Chapter 12

Three days. The tournament had been going on for three days so far, and frankly Yang was getting sick of it. Not that she could outright say so when Phyllis was definitely enamored by it, or when the only person she could talk to on a regular basis, the old man, was having fun in his own way. Or at least he seemed to, even as he gave near constant criticisms to the way each trainer led their team.

Maybe it was the fact that the tournament didn't seem to change things up enough from one match to another. One pokémon at a time, first team to get three eliminations wins. Nothing to differentiate one match from another other than who and what was in the arena at the time. Didn't matter which series of competitions she glanced at, rookies or tried and true professionals, it was all oddly monotonous. All in the same unchanging, flat arena with the big pokéball image on the ground, with the same one at a time first to three knockout rules every..single..time. They didn't even have a ring-out for quicker or more clever wins.

For the hell of it she watched that Kenshin guy if only to see why that crowded room just ceased 'all' activity when he walked through. Just about every match he had was short and one sided in his favor. Few lasted long enough for his opponent to even have a chance to strike back. Weaknesses exploited with brutal efficiency, his team moving without him having to say a word. At most he made some hand gestures, things that at times his pokémon had no chance to see but they reacted to all the same. It was easy to see how he won every time. It was equally easy to say she wasn't a fan of the guy.

Maybe it was the fact she compared him to Pyrrha and felt he couldn't measure up in 'any' category. Where Pyrrha was near constantly smiling unless a friend of hers was in trouble or when she was concentrating especially hard, Kenshin had a stern, stony look that never changed. Where Pyrrha gave even her weakest foes a look of respect, either praising their strengths or noting how they managed to surprise her in their match with the notable exception of her four on one beatdown of team CDNL, Kenshin looked at all his foes with derision, as if insulted they wasted his time in the approximately two minutes or less he dismantled them. Seriously, that guy felt like he 'needed' a humbling and nobody was around to pull it off.

It didn't help that she was fresh from the Vytal Festival, with plenty of little gimmick and terrain changes between rounds before everything went to hell. An anti-gravity section, desert, water, mountain, tundra, urban, with rounds that involved a full four people per team, or just a pair, or singles. It was like comparing a ham sandwich to a pork roast, even if she got burned by her last match in the Festival the sheer amount of effort and attention to detail..great, now she was thinking like Weiss. Again. Why was it whenever she started feeling critical around here she felt like she should put her hair in a side tail? Was it even possible to do that with one hand?

It was equally likely she just wished some people she actually knew were here in some capacity. Ruby, Pyrrha, her dad, hell she'd even settle for Junior or Neptune! Just 'anyone' familiar from Remnant regardless of if she liked them or not! It was..ugh, just the whole world here itched at her. From the way kids were allowed to just wander without any kind of supervision from town to town to the lack of anything remotely similar to a hunter to the lack of even a basic town militia!

It 'really' said something about her mindset when the moment the last match of the day ended she wandered over to a local police office and just..observed. And she felt so critical of them that if Weiss could hear her thoughts than the usually brutally honest heiress would tell her to give them some slack. She could honestly imagine Weiss of all people telling her to ease up. Did that mean she felt her friend had become a more relaxed person, or that Yang was just plain tense all the time here? And why was she comparing herself to Weiss so much anyway?! Why not Blake or Goodwitch or..actually, yeah, Weiss was typically more critical than anyone else she knew, even the strictest teacher at Beacon.

But really, the most athletic of the police at the station she was looking at were the morning jogger type. Slim, could probably do a decent amount of cross country before getting tired but not what she would consider strong. Junior's thugs would 'easily' be able to dominate these people even unarmed and with a five to one disadvantage! At least one guy was so disgustingly fat he defied belief, she'd honestly seen pigs slimmer and those were 'purposely' fattened up to feed people. Whatever the power to weight ratio was on his car had to be downright amazing with the way he barely fit through the door. No weapons of any kind that she could see on any of them, not even a basic pistol. Everyone just had pokéballs. Granted, she didn't know what creatures were in each ball and how well they worked with each cop but..

..but it just felt 'bizarre'. A world full of monsters and nobody seemed in any way prepared to fight for 'themselves'. They just let a bunch of monsters they raised themselves do all the fighting for them. All too frequently she asked herself what would happen if the Grimm ever popped up during 'this' tournament, and all she could think was that it would be a complete and utter massacre. Maybe she was just being overly harsh based on watching mostly rookies competing with eachother. But then a basic beowolf pack wouldn't play by the rules and just fight each and every individual pokemon a trainer sent out one at a time. They'd maybe have one or two spend time on the pokemon and the rest would swarm and devour the helpless trainer with just as much ease as any civilian.

And then there was the whole question of where the meat around here came from. As far as she could see everyone acted like they lived in complete harmony with pokémon despite having them go through 'brutal' fights. Fights that sometimes ended with second degree burns if not outright smoldering flesh, or entirely encased in ice. Kind of a disconnect if they were potentially raising some of their little "friends" to be slaughtered and eaten. What determined the difference between "friend" and meal? Pure luck? And why were the competitive fights so rough? It's not like they were training to deal with some threat in the world, this was just..

Duncan flew by her face, cutting off any further thoughts she had. Little guy landed right in front of her and gave her a piercing stare, as if to say "get out of your head and back in the now" and she couldn't help chuckling a bit. It's not like she'd been enjoying the way her thoughts were going anyway. "Right, right. Sorry Duncan. Let's go. Come on, Phyllis."

The trio moved towards the outskirts of town, towards a nice little area just south of what was called Viridian Forest. She'd been, well, 'trying' to do the whole training thing. Taking what she observed in the various matches and coming up with what amounted to calisthenics for her two little buddies.

It probably wasn't the kind of training a lot of other people gave their pokémon, more focused on getting a feel for their physical limits and how to try pushing them than her getting them to follow orders or firm up fighting skills. Still, she wasn't the leader type. Ruby undoubtedly was, and anyone who said different was either an idiot or an asshole. Weiss, not so naturally but through sheer force of will and some textbook knowledge of how to direct others she could make a strong showing. Blake possibly if push came to shove and she felt fired up enough to shove back, but not Yang. She was more the type to either let someone else take the reins or go in her own direction. Probably made things even tougher when she had to pick up the slack when she and Ruby were growing up. She was the strong, nurturing sister. The steady rock hard, play hard..great, she was so unsure of herself she couldn't even finish that thought.

Still, this felt as good a way as any to start things off. She couldn't help wondering if this was the sort of thing one of those pokémon gym leaders did, or if the word gym had a different meaning around here. It's not like she could imagine a bird lifting weights alongside someone like Nora. Not unless the birds here could grow as large as a nevermore.

All she could say for certain was it was something to do, an active thing to keep her mind focused on. If it was especially good than it'd keep her brain from wandering to people she probably wasn't going to see again and how out of place she felt..

If nothing else her exercises were getting her more familiar with the physical abilities of each of them. And she was..well, not completely used to missing her dominant hand but at least convincing herself one less limb wasn't the end.

Duncan was, well, a flier. And from what she could tell was somewhere between a hovering kind of flier like that beedrill thing and the more momentum based pidgies. He had to flap his wings more often than a pidgey at any rate, so if it came down to a contest of who could fly further she had the feeling Duncan would run out of steam faster. And he didn't hover as smoothly as a beedrill either, with rapid rises and drops and unable to keep the same altitude when staying still for extended periods of time.

He was pretty fast though. Not Ruby quality you-can't-follow-with-your-eyes speed but still something. Hard to judge since she had only seen the pidgies in the tournament from a distance but based on the ones she'd seen in the wild Duncan could probably outrun them. Was outrun the right word for flying faster? It was also hard to tell how his maneuverability fared in comparison to the only other bird she was in any way familiar with around here. Still, he could pull some pretty tight turns, even at top speed he could twist around within a fifty degree angle in just around any direction. The first time he pulled something like that she went slack jawed.

Even without her missing arm training him was going to be a lot more challenging than anything else she could think of. He was proud, had a sense of cockiness despite whatever had left him brutally beaten to the point of near death, and regardless of what she could come up with he would give her a glance that felt like an arrogant "really?". Even when he was so tired he couldn't flap his wings anymore there was a sense if he could talk he'd ask "is that all you've got?". Always ready to prove himself, but at least sensible enough to avoid doing obscenely stupid crap to show off. At least for now, though maybe those tight turns weren't good for him. It's not like she could tell. She was still getting a feel for his personality and it's not like she knew how he'd react to a real challenge, assuming she could come up with one.

So for now she stuck with throwing some objects into the air for him to swoop at before they hit the ground. Four rocks, one of which was white while the other three were white he had to grab and toss to her, the greys he had to throw to Phyllis. She figured it was a good way to both make sure he could see small details while moving as fast as he could and gave his legs something to do. After all, he couldn't catch everything with his beak and then toss the objects in two different directions. Probably not the 'best' form of training for him, especially since catching a rock in his beak was a potential choking hazard, but she didn't have a whole lot of other ideas. Her attempt at an obstacle course yesterday took way too much time to set up and didn't feel like he was actually tested at all anyway.

As for Phyllis, she wasn't built for speed in any way, shape, or form. She was a chubby lizard with a plant on her back and stubby little legs. Cute, but even Zwei had a better body type for speed. So there wasn't too much point in having her run around to try moving faster. Possibly something to do at a later time to get a better sense of her stamina though, but that didn't feel like the best thing to have her do at this stage. Yang didn't really have any ideas what to do with the whole seed launching thing she saw back when they were trying to reach Viridian, or any of the little abilities she'd seen in the pokedex like "razor leaf" or "solar beam", assuming the little girl even knew how to pull stuff like that off. Seriously? "Razor leaf"? Phyllis didn't even look like her plant part had leaves, and what made them razors? Freaking pokédex just kept throwing terms out there and didn't actually explain much of anything. Still, Yang had a few ideas involving those vines.

The first day trying to get her to lift the dumbbell, even when it had lighter weights attached to it, was a wasted effort. A wasted effort that nearly made the poor girl cry and made Yang feel guilty for pushing her beyond her limit that quickly on the first day. Still, the thing about mistakes is you can learn what not to do. If doing twenty reps with twenty pounds was too much for her right now than she'd focus on other things. Whenever Duncan threw rocks at Phyllis she was supposed to catch them as quickly as possible and then throw them at Yang. Again, probably not the best idea using rocks like balls but it was the best she could come up with for now. Besides, after fifteen years of dealing with Ruby it's not like she couldn't keep her eye on some fast moving objects and predict where they were heading.

Frankly the exercise was probably doing Yang just as much good as them, she was doing sit-ups as well as trying to keep track of the rocks 'and' both of the pokemon. Tracking two different mobile creatures, catching objects and throwing them with just one hand, it was actually a fun little twist to a usually forgettable bit of staying in shape. And she wasn't occasionally trying to catch with an arm she didn't have. Did that count as progress? Or was she just fooling herself?

Not that she was likely to come up with a lot of other exercises that would let the three of them just flow together and cooperate like this. All three of them were just too physically different in terms of body type, and extremely likely needs as well. Should she try to think of ways to improve Phyllis' strength that didn't involve weight lifting? Could she think of ways to really work on how Duncan flew? Were there any bird-fu masters or plant/lizard martial arts books? And dear god, just how much more complicated would things get if she started getting more pokémon? She'd seen a starfish thing with a jewel where the mouth should be, how did you exercise or even 'feed' that? And what if she actually got a fish? It's not like she had a bowl of water she could carry around or something. And a fish on land, well, just the mental image felt cruel, much less the flopping around she saw in the tournament. You may as well launch Jaune into the air repeatedly and try to see which made a bigger splatter, his puke or his body when his aura ran dry.

And great, her mind was still wandering around in very grim directions despite her actually trying to concentrate on catching the rocks and measure how well her two little buddies were doing at the same thing. Was imagining Jaune being abused to the point of gory death better or worse than imagining Blake jumping into a pokémon match with a crazed grin and a cooking knife. Hell, did her partner's love of seafood mean more than fish and squid, or was a starfish where she drew the line? Yang wasn't an expert on seafood. Hell, what 'was' she an expert at other than being a substitute mom, a fiery boxer, and kind of a thug? How was her team doing without her? Were they even still 'alive' or..

It was hard to tell just how long they kept that exercise up. An hour at the very least. Still, eventually Phyllis started to visibly run out of steam, moving more sluggishly and less zip in her throws, and Duncan was starting to breathe hard, though neither seemed to want to admit they were done. Maybe because Yang wasn't even breaking a sweat. Cute, and was a good sign of their work ethic for repetitive tasks.

So Yang called it quits for them. She was more interested in personally staying in shape and trying to see what limits she had to work with from her little buddies, not giving them a brutal workout. "Right, this seems like as good a way to end it for the day as any. Anyone else hungry or is it just me?"

Phyllis was definitely appreciative of the idea the workout was over, almost crawling into Yang's lap before collapsing in a cute little heap. Possibly a little exaggerated, or just the result of not much experience working out. Whereas Duncan just landed on her shoulder and tried to look like he was perfectly fine despite the slight wheeze when he cawed. If anything his attempt to act tough was more hilarious than Phyllis' over the top drop.

Of course now she had the awkward challenge of trying to reach for her bag while trying not to disturb the positions of either of her little buddies. In the end she just waddled with her butt until she got close enough to comfortably get it over her shoulder, then grabbed Phyllis in as comfortable a way as she could manage and got to her feet.

As she walked back in the general direction of the city, she couldn't help noticing how many other people had decided to use the outskirts for their own little bonding sessions with their pokemon. The methods were as varied as the people and creatures. One kid was cuddling with a pink ball of fluff that looked bigger than he or she was, the remains of a picnic scattered around them as they napped. A teenage boy sprinting in a race with the rest of his team, being somewhere in the middle of the pack as he laughed. An older man walking alongside a two legged lizard thing with comically small wings. A girl with a conductor's stick-thing getting a bunch of varied birds to sing while flying in coordinated, complicated patterns.

Well since there didn't seem to be any kind of standard way to get along with these pokemon things it made Yang 'less' concerned she was somehow screwing up. At least the old man and the professor weren't just throwing around platitudes when they said there was no real wrong way to go about it. Now if only she could find something that really got her blood pumping and left her eager for more instead of going through motions for the sake of doing 'something'.

Was it wrong that a place that felt like it'd be total heaven for Ruby was getting her down so constantly and frequently? It was just so 'frustrating' that she knew there were plenty of things she 'could' enjoy here but couldn't muster the enthusiasm to just let go and enjoy everything around her. At best she just gave herself some obligations and tried to follow through on them. Mysterious ghost-Pyrrha wants her to watch the tournament, she'll watch the tournament even when she's getting bored of it, because why stop bothering to go when her two new buddies were enjoying themselves. The professor she first met wants her to go all over the place talking to important people? Fine. It's something to do, even if she's not that confident. It's not like there's anything else she could be doing.

Considering how muted or negative her emotions tended to be from one moment to the next, it was actually rather surprising just how much being around Phyllis was the brightest part of each day. Always ready to please, attentive to her moods, smart enough to try thinking of solutions to anything that might be annoying or nagging her. Not that the little girl actually 'could' solve all the things that nagged at Yang, but the constant, innocent efforts were appreciated.

And oddly enough Duncan's more selfish attitude was also a pleasant way out of her own issues. It was downright amazing he was so confident so soon after getting so badly hurt. Hell, considering she only put him in his ball whenever he 'wanted', it was amazing he didn't just choose to fly off on his own considering how willful he could be at times. Sometimes he'd look at the food she gave him with disdain, occasionally zipping off just to come back minutes later with a freshly killed smaller animal and somehow managing a grin on his beak that said "now this is 'real' food".

Maybe she shouldn't feel so surprised and heart-warmed every time he came back. Maybe she should wonder if the creature he blatantly killed might have been someone else's partner/friend or whatever. Or if the creature he killed might have potentially been someone to join their little group. But really, the only thing she could do was smile, maybe try to cook the meal before digging in with Duncan and occasionally chuckle as Phyllis nibbled a bit as well.

It certainly wasn't team RWBY, cracked in their own unique ways and each with a combination of endearing and infuriating quirks that she wouldn't change, but Yang could have done a 'lot' worse than end up with these two. Now, what kind of letter acronym thing should she give her team. Was it right to even think about doing something like that when she didn't know if they'd be gaining any other members? PDY, DPY, YPD, DYP..no, no catchy name coming to mind there. Maybe with more letters? Yeesh, hopefully she wouldn't decide on a pokemon's name just because she get really attached to a particular team name she wanted to hang over their heads.

Before her brain could go in some other random direction, Duncan poked her in the cheek with his beak and made a quick squawk. "Right, right..so, we're going to stop off at the gym, see if we can get the first interview thing done, or at least get a sense of how long the leader's going to be gone."

..okay then. When she was imagining what this gym looked like, she had two different ideas. Either this guy would pull the same kind of ridiculous design decisions he did for those chairs in the VIP lounge, or it'd look like the kind of non-pokémon gym she was used to.

Of course she kind of expected to be able to walk in, or at least look through a window. Neither existed. The place looked more like a small warehouse from the outside, nothing grandiose about it. Hell, it was sandwiched between two unremarkable five story apartment buildings. She probably would have missed it entirely if it wasn't the only one story building for miles.

No fancy carving on the door like the bed Oak had her sleep in. No sign saying they were closed or note saying when they'd be open again. Just a very plain, locked door. Considering how the professor tried to convince her how important these gyms were, that was pretty disappointing. Not that she'd been looking forward to doing one of these interview things, just that it felt..awkward, for lack of a better way to put it.

Of course just about everything, even the things she could have done with ease like just walking through a crowd, felt awkward to her around here. Maybe she should look into getting a thesaurus installed onto the pokédex. Was it even possible to install new things onto that thing? Was she just spoiled by how great her scroll was back on Remnant?

Not that she'd have been able to get much use out of it out here. No towers to connect with, all the games she'd installed on the damned thing required two hands, and she didn't even know if anyone on her contacts list was still alive. Hell, she didn't even bother asking for that little piece of home to come with her. All she'd have been able to do was look at pictures she took both before and during her time at Beacon.

Giving the locked door in front of her one more knocking, Yang was 'really' getting sick and tired of the direction her thoughts kept going. Stuck in the unknown, and she kept getting bombarded with depressing crap that made her wonder how and why she bothered getting out of bed in the morning. Sure, always at least one thing that was new every day, but..she just felt so..

Part of Weiss found it oddly funny. When she first arrived at Beacon, she just reflexively recoiled at everything and everyone.

Ruby Rose, a hyperactive girl two years younger who had so many random flips between brilliant and stupid that anyone trying to keep track would start feeling dizzy. Add in her childish enthusiasm, social ineptitude, and inexplicable drive to help people regardless of how mundane the problem and Weiss couldn't count the number of times her partner made her brain go haywire. It's not that she didn't appreciate Ruby, far from it. Just that there were only so many times per day she could be caught off guard before wanting to jump on a table and scream. Who'd have guessed Weiss wanted a red blur of spontaneity to drag her around for something random now? Something to break up the monotony of high class events and waiting for the next one.

Blake Belladonna, a girl that mostly kept to herself until something pushed her self-righteous button. Then she became self-destructively passionate, which was made worse by her egotistical attitude that she was the only possible person who could solve the world's problems. Add in the intangible tension between a former member of the White Fang and the heiress of the Schnee Dust Company, and you had random moments where they unintentionally rubbed eachother the wrong way. Still, they'd grown to respect one another. And damn, Weiss would have preferred a repeat of some of their most vitriolic arguments over the vapid,'boring' people she'd had to interact with on a daily basis ever since her father dragged her back to the mansion.

Yang Xiao Long, a free spirited brute of a girl with a contagious sense of humor. Warm hearted, teasing, protective of everyone around her, but very quick to offense. It was kind of frightening how quickly she could switch from laid back to berserk, even when you figured out her triggers. And disconcerting that Weiss felt comfortable around her despite that. That she had gotten into a category of people that Yang would never harm no matter how furious, that despite their rocky introduction she was..family.

All of three of them were family to Weiss. Closer to her than anyone, even Winter. Not too long ago, she'd have scoffed at the idea of anyone being closer to her heart than her sister. But she'd never just laid in bed, staring at random pictures involving her sister. And she didn't worry about Winter anywhere near as much. Of course part of that had to do with how things were last time she saw any of them.

Last time she saw Yang was just before the evacuation of Beacon, when she went rushing to help Blake. Then her aura went down on her scroll, followed by an inexplicable "too far to read" notification. The last time she saw Blake..well, she was notably without Yang, tears streaming down her face and making some kind of primal scream that could only be described as grieving fury. She just disappeared without a word after that. And Ruby was in a coma. No visible injuries, and aura exhaustion certainly wouldn't last longer than twenty four hours.

No CCT connection since nobody had been able to secure the Vale tower since the city had been overrun. Little to no news from outside of Atlas. And so much of the general attitudes in Atlas were needling her in ways that honestly surprised her. How long until she finally lost her temper and slapped some random guest at one of the random parties? Or strangled her little brother? Or..

..great. Time for her to get into the dress her father wanted her to wear and start greeting guests she couldn't care less about for yet another pointless bit of lording over his dominance over all the upper class of Atlas.

If she'd kept looking at her scroll instead of setting it down, she'd have noticed an odd yet cute collection of pink polygons with eyes next to three dots and the word [connecting] at the upper right corner.

She didn't even notice her scroll was still on when she left her room. The image of a golden, circular shield, with a pair of axes crossed in front of it, one black and the other white. The background was a deep crimson..

Author's Note: Well, this took a lot longer than I expected it to. Got extended hours at my job, which is great, and the stuff from the latest volume of RWBY..well, iffy.

One of the biggest things that annoyed the hell out of me was just how little Blake interacted with Ruby and Weiss. A vast majority of her actions were either her relationship with Yang, Adam being a stubborn ex stuck in a moral mytopia, and her just..fading into the background. Funnily enough that particular annoyance inspired me to revise one of my plans for this fic.

Originally, Yang was going to go through the whole Pokemon Journey thing with absolutely no contact with anyone on Remnant, being forced out of her depression by a combination of wonder and sheer necessity. It was more than a little annoying trying to push this chapter through when she's still in floundering mode, thought "hey, you've already done some ridiculous bullshit by throwing Yang into the Pokemon world. Why not give her a scroll connection with her team as well to help solve her (somehow without me being able to control it) growing sense of isolation and just going through the motions?"

Not sure how long it'll take for me to update this fic, or the Modern Warfare one. I can't even begin to guess when I'll have both the time and inspiration for either. Sorry. Hope you enjoyed this chapter, though.

Oh, as a side note, does anyone know a truly reliable way to give "e"s an accent mark? I know of two, but both feel like they pick and choose when to work for me.