[X] Went out to the woods to train the thing Qrow had done. Had he turned into a bird there? Could she do that? Was that a possibility here?
"Anything on TV?" Ruby asked, as Yang flicked through some channels.
"Doesn't look like it." Yang replied, as she stopped at a news channel. There was a segment playing about Jacques Schnee going on a hunting trip, with some concern regarding how the White Fang had been quiet recently and wondering if they had been waiting for something like this.
"Then pass me the remote." Ruby complained, as the topic changed again to noting how the former champion of the Mistral regional tournament was still missing. "The news is boring and there's a comedy show on or something. It's my birthday tomorrow so you have to listen to me, we agreed remember?"
Yang pretended to give a long-suffering sigh as she passed the remote to Ruby. "Yeah, alright. I was gonna go for a walk in a minute earlier."
"You don't need to." Ruby quickly assured her. "There's... Ugh, there's a guy who does a lot of puns on the show apparently, you might like it. We could watch it together, if you wanted."
"Thanks for the offer." Yang replied. "But nah. I've got a schedule going now, don't want to break it."
Ruby sighed. "...Okay."
She pressed a few buttons on her remote for a bit, before flicking over to a stand up comedy routine. A Faunus with chicken feathers through his hair made a joke about quickly going through 'The obligatory' chicken jokes, before moving on to state that the chicken that crossed the round eventually got taken out when the road put a bounty on its head.
Ruby was looking kinda sad, as Yang left the house for her walk that day.
...She was obviously concerned about Yang. Maybe she didn't want Yang to wear herself out by training too much. Maybe it was the same issue Yang had. Maybe Ruby didn't want Yang worrying about Ruby as much as she was.
That was Ruby for you. One of the kindest people you'd ever meet. Wanted to be a Huntress to help people, and never wanted people to worry about her too much. She deserved better than Yang making her fret because she had to work so hard, to overcome her weakness.
But she couldn't just do nothing, either. Ruby deserved better than to watch her big sister be run through with a spear. She deserve better to be sitting over her sister's non-responsive body in a hospital somewhere. A girl who could so easily shrug off anything bad happening to her and try to move forward at all times, who never even stopped to think too hard about the bad things in life to remember the good...
Yang needed to be stronger for her. Yang needed to be able to protect her sister. More than that, she needed to be able to assure her sister that everything was okay. That everything was fine. Someone who was naturally so happy shouldn't be sad, ever. And especially not Ruby.
So even if Ruby worried about her now, or the reasons why Yang was pushing herself so hard, she had to keep going. She'd heard the stories about what Two and Five had done while fighting each other, and what they called up. She'd seen pictures. If people like that existed in this world, then Yang wasn't strong enough. Dito had been Five's underling, weaker by every account, and he had so easily controlled the fight.
Even if she hadn't realised it before Mountain Glenn, Yang couldn't ignore the problem now. She needed to be better if she was going to protect her sister.
Setting off into the forest again, Yang went for her usual spot.
It'd almost been funny, how quickly things had fallen into a routine. After everything that had happened with Five, you'd think there'd be a longer period of time where things were chaotic. But everyone seems to have recovered alright. Qrow wasn't around, but that was normal. Ruby was going to school just fine, Yang was going to school just fine, she'd pop by the study room while Ruby was in the weapons room across the hall and the two of them would do their things for an hour or so after school.
It varied a bit from there, between hanging out with people and some training, but she did always focus on going for a walk through the forest at night so she could be sure she was training up her Aura constantly.
She was... Fairly sure she was getting stronger. She hadn't really had a chance to measure her growth. She'd prefer not to, either. She'd need to be pushed as hard as she had been earlier to get that far, and to be quite honest, she'd prefer not to have to be put under so much risk again.
How many times had she nearly died, in that month? The mercenary captain had stabbed her and left her to bleed out, saving the Undine so the girl wouldn't die too had nearly done it as well, she came a bit too close to comfort when the girl had breakdown, and then Dito...
And then even ignoring her near death experiences, there was the list of her failures. She hadn't saved everyone in that burning town. People had been shot down because she misread her opponent and gave them a chance to kill. She'd failed Ruby by not being there in the first place. She'd failed Ruby again by being as hurt as she had been in front of her, failed everyone else by just running off the instant Five started baiting her. She'd dragged Miltia with her, then let her run off on her own and get beaten bloody by Melanie.
It wasn't good enough. None of it was.
She needed to do better. Learn from her mistakes. Not let them, any of them, happen again.
Reaching the waterfall as usual, Yang paused, and looked over to the trees she had last seen Qrow leaning against.
...She was curious, she had to admit. There was something going on with what he was teaching her. It was clear from the start it was some sort of magic, and the soul resonance thing apparently let her review memories. And though she was having some trouble remembering exactly what she had seen out of her uncle, she did remember the odd experience that was the weird dreamscape, as well as the way he turned into a bird to fly away, from the looks of things.
She wanted to know more.
Walking away from the waterfall and into the trees a bit, Yang calmed her breathing, and tried to remember exactly how she entered that weird state.
...Well, Qrow had been the one to initiate it. So maybe she couldn't pull it off without him. But she had to try something. Resting against a tree for a moment, she tried thinking about how Qrow would have done it.
Think, think. Yang had to think. What would Qrow have done...
...No, that wasn't working. It was weird. She knew he was a teacher and a hunter, but the image of him as a slightly sad and comedic uncle who drinks a bit kinda overrode that, let alone the new mental image of him as some sort of sage of the forest who held great secrets.
Yang stared up, let out a breath, and tried something else.
After a moment, she tried flaring her Aura. Supposedly, what Qrow was doing was resonating her soul off all the trees and animals around, so maybe...
A bit of grass caught fire at her feet, and Yang abandoned that tactic. Closing her eyes, she tried something else.
Turning around on the tree she was leaning against and trying to ignore the slight scorch on it, she tried literally hugging the tree.
...Nope, also not working.
Well, something had to, right?
She walked further into the forest, looking around, until a glimmer of gold caught her eye.
That tree in the corner, there was something about it. She stepped towards it, and noticed the circle pattern on it.
Was this the same tree from her little spirit journey? She hadn't recalled it being so normal, but she supposed it was less likely to be really really ominous outside of metaphor land.
Reaching out, Yang touched the circle-
The woman let out a little laugh, as she carved against the tree. The man said something, and the woman told him something in a slightly disappointed voice. The man himself carried an axe, and the woman gave a sigh as he moved forward to cut it. Naturally. It was old wood. Strong wood. Good for building or burning.
Yang pulled away, frowning. Those two people had felt familiar, someone. Like...
...She wasn't getting anything, she sighed. She looked up to think, and paused.
A red sky hovered above her.
"...I did it?" She asked. "Sweet. I'm the best."
A sudden cold wind blew through the branches, and Yang shuddered, suddenly wishing she was wearing heavily clothing.
Stepping away from the tree and looking around, Yang noticed that the change that had happened when she had touched Qrow had remained. She walked onto a dusty dirt path, with blood stains and scorch marks covering the road, and thought for a moment.
Roads had to lead somewhere. So, in this strange metaphor dream land, maybe she'd get somewhere if she followed the road?
Wandering down it a bit, Yang thought to herself a bit, about the nature of whatever was happening here.
The sky was red. That was... Weird.
For some reason, it felt normal. Wrong, but normal.
The wrongness couldn't be understated though. Despite the contradictory idea that the sky was supposed to be red, there was just something about it that made Yang's skin crawl.
It couldn't just be a symbolism thing. Even if red did have a few negative connotations- Anger, violence, blood, the works- It was also the colour of love. Not to mention Ruby's favourite colour. She'd worn red her whole life. Yang couldn't remember ever seeing Ruby when she wasn't wearing a red hood of some sort. She had more positive memories of the colour red then negative.
In which case, why was it causing this reaction? Looking into the red sky, Yang felt an oppressive weight on her shoulders, like a cruel gaze judging her, and finding her lacking.
Lacking.
Not good enough.
Weak.
The thought thundered through her head as she stared at the dark sky above her, driving Yang to her knees for a moment. She tried to stand, shaking, and took another step, before she collapsed again.
This was some kind of metaphor, wasn't it? Something to do with weakness. Falling and failing, even as she tried to stand and move on and the fall came again because she wasn't strong enough-
She gritted her teeth, as she flared her Aura and stood again.
No.
She was not going to just fail like that. The sky was challenging her? The sky thought she wasn't good enough? She'd show the sky, she'd fight the sky! Fuck the sky!
Sprinting down the dusty road, Yang watched as it seemed to stretch on infinitely. No end in sight. Nothing but more road, surrounded by more trees, with more of a hateful red sky overhead. There was an uncomfortable silence in the air, and Yang realised she couldn't hear her own footsteps.
It was an odd silence. Not the silence of nothingness. More of a muffled silence. A silence trying to block something out.
Yang looked up for a moment to see the red sky slam down on her, bringing her to her knees again, and she flared her Aura even more. The world outside the dirt path faded slightly, and Yang felt a fire in her eyes and a light in her chest as she stood. The silence was deafening, as she continued to run.
It occurred to her, after a minute, that she didn't even know why she was running. But she put that thought out of her mind after a moment. Asshole sky thought she couldn't, she'd show it.
There was a pain in her chest, and Yang reached for it in a sudden shock. Then, shaking her head, she pulled her hand away.
A glowing, burning light came away with it.
Yang looked down at the ball for a moment, curious. What...
What was this?
Everything faded away around her. The rest of the trees vanished. The road vanished. The red sky was still there, but fainter. Out of notice, even as it surrounded Yang. As far as she was concerned, there was her, and there was the ball of light.
It took Yang a moment to realise that her Aura had disappeared. In fact, it had vanished the moment she pulled out the light in front of her. And keeping in mind that this was metaphor land...
Her head was feeling fuzzy, as the red sky surrounded her, drowning out all thought. It started to intensify again, and Yang reached for the ball with her other hand to try and concentrate.
The moment her left hand touched the ball on her right, the entirety of her left arm was engulfed in flames.
In shock, Yang let go, pulling away. The arm stopped burning instantly, even if it still felt hot. The pain faded after a moment, and Yang looked closer at the ball.
There was a faint dent in the ball. Like a hard casing had been torn away. No, not that. It was still hard. But when Yang focused on it, she noticed it expand to return to a ball-like shape. She concentrated, and it dented. She concentrated, and it returned to a fixed position.
...Huh.
Okay, metaphor dream examination time. That ball had been pulled out of her chest. Once she did so, her Aura disappeared. Ergo, she was holding her soul.
The more she concentrated on her soul, the easier it was to ignore the red sky around her making it hard to think. That probably meant something.
When she touched it in this state, her soul lashed out against her. Like some kind of defence mechanism? But at the same time, that little touch had left her soul more...
Malleable.
That was probably significant, to a degree. This was meant to be some sort of strange spirit journey thing to be able to master magic of some kind, the strength of Yang's soul was probably related to that.
Maybe if she shaped her soul-ball into a soul-bird, she'd get Qrow's weird bird power thingy.
...She was feeling really tired, and it was getting hard to think. If she was going to make a decision on what to do with the soul thing, she should do so now.
She could ignore the burning and the pain, and force her soul to be shaped how she wanted. It'd be easy. She'd just have to force herself through it, and she refused to be weak and let pain overcome her. And when she was done...
[X] She should do it. It probably wouldn't take long, and she might get bird powers out of it. She was strong enough to do it.
[X] She shouldn't. She was tired, she might make a mistake, and she didn't have a spare soul in case she broke something.