Epilogue Part I: One New Message
AN: Fair warning, both parts of the epilogue will be shorter than standard chapters.
There it was. Just over the hill. A homely log cabin, out by itself in the middle of the woods on Patch Island. The home of one certain Yang Xiao Long.
His objective was only a couple hundred feet away, now. His journey was at an end.
Slowly, shakily, he started climbing the mild ascent. It was harder than it had any right to be, but the fact that a good chunk was missing out of his leg, coupled with the missing arm, made it all the more challenging. Grimm didn't take kindly to lone travelers. But he wouldn't give up. He wouldn't quit. She wouldn't let him.
Are we there yet? his companion asked.
Almost, was his reply. Just a little bit further, and we can give Yang what she deserves.
The crunch of snow underneath his soles gave way to the thump of wood. Stairs were still a bit tricky for him, but he eventually managed. A look to the right, to the left. Nobody here. All it took was a quick knock on the door.
After a few seconds, someone could be heard moving to the door. It opened, revealing a messy mop of blonde hair and sad, dulled blue eyes. Those same blue eyes narrowed, whether in anger or confusion he couldn't tell. "What the hell…?" he began.
He didn't give the man – Taiyang Xiao Long, he now remembered – time to finish his thought. "Is a Miss Yang Xiao Long here?"
"Who's asking?"
Suspicion. Defensiveness. Reasonable enough considering the circumstances, he supposed. "An old friend. I have a delivery for her." To illustrate, he hiked his thumb over his shoulder, pointing at the long and wide box strapped across his back.
Taiyang took a half step back, arms folding across his chest. "Uh-huh," he hummed. "And just who is this 'old friend' that would send an android to deliver a package to my daughter?"
"Is someone there, Dad?" a new voice asked. A voice he hadn't heard in some months. Out of his peripheral, a wheelchair scooted into view, and its occupant…
The past two months since the Battle of Beacon had not done wonders for Yang Xiao Long, he noted. Dulled, tangled hair, eyes rimmed red from crying, atrophied muscle tone – especially on the lower body – and was that a slight buildup of fat tissue he could see? A far cry from the proud and mighty Huntress he once knew.
"Uh… why is there a robot at our front door?" Yang asked, turning towards her father.
He reiterated, "I have a package to deliver to you."
Suddenly, Taiyang stepped between him and his daughter. "Yeah, I think I'll take that off your hands."
He would have blinked had he eyes. Not only was the package on his back, not only did he have one hand and not two, but… "My apologies, but my instructions explicitly forbid me from delivering this package to anyone other than the intended recipient."
Before he knew it, he was on his back staring at the underside of the front porch's overhang. He sat back up in time to see Taiyang heft the package in his hand. "I wasn't asking," the man said, before tearing open the end. Well, I suppose my instructions didn't say anything about it being taken from me.
"What is…?" Taiyang began, before being cut off by his daughter's gasp. He turned around, showing the wood-stained plaque he held with a rifle on it.
"C-can I?" Yang asked, reaching out to it. Her father took another mistrustful glance at it, but eventually yielded it. She held it in her lap, fingers ghosting over the American steel that made the weapon. At once, her eyes snapped up, wide and shining, and focused on him. "Where did you get this?!" she demanded. "Where did you get K's rifle?"
He wobbled back to his feet, before answering, "The owner of that rifle entrusted it to me and asked me to bring it to you."
"The owner – wait…" Yang's eyes narrowed, before they widened again as she gasped. "Bob?!"
At that, he nodded. "It's been a long time, Yang," he said. "It's good to see you again."
Yang's eyes watered. She stammered for a bit, but eventually she got out, "But if K's dead, then who…"
She stopped again, jaw dropping. It gave Bob time to shamble up to her and drop to a knee, getting on her level. "Officially speaking, my task is to deliver this weapon to you as a token of the promise she made to you before the festival. That just because she's away, she's not gone. She will be back for it… and for you."
"She's… she's alive," Yang stammered. Breaking down into sobs, she cried out, "Did you hear him, Dad? K's alive!"
Taiyang, when Bob looked to him, looked torn between multiple emotions. He slowly asked, "According to who? Who gave you this information?"
Bob shrugged – or, at least, gave the best impersonation of a shrug he could do when the android he was inhabiting only had one arm. "General Ironwood left the security guarding Kassidy to Atlesian Knights. I'm honestly not sure what he was thinking would happen, unless he actually suspected me destroyed in the battle."
"Where is she?!" Yang demanded, so loudly, so suddenly, so desperately that it caught Bob off guard. He mulled the words over for a few seconds, unsure how to proceed. While he didn't have explicit instructions one way or the other regarding a question like that, he did know that his Maker wouldn't want Yang to know. But with how she was when she finally woke up…
Bob admitted, "I don't know. And this is where I must speak unofficially." Getting back on a knee, he adjusted the faceplate of the AK-200 to stare right into Yang's eyes. "She's… she is not well."
"What do you mean?" Yang asked, befuddlement plain as day.
"I think… I think she reverted to prior programming?" Bob said, before immediately shaking his head. "No, no, that's not right, people don't do that. But she went back to old habits. Old ways. I'm scared for her."
"What's Kassidy up to, Bob?" Taiyang asked, seemingly finally having made up his mind about whatever is going on.
There were a few ways he could've answered that, but not many would've made much immediate sense. It was actually his companion that provided the answer he chose to use. "Vengeance," Bob answered. "She's up to vengeance."
"Vengeance?" Yang asked, confused. "What do you mean, she's 'up to' vengeance?"
Bob shook his head. Yang gasped, probably having guessed what he meant by that. "Kassidy needs help," he said. It was painful for him to admit, "And I don't know how to help her. Not with this. And I'm not sure who exactly can help her. She's scared, and paranoid, and so angry."
"Send her our way," Yang demanded. "We can help her – right, Dad?"
Taiyang's face dropped, but as he opened his mouth to speak Bob said, "I don't have a way to getting into contact with her. She doesn't have a Scroll on hand. At this point, I'm not even entirely sure where she is."
Silence fell over them for a minute. Eventually, Taiyang asked, "Any ideas?"
Bob shook his head. "That's… that was the only instruction she gave me. Give her rifle to Yang. I don't have any further directives." He fell silent for a moment, pondering the situation. He took another look at his Maker's partner, and began, "But while I'm here, I should probably take a look at that."
"A look at what?" Yang asked. Her eyebrows raised when Bob didn't answer but instead pulled his own casing out before running it in front of her stomach. "Uh, Bob?"
"Spinal column pulverized, most notably the T12 through L5 vertebrae are damaged beyond repair," Bob diagnosed. Switching filters, he continued his examination. "Spinal cord is surprisingly intact, even if that's not saying much. Nerve cluster viability seems to be at three percent. No longer conducive to electrochemical reception."
What are the basic principles that cybernetics technology is built on? Bob asked his companion as he continued to scan the damage. Would bridging the gap be possible using existing technology?
Theoretically, yes, she answered. Though no such precedent exists – any possible device would need to be developed from scratch. After a moment's thought, she continued, And it would do nothing to address the fact that even if communications were to be reestablished in her spinal column, the spine itself would be incapable of supporting her weight.
A Dust-based steel-aluminum alloy should be able to handle the mechanical aspects, Bob surmised. Finally, aloud, he announced, "I have good news, Yang. I think it might yet be possible to repair the damage sustained by your malfunctioning support column."
The words startled both father and daughter, the latter of which asking, "Really?! You can help me walk again?"
"If performed correctly, you'll be able to more than walk," Bob confirmed after double-checking his numbers. "But not yet. Not for a while. I need time to design and assemble the necessary components. Then, of course, there would need to be a surgeon of sufficient skill to replace your spine and rewire around the damaged nerves."
"But there's hope, right?!" Yang demanded.
Bob was about to answer but paused before he spoke. His companion had her own thoughts on the matter, of course, and between that and what he knows of his Maker… "There's always hope, so long as we don't give up," Bob said. Seeing time for a bit of a joke, he added, "Having Ruby chase you around should probably do well for your physical conditioning, also."
Both father and daughter gasping and faces falling clued Bob in that he somehow said something he shouldn't have. Before he could ask what was wrong, Yang explained, "Ruby left last week. She's going with what's left of JNPR to Mistral. Why, I don't know." Fists balling into the blanket covering her legs, she groused, "Everyone always winds up leaving me…"
"Hey, how about you head back in for a while," Taiyang offered quickly – too quickly. "I'll go ahead and wrap things up here." When Yang made no effort to move, he added, "Think you're up for another round of games? Or are you too scared of your old man whipping your butt again?"
A rather unladylike snort was Yang's thoughts on that matter, and she slowly wheeled herself further into the house. When she disappeared around the corner, Bob couldn't help but ask about a suspicion of his. "Was that an attempt to speak with me privately?"
"You shouldn't be getting my daughter's hopes up like that," Taiyang growled, not bothering to answer. "Telling her that her partner's alive, telling her she can walk again – can you even deliver on any of that? Or is she just going to be crushed? Again, I might add?"
"I swear to you, your daughter will have full functionality of her locomotive unit by the time I am finished," Bob promised. Taiyang snorted at that – why, he couldn't tell. "I also swear that Kassidy is still alive, but… like I said, she's not well. She needs help, and I don't know how to help her. It might have been for the best that she's not here in person," Bob mused. Shaking his head, he pressed on, "She said Ruby is on her way to Mistral?"
"Yeah," Taiyang nodded glumly. "Snuck out one night and left a note on her bed. Yang's not taking it very well."
If Bob could frown, he would have. "Kassidy needs help, Yang needs repairs, Ruby needs support, Weiss needs support, the CCT needs repairs. I think now I know what my Maker means when she says, 'too much to do, not enough time to do it'." He trailed off, but soon asked, "What do I do? I've only been sentient for a couple months – I still don't even fully grasp what it means to have a mind. I can't get every last one of these priorities done in any relevant timeframe, but how am I supposed to pick and choose?"
"The same way we all do," Taiyang said. Before Bob could answer, Taiyang asked, "Tell me, how do you eat a Goliath?"
Bob found himself stunned. What kind of question was that? "How… do I… what?"
"How do you eat a Goliath?" Taiyang repeated. When Bob couldn't give an answer, he smirked and said, "One bite at a time."
"Oh, lovely, a parable," Bob groused. "I still have trouble understanding those."
"It means that if you find yourself with some big task that can't be done, break it up into smaller tasks," Taiyang explained. "Break it up into smaller tasks and keep working on it. In a similar vein, have you heard 'The man that moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.'?"
"I believe I'll have to ponder your words on the road," Bob admitted. "I need to go find some small stones to carry away. Please give Yang my best. I'll be keeping in touch as I make progress on designing a repair solution for her."
Slowly, unsteadily, Bob shambled off. The android he was occupying really was in need of replacement. Oh well, it could happen when he arrived back in Vale proper.
What do we do now, friend Bob? his companion asked.
I don't know, Penny, Bob said. But I have a few ideas on where to start.
Ooh, goodie! the former android's personality matrix replied. I've always thought the best stories were the ones I didn't know the ending to yet. This should be fun!
I'm… not particularly concerned about the amusement of our journey, myself, Bob admitted. After a moment's thought, he added, But, yes. This should be fun indeed.
