I sighed as I propped myself up on my glaive and floated out of the town, sipping from a thermos.

Grimacing at the taste of the cocktail of chemicals, I let the mystical effects of the potion start driving the tiredness from my lack of sleep away, preforming the maintenance on my brain and body.

"I can't believe you drink that stuff," Yang commented as she rode bumblebee to keep up with me.

I chugged the rest of the potion and stuck the thermos back into my cloak before shoving my thermos into my coat and turning to her, "It's the price I have to pay for getting lost in my work. Plus, at least this version is vaguely edible. The last one I made was so foul I couldn't swallow it."

Yang winced and pointedly looked around the forest, "So my mom is here?"

"Yep," I noted, "She's going to be attacking the town in a few hours. Since I've been clearing the Grimm she tries to set on the other villages as training, her little bandit tribe has been growing more and more desperate. And since Germe was willing to receive training and protection from Amber, we ."

Letting the biotic reactors on my glaive glow, I motioned towards the setting sun, "They are a few hours out in that direction, and my drones report that they will be kiting a fairly large group of Grimm. Mainly Creeps, Beowolves and Ursa but I saw a few more esoteric things, including a rather large Nevermore. It's probably for the best that we don't let them get this close."

Yang nodded, her engine roaring as she raced out ahead of me.

Rolling my eyes, I shifted the local topography os space and sent myself flying forward.

The tops of the trees blurred under me as I quickly caught up with Yang. In the distance, I could see the black shapes of the Nevermore that were occasionally launching feathers at the raiders I knew were weaving between the trees.

I peeled away from her and began to draw off the biotic charge of my staff.

Tapping into my recon drones, I began chanting, strange vortices of malformed space forming around me. In my vision, hundreds of Grimm and raiders were outlined in red. At least before they were set upon by my attack.

The vortices of gravity blasted forward, raining from the sky upon the Grimm and the Raiders.

The Grimm collapsed under the force, their phantasmal forms ripped apart from the chaotic mess of forces.

The Raiders were vaguely more lucky, spared from the full force of the attack, but still rendered immobile through a myriad of fracture and being buried under the detritus of shattered trees that now covered them.

Confirming the captures, I kicked my glaive into high gear, producing more and more gravity globes that I rained down on the approaching horde. Thousands of Grimm and hundreds of raiders were wiped out even as they tried to respond.

Before long, all that was left of the horde was a rising column of dust and black smog from the disintegrating Grimm.

I signalled back to Mistral, letting them know about the bandits that I had trapped here as I floated down to where Yang was facing off with her mother, surrounded by the knocked out forms of half a dozen weaker bandits.

Or trying to at least, the woman was quite casually keeping her daughter at bay as I floated above them.

Rolling my eyes, I pulled a vial from my belt and smeared it with blood before launching it at the bandit.

By the time I touched down on the ground, she was bound in glowing webbing, stuck to the ground before she could react.

I turned to Yang who had collapsed back onto the ground, "So…"

She sighed, "You were right."

"No not that, how are you dealing with it?" I asked.

She slowly picked herself up, "That my mother was such a horrible person that she left her children to kill innocent people and take their stuff? I… I don't know."

I shrugged and grabbed the bound woman's weapons out of the webbing, before injecting her with a focus for my tracking spells and shackled her with a set of thick metal restraints. "There, that should make sure she can't escape, why don't you get some answers from her."

"No, I already confirmed everything I learned before. She's a terrible person and I don't really know what to do with her" Yang sighed.

"Well, Mistral is sending a few teams of hunters to bring these people back and put them on trial, however short that's going to be, so you could just leave her to her punishment." I offered.

She paused for a moment, "Could you call dad and Qrow?"

I nodded and pulled out my phone, and calling up Taiyang and Qrow before handing her the phone.

As the call connected, I took off. Best leave her some privacy. Before I took off, I took a minute to toss Yang a little dongle, "If she tries to use her Semblance to escape, press that button, it will activate the taser in the controls for long enough that she won't be able to do anything."

With a flex of my will, the remaining bandits floated up to follow me as I gathered up the insensate and broken forms of their compatriots, occasionally healing those too close to death.

Before long I had to return, dropping ff a pile of raiders bound up in webbing next toYang before heading off to collect the rest.

As I flew away, I heard Qrow and Taiyang yelling at an unrepentant bandit. The bound woman was simply sitting there, almost bored as Taiyang and Qrow lambasted her for leaving her family.

Yang herself could only really sit there, staring in disbelief at the scene.

By the time I had rounded up the last of the bandits, their leader was unconscious, and the call was over.

Yang stomped over to me angrily, turning her back on her mother and walking over to my side.

"Let's go. I don't want to see her anymore." She said.

I nodded and lifted both of us and Bumblebee into the air. Yang as quiet as she was dragged along next to me, handing me my phone before staring off into the distance for the rest of the trip.

She didn't even react to my change of direction, simple staring listlessly at the sky as the ground below us changed, shifting from woodlands to the ocean.

She didn't look at me as I made a few calls, only turning to me after I confirmed that Mistral had managed to capture the raiders with little issue. After that, she returned to what she was doing before.

By the time the scenery below us shifted to woodlands once again, she turned to me, "Why did she have me if she was going to abandon me like that?"

"I can't say. I don't respect her enough to attempt to divine her motivations, but if I had to guess, she's just a terrible person and only cares about her wants and is unwilling to take any consequences that she can escape." I offered quietly, "She's not worth your time, beyond what it took to stop her from harming anyone else."

Yang nodded sadly, before suddenly looking in the distance. "Is that my house?"

I chuckled, "I wondered when you were going to notice."

We reached the cottage in short order and were beset upon by Taiyang and Ruby as soon as we touched down.

I lowered the bike into the driveway as Taiyang walked up to me, "Thank you for that… We… we needed that." he admitted.

I smiled, "It's not a big deal. I had finally cleared up my business in that part of Vacuo as it was, and I wasn't going to leave a bunch of murderous assholes lying around when I was done with them."

Taiyang nodded and turned back to his two daughters.

As I pushed him towards them, he held me back, "Should I punish her though? She did run away from home to do this."

I paused, "Well, she told me that she told you that she was leaving, so make of that what you will."

Taiyang sighed and turned to Yang even as I took off, floating off into the sky.

I kept going, flying out of the atmosphere and settling into a lazy orbit.

I watched the world roll under me for a while, getting a good feel for my orbit.

I grinned. My first trip to space might not be how I always imagined it, but it was definitely a lot more fun than I thought it might be.

Still, I suppose I had work to do.

Pulling out the sensor suite, I made sure that our early tests were accurate, and nothing, in particular, was different from what we were expecting to see.

Our drones had confirmed as much, but it was probably a good thing to make a final check before putting something as life-changing as a satellite communications network into orbit around this world.

As I passed over the Grimmlands I took a moment to observe it before gating away.