Yellow²
"Yang! Wait! Hold up!" Dry leaves, beaten dirt, young and old snow, crackle, crumble, and crinkle under boot and wheel, he pants with every pull of the cart, his breath misting in the cold winter air; a small and light thing this wagon would've been, if not for the sleeping form of his little sister nestled within its confines, "Hooh… Yang!" A pair of yellow kids and a sleeping toddler in red, all beneath the orange light of a slowly fading day.
Stupid Yang, why'd they have to bring little Ruby along for this, anyway? Oldest sibling his… Butt! It would've been better if only he and his twin went, even faster too! And less exhausting.
"Come on bro, keep up! We're almost there!" Yang yells back as she crests one last snowy hill, and even from beneath the hill, he hears that slight, telltale noise of a gasp, "I knew it! Come on, the barn's over here!" Juvenile fingers point at something he can't see, and hope and satisfaction blossoms in his beating heart; could it really be that she, or at least a clue as to where she was exactly, was just lying around here somewhere?
Juvenile and underdeveloped, the boy does not think it through. There is too much joy waiting to be released with revelation. He pants and pants as his battered arms and tired legs push and pull both, "Just a bit more, just a bit more." His little sister mumbles and turns in her sleep as he mutters to her, "Don't worry lil' sis, we'll be whole again, we'll be happy again."
Just a little more… Beyond that hill! "Bro you there? Huang? Huang…"
"Bro! Hello? Remnant to Huang?" Lilac eyes meet distracted red ones.
"Huh, what?" He shakes his head free of thoughts, "We there yet?" What was the mission again? He remembers and Bumblebee and Stinger parking before they left somewhere, and then he spaced out.
"Huang, we've been standing in front of the club for a good half-minute by now." Ah, that bad huh; his features contort into something sheepish as his twin speaks, "You better not space out on the job, bro. Now, remember-"
His raised hand dismisses her concerns alongside the confident grin on his face, "I know, I know. I play bad cop, and you play good cop, with… What was it that you said? 'Some switch-ups for variety'?" He fiddles with his weapon, checking the chain segments for anything that might've gotten stuck; he then turns toward Yang after finishing his weapon checkup, "Say, how come you get to be good cop almost 90% of the time we get to do this routine?"
"Because I'm just that charismatic Huang, and if I recall from those books you keep on reading, they'll be more amicable to a pretty face, like mine, see?" As if to emphasize a point, she points at her own brightly smiling face, "Besides, you look great as a bad cop, especially with that scar of yours!"
He only deadpans at her antics, and only the sound from Junior's place fills the lapse in talking.
"Come on you dour grouch, smile a little!" Her fist playfully hits his shoulder, which provokes a response in the form of…
Another deadpan look.
"Don't you think we should be, you know, getting this over with soon?" He mutters audibly enough for her to hear, "Besides, the sooner we get it done, the sooner we get to finding other clues; a bigger picture and all, new angles and info, that sort of stuff?"
There's a tinge of annoyance in those lilac eyes being rolled as a response, but acceptance and determination quickly smother that emotion. "Alright, fine." She says with a sigh as she inspects her gauntlets one last time, "It is as you say, bro. It is as you say." A mockingly posh tone.
"You and I both know I don't speak like that." He says with a test of his weapon's mechanisms, its quickly returned into a folded form to be stored in his pack right afterwards.
"Ooh we've a long way to go dear chaps, must needs to get going, hohoho!" Its red eyes that roll this time.
"Oh fuck off Yang." They push the doors in and garish club music and lighting immediately blast their senses, it's enough to make him retreat back to memory…
They should've never come here.
"Ruby! Ruby get out of here!" The hounds bay for the shedding of blood, their howls echo deep into the dying day; and all the while he limps and yells hoarsely at a frozen Ruby, "Sis! Listen to me!" Where was Yang, where was Yang? Where was she?!
The pit in his stomach deepens as he hears the growl of them behind him. He's forced to look back, to face what was the death of many a huntsman and huntress, and his feet begin to slowly push him into backing, and backing, until he bumps into Ruby's form.
And it keeps approaching.
He can hear its bones creaking and grinding against its form, and ichor sloshing within its black maw. All it does is make him want to puke. All around you is the sound of blowing wind
His fear makes it hungry, but the hope he gets from finding a worn woodsman's axe is more than enough to send it over the edge. With a howl, the Beowolf lunges, and despite the protests of his legs and arms, both sister and axe are weaved out of the way by a hair's breadth.
Howling and howling, all five of them, all unique. No matter how weak he felt, he knew one thing needed to be done.
He runs, he runs, he runs, he runs, he runs…
"Hey… Let me run that by you again." Junior says with agitation in his voice, "Aren't you two too young to be in here, Blondies?"
He can't help but let out a bit of snark at the breaking of his musing, "Oh I don't know dude, aren't you a bit too old to be called Junior?"
"Oh so you do know who I am, huh asshole?" Junior bit out with a scowl, "Got any names for me to remember after I punt you two out with my own boots?"
Before he could escalate, Yang interjects, "Yeah Junior, we got several names. But instead of asshole, why don't you… Hmm, I dunno…" One look at Huang is all it takes for him to unveil his wrapped weapon and put it on the table.
"How about you call us both Ma'am and Sir? That would make things easy don't you think?" She says with a sweet smile, emphasizing the threat with a light shake of her gauntlets, "Anyway, we're just here to talk, that's all. About how you know everything and all, with what we've heard." There's a bit of a drawing-out of her words there as she speaks.
Huang raises his scroll after she's done speaking, "So, you know where this woman is, old man?" Red eyes, black hair, some semblance of relation from facial structure.
"This your sister or something?" Something faint but sharp is heard, but Junior's quick to brush it off as family issues of some kind, "Well sorry to say kids, but I got no clue on where she is. All I know is that she's Raven fucking Branwen and she's not a camper I wanna face anytime soon, screw that noise!"
Lilac and red eyes look at him, and then towards each other. The resulting nod of agreement is enough to make Junior gulp at what was coming next.
It was like lightning: you register the flash, but your senses pick up more on the booming thunder that follows. In this case, he registered that eolian noise of something moving quickly through the air, but he picked up more on the fact that there was now a revving chainsaw axe next to his— admittedly aura protected— neck. He can't help but yelp at the suddenness, to Huang's amusement and to his embarrassment.
At least the goons had heard his strangled shriek, a congregation of them had begun to form. "Hey Yang… Do we, you know, do the thing?" Her eyes brighten up in recognition of that.
"Oh right! The thing! Of course bro, of course…" Junior is visibly sweating bullets at this point as the chainsaw axe— chain axe— has still remained too close for comfort to his neck. Sure, he had aura, but that thing's teeth would hurt like a bitch, that too he reckoned.
Not much else to reckon about at this point, considering that the other Blondie had suddenly grabbed him and tossed his body like a bag at his own men.
"Ooh, nice. A strike." Huang high-fived Yang's outstretched hand at the little joke, "You think we can knock down a few more pins?"
The racking of Ember Celica was all the answer he needed.
"Damn straight." Grudgemaker revved in response.
Ironic then, that the first blow would be from the axehead's flat side. Knocking a few goons out and to the side with the wide swing. It knocked in some sense into them too, as they begun rushing at the pair, a challenge that they took on with earnest.
"It's a free-for-all sis, let 'er rip!" He gleefully bashed a henchman in the head with Grudgemaker's haft, then tossing the now unconscious body at another as a projectile.
"You got it bro!" Each punch, each blow, each strike, augmented both from her gauntlets and from her own strength, and needless to say the growing pile of unconscious goons she was making was a good indicator of just how strong she was.
"XIAO LONG TOGETHER STRONG!" They practiced this one repeatedly— as in, knocked down a whole grove of trees just to get it right, kind of repeatedly— and the fruits of their labor showed in the form of them flawlessly launching the last goon, the DJ that is, through and outside of a now broken wall through a synchronized double punch.
"God DAMN do we rock!" The younger of the Xiao Long twins pumped his hand, "And speaking of which, Yang do you think they got rooooooo- oh what do we have here huh?"
It was the sight of two young women waltzing in that interrupted Huang's train of thought. "Hey Yang, I'm gonna go check on Junior now so you take care of— actually nah, I'll take care of em, you beat some downed guy into— "
"Oh fuck off Huang, I'll take care of this." It was always some form of friendly one-upsmanship between these two, no matter how brief; such was the way of twin siblings, "Go see where Junior went, unlike you I actually spotted him crawl somewhere. Have fun bro!" She then left for the other set of twins down below on the now cracked dance floor.
"Love you too, sis!" With that, he left for a different place in the same space.
The sounds of hidden rummaging near the bar ensured that finding Junior didn't take long, "Found you!" Grudgemaker's chainsaw was put to good use in jaggedly slicing up the bar's countertop, much to the alarm of the info-broker trying to get his hands on a weapon under it, "Come on man, I bet you got a melee weapooooon— oh cool, is that a batzooka?"
Junior Xiong's response was to run and shoot the weapon's cluster munitions all directly towards the red-eyed Xiao Long. A cloud of concrete dust formed as a result, though Junior wouldn't take any chances, shifting his weapon into its club form and readying to charge whenever the blonde bastard could be seen.
And seen he was, and standing no less!
"Come at me, old man."
With a shout of frustration, the club owner began wailing on the youth with his weapon's club form. Or at least, tried! Huang seemed to be dodging each strike lazily, and he had even let a few strikes land and show nothing but a wince and a smirk as those few blows landed.
"You like messing around with people, huh punk?!" The Xiong yelled with each blow he tried to land, "Well find out! Find out what happeeeeee- oooohh shit!"
The blunt rear side of Grudgemaker's head was modular, and it just so happened to be fitted with a hook today. "Welp, it's over old man." He stood triumphant after essentially tripping Junior Xiong with the hook, and giving his head a precautionary smash with the axehead's flat side once again for stunning purposes, "Hmm come to think of it."
He tossed some of the concrete dust lying around from what was practically a demolition site that was now the club into the man's lightly closed eyes. That got him a hiss as the Xiong's face scrunched up in pain.
"Much better, now… You sure you don't know where Raven is?" Huang held him up by the collar, his axe now raised for a final knockout blow.
"I swear I don't know! I don't know where the hell she is! Hell, I only know her name from watching an old Vytal Tournament!" As tall as he was, Junior was looking quite vulnerable here, with his beefy if exhausted arms raised in surrender as the Xiao Long held him still by the collar of his suit.
"Hmm, fair enough. Here's for the false advertising though, asshole." Huang dropped him roughly back into the ruined floor, "And here's for my drinks."
He flicks a lien card at the man's concrete dusted face, eliciting a strangled noise of indignant anger from the tired club owner. "I swear I'm too old for this shit." He mutters.
Huang's already in the ruined bar by that point, somehow finding an untouched fridge full of soft drinks. He spots cola cans and his eyes light up.
"Score." Finally, some time to unwind and think with a cold one in hand…
"Over here you stupid dogs!" He had successfully rendezvoused with Yang at the cart, and perhaps in one of his worst spur of the moment ideas, he decided to be a big, glowing distraction full of negative energy. Fear, anger, and some contempt should be more than the fear of two people right? Three different emotions in one go.
His gamble works as the five Beowolves begin their hunt. The forest is dark, the ground rough, the air cold, and the light dim; but the boy's legs refuse to give up and neither does his will, "Be safe, be safe, be saaaaAAaaahh!"
Not much willpower can do against a stray tree root, I'm afraid. And that cry of pain, it was too much an irresistible noise for the Grimm, and one bursts out of the bushes, sending him tumbling across the rough forest floor.
He tumbles once at a wrong angle near the wrong place, and a branch splinters near his closed right eye; but at this point, the boy's already too tired to scream from the pain, and only it's only an agonized groan that he manages to croak out.
"Someone, please…" Huang prays within the confines of his terrorized mind, and 'help' cannot even come out of his mouth anymore.
The baying of the wolves grows louder, and louder, and louder… And the humming intensifies too…
And then, there is silence. He expects the darkness too when he opens both of his eyes, but sees nothing but the fuzzy image of ashes on the snow and a red wound in the world, with a woman passing through.
"Wait, no… Come back…"
He's already sipping slowly on his second serving when an irate Yang returns with a confused Ruby in tow.
"Oh! Hey big bro!"
A shocked Huang spits his drink out in the most comical of fashions at that voice. "And uhh, why are you here of all places lil sis… Oh, hey Yang!" His nonchalance only proves to tick off the brawler even further.
"While you were busy with drinking here, I was busy explaining to Ruby as to why the hell we were here in the first place." He hears a sharp intake of air from Yang, and from her closed eyes alone he could tell that there was going to be more noise for the next few minutes, "Kinda hard to do when one half of the story is suspiciously absent, don't you think?"
"Well excuuuuuse me, Miss Sunshine, but I was too busy wringing as much information from Junior over there to be with you; so sorry, not sorry." He rolls his eyes, "Besides, this thing was a bust anyways; guy's got no info on mom, sorry, very sorry."
This gets a long sigh from Yang and Ruby handing out pats on the back for everyone involved.
"Tossed enough lien at Junior for a couple of soft drinks though, you guys down?"
"…Fine."
The Xiao Long twins had left that place with a fun memory shared between them at the very least, and a stomach cramp tomorrow at worst.
A/N: Well, I've always known my first fic would've been about RWBY; seemed easy enough to get to, and I got enough exposure from both watching the and reading the fanfics here to become confident enough to both write about its characters and insert my own ideas, preferably ones that will actually cause ripples in the timeline (I'm looking at you, "Stations of the Canon" trope!) Anyways, this right here is but the first of five- that's right, five- trailers for the characters I'm tossing into this Chlorine Trifluoride fire of an AU that I'm making. I'll just spoil the extra fifth guy as a White Fang leader, but that's all about him for now!
Until the next time, He Who E, out! Next chapter probably on Sunday but I make no promises.