[X] Run to the medbay.
Coco stumbled to her feet as the silver clad girl stepped forward, blade at the ready. Her gaze wasn't directly on Coco, but rather, tilted. While the older girl was definitely in the attackers gaze, her helmet's angle seemed to be enough that she could also see Yang, out of the corner of her eye, as she waited for whatever attack that Yang could be working on.
Coco pushed herself, as Yang planned out her move.
Get Three?
If only it was that simple. While having an Intoner in on the fight would be great, the fact that Three wasn't already here spoke for itself, for the most part. Coco clearly knew what Three could turn the tables, and knew where she was, but the fact of the matter was that it wasn't that easy.
Whoever the hell this attacker is, they were good. Good enough to be beating up a Beacon student rather easily, and Yang knew where she had seen that red lightning before. That was the same lightning that had been arcing through Nora, zapping every now and again.
Which meant this was the same person who had attacked Ren, Nora and Peri earlier, and broken them down so easily. She didn't see anything that would hint at the attacker being concerned about any sort of damage, which didn't bode well at all. So, all in all, a fighter that couldn't be underestimated.
At what point in a fight does someone get the time to get away from a stronger opponent, who was willing to cripple someone to keep them still?
Getting to Three wasn't an option. Especially not since Coco had said it out loud, so this attacker would know what Yang was trying for.
As the silver clad woman raised a blade, Yang let out a scream, charging forward. The girl in silver spins around, swinging her blade, and Yang smiled. Perfect.
Her gauntlet fired to the side, throwing her into the wall. With one hand on Nora lost and a sudden collision into the wall, the orange haired girl slipped off. Spinning on the spot, Yang caught Nora just before she hit the ground, and Nora screamed as her ruined arm slams into Yang's grip.
There was a flash of red before Yang could react to that, and as she turned around, the silver girl brought her blade down on the two of them. Yang shot her arm up. Her Aura buckled, and Yang could feel it approaching breaking point, but it was better than it coming down on Nora.
Nora throws her hand up, and fired the Ember Celica around her hand. The dust shot slams into the silver helmet, as the attacker raised her forearm a second too late to block the projectile. It wasn't enough to do any damage, from what it looked like, but the true benefit of the attack wasn't in the Aura damage.
A leather strap is thrown around the girls head, and she's pulled away, as Coco snarled.
"Don't you have bigger problems?" She spits out, her voice odd. She was trying to keep her voice level, but there was a tone of desperation in her voice. The handbag in her hand was tugged down, trying to pull the figure in silver away from Yang and Nora. Yang herself turned from the battle again, and started running again.
Coco cried out again, before a hand grabbed the back of Yang's hair. Letting Nora slip from her grasp, Yang tried to take a moment to make sure she would land on her good arm at least, but her effort was interrupted when she was thrown into the ground. Her Aura couldn't take much more of this, she knew, but Nora was out of her hands now.
She'd gotten past the silver attacker, at the very least. Nora should be able to get to the medical bay from here, as long as Yang made sure that silver attacker didn't get past her.
The hand pulls upwards again, as Yang is pulled by her hair into the air. She turns her hand back and fires Ember Celica into the other girls stomach. The silver armour blocks the blast, and a moment later, a red light flashed out as lightning shot into Yang's Aura.
At the start of the year, this would have been enough to break Yang's Aura. Even with all the training she had done throughout the year to improve on it, to make herself stronger, it was barely enough to hold on. Her Aura felt fragile, like she was a child just having it unlocked for the first time. Except even then, the child would have viewed it as amazing and new. Right now, Yang could only feel the lack.
Her Aura was dangerously low. But that meant more than just the fact that she keep fighting for long.
In this moment, she was strong.
Her elbow jerked back, into the armoured figures chest, and Yang felt the grip on her hair loosen as the figure behind her stumbled. It took a brief moment of Aura manipulation to stop protecting her hair, and as she jerked forward, Yang felt it rip out of her head as she escaped from her opponent.
It was almost funny. At the start of the year, throwing her hair away like that would have been the last thing Yang would have ever wanted to do. But with everything that was going on, Yang had almost forgotten about how much she cared about it.
Spinning around, Yang turned towards the armoured figure and punched them in the helmet. Her hand stung at the impact against steel, but the attacker was still reeling from the surprising strength behind the elbow, and that let Yang push the initiative.
She didn't have a plan. Not really. She just needed to keep her opponent occupied for as long as possible, until Nora was in the medical bay. Her comment earlier had made mention of something she needed to do to keep Nora out of the fight, so once Nora was out of the way and recovering, then the silver armoured attacker should accept that it wasn't some kind of trap.
But, beyond that? This figure in silver had waltzed into the Schnee manor while several other terrorist attacks were going down, and left a trail of blood and destruction behind them. Even if Nora did get away, Yang wasn't going to forgive this woman. Not for putting Ruby in danger. Not for, presumably, working with people willing to burn down an orphanage and-
Yang's train of thought made her hesitate again, as she tried to avoid remembering the scene again, and that moment of hesitation was costly. Red lightning arced out from the girl, and Yang fired Ember Celica at the last second to propel herself away, as the girl flashed away from Yang again. The energy tore into the empty space in front of Yang's face, vicious enough that it would have depleted Yang's Semblance for sure. The floor and walls were marked with electric burns again, overlaid by the bullet holes from Coco's gun.
The figure in silver looked at Yang, and Yang looked back. Behind the knight wrought in silver, Coco was stumbling to her feet again, clutching at her side. There was a cut in her shirt there, with blood dripping out of it, and even if she tried to maintain some kind of composure, Yang could see the pain in her eyes.
The helmeted figure held out a sword, as she stepped towards Yang.
"Why are there so many of you here?" She asked, frustrated. "There's three Schnee manors within an hour of each other, and yet there's so many of you running around in this one specifically, making this take longer."
Yang held up her own fist, the one unprotected by Ember Celica, in response.
"It's almost like karma." She mused out loud. "Be a shitty person, get a lot of people stopping you from doing shitty things."
"Oh, someone thinks she's fucking clever." The girl in armour responded. "Well, why don-"
"Look..." Coco wheezed out, as she stepped forward. "At... Me..."
The silver knight turned her head back, even as she kept her sword trailed on Yang, to look at the Beacon student.
"You're up already?" She asked. "Just stay down already. Your gun was an alright threat, but I could have you on your knees again before that little handbag of yours transforms again. Do me a favour and stay a non-factor-"
"Look at me!" Coco roared, as she raised her hand. The sound of tolling bells filled the halls, and as the girl with the red lightning turned the rest of her body to face Coco, Yang took a moment to look back at Nora.
She was stumbling, crawling, and kept looking back. Ember Celica, the one on Nora's wrist, was positioned so Nora could just collapse and fire it back if she saw the need. But she was close to the door. She was nearly safe.
Down the end of the hall, past Nora, there were bullet holes from Coco's gun. The tolling bell sound was coming from them as well, and as Yang watched, they started glowing.
Oh. She remembered this. She had seen it, back when Coco was her enemy, working with Five. Yang wasn't sure exactly how it worked, but it had something to do with Coco's Semblance. It was as if there was something in her bullets, and when she activated her Semblance...
Coco clicked her fingers, and Yang turned back to the battle to see the walls of the hallway glowing as well. Coco held her finger and her thumb apart slightly, slowly closing in on each other, as she started down the silver knight.
"Don't you dare overlook me." She snarled, as the walls started creaking and buckling. "My name is Coco Adel. First year Beacon student. Fashionable enough that an Intoner picked me out of a crowd, and useful enough to her to bring my partner under her thumb as well. I don't care who you are. Look at m-"
There was a flash of red light, and the woman in silver surged forward. The red lightning arcing off of her back shot out far enough that Yang took a step back on reflex, as she pushed herself forward and slammed into Coco with her full body mass. There was a sickening crack, as Coco and the woman were sent flying, and Coco slumped against the wall as she hit it.
The Beacon student stopped moving, but her Semblance didn't. The glowing walls continued to creak and groan for a moment, as Yang rushed forward. Her Semblance was in overdrive, and with all the power behind her kicking off the ground, Yang closed the distance just as the walls started to collapse. The glow pulled towards itself, the walls ripping out of the hall and into the space filling it as Yang surged through it, moving to hit the girl in silver in the face.
There was a flash of red, and an electrifying impact, and Yang felt her Aura shatter. Her head was flying back, even as her forward momentum continued sending her forward, and Yang found herself spinning in the air from the force of the punch to the face. Her legs hovered above her head for a moment, and then the sword came down.
Yang screamed, as the silver blade pierced through the scar on her leg, and she collapsed as he stirred the spear and spread the pain through her leg.
"Man, this must suck so much!" Dito laughed. "Oh, don't worry, you'll live. I'll just wait to give you the medical treatment her and there, leave you crippled for months. I want to see you completely helpless, Yellow. Unable to help yourself, unable to help others, not even able to do anything when I walk in and decide I want to see your blood painting the floor whenever I want..."
No, no, this wasn't happening again! Surging upwards, Yang sat up as she swung Ember Celica, firing the shotgun gauntlet at the now unarmed figure in armour. A silver hand was held up in response, catching the Dust projectile, before a foot kicked into Yang's head and put her on the ground again. Yang could taste blood in her mouth, and the figure in silver swore as she put her foot on Yang's hand.
"Maybe you'll learn." She said to herself, before red electricity flew off her, pushing her downward.
Yang screamed, as she felt the bones in her hand break. No, that couldn't be right, that was the hand Ember Celica was on, that would mean-
Yang looked to the side, as the silver boot twisted in place for a moment, scattering fragments of metal on the now shattered shotgun gauntlets.
With her work done, the armoured figure reached for her sword again, and ripped it out of Yang's leg. Yang screamed, and reached for her leg. Her broken hand slapped into it enough to shift bone, and Yang screamed again in pain from that.
"If you know what's good for you." The girl in silver said, as she walked away. "You'll stay down. I'm done with you. It's time I got a chance to see her again."
Red lightning erupted from around her, dancing around the silver armour more and more, until there was more of the crimson energy circling her form and Aura then there was visible armour past it. She walked away from Yang, sword in hand, as she looked to the left.
"Third one, then?" She asked, echoing Coco's words from earlier. There was a tone in her voice that Yang took a moment to place. She had been angry for most of this fight, but in this moment, in this instant, there was something more in that voice. A tint of sorrow, overwhelmed by almost toxic levels of hate. Yang could almost feel the killing intent expressed in those words, as the sword seemed to coil with more and more red electricity.
She was after Three, then. And Yang had only seen a bit of her Semblance, but she was willing to bet that, whatever the current build-up was, it was a prelude to something big.
The devastation on the front gate and door came to mind for Yang, and she realised that the attacker was about to blast her way through.
Turning to Coco's body for a moment, Yang saw her sitting there, immobile, before she looked back towards the girl in silver.
Her leg was messed up, again, but it wasn't anything too bad. Yang could likely power through it if she had to. She'd be tearing her muscles apart and prolonging her own recovery up until it gave entirely, but right now, she could do something, even if it was just one thing.
The knight in silver raised her crimson blade, and pointed it at the door. Acting fast, Yang made her decision.
[X] Interfere. That attack, as it was, could end up hitting Coco. Slam into the knight, disrupt the blast, and hope that whoever was in Three's room noticed enough of what happened next to interfere.
[X] Run. Forget Coco, forget Three, forget everything. Yang was out of Aura and wouldn't be able to move for long, and she needed to get to Ruby again. Abandon the battle to go back down and find her.