[X] Taiyang, her father, who had left the guest manor to help as soon as he heard the news.
The van was simultaneously on the large side, but also cramped, Yang vaguely noticed. Sure, there was still room in the front passenger seat, but Yang had left that clear so that she could sit in the back with all the distraught children.
She was surprised that her father had been driving the first Schnee van to arrive on the scene, but now wasn't the time to question it. She could ask after they got back to the Schnee manor, and someone else was making sure the kids were okay.
Might even take a while after that. Yang wasn't sure she wanted these kids out of her sight, until Two got back. They probably didn't know many people at the mansion, and even if Yang hadn't seen them too much, she was still more of a pillar of stability than anyone else.
"Yang?" A voice asked, tugging at the sleeve of Yang's shirt. She looked down, at the girl pulling for her attention. Carmine was looking up at her, a sad look in her eyes and her fox ears drooping slightly.
"What is it?" Yang asked, trying to keep the tone light. They were already sad enough, these kids. The least Yang could do was try to cheer them up.
"You said something to Winter when you came out of the building." The fox Faunus noted. "About the White Fang. And you were fighting as you were coming out."
"It's fine." Yang quickly assured her, but Carmine continued on regardless.
"Someone did that on purpose, didn't they?" She asked. There was a hollow look to her eyes, and one that Yang didn't like. "Again. Yang, why does this keep happening? Did I do something wrong?"
"You didn't do anything wrong." Yang immediately rejected the idea, pulling the girl into a hug to try and reassure her. "The White Fang girl, she's the one in the wrong. Not you."
"But this is the second time." Carmine muttered under her breath. "F-First everything burns down and it's j-just me who gets out, and now everything h-here is burning and I'm s-safe but Tommy and Nightingale and everyone isn't and everything in there is gone-"
"You didn't do anything wrong." Yang repeated, firmer this time. "I know it sucks, but don't think it's your fault, if something bad happens. Sometimes, people just want to hurt people, and you can't stop it."
It wasn't her, that was wrong. This was the second time some asshole terrorist had burnt down somewhere where Carmine lived- Where all of these children lived- And they hadn't done anything to deserve it. If anything, it was the world that was wrong.
"Just wait." Yang continued. "You're going to be fine, everyone will be fine, and the girl who did this is going to pay for it. She'll get whats coming to her, and everything will be better."
"That's what everyone said before." Carmine replied. "The Kingdoms were safer than outside. We wouldn't have to be scared inside Atlas. Everything would be okay. And now this is happening. It's going to keep happening-"
"I won't let it." Yang interrupted. "Neither will Two. Or Two's sisters, or the Schnee, or Atlas. There's a lot of people who don't want this to happen again. Because the White Fang are the people who did something wrong, and people aren't going to let them get away with it."
Carmine looked up at Yang, and Yang smiled softly.
"That's what a Hunter's supposed to do, isn't it?" She asked. "Help the people who need help. Stop the people who need to be stopped. Take what's wrong in the world, and make it right. And believe me, I'm going to make this right."
At some point, enough had to be enough. Yang would be the first to admit that she was a thrill seeker, at least when she was well off enough that she could focus on thrills, but you'd need to be some kind of masochist to just be fine after everything she'd seen.
The mercenaries attacking and burning down that town. Five kidnapping Ruby. Blake robbing the Dust store and leaving Yang hospitalised. And now Blake was here, burning down a mansion with the same orphans the mercenaries had left behind.
Was it just something about Yang? Was she just some kind of bad luck charm, who kept causing disasters with the people she was close to? Did these situations just follow her around?
Well, enough. She wasn't just gonna sit aside and let stuff like this keep happening, not when it kept hurting people around her. She couldn't do it alone, not without fucking up and hurting people worse in the process, but she couldn't sit aside and do nothing.
The White Fang had a hand in this? Alright then. Looks like she was back to helping Four fight the White Fang. Crush the entire organisation, so they couldn't keep hurting people close to Yang. Blake, specifically, was going down. This was the second time Yang had fought her, and what she had done here was unforgivable.
The van stopped in traffic, and Yang looked towards the drivers seat to see her father looking back. There was a faint smile on his lips, as he observed Yang for a moment, before he threw his own effort at consoling the children into the ring.
"Don't worry about it, too much." He said to the van full of kids. "You're still here, aren't you? Then things can still get better, can't they?"
"...'pose..." Carmine eventually sighed, looking down again.
Not much progress, but at least she wasn't blaming herself. Or at least, nor vocally. Yang knew better to think that one conversation would have been enough to solve the problem, but at least it had been worked on.
"What's holding up traffic?" Yang asked suddenly, trying to shift the discussion over to a less depressing topic.
"Not sure." Taiyang replied. "I'm not seeing any cause for it. And we're on a highway, so there's probably just something holding up an exit that's causing a delay."
Yang sighed, as she leaned back. "Have you told the Schnee that we're on the way?"
"I'm not getting any signal here." Taiyang replied. "I'm guessing the line must be busy. Tried calling Ruby as well, to tell her what happened, but she must be busy."
"She did say she was gonna work on weaponcrafting with her new friend." Yang mused. "You know how Ruby gets when she gets too into things."
"Ruby?" Asked one of the kids in the back of the van.
"My sister." Yang explained. "I'm not sure any of you have met her. You'll like her, she's fun."
"What's she like?" Carmine asked, from next to Yang.
The older girl smiled. "She-"
A blinding light flickered for a moment, and the thundering sound of steel rending apart followed a moment later.
Eyes wide, Yang looked towards the front of the car, in time to see the wall of fire bursting forward, throwing steel wreckages of other cars away as it surged through the highway. She heard her father swear, as he suddenly reached or the gearbox and threw the car into reverse, backing up a moment too late. A wave of heat struck the van, and with an explosive force, the vehicle was thrown into the air.
There was the sound of crunching metal, as Taiyang ripped his way out of the car and immediately threw himself out of and under it, but Yang couldn't hear much over the sudden screams from all the orphans around her.
What the hell was going on now?
Another attack? Fucking really? Yang hadn't even really left the scene of the last one!
The falling van suddenly stopped, and slowly lowered to the ground. The back door of the van was ripped off a moment later, and Yang's father was sitting on the other side.
"Time to go." He decided, reaching in to start helping the closest orphan out of the van. It didn't take long to get the boy out, but there were a lot of kids in the car.
Kids who had just seen their second home in less than a year burn down, and were now being attacked again. For what reason? Why would kids be targeted? There was no need for them to be a target, or for Yang or her father to be a target.
Unless someone just wanted to finish the set.
Growling to herself, Yang ripped her seat belt off, and surged towards the front of the van. She vaguely heard her father call her name behind her, but ignore it, as she looked forward at the cause of this newest lot of chaos.
There were people scrambling away from burnt wrecks on the burning road in front of Yang, which made it all the more obvious which silhouette was at fault when it start confidently strutting out of the flames. Details were hard to make out, as the fires kept bending just right to keep her face in the shadows, but the short red gown was visible enough, and the clicking sound of her heels echoed out for a moment.
"And who the hell are you, then?" Yang called out, Ember Celica at the ready. "Because I'm starting to get real sick of random people fucking with my life."
A chuckle slipped from the woman's lips.
"Random people, you say?" The woman asked, her voice keeping a weirdly sensual tone to it. "Oh, you must know nothing about me. But I know so much about you, Yang Xiao Long."
At the mention of her name, Yang glared at the newcomer with narrow red eyes, and her Aura flared up around her.
"Explain." She growled.
The other woman didn't respond, as she strutted forward more. She lifted a hand up, in front of her chest, and clicked her fingers.
All at once, all the fire around Yang surged at her, like a bathtub with the plug pulled out. Yang responded by flaring her own Aura, letting the explosive force push back the flames for a second, before she charged in.
The woman in red lifted a hand, letting embers fall from it as she did so, and one of the ruined cars on the highway between them surged into actions, the molten steel ripping away from that which hadn't burnt yet, and rose to block Yang's path.
She curled back a fist to send surging forward into it, but before she could, it crashed back into the ground. Standing atop of it, fist smashing downwards, Taiyang took a moment to look back at Yang.
"Switch!" He called. "Make sure everyone can get out of here!"
A jet of flame suddenly shot at him, and he raised a hand to meet it. The flame shot into his palm and was redirected, shooting back out in a wide cone-shaped spread in front of him. He grunted in exertion, and as he fought against the flow of the flame to move forward, Yang retreated.
She shouldn't just charge into this. Not until everyone was safe, at least. It only took a second to get back to the ruined van, and a second more to pull the last of the kids out of the wreckage.
"Is everyone okay?" Yang asked, looking between them. "Is anyone hurt? Broken bones, bleeding, burns, anything like that?"
There wasn't a real reply, apart from a few muffled no's from a few of the kids, who were mostly watching Yang's dad.
The fires were surging around him, and Yang could see whenever a few streams of flame managed to catch him by surprise, but for the most part, he was doing his best to repel and reflect the fire.
Yang hadn't seen him fight very often. Not seriously, at least. Sure, he sparred here and there, but the only time he had reason to fight all out was when Ruby had been kidnapped, and Yang had never really seen him in action.
He was good, she had to admit, but he was also out of practice. Well, maybe that wasn't the right word for it. He was a Beacon graduate, but he hadn't grown from there. Qrow used to joke that he'd be able to kick her father's ass, and he never really denied it.
He was able to redirect all those flames that were striking him with his Semblance, but that was just in theory. In practice-
The jets of fire suddenly exploded, and even as most of the surging flame was pushed away, he stumbled back from a blast near his ear which had gotten through his guard. The woman in red swept her hand to the side, and a knife manifested in the flames, suddenly shooting out towards him. Too solid for his Semblance to deflect, the knife stabbed Taiyang in the chest, and detonated, throwing him to the ground.
"Run." Yang said softly, turning around and gesturing for the kids to do that. The orphans took a moment to react, but once they comprehended her words, started scuttling away. Yang stayed at the back of the group, urging them along, looking back to ensure that no attacks were going to strike at them-
A trio of arrows soared through the air, and Yang fired Ember Celica to the side to propel herself through the air, jumping in front of the first of them as it smashed against her Aura. The momentum behind it, the force, was more than she had expected, and she was thrown back as her Aura strained against the pressure.
As she watched, the other two arrows soared through the air. Carmine cried out at the head of the group, as an arrow pierced through whatever Aura she had awoken and stabbed into her hand. She doubled over in pain, as the arrow disappeared, and her head just into the path of the second arrow.
Her screams intensified, as the arrow soared past, and she clutched at the bleeding remnant of what had once been her ear.
"Not so fast, Yang." The woman in red chuckled, her low voice somehow carrying all the distance between them. "I've organised so much to finally have the chance to meet you. It'd be such a shame if you left without even learning my name."
Yang watched as her father finally got to his feet, and circled around to the front of the woman. He was panting, slightly, and after a moment where he seemed to tire, burst into action and spun around, throwing a chunk of metal at the woman in red.
The metal burnt away and disintegrated before it hit the woman, who responded by sending him another burst of fire. He leaped out of the way, and started tracking the movements again as the flames darted all around the sky around the highway.
Gritting her teeth, Yang looked from Carmine to the woman in red.
She couldn't leave. Fine. After that display, she didn't feel like running anyway.
[X] ...But the kids were still in the path of danger. Stay back, watch Taiyang fight, and stick near the children to make sure the woman didn't attack them.
[X] Her father was on the losing end of this fight, and Yang wasn't sitting it out. The kids didn't need to stay, and they'd be safe enough if they ran while Yang fought.