Somewhere Else to Be
On the beach, Yang laughed.
It began as a smile, then a slow chuckle. Soon she was went straight through belly laughs to wheezing when her lungs refused to suck in enough air. She doubled over and collapsed on the wet sand, caking it into her hair.
"What," she wheezed between breaths, "am I doing?" She could feel frost build on her lips when she spoke. It felt cold, but not cold as she was used to it. It didn't hurt. It was like mint, minus the mint. The whole world tasted fresh.
She assumed she would reach some life-changing epiphany miles ago. What happened now that she ran out of north?
Yang picked herself up with both arms and gazed across the ocean. Nothing as far as the eye could see. If she got a boat and headed east, or northeast, or north by north by north by northeast, she'd reach the mainland. But straight north would lead her through a whole lotta nothing.
"She's insane," Yang declared. "She's nuts! There's nothing here!" Her shout went unanswered.
"Fine."
Yang sat down on the beach, brushed the worst from her hair with her hand and her other hand, and broke out lunch. She'd brought Pilo's nutrition bars because dust, after a day like that, why would Pilo poison her after leaving? All the food was weighing her down. Everything seemed heavier now without her fire — apparently it had some effect when not active, because her hair made it quite hard to turn her neck — but even on that scale, the woman had brought a lot of very dense food with her.
Too dense to consume on its own, and Yang was down to her last bottle of water. I wonder..?
Yang opened her mouth and condensed ice on her tongue. It felt almost like gum. She closed her mouth again and willed it to melt. Yang couldn't make it warm. She could only stop it from being ice. Her power, her semblance, stopped after that. But it was pure, distilled, and the temperature wasn't a problem.
Guess I can toss the bottle.
Yang had expected to find her second arm odd, hard to handle, difficult to get used to. Instead, it just made her realize how little she'd adapted to losing one. She was herself again, well, herself without her fire but maybe a second arm was a worthwhile trade. Maybe. Yang still wasn't happy about the way Pilo had made the call on her own. But apparently she didn't hold much of a grudge, because she'd boarded Zwei and followed the woman's compass north the next day.
And found nothing along the way. Go north. What did it mean? What did Pilo know? Or whoever planned her trip? Why couldn't someone, for once, just tell Yang the truth?
Yang exhaled her frustrations, frosting the beach nearby. The cold rippled outwards, freezing the surf next to her, then ten feet away, then twenty.
That... that would be stupid.
"All right, Pilo." Yang lay down on the sand, which stuck to her less when frozen together. "I came north. I don't know how you did what you did, but here I am." There was something she was supposed to do, or find, or be. Or should she just go back home, wait for dad to call back, and tell him the news? "Some woman came over and changed my semblance and now I have an arm made of ice." How would he take it? She'd had to feed the fire much more aggressively to keep Zwei warm in the house. She had the option of melting her arm. Without keeping ice around, she was barely even cooler than normal.
Of course, that would mean having one arm, even if just for a little while. Yang held it before her face, examining the fingers. The material was uniform, but she could swear there were tendons and veins textured onto the surface if she looked close. She could form other objects, but nothing with detail this fine. Couldn't even make other things move. This was the exception. This was her.
Yang grabbed Ember Celica from her bag and put the left bracelet on, then the right. It fit perfectly. She expanded the gauntlet, and for that stretch of wrist, couldn't even tell it wasn't a normal arm. The gauntlet looked good. Ruby's handiwork. Yang hadn't taken it so well at the time, but it had only meant the girl was optimistic.
Ruby would be in Mistral now, with Juniper. Changing the world. Fighting the people that nearly destroyed Vale. They'd be outnumbered. On unfamiliar territory. Wishing Yang had agreed to come along.
Or maybe forgetting about her entirely. Yang could party, Yang could excite, Yang could fight. But not win, not if her last battles were any indication. She'd helped the team, all right, against Grimm. Or when Blake could slingshot her into the enemy. Blake beat Roman in that train car. Ruby fought Cinder in the tower. Yang couldn't keep up with trained hunters, not on her own. She was just too slow.
Yang stood up.
"Sorry, Roman." She pointed at a rock on the sand about fifteen feet away. "Be a shame if you got... cold feet." Ice grew around it, encasing it entirely after a few seconds.
Great. She could stop Roman from moving if he was already immobile. Anyone could avoid ice growing that quickly. Yang could.
Yang held out her hands and grew icicles. That only took a second or two. Then she threw them, one after the other. She had power, even without her fire, but she couldn't keep them on target without tumbling around in the air. Yang was no Gwen Darcy.
Yang grew a sword. Like the daggers, it didn't stick to her hands. She started with an icicle, adding a handguard and sharpening the edges.
She tested the edges. It wasn't very sharp. Great. I can make an estoc. Piercing attacks weren't very good against aura in the first place, much less in the hands of someone that had never trained with them. Much less in the hands of someone too slow to fight.
Was this why she was here? To get her outside and planning, trying new things? In that case, was she supposed to stay here until she figured out something that worked? A way to use her power to fight in a world of speed? Attacks that can't be dodged quite so easily?
Or was Yang supposed to do the stupid thing?
She turned her gaze northward. The waves had frozen mid-crest, leaving an uneven surface. Where the ice stopped, water lapped over the edges.
Yang approached and stepped on the ice, willing it cooler. Immediately, the water around it froze, and the water around that. The ice now extended to the sand underneath for twenty feet around. Thirty.
Yang walked out onto it. She could keep a radius of forty feet frozen pretty easily, more if she exerted herself. It no longer reached the sand underneath. The ice behind her remained, although it would melt, in time. Then she'd be on an island. An iceberg.
Still, forty feet of ice would float, and stay upright besides. The waves were gentle.
"What do I owe her anyway?"
"I guess I should walk home and finish sweeping the yard."
Yang walked north.
