A/N: I was intending to introduce all the heroes in the previous chapter, but it took a lot to get Ruby and Weiss's story set up, so I'll be introducing the heroes in pairs. This is Blake and Yang's story, and I'll have a chapter about Team JNPR up by the weekend. Again, there are more than a few edits to some parts of the backstory, just to make this AU work better. Enjoy!
Blake is supposed to hate the heroes.
She's supposed to despise them for the battles, and the prison terms, and the burn scar extending across her shoulder, a relic of a particularly brutal fight and a handful of fire thrown at her.
But hating the heroes has always gone hand in hand with trusting Adam Taurus.
Hating the heroes meant you had a right to survive through any means necessary. Hating the heroes meant you fought for the working class. Hating the heroes meant you thought that the system was too rotten to prop up with empty hopes.
And now Blake can't be sure of anything.
Vale is, as the saying goes, a wretched hive of scum and villainy. The police aren't better. Neither are the heroes, or the White Fang.
So Blake relies on her wits. She steals from those who can afford it, at least, she tells herself. And she waits.
She isn't sure what she's waiting for, but she needs something. A cause. A team. A real fight for once. Anything, really.
Anything proceeds to arrive in her life by barging into the dive bar, requesting a few glasses of the cheapest whiskey available, and dropping one glass in front of Blake with a grin.
Blake looks up from her novel. The woman is dressed in brown leather, including a mask that covers the top half of her face, with two cracked lenses set in it. Her hair is blonde, and waist-length. An easy vulnerability to exploit, if it comes to a fight. Most likely a superhero out searching for petty criminals.
"What do you want?" Blake asks.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm just here to enjoy the atmosphere! Have a few drinks with a friendly face!"
"And you came here?" Blake comments. The whiskey spilled from her glass is eating through the metal counter. This isn't the kind of place people go when they could be anywhere else.
"Okay, ya got me. I'm looking for information on the whereabouts of one Adam Taurus." The blonde grins, oblivious to the way the bar's atmosphere instantly grows tense.
"Can't help you," Blake says, and reopens her novel. She's not going to get involved in this if she can help it.
"Sure you can't," the woman says. She's still grinning. "I bought you a drink; isn't that worth at least a bit of help?"
"I am not drinking that," Blake comments, staring at the cloudy liquid. "And I've already told you that I don't know anything about Taurus."
"Would that change if I bought you some better whiskey?"
"I could make up an address for you; is that what you want?"
The blonde frowns and rummages through one pocket. The rest of the bar has gotten quiet, Blake notices. They're all waiting for something suitably dramatic. There are plenty of myths about the heroes and their apparent power to turn invisible and teleport, spread by lesser thieves too easily awed by a bit of blending in.
The door opens again, rebounding off the far wall with a thud. A man in a white coat strides through the door, along with half a dozen tall men in masks, all carrying submachine guns. A few of the smarter customers slip away behind their backs. The bartender continues to polish a glass with a filthy rag, but his hands are shaking slightly.
Something is very wrong if a man who serves drinks to murderers for a living is scared. Blake's seen the man wordlessly duck behind the counter during a gunfight, then reappear, wipe the worst of the bloodstains off the counter, and continue with his job.
The newcomers walk up to the counter, pushing the blonde aside. She splutters in indignation. The man in the center taps the counter.
"I'd like to talk to your boss," he says quietly.
"He's not in," the bartender says, not looking up.
The man laughs. His hired guns laugh too, dutifully, because when the boss thinks something's funny and you don't it won't end well.
"We both know how this is going to end," the man says, no trace of his hysteria from moments ago remaining. "I'll speak to your boss. The only real difference is whether you're alive at the end or not. Get me your boss!" He slams one hand down on the counter.
"As you wish," the bartender says. He disappears through a small door.
The man in white takes his hat off and tosses it onto the bar, revealing hair in a fiery orange that can't be natural. He settles on one of the stools, propping his feet up on another. The masked men spread out. Two remain by the front door, two next to their boss, and two at the sides of the room.
Blake is known for her ability to escape anything, but that's really a statement on Vale's security systems rather than her own unique abilities. She's fast and quiet, really. Which isn't all that helpful now.
The blonde apparently has no sense of self-preservation, and has stalked up to the man.
"Do your men have a carry permit for those weapons?" she demands.
The man in white laughs at her.
"Darling, you really shouldn't be meddling in things you don't understand." He pinches her cheek.
Blake is prepared to sit back and watch a superhero demolish a few petty criminals. She shifts further back in her chair as the blonde's hair ignites and a red glow flashes from behind her mask.
The man in white ducks her first blow with catlike grace. His henchmen close in on the blonde, and she hurls a handful of fire at the first.
Its uniform burns away, revealing cold metal. Of course. Robots. The minions of choice for anyone with the technological know-how to build them or the money to spend.
Blake doesn't like wasting expensive Dust cartridges, but she doesn't want to be caught in the firefight.
The Lightning Dust fries the circuits of the two closest to the blonde, sending them to the floor leaking smoke. The blonde grins at Blake, then swings her fist into another, making a sound like a shotgun blast and turning its face into a crater.
The man in white is escaping, two of his robots by his side. The blonde's punches are slowing down the other two robots, but they're still upright and fighting.
Blake can now cut her losses and run, or continue helping a hero she barely knows, risking life and limb in the process.
The robots close ranks around the man in white, but Blake slips through the gap and swings Gambol Shroud. The man blocks it with his cane, quickly enough to off-balance her slightly. One of the robots flings her back into the bar.
Blake spins in midair and manages to land on one foot, one knee, and one hand, which makes up for in style what it lacks in tactical use. The man in white is long gone.
The blonde is standing, breathing hard, in a heap of cogs and gears and half-melted metal. A few hairs are out of place, but she doesn't look like she just got in a fistfight with six feet of solid steel.
"Thanks for taking out those two," she says. "You're pretty good with a weapon. In fact, I might have a job offer. What do you say we get a drink someplace slightly nicer and chat about it?"
"If all you wanted was to buy me a drink, you could just have asked," Blake mumbles.
The blonde laughs at her.
"With that kind of attitude, you're getting nothing." Her tone shifts to a more serious one. "But I'm not joking about the job offer. We could use a good fighter like you."
A year ago, Blake would have instantly refused, and probably tried to kill the blonde for good measure. Five years ago, she would have accepted a chance to help save Remnant instantly. Now, she doesn't know.
It's a real fight, a team, and a chance to make the world a better place. Depending on what her boss turns out to be like, not all that different from the White Fang.
Can't do any harm. If she doesn't like the job, she can just sneak away in the middle of the night and head to Mistral or some place they'll never find her.
"I'll take the job," she says.
"Great!" the blonde says. "We'll save the introductions for somewhere a bit more private."
That turns out to be the roof.
"I'm Yang Xiao Long," the blonde says. "Welcome to the team."
"Blake Belladonna," Blake says. "And do you really recruit people by walking into disreputable bars and getting attacked by robots?"
Yang shrugs.
"Recruitment is a bit – complicated," she says. "Usually, we don't really recruit at all. It's just because of – well, a lot of things, but mainly we're just low on manpower."
Most likely, the recent surge in crime has led to the deaths of several superheroes.
Blake's mouth dries up. She remembers Taurus leading a mission. Blake was the distraction, instructed to climb through a heavily-guarded window and deliberately set off an alarm, to draw the security guards out into the crossfire.
A superhero had swooped down from the roof, green cape swirling around them. The White Fang had backed up out of range, but Taurus had encouraged them onward. The superhero had hesitated for a moment, and been too slow, and they had lost. They had fallen, and lain spread out across the ground in a pool of blood. Taurus had pulled off the man's mask, revealing a man of about fifty. He had gloated about the corrupt government, whose best fighters were old men. The hero's cape still hangs in headquarters, as a reminder that heroes are never invincible. Heroes are people, stronger and faster and smarter, but people, who can be killed.
"You okay there, Blake?" Yang asks, squinting at her.
"I'm fine," Blake lies. "I'm just worried, since I don't have powers. I'm well-trained; I can't shoot fire."
"Not a problem," Yang says, grinning. "Most heroes don't have powers. My family have been heroes for generations, and I'm the only one to have powers. Right now, my sister, Ruby, is the other fighter in the family, and she's nonpowered. Pyrrha, The Huntress, you know, she's nonpowered, and she can beat me in a fight. Let's see – Ren is nonpowered, he's on Pyrrha's team. Qrow is away in Atlas, he's nonpowered. Ozpin was nonpowered, but he's dead, so that doesn't really count."
"You're very casual about death," Blake comments.
Yang shrugs.
"I didn't know him well."
There's more to that story, but Blake won't push for more details now.