[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.
Three could handle herself. Yang had seen an Intoner fight before, and knew well enough that they could take care of themselves. And who else was the silver girl going to end up running into there? Three's Disciple? Yang had fought one before, Disciple's weren't pushovers. Three's robot? It wasn't alive to begin with, nothing of value lost.
For a moment, it occurred to Yang that there should have been robots on the top floor protecting the place. Did the girl in silver take them all out before the battle even progressed to the area where Yang had seen it?
Well, that was hardly important. What mattered was the stakes. Nora was safe and out of the way, Three could take care of herself, and while Coco was within range of some collateral damage, she was hardly going to be targeted while unconscious.
And, as much as Yang hated to admit it, she wasn't strong enough to keep going too much longer. She'd lost, and lost, and lost again. She had to run at the orphanage, she couldn't do anything but watch when her f- when what happened next happened. She got her ass kicked by the silver woman, right after messing up and almost ruining Nora's arm.
Yang had gotten Nora to the medical bay, and that was far enough from the silver woman and her charging sword that Yang didn't think there was any worry there. And as much as it pained her to say it, Coco wasn't anyone to Yang.
When had Yang ever really seen Coco, anyway? When Coco had been an enemy in Mountain Glenn, working for Five. In Atlas, in the fashion store, alongside Melanie. Someone Yang only really knew from the fact that she had been thrown out of a building by her, and had seen how Five's influence had impacted Miltia's relationship with her sister.
Nora was one thing. Yang knew Nora, and it was kind of her fault that Nora's arm had been rendered useless. But as close as she was to defeat herself right now...
Yang couldn't afford to keep fighting to protect someone who was basically a stranger, when she still didn't know if Ruby was okay. At some point, Yang had to start putting her sister first.
Rolling on the ground and pushing up from the floor, Yang heard the arcing electricity from the silver knight reach a crescendo, and acted on instinct more than anything. Throwing herself off the ground towards the stairs, Yang timed her movement just right, as a red beam of light filled the hallway, and an explosive force ripped out. The shockwave of the explosion slammed into Yang, propelling her forward and, thanks to the direction she had thrown herself in, sent her flying towards the stairs.
She hit the top of the staircase and rolled from the continued momentum, forcing her down the steps in a matter of a few seconds. Every time her leg hit the stairs, she bit on her lip to stop herself from crying out.
Suck it up, Yang. She'd felt this pain before. She could go through it now. She wasn't about to break just because of something she had been able to move past before. She could scream at how much it hurt later. For now, Yang needed to get to her sister.
Just because the attacker was in the top floor didn't mean anything. Maybe Ruby had already run into the knight in silver and was bleeding out like Nora was. Maybe the knight in silver wasn't alone. Yang remembered the White Fang terrorist in the orphanage, and she remembered the woman in red. There was already several people at work here, not to mention whatever had-
Another roar echoed, and Yang reached for her ears to block out the sound. Loud. That was the only word that came to mind to describe it. Any attempt to put it into more words was foiled by the fact that Yang could hardly hear herself think over the sound of that roar. Even as it faded away, Yang could feel it echoing in her head, as her ears rung from the sound.
She'd rolled down the stairs down a floor, Yang noticed. And she had one more she could go down here, before she had to go around and go to the next set of stairs to get back to the ground floor.
Why was there even two sets of stairs, anyway? Why not one that went all the way up? Some sort of aesthetic in terms of floor plan?
Well, no matter. What did matter, though, was the way Yang's leg was bleeding.
She needed to get down, but after the way the silver sword had sunk into Yang's flesh, and how the wound had been worsened from getting down the first set of stairs, Yang didn't want to leave it unattended. If she pulled that leg again going down the rest of the stairs, she was going to bleed out before she even got to Ruby.
Who, Yang mused, was still in a mystery location right now. Nora was in the med bay a floor up, Coco was unconscious, and Yang hadn't found anyone else who knew where the weapons room would be on the first floor.
So even when Yang did get down there, she had no guarantee she was even going to find her siste-
No, she'd find Ruby. Yang had gone through hell to save her from Five, she was going to pull through here as well. Fuck anything that tried to say differently.
But for now, she had her wound to tend to. Usually, at this point, Yang would tear away at some of her clothing and use it to bandage the wound, but...
Well, she didn't have much left, at this point. She had abandoned her jacket in the orphanage to escape from Blake, she'd torn off her sleeves to tend to Carmine, she tried to rip some of her shirt off to help Nora, and that only really left her long pants to be torn for material. Yang didn't really want to mess around with her pant leggings right now, she didn't want to see how bad the wound on her leg was and focusing enough to try and rip some material off of her leg would definitely involve seeing that wound.
But, if she didn't have any other choice-
"Use this."
Yang looked up to the source of the voice, and saw someone holding a cloth out towards Yang. Blinking, Yang jerked back on reflex, holding her fists out to prepare Ember Celic-
...Oh. Right. She didn't have her weapon anymore. Nora had one gauntlet, and the silver woman had destroyed the other. Just something else Yang had lost. Well, at the very least, she still had the ammo at her belt. If she used her Aura right, she could probably use that as a makeshift grenade.
But more importantly, people.
"Here, let me." The girl's voice said, stepping past Yang's hands and towards her leg with the green cloth. With the cloth out of focus, Yang finally got to get a look at who had found her.
"Penny?" She asked. "Ciel? What are you- Where's Ruby?"
"Ruby's okay." Penny assured Yang, as she started binding Yang's leg to stop the bleeding. "She's still in the weapons room. She was... Reluctant, but she's still there now."
"How long ago did you last check?" Yang jerked her gaze back and forth between the two. "Did you... Did you leave her alone! After-"
"It's been a while." Penny admitted. "We ran into Eris since we left her, but as far as I'm aware, she is safe."
"As far as you're aware?" Yang snarled. "Not good enough! Didn't you hear the roaring? The fighting? Why did you leave her alone instead of getting her out of here!"
"She never would have left." Penny replied, melancholic. The tone in her voice caught Yang off guard. She didn't know Ruby's new friend well, but she thought she knew her well enough to know that her current tone of voice wasn't like her. She sounded sadder, but at the same time, more sure of herself? Her voice was more consistent, at least. Like she'd gotten a lot better at dealing with people while under pressure like this.
...What the hell was Penny's story, anyway? Was there something tragic lurking in her backstory, if she looked more practiced to dealing with people while people were fighting and possibly even dying nearby?
"What are you doing up here?" Yang asked. "You can hear the fighting above us, right? The attacker's up there-"
"I know." Penny noted. "There's something I need to do, Yang. Ciel, can you take her to a lower floor for me? She seems injured."
"Hold on." Yang objected. "Even if you just left Ruby, she still considered you a friend. She's going to be sad if you went and died up there. What are you doing?"
"...Don't worry about me." She noted, sadly. "You really shouldn't."
Ciel leaned down next to Yang, slipping one arm around Yang's torso and the other beneath her knees, just under the hole in her leg. Yang winced slightly, as being picked up caused the wound to sting, but overlooked it in favour of what Penny was doing.
"Hey!" Yang called out, struggling against Ciel. "Don't just give me that answer! What's so important that you have to-"
Ciel turned, blocking Penny from view, as she started walking down the stairs. Yang's eyes went wide as the angle of view changed, and she realised that Penny was gone.
She hadn't seen any movement, and there was no way Penny was just hiding behind Ciel or anything at this point. Did she have some kind of teleportation Semblance, then? Or some kind of invisibility?
Ciel carried Yang down the next set of stairs, and around the corner, before the feelings of confusion, shock and anger in Yang simmered down enough that she found her voice again.
"What is Penny doing?" Yang asked, as Ciel kept carrying her down. "She's up there alone? I mean, Three's up there I suppose, but what does she think she's doing?"
"The right thing." Ciel replied, as she moved down the stairs with surprising speed. Yang herself hadn't been able to move this fast while carrying Nora, and even if she had been carrying Nora in a different grip, this still felt a bit too fast.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Yang asked. "If she trying to get everyone out of harms way, then?"
"That would be ideal." Ciel continued, as they reached the halfway point between the second and third floor. "But some require saving more than others. Someone only Penny can help."
"You sound like you have some faith in her." Yang grumbled. "But why do you have to be so vague? Who needs saving more than anyone el-"
Ciel suddenly stopped, as she snapped her head to the side and looked down. In a display of emotion that was more than anything Yang had seen of her in a while, there was a look of shock in her eye, as well as disappointment, that slowly simmered into annoyance.
"What happened?" Yang asked.
"My Semblance." Ciel replied, as she and Yang walked onto the second floor of the manor, with only the ground floor beneath them. "Creates area. Can be disrupted from outside. Someone broke the protection keeping Ruby in weapon room."
Yang's fists curled into a ball.
"Someone's trying to hurt Ruby?" She asked, anger simmering again. "Then why aren't we hurrying down faster?"
...In fact, why weren't they going down at all anymore? Why were they walking away from the stairs?
"What are you doing?" Yang asked, as her fist started trembling.
In response, Ciel walked forward as a door swung open for her.
"As Penny asked."
With that reply, Ciel threw Yang forward suddenly. Surprised, Yang was a moment too slow to respond, as she tried to reach out and grab the Atlesian girl as she slammed into the ground. Crying out as her leg hit the ground, Yang barely had time to process the shock of what had happened before the door slammed shut, and colour started draining out of the room.
In desperation, Yang reached for her belt, and pulled out the Dust ammunition kept at her belt. Shaking them around for a moment, Yang pushed her Aura into them, and threw them at the door-
...Oh. Right. Aura. That thing she usually had, but didn't right now.
The Dust rounds sailed through the air, eventually passing into the area where colour was being drained, at which point it's descent slowed to a crawl. Yang watched, as it moved like it was swimming through jelly.
As if time was slowing down.
Eyes wide at the realisation of what exactly Ciel's Semblance was, Yang turned to the window, just in time to see the colourlessness seep into all of the walls. They were descending into the centre last.
No, no, she didn't have time for this! Yang didn't know if she could trust anything Ciel said, not know that she was apparently with the silver knight or something, whatever her motivation for doing this to Yang was, but she had said that Ruby could be in danger. That whatever field was around her had been broken.
...Or maybe she had meant that Ruby had broken free herself, if she had trapped Ruby like she was trapping Yang. Which just raised further questions. Was Penny in on that? Was that friendship with Ruby just a ruse? Or was Penny in the dark at Ciel's actions?
More importantly, what was Ruby doing now? Escaping? Trying to help people? And where was Ciel going now? Back to Penny? To find Ruby and trap her in the building again?
She couldn't just sit around here, Yang thought. She saw the colourlessness of Ciel's Semblance wash through her, as she started to drag herself up to her feelt If she could get close to the door, she could break it down, even if it took a while. It was a steel door, but Yang's Semblance was at it's peak-
...In fact, in that case, why even go for the door?
Raising her fist, the one that wasn't broken, Yang braced herself. With a desperate cry, she brought it downward. The steel beneath her cracked and buckled, and Yang repeated this trick a second time. And then a third.
The lack of colour had something to do with time moving slower, Yang noticed, but she had been too busy in thought to keep track of by how much. How much time had passed, since Yang had started beating down on the floors? Nothing she could change, but as she brought her fist down for the first time, she wondered if Ruby was still even here.
The cracks in the ground shattered under the weight of the final blow, even as Yang had to muffle a cry as she felt pain shooting through the bones on her arm. Was she about to lose use of that hand, as well? Something to worry about later, when she wasn't falling another floor.
Feeling her back slam into the ground, and crying out in pain as it did so, Yang took a moment to clutch at her spine. Fuck, that hurt. She was out, but that hurt. She didn't feel like she had broken anything, but Yang was starting to worry. Nora had been at risk of serious medical problems if she didn't get aid immediately. How far was Yang from the same boat? Her leg wasn't as bad as Nora's arm, and Nora seemed to have a back injury of her own, but at least Nora wasn't making it worse at this current moment.
Pulling herself off the ground for a second to look around, Yang looked up to see if she could determine where she was, at this moment.
[X] The room was empty, except for her. Nobody to ask for help, nothing around, nothing but a window to look out of.
[X] There was someone standing at the door, positioned as if they were leaving, with their head turned towards Yang.