The meeting went well. Her speech didn't mark the end of said meeting, for they talked more and ate until they were all full. At the end she summoned her portal to go home, but before stepping inside, she looked back and told them to think over what she said, and she stepped in, and just like that, she was back home in her office.
The meeting lasted nearly two hours, and there was now plenty of work to do to secure the money she promised. They had scheduled the next meeting on the 13th, and so she had plenty of time. She did realize that she hadn't negotiated as to the dust the army would get, but she needed far more data from her military personnel to see how much stuff they were lacking including dust. Once the army fills up to an acceptable amount, she'll request a debriefing on this from her personnel.
"Master?", her apprentice interrupted her thoughts, "I didn't want to bring it up back there as I'm sure you didn't mention it for a reason…"
"What's on your mind?", Yang asked curiously.
"Why the hell did I have to suffer through an eight hour long flight if you could teleport us there?", he asked with frustration clear in his face and tone.
"Because I can't.", Yang replied bluntly, "As I think you noticed, I was bluffing a lot there, trying to make myself seem more powerful than I am"
"We teleported back, though!", Finster pointed out.
"We did.", Yang agreed, "The Tower Gate, the thing that appears that we step on to teleport, can only open itself either to my location, or to a location it has been opened in before even if the Gate there is closed to hide its existence. There are three exceptions to this. The Gates don't carry over Overlord to Overlord, and so I can't teleport to places the, for example, Third had visited without going there myself. The second exception is something that is known as blind Tower Gate creation, but it is dangerous and complicated without knowing what's exactly on the other side, and getting it to appear anywhere close to your intended location gets more difficult the further away your intended location is. Lastly, the third exception is just a loophole exploiting how the Tower Gate works. I could send a Minion to dig underground to my intended location, and use it as a lock on for the Gate creation above it. Even though they can be very fast doing this, this still takes time, and sometimes presents other logistical problems."
"That's honestly more complicated than I expected", Finster admitted.
"Don't I know it?", Yang said, "Sometimes this gets annoying. Dead useful, though, so I can't complain"
"Dead useful?"
"Slang", Yang answered, "Come on, we're all teens here-"
"Just tell me what it means, Master", Finster requested interrupting her.
"Rude. Anyway, it means super useful."
Finster decided to change the topic to something that has been bothering him since he saw her Minions slightly before they started the flight.
"You mentioned your Minions", he started saying, "what exactly are they? Demons of some kind? They do look like they'd fit the bill".
"I'm assured they aren't. Most of them are made-"
"Made?"
"Do not interrupt me!", Yang demanded with frustration, "I was getting to that."
"Sorry, Master. Please continue"
"Yes, so like I was saying, most of them are made.", she then stops to think, "You know what? I think it's going to be way more interesting if I show you. Follow me."
Yang steps back into the Tower Gate and it takes her to her castle. Her apprentice follows close behind.
"Wow", he says amazed as he looks around.
"Beauty, isn't it?", Yang asked with a happy smile.
She continued moving reaching leftwards stairwell leading downstairs, with her apprentice following behind. After exiting the stairwell they come face-to-face with a massive glowing blue orb that was floating about 4 inches above ground.
"This is the Tower Heart.", Yang informed him, "It is one of the most ancient Overlord artifacts, and definitely most powerful. It is the source of my teleportation powers, for example, and my connection to it is what caused my transformation, over many years, into the Evil Magic-filled figure you sensed when you became my apprentice"
"You keep mentioning towers. Tower Gate, Tower Heart, all towers, but this is clearly a castle"
Yang chuckled.
"Confusing isn't it? The Overlord who popularized the names of the Overlord's abilities and items ruled from a tower, and the names stuck, I guess.".
She motioned for him to follow her again, as she led him to the Brown Minion Hive.
"No offense, Master, but looking at this thing makes me want to vomit", Finster complained.
The Hive was best described as a lot of intertwined fat larvae forming a massive, in both height and width, almost egg shaped structure with a few brown eggs being nestled in between the larvae.
"Yeah, it's discussing. Don't ask me about the eggs. I don't know what they are, and I have absolutely no idea what they do. Frankly I don't really like thinking about this thing. Aaaanyway, this is what makes Brown Minions, which get sent to where I want through a Minion Gate. They can go and use the Tower Gate too, but this way is faster. Before I explain how this works, I need to explain something to you. I don't think you heard of Life Force, have you?"
Finster focused his attention to his Master's face to avoid having to look at the Hive.
"I'm sure I've heard about something like that in one of those fighting comics all about heroes who are willing to fight evil and are willing to sacrifice their live energy for extra power or something like that.", he then thinks for a bit, "I used to admire them. Ironic that I am working for evil now."
"Doesn't it bother you?", Yang asked looking genuinely curious.
"Not anymore. I originally joined you because I admired your power.", Finster admitted, "But after your speech you gave to the Schnees, I do believe you ultimately are trying to do something good in your own evil way".
Yang felt happy to hear someone thing of her this way.
"Anyway, those comics are somewhat right about this. Life Force is the Spark of Life that exists within all living creatures, even the Dark Creatures of Grimm. Not all of them are big or healthy enough to produce amount necessary to make a Life Force orb, but the one's that do create it on their death. These orbs of Life Force can be used to create Minions. Life Force comes in four colors, Brown, Red, Green, and Blue. Brown can be found in most creatures of Remnant. Red can be found only in creatures of fire. Green can be found in most creatures of Nature. Blue can be found in creatures of water, or in beings very magically inclined. You can only create a Minion from the same color of Life Force as a Minion you are trying to create. Life Force can only be seen and interacted with easily by Overlords although some talented Wizards, or some other deeply magical creatures have been known to be able to do interact it for their own ends although never with such ease as an Overlord and his Minions can."
Yang focused on her gauntlet and raised her hand and clenched it, and from the top of the Hive, a Brown Minion emerged, and energetically jumped down and landed next to Yang.
"Mastah!", the newly born Minion happily greeted Yang.
"And that's how they are created. The alternative, of course, is breeding, but female Minions are rare. They are known, however, to on occasion…breed with human women, so that can create a Minion too"
She shows him the Red Hive too, one looking substantially different. It looked as if someone decided to merge an octopus and a human heart. She showed of the creation of a Red Minion as well.
"As you can probably figure out, I haven't found the Green and Blue Minions, yet".
"Why are they missing?", Finster asked with some confusion
"When an Overlord dies, or disappears from his position, the Minions tend to disperse to areas they prefer. The Reds find the hottest places, Greens the most nature-filed, or poison-filed, and Blues prefer watery areas. They do still try to gather any magical artifacts nearby that they find, or look for a suitable Overlord to next guide them. The Browns have the best success rate with finding new Overlords".
"And where did they come from?", FInster ask, "Originally, I mean".
"The Minions?", she clarified.
"Yeah."
"The Netherworld. Deep within the earth, and in Darkest place one can find, exists an area referred to the Minions as the Netherworld. Gnarl says that it is there, from the depths of the Evil Darkness of the place that the first Minion crawled out and came into existence ready to find an Overlord to serve and to unleash Evil upon the world."
"That doesn't make sense", Finster pointed out, "How did the first Minion know about something he's never met?"
"Who knows?", Yang said shrugging her shoulders, "Maybe it's some Evil Magic. Maybe it's an unknown property of the Netherworld. Hard to say. Gnarl's old, but not that old, and Minions are not the best at writing down their History. In fact, I'm pretty sure Gnarl's the only literate one. So, yeah, it could just be a legend. Could be true for all we know."
After satisfying her apprentice's curiosity, they returned back to her office.
The Scroll she had recently bought for her Emperor duties rang. She looked at the caller and saw that the caller was her secretary. She picked up.
"Yes? I'm rather busy right now.", Yang irritably said.
She heard her secretary's voice come out of the scroll, the voice sounding regretful.
"Apologies, your Highness, I am very sorry to interrupt, but your Four o'clock is here".
"I don't remember having anyone scheduled for today", Yang said for confusion.
"You left early in the morning, your Highness, and as such I could not inform you. As far as I could see your schedule was clear, and I was not informed that you would be away. With intercontinental communications requiring the usage of CCT's, I could not easily inform you without abandoning my other duties. Perhaps if you thought to inform me, your secretary, of your plans or hire more staff incidents like this could be prevented"
"I'll take your thoughts under consideration.", Yang replied, "Send whoever I'm supposed to meet up here. Also, bring me some coffee. I've been awake since six, and I need something to get me through the rest of the day."
"Of course, your Highness. Anything with the coffee?", her secretary inquired.
"A bit of milk, and a spoonful of sugar."
"I'll bring it up in a couple of minutes, your Highness, In the mean time, I am sending your appointments to you"
Yang ended the call and sighed. She was not looking forward to whatever was going to happen next. She wanted to sleep and relax, damn it!
She sat down in her office chair, and motioned for her apprentice to stand next to her.
"You'll be intimidation if I need it. Try to look tough.", Yang commanded him.
"Yes, yes, Master.", Finster agreed, "Not like you'll need any help on that front anyway. You can be very scary, you know that?"
Yang chuckled.
"Of course, I do, apprentice. You remember what happened just today after all."
Soon there was a polite knock on her door.
Yang composed herself, channeled some Evil Energy into her eyes to get that Evil looking brown glow, and in her most authoritative voice said, "Enter".
The door opened, and a red blur zoomed across the room, over the desk, and tackled Yang and her chair to the floor. Yang's apprentice began to draw his weapon, but a mental command from Yang stayed his hand, and reversed the process. Yang looked down at her assailant, and stroked her black hair lightly.
"Well, hello there, Sis."
"I missed you sooooooooooo much!", Ruby said excitedly, hugging Yang's with a very strong grip.
With a fond chuckle she replied, "I missed you too, Ruby"
"I didn't really think you had family, Master", Finster pointed out, visibly relaxing when he realized no danger was present.
"Master?", a male voice came from the door way, as two more males entered, "Someone's gotten into some weird kinks while they were away~", the voice said teasingly
Yang rolled her eyes although it wasn't really visible to the two men due to Yang's position. Yang carefully got up, still hugging her sister, and looked at the two men. The first man, the one who attempted to tease Yang, was a man with dark spiky hair, some bangs nearly touching his eye, while the rest of the hair is somewhat slicked back. He had pale red eyes. On his neck he wore a cross necklace. He was wearing wears a gray dress shirt with a long tail, black dress pants and black dress shoes alongside with a red, tattered cloak. The other man was radically different. Where the previous man could be described accurately as 'cool' the other would be best described as 'joyful youngster', for certainly that was what his clothing implied. He was a blonde with messy hair. His eyes were ocean blue. He wore brown leather vest over a tan dress shirt with the right sleeve cut off, a red bandana on his left arm, brown cargo shorts with a dark brown belt, and simple black shoes. On the sleeveless hand he had tattoo of an emblem of some kind.
She pointed with her left hand at her apprentice, than at the man with dark spiky hair.
"Apprentice, that's Qrow, my uncle. Feel free to ignore him."
The now named Qrow, feinted being hurt by her words and almost fell to the floor before he stopped pretending. Yang moved on and pointed at the blonde man.
"That is my dad, Taiyang. Call him Tai, everyone does."
She then looked at Ruby.
"And the woman that can't let me go, not that I mind, is my sister, Ruby."
She then pointed again at her apprentice.
"Everyone that's my apprentice, Finster Wolf. I stole him from Shade Academy"
"I consented to being your apprentice, and I never withdrew from the academy", Finster pointed out.
"Shush you", Yang lightly rebuked him.
Finster looked all of their guests over and politely bowed.
"It's a pleasure to meet the family of my magnificent Master", Finster said respectfully.
Yang frowned, and corrected him.
"You're only supposed to bow to me, you know."
"Seriously, what's with the whole 'Master' bit, Yang?", Qrow asked.
"That was my idea, actually", Finster interrupted, "I thought I was supposed to do that, you know like in those movies. Master found it funny and told me to keep doing it"
"Really, it's just a term of respect for me. That and he is my apprentice, and I do teach him, so it fits really well", Yang added.
"I'll leave you all alone then. Have fun, Master", Finster said as he left.
"Well, anyway, nice to meet you all again. Did your really make an appointment?", Yang inquired curiously.
"Didn't want to make a long trip only to find you left again", Qrow said simply.
Yang nodded, "Makes sense, I guess"
Ruby looks up and notices Yang's glowing eyes.
"Yang?", Ruby asked hesitantly?
"Yeah, sis?", Yang looked at her with curiosity, interested in the reason behind her hesitant tone.
"What's with your eyes? They look...kinda creepy? What happened?". Ruby asked, her voice filled with worry for her sister.
As Ruby started into Yang's eyes, the color slowly melted away from the glowing brown to her normal lilac one.
"Better?", Yang asked, not really answering the question.
Ruby nodded, her worry replaced with curiosity.
Yang turned to her other guests.
"Well, don't stand around, grab a chair, get yourselves comfortable"
"I heard you could do that", Qrow mentioned, "Heard another color, blood red one like your mother's".
"Heard about it? Really?", Yang surprised, "The red one happened like once, and it was heavily televised."
"About that-", Tai started before he was interrupted by Ruby, "How do you do that?"
Yang thought about it for a moment.
"I'm not sure. The red color happened when I was extremely angry, and I was feeling particularly...", Yang hesitates for a moment before thinking of the right word to use considering the audience, "malicious. So, maybe one of the emotions fuels it. Maybe it's something else. Don't really know."
"And the glowing brown?", her sister inquired.
"Magic", Yang answered simply, "You know I've always been able to do that. Well, not the eye thing particularly, but, well, Magic"
Qrow looks around her office
"The table seems completely different.", he commented, "You've done some interior redecorating, kiddo?"
Yang laughs
"Yeah, you could say that. The window's different too. Broke both of them in a pretty big fight."
The room silenced. Accidently, it seems, Yang addressed the elephant in the room.
"About that, actually", Tai started, "I've been meaning to discuss that with you"
She could hear from his tone that it was one of those kinds of discussions, one's where she's done something wrong and she's gonna get lectured over it.
"Whatever have I done to upset him?", Yang wondered before remembering she killed a guy on live television, "Oh, right, Murder."
Before Tai can continue, a polite knock on the door is heard as the secretary brings Yang her coffee.
"Thank you, Akita.", Yang politely said, "Please make sure that no one disturbs us for a few hours".
She nods.
"Of course, your Highness."
She puts down the coffee on the table, and leaves, closing the door behind her.
Yang takes a sip of the coffee and releases a happy sigh.
"Oh, I needed this. Been working far too long today"
"Getting back to our talk", Tai interrupted her.
"Yeah? What about?", Yang feigned ignorance.
"You know exactly what", Tai countered.
Yang sighs.
"Yeah, fine, I do. I killed Theodore, stabbed him through the back, and paraded his dead corpse, with maniacal look, on live television. So what? You want some sort of apology?"
"As a bare minimum, I'd like for you to recognize what you did was wrong".
Where Yang's voice carried tension, and full of challenge, Tai's was calm. It was clear from his face that he wasn't happy, but seemingly he wanted to prevent it from devolving into a shouting match.
"Wrong?!", Yang said in a raised voice carrying surprise, "My reasons aside, hypocrisy much? I own Shade, I know they teach desensitization to killing"
"Of criminals, Yang! Not of wanton killings!", Tai said in a raised voice, unable to keep it as calm as he'd like.
Ruby got in-between them in case this got out of hand, and attempted to calm them down. She addressed Yang.
"You said you had reasons for this?", she asked, voice full of hope, "Of course you did!"
"I'm not going to spend time explaining it. It would require going over most if not all of my journey away from home. I don't want to have that conversation here and now."
"At least give us something then. Help us understand", Qrow said.
Yang sighed.
"Vacuo, someone in the previous government for sure, wrong me, and I feared for my life. I saw the perfect opportunity and struck.", Yang honestly explained.
"Someone? You don't even know who?", Qrow asked incredulously.
Yang gave a small laugh, though not a particularly happy one.
"Does it matter? I no longer have any beef with Vacuo. Whoever wrong me then is most surely dead."
"How can you not know who wronged you, Yang?", Ruby asked.
"I'm sorry that government assassins don't carry letters of employment, Ruby", Yang irritably bit back.
"Theodore doesn't seem like the kind to do it. Trust me, I knew him well enough, we were friends", Qrow said.
Yang waved her hand
"Doesn't matter, and I hardly care. I killed Theodore, and took over, and the council is dead too. Justice prevailed."
"What kind of justice sentences people without evidence to back the claims up?", Qrow countered.
"My kind.", she sighed and tried calming down, taking a sip of her coffee again.
"I'm not going to apologize, and I'm not going to wallow in guilt. They were my enemies, it's as simple as that."
Qrow suddenly looked like he had an epiphany.
"You don't believe in your own story!", he accused her, "Or at the very least you are heavily questioning the events that took place."
"What brought that about?", Yang asked diverting the topic somewhat.
It was true. She was questioning her choices during that fateful day. Remembering what happened made it seem more like a silly misunderstanding that turned to murder. She wasn't even sure if they were assassins really. They had feared that Vacuo would send soldiers or assassins to reclaim the land, and it might be that they found themselves the victims of Gnarl's paranoia and confirmation bias. At the time she assumed that Gnarl heard something in their words that she did not, after all, he was far more experienced. But, that would mean that all of this was for nothing, including her near death while fighting Theodore. She couldn't have that. Besides, she could recall that they knew of her takeover. They must have come for her head! It was the only thing that made sense. If Theodore didn't recognize her maybe it's because they only knew that someone took over, not how that someone looked. Or maybe it was an order by the council or something. It didn't matter. She's right, she has to be. The alternative would be beyond shameful and embarrassing.
"Call it a hunch born from experience.", Qrow said, "You sounded to me like you were in denial"
That did anger Yang. Her lilac eyes momentarily flashed red before returning to the normal color instead.
"I am an Emperor of a Grand Empire! I traveled all four Kingdoms! Seen the Horrors of Kuchinashi! Traveled deep into the very depths of the volcano of Vacuo! I fought the strongest Huntsman in the world to his death! Forced all of Shade to its knees in fear! Even Schnees don't dare to play snob with me! Seen the lightest and darkest magic! Made allies with most powerful of people! I lead an evil army of the damned! I DO NOT GET IN DENIAL!"
Darkness spread from her body, covering the room in an illusion of eternal void. The darkness slithered around her like a snake. Her eyes which had momentarily flashed red, have now at her last words fully transformed into red, with no clear sign of her normal eyes. She looked as terrifying as she was angry.
Qrow loudly whispered to Tai, loudly enough that both Ruby and Tai could hear, "Yeah, seems like she's hard in denial"
Tai smiles and Ruby snickers.
Yang released an angry scream, and for a moment the void was washed away by an image of the Infernal Abyss, before that image shattered, and the darkness returned again, as Yang was breathing heavily trying to calm herself with controlled breathing.
Her eyes began flickering between red, lilac, and brown, and a few minutes later they settled on her normal lilac ones.
She eyed the illusion in the room, and when she glared at it, the illusion shattered.
"Enough", she said with finality in her tone, "I will not talk about this any more today. Let's not ruin our reunion with angry arguments."
"Fine, but don't think I will just give up on you", Tai said with Ruby adding a "Yeah!"
Yang finished her coffee.
"Are you all hungry? I recently ate, but I wouldn't mind treating my family to a restaurant meal", Yang said, "You know, ruling comes with some perks after all."
As soon as they agreed, Yang took them to a restaurant to grab a bite to eat, and hopefully wash away the unpleasantness with a more happy moment.