A Fallen Yellow Petal

Pt. II

They ran as fast as they could without leaving her behind. Yang was having problems keeping up with Weiss and Ozpin but she did not want them to worry about her; she was fine. It was only a piece of metal sticking out of her back, no big deal. Her flight through the window from Hazel left her with her Aura gone and her body vulnerable. Basic first-aid told her that pulling the piece out would likely make her bleed out faster. The Atlesians they were heading towards probably had something to help, she just needed to hold on until then.

Keeping Weiss and Ozpin in her line of sight, she used a wall to support herself as she took a deep breath when Weiss stopped to look around. "We're almost there," she said. Yang noticed that she was also rushing along with a limp in her step; they were all badly hurt from Hazel, but there was still so much to do. Blake and Neo were still out there and most importantly, so was Ruby. "This way." Weiss began to race down the street and Yang had to push through the searing pain in her side and rushed to keep up. A booming roar filled the air and Yang swore as they all turned to watch the colossal Grimm slowly making its way towards the city. Atlesian fighters and Bullheads engaged with aerial Grimm as explosions went off next to it, taking out entire patches of the sky.

It did not even look like it knew it was being attacked. Explosions bounced off its hide as it shook the ground with every step it took. They did not have much time left before it reached Mistral. Overhead, a Bullhead headed down the street that was flying just high enough to clear the buildings. Seeing it, Weiss began to make a mad dash towards it. When they reached where it landed, three other Bullheads were already landed and were taking in people. From where she stood, she could see Atlesians herding Mistrali and White Fang members onto whichever was closest. A few fights were breaking out as Black Fang and White Fang noticed each other, but the threat of being gunned down by everyone around them quickly calmed any fight before anything could get out of hand.

"Yang!"

Turning when she heard her name, Yang looked down an alleyway and saw Blake and Velvet hobbling towards them, Velvet barely holding onto Blake as they struggled to walk. "Blake!" Yang rushed towards the two of them, Weiss right behind her calling out as well. Velvet was very pale, she could see blood seeping between her fingers and on the ground behind her where they walked. Helping Blake, they laid her on the ground where Yang pulled her hand away and lifted her shirt to examine the damage. A clean stab all the way through her side, front to back. Her skin was cold and her breathing came in quickly. "What happened?"

"It was Adam." Just hearing his name made her heart stop. She swung her head, trying to find the man like he was going to be conjured by saying his name alone. "We both barely managed to get away from him." That was when Blake held up her hand. Yang saw her hand shaking, being held together with the ribbon of her weapon from a cut that ran from the middle of her palm to between her knuckles. The Faunus woman must have seen the look on her face because she shook her head and looked back down at their friend. "I'll be fine, but Velvet is bleeding out."

Looking back, Yang saw Weiss staring at the scene with wide eyes in an unblinking stare. "Weiss! She needs help, call one of your medics over!" The Atlesian woman stood frozen before them, Yang did not know what was going through her head but she saw her shake her head so slightly she would have missed it if she was not trying to get her attention. "Weiss!" That managed to break the spell on her. Rushing forward, she knelt next to them and inspected the wound. Pursing her lips, Yang could see a hundred possibilities running through her head before she reached into one of her pouches and pulled out some sort of white tube. Shaking it, she tore the tip off with her teeth and lined some sort of applicator with the wound before pushing it in.

The next second, Velvet was screaming. Yang and Blake held the woman down as she thrashed on the ground before going limp when Weiss removed the tube, revealing a sickly yellow foam filling the would before hardening in seconds. "What the hell is that?" she asked before she helped Weiss pick Velvet up.

"Combat Booster," she began, "It'll stop the bleeding enough to get her to the medical deck on the Dreadnaught." They did not get very far before professor Ozpin came up and took Velvet from them, while Yang figured she could manage the trip, she was still glad for the help.

"Yang, Neo's here, she saved me."

"Where is she?" Yang quickly closed the gap between them. She could feel the piece of metal in her back shifting with her movements, but she needed to know Neo was safe.

"I don't know, she came to help me when Ilia showed up at the warehouse. She bought me time to chase after Adam. That was the last place I saw her." Looking past Blake, she tried to map out where she was to where the warehouse is.

"I can't leave her, Blake."

"I know, come on."

Looking back at Weiss, she had handed off Velvet completely to Ozpin before the three of them began to race down the war-torn streets of Mistral. Yang had no idea how far she had run away from the warehouse when she first charged out of there to get away from the White-Fang ambush, so she was trusting Blake to not lead them astray. Turning a corner, they were stopped by a group of White Fang soldiers all rushing towards them, crashing into each other. It took a moment for both sides to realize who was who before bullets started flying.

Yang had to be careful, she knew her Aura was already broken so any bullet would rip right through her body. On top of that, the recoil from her gauntlets pushed her arm muscles to their limit. Slapping the barrel of a rifle out of her face with her metal hand, she punched the enemy Faunus in the face and shot off another round, completely severing his jaw from the rest of his body before jumping over the body and emptying another shell into the stomach of someone else. The whole engagement took only a few seconds before they all continued their sprint down the streets only to be stopped when a dog came rushing out from an alleyway nearby.

Before Yang could do anything, ice spread across the ground and impaled the dog and formed a wall between them. The next second was filled with ice cracking from an explosion, painting it crimson. "What the fuck?" was the only thing Yang managed to get out from the few seconds everything happened.

"White Fang strapped dogs with exploding collars like running bombs." Weiss stared at the aftermath of what she had done. "Monsters."

Yang agreed. How could anyone, let alone the Faunus of the White Fang even consider doing something like this? The silence was broken by a roar that shook the ground around them. Looking up at where the colossal Grimm was making its way towards them, the sky was beginning to fill with shapes of the flying Grimm. She could hear the animalistic cries from Griffons and Nevermores as they got closer to the city. "We need to hurry," Yang said as she took a deep breath and pushed through the pain that was spreading from her side. She could feel the blood soaking through the pants as the wound continued to weep.

Yang tried to control her breathing, but it was getting harder to hide her wound from her friends as they raced around corners and sprinted down streets to avoid stray bullets. The threat of an endless Grimm swarm kept her moving while the whole city shook with every slow step that thing took. Rounding a corner, Yang had to stop to catch her breath. Her lungs burned and she could feel a lightness in her head as she tried to will her bleeding to stop. Ahead of the trio was the warehouse that Blake and she had hidden in, half-collapsed in on itself.

"No..." Yang's heart dropped as she pushed past Blake and Weiss and began to climb through the destroyed metal and brick to take a look inside. There were a few bodies littered around, obvious signs of a struggle as one of them was missing half his face while another's chest was filled with stab wounds. "NEO!" She held her breath for any response as she carefully brushed past some of the debris and began her search. From under a portion of the roof, Yang spied a patch of skin and she was quick to use her strength to lift up the metal.

Under it was a man with whiskers coming out from his upper lip. His dead eyes were wide open while his gut was pinched between the slab of concrete and the hard ground under him. His death was probably agony for the few seconds until the end. She was both thankful and worried that this was not Neo, she was still somewhere. Letting the piece of the roof fall, she looked around a bit more and saw a trail of blood that was leading towards the set of doors that were blown open when the White Fang ambushed them.

Following the trail, she saw bloody handprints on the wall, whoever it was, they were bleeding out but when she found the end of the trail outside the building, there was nothing there. Screaming out her name again, she held her breath and waited for anything that would reveal her location. The only thing that filled the silence was screaming Grimm and cannons from the airships. She stared out into the burning city and took a shuddering breath. Tears threatened to fall from her eyes at the thought of losing her like this. She did not know what would be worse, to find her dead body or wonder if she died or not.

"Yang!" She heard Blake's shout and ran back into the building. Getting back, she saw Weiss standing near the hole they entered from, white Beowolves standing outside with their backs turned to her. Yang had no idea what they were or how they were white, but if they were not attacking them then that's just one less thing she had to worry about. Rushing over to Blake who was struggling to move a chunk of concrete from the pile with her bad hand. Yang helped her throw the piece off to reveal Neo buried under it.

"Neo!" The two of them began to pull the larger chunks off of until they were able to drag her out from under the rest of it. Pulling her into a tight hug, it felt like a weight had been lifted off her lungs and she could finally breathe since the smaller woman disappeared from the hotel building. "You scared me so much…" she could not stop her voice from wobbling with emotion as small arms slowly wrapped around her body to weakly return the gesture.

"Yang, we need to get out of here." Blake's voice broke through the happiness that filled her and brought her back to reality. Releasing her, she began to check over her body to make sure she was okay. While Yang could not see any obvious marks on her, her clothes were cut and torn in places, but she was unmarred. Yang did not know if that had something to do with her Semblance or she just had a strong enough Aura.

"Can you walk?"

Yang watched as Neo took a step but stumbled with a wince on her face. Deciding that it would just be faster, Yang wrapped her arm around the smaller woman and braced most of her weight against her and helped her over the pile of building to leave. She saw Weiss double take at them as they crossed the threshold.

"Isn't that one of Torchwick's people?" she asked, "The one who teleported him when we were fighting the Paladin on the freeway?

Before Yang could say anything, Blake stood next to them and looked right at Weiss. "She's with us," the Faunus woman said. She gave Yang a nod before helping them over the rubble and back down onto the street. Yang returned the nod with a soft smile. At the end of this whole mess, they had to have a talk, all three of them.

Pushing through the pain that was throbbing at her side, they retraced their steps back to the makeshift rendezvous location. Yang stared at the mass of people all trying to get onto Bullheads, news was travelling quickly about the end of the war and Atlas taking in people who surrendered in favour of the coming tide of Grimm. She could hear everyone yelling about who shot who, blaming and accusing others of cutting in line. If they do not calm down, they were going to bring the whole horde down on them with all this negative energy.

Weiss managed to clear an area for another Bullhead to land nearby and began to talk to the team that jumped off. They wore different armour from the regular Atlesian soldiers, black instead of white and more armoured than their counterparts. People began to move towards it and Yang brought Neo to the ship, overhearing the conversation between Weiss and the team.

"This is insane! The Grimm are coming and we're taking people from the enemy?" a woman was screaming at Weiss from inside her helmet.

"The war is over, Resdea. Orders are orders."

The woman, Resdea, just cursed and gave Yang a hard look. She could not see her eyes through her mask but could feel the anger coming from her. Sitting Neo in one of the seats, she took a deep breath and turned to watch as more people walked in before Blake's voice caught her attention.

"Yang, you're bleeding!" Looking back, she saw that Neo's hand was covered in red and Blake was pointing to the wound that still had the piece of metal in it.

"I'm fine," was the automatic response before Blake walked up to her and shook her head.

"You're bleeding out!"

Before anyone could say anything else, a scream cut through everyone. A kind of scream that froze blood and made everyone stop what they are doing and soak in their fear. All head turned down the street where a group of soldiers from all factions were all firing down the street. Yang watched as one of them was yanked from his position when a hand stretched from out of sight and grabbed him, pulling him back before she could blink. The rest stopped firing and made a run for the Bullhead.

A Grimm made of pure nightmare came speeding around the corner and trampled one of them while stretching its arms out to grab the last escapee. Ripping him apart at the waist, it bathed in its blood, painting its horned skull crimson before discarding the remains. An exposed, pointed rib cage and inhumanly thin limbs were attached to a Horse Grimm making the rider even taller. It jerked its head in their direction and stretched its mouth open to give another scream, summoning the horde that slowly approached from buildings behind it.

Ursas and Beowolves made up the bulk of the horde but she saw a number of Borbatusks and Creepers filling in the gaps. A few Beringels appeared on rooftops and Yang almost gagged at the sight of a massive Geist using bodies to make a flesh golem for itself. Yang was so distracted by the impossible number of Grimm, she did not see Weiss move until she started to scream out.

"Firing lines! Fill that whole street with bullets!"

The spell was broken and everyone began to shout as they took up positions while the Grimm charged them. "Weiss! I need one of those booster things!" Yang shouted at her friend as she tried to make her way to the front line. Weiss took one look at the wound and nodded while shouting for a medic. A man with blood splattered armour and a red cross on his shoulder walked up to her and knew exactly what to do.

"Hold her arms." Blake and Weiss gripped her biceps and grounded her as the man held her shoulder and tore some of the shirt to give him access to her wound. "This is going to suck, just a warning."

Gunfire exploded from the gun-line as everyone finally got into position and began to fight the Grimm. "No time, just do it!"

"On three, ready?"

Yang could only nod as she watched the tide of black hate trampling over their dead to get to them.

"One!"

He yanked the metal shard out of her back, causing her to scream at the miscount. Before she could say anything about it, she felt some foreign object get jammed into the open wound at the count of two.

"Three!"

Yang could not stop herself from screaming as something filled the cavity of her puncture wound. It felt like a thousand ants were crawling around inside of her, biting every inch of her body before everything went numb. The next second, she felt invigorated as something else entered her system. Taking deep breaths, Blake and Weiss released her arms and Yang stormed down the ramp, jumping over the soldiers and charging straight for the Horseman Grimm.

Screaming as her blood ignited from her semblance, she leapt into the air and grabbed the horns on its head and let her momentum pull it back. Its whole body stretched impossibly far until the skin began to rip and tear. The screaming coming from the mouth rang in her ears until Blake jumped into the fray, her blade cutting the neck in half and letting both parts snapback, killing the creature of Grimm.

Two ice walls erupted along the street, funnelling the Grimm right to them as Weiss stood next to Yang. She could see that both of their eyes took on a glow as everyone got ready to meet the horde head-on. Swinging her arm back, she opened Ember Celica and let the shells bounce on the ground as they were ejected from her weapon. Pulling out a fresh belt from her pouch, she slapped it around her wrist and everything slid into place before she slammed shell after shell into her artificial arm, reloading the built-in weapon. When the first Grimm finally managed to make it to the three Huntresses, Yang was armed and ready.

This chapter was edited by StreetAngelJ

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