on their hangars with her free hand. Only then does she condescend to allow Yang to drag her out of Ruby's room.
Yang is looking down the hall impatiently when the bathroom door opens. "Took you long enough." she says as she turns around. Her next words die in her throat. It isn't the pink-haired girl who's come out of the bathroom. It's Ruby.
"Yang, what is it?" her sister asks. "You look like you just saw a ghost."
"Ruby? I..." Yang's eyes are watering. She rubs them on her sleeve. When she looks up, Ruby is gone. The pink-haired girl is standing there, head tilted on its side.
Yang grabs her by the front of her borrowed shirt. "Don't you ever-" She swallows hard. "-ever do that again."
The pink-haired girl bats Yang's hand away, her face the picture of bewildered innocence.
"But if...if that wasn't you..." Yang's eyes widen. Ironwood's words come back to her in a rush. When you're out on the battlefield, your judgment can become clouded in an instant. Sometimes you see things that simply aren't there. Even after the fight is past...
She sinks to her knees. The pink-haired girl cocks her head again.