Overhead, the promise of the cloudy sky had given way to rain, and the torrents had opened up. They rattled off the roof, and where it had started to open was pouring down through the gap, hard enough that it was as if a steady curtain of water was marching forward, engulfing ground as it came on, surrounding Yang and the huge boxer that stood facing her, sluicing over his bare torso and beating off her leather duster.
Normally, Yang figured that the best offense was a good offense; she was a get in, hit first, fast, and last sort of girl. Against an opponent Shaved Head's size, though, there was a pretty good chance that could end up getting her broken in half. He was keeping his guard up, having already taken a body blow from her and no doubt confident he could take as many more as he'd need to get his hands on her.
Besides, she figured correctly that she wouldn't have long to wait.
He came in hard and fast, his right flicking out in a jab that she dodged out of the way of, her head leaning left, then right to avoid a second jab. She gave him one of her own in return, hitting his forearm on purpose to see if she could jostle his guard. He didn't budge, and he came back with a hard left that she had to jerk back from. He sneered at her, grinning smugly at what seemed to him like a reaction of weakness.
"Hey, I know you!" Yang realized. Shaved Head blinked in surprise, though he didn't lower his guard. "Browning Bullingham, the Birmingham Bull, right? I saw you fight Sullivan two years ago in Manchester!"
The Bull's lips twitched into a rictus smile, more of a parody of a grin than a real one.
"Yeah, that's when he knocked out that upper canine," she added, the gap in his yellowed teeth further prompting her memory.
Apparently it prompted his memory, too, because he came in on her hard and fast, firing punches at her like bullets. She slipped some and parried others, not trying to block the blows but deflect their force enough that they shot past her. For the most part she succeeded, taking only a glancing hit off one shoulder, and that opened up the chance for her to hit back, delivering a hard blow to his mouth that split his lip, blood mingling with the rainwater streaking down his face.
Even this didn't slow the Bull down, though, and he responded instantly, driving his right fist into Yang's gut while she was still trying to think up ways to press what she thought was her advantage. She gagged, lurching over reflexively, and he flung her back to crash into one of the machines, delivering another hard blow to her back when she hit.
The Bull stepped in, wheeling a brutal roundhouse at her head that would probably have torn it clean off, or at least made her feel like it had. Still momentarily dazed by the first two blows, Yang did the only thing she could and crumpled to the warehouse floor, letting herself drop under the punch. The machine's metal housing rattled as the roundhouse hit home, and Bullingham yanked his bleeding hand back with a yowl, having cut it on some protruding flange.
Her enemy's cry of pain seemed to energize Yang; she swiveled around on her back and thrust out with both legs, her boots slamming home into his lower belly just above the belt and the breath went out of him with a whoosh.
Since she was on the ground already, she tried to bring the Bull down to her level by kicking at the side of his knee but even after the kick he had just taken he was too well-braced to get at that way; the leg buckled a little, but he took his weight on his back foot and held firm. Then he kicked back as she was trying to get to her feet, catching her in the left side and a bolt of pain shot through her, not just from his blow but from the damage the Malachites had inflicted the day before.
The Bull reached down, his big left hand closing around her throat. He hauled Yang up, picking her clean off her feet, and slammed her up against the machine again.
"You ain't ducking again," he sneered at her, raising his right fist even as his fingers dug in, cutting off her oxygen.
Desperate times being what they were, she swung her leg up and kicked him square in the crotch.
Which accomplished nothing.
Oh, Bullingham bellowed in pain and rage, all right, sounding very much like an enraged specimen of his namesake about to gore someone. But he didn't let go; if anything his hand clamped down harder out of reflex. Vision starting to swim, Yang flicked her gaze left and right.
Maybe...
She didn't stop to analyze, just whipped her left fist out along the face of the machine, crashing her gauntlet into a valve wheel with everything she could muster.
With a shriek of wrenching metal, the valve popped off and a jet of steam shot out. It was far enough off to the side that Bullingham didn't get it full in the face, but it got enough of the right side of his head that he yowled and clutched at it, dropping Yang as he staggered back and out of the way of the steam-jet.
As soon as her boots hit the ground, Yang sprang, feeling the wrench in her side as she stretched upwards as far as she could, her hands closing around an overhead pipe. It was, in fact, the same steam pipe that fed into the valve she'd knocked off and she could feel the heat of it through her gloves. As quickly as she could, she brought her legs up, then shot them straight out in a cannon of a double thrust kick that hammered into the Bull's breastbone.
She dropped as he reeled away, then took two quick steps towards him. Instead of charging in directly, though, Yang veered right, springing up onto a concrete pedestal serving as a base for a bulbous, tank-like cylinder, then launched herself back forward and to the left, her body flying towards Bullingham. She sailed through the air, and she reached out with her right hand, hooking him around the head.
As her attempt to sweep his leg had shown, the stunt wouldn't likely have worked had Bullingham been aware and ready; Yang was a tall and strongly-built woman but the Bull could have tossed twice her body weight around without trouble. Burned, half-blinded, and staggering, though, the Bull was too off-balance to absorb the impact and Yang hauled him over, bulldogging him down hard to the warehouse floor. The crash didn't shake the walls but it felt like it to her, like she was a lumberjack taking down a hundred-foot oak.
Yang didn't hesitate for a moment, though. The Bull was still twitching, and she wasn't going to let him regain his senses and come after her again. Her hand came up, and then once, twice, she drove her gauntleted fist down into his face like a triphammer, leaving him lying still. She pulled herself free of the unconscious man's dead weight and looked around, taking stock of the situation.
"Oh, brava, brava!" rang down from above, together with slow, measured applause. "Another first-class performance by Yang Xiao Long, as she pummels into unconsciousness yet another person unlucky enough to get in her way. How many is that now, a round dozen or so?"
"Then you can be especially unlucky and be number thirteen, Torchwick!" she shouted back. He was standing in the gondola of the airship, a good twenty feet off the ground. Someone had already started the engines in preparation for flight; they belched smoke while the propellers turned lazily, not fast enough to provide any motive force. The bow lines had already been cast off, and the aft ropes were pulled taut.
"Thanks, but no thanks, sunshine. I prefer ladies with a little less aggressive taste in getting physical."
He reached out, grabbed a lever, and threw it. Though the engine noise swallowed the sound, Yang saw a motorized wheel spin into action, rapidly hauling the rope ladder up. It was already out of reach before she even realized what was happening.
Well, if she couldn't reach him, she thought, a bullet certainly could, and she reached for her revolver. He saw what she was up to, though, and sprang for the nested control housing. Her shot spanged off metal, ricocheting harmlessly away, and a second gouged into its wooden walls. The airship's U-shaped bridge protected him from this angle.
Suddenly, the starboard aft line went slack as one of Torchwick's minions released it from where it had been secured in the back right corner of the warehouse. The airship swung dangerously left, but the engines sprang to life, Torchwick firing them up just in time to keep the dirigible from swinging into the warehouse wall. It was a nice bit of flying, and Yang had to admire it even while wishing he hadn't been such a dab hand at the controls.
The roof was fully open now, the rain falling as freely as if they'd been standing in the street outside, and the only thing holding off Torchwick's escape now was the single remaining aft line. Jaune and Heyman were wrestling their own opponents to the ground, so it looked like a clean sweep of the Phantom's gang, but it all meant nothing if the man himself got away.
Yang swiveled around towards where the last aft line was anchored, and saw a red-haired man picking his way towards the spot. She made a break for it, running down the line of machines, vaulting over pipes, and otherwise running the obstacle course that made up that corner of the warehouse.
Maybe it was the assorted bangs, bumps, and bruises that she'd picked up since she'd started this business slowing her down, or maybe there just never had been enough time in the first place. Regardless, she was still a good twenty feet away when the redhead grabbed onto the end of a steel pin thrust into the center of the knot and yanked it out. The sudden shock was all it took; the knot came apart in an instant, the thick hawser slithering around and free from the wall-mounted steel bar it had been tied to. Yang covered the distance as fast as she could, but it wasn't fast enough, the end of the rope came up just above her reach. She looked up, saw it rising...and then she saw the catwalk above.
Why not? Any chance was worth trying! She didn't even think about it consciously, just spun around towards the latter leading up to the catwalk the instant she saw it. She took one step, almost more of a bound, then suddenly her head snapped back as her momentum was brought to a sharp halt before it had gotten a chance to really begin. Twisting her neck to look back, she saw that the red-haired thug had grabbed a fistful of hair. Yang started trying to twist, to wrench herself free, but before she could even get going he did it for her, raising a nasty-looking hunting knife and bringing it down with a slash, hacking off an eight-inch hank of hair.
Yang saw red. The heat may not have literally rolled off of her, but it was obviously in her eyes because the momentary sneer on the redhead's face at what he'd done was wiped away before it even had a chance to fix on his face and he stumbled back a couple of steps in stark terror. It was the look of a hapless villager realizing that he'd managed to get the full force of a raging dragon's ire aimed directly at him. Even so, what Yang did next caught him completely flatfooted.
She turned away and took off running in her original direction.
It was dangerous, since it presented her back to his knife, but he'd been flinching away and she knew it. It was unsatisfying, since the reason she had the opportunity was because of how evident it was she wanted to vent her anger over her hacked-up hair—not even accidental; he'd done that on purpose!
But it was her only chance.
She reached the ladder, not even wasting her time to stop and climb but jumping at it, grabbing the side, and swinging her body on. She re-holstered the LeMat in mid-pivot and scrambled up the rungs as fast as she could.
If the two lines had been released at the same time, she'd probably have been out of luck. But with only one line anchored, the instant it let go the way Torchwick had used the engines to balance out made the airship heel hard to its right and he was forced to correct for that, which slowed the dirigible's ascent. Those few seconds made all the difference as she pivoted to her left and went sprinting down the catwalk towards the starboard line, marginally closer to the ladder. The line slithered up like a mocking serpent, rising as the airship passed beyond the roof into the night air and continued climbing.
She wasn't going to make it.
No!
The end of the line rose past the level of the catwalk, then up past the railing. Yang took two more steps, sprang, and her boot hit the top of the rail. Steel rattled with the impact, but she didn't even have time to think about whether or not it was holding before she launched herself out into space, reaching up and out.
Got it!
Her left hand closed around the rope about a foot from the end. There was a sudden jolt as gravity reasserted itself and started to haul her down, and her hand skidded down the wet line several inches before tightening firmly enough that it held herself firm. Yang pulled, raising her body by main force, and hauled her right hand up enough to grab on as well, even as she sailed out of the warehouse into the open air.
Thick, black clouds covered the night sky; neither the moon nor the stars could find a gap. The only illumination came from the city itself, electrics and gaslight spilling out and sparkling through the pouring rain. Directly beneath was the black ribbon of the Thames, easier to see by what was not there, the absence of manmade light, than by any actual sign of its presence. Torchwick seemed to be following its course, heading east, perhaps to avoid flying over any place that might have weapons they could direct against him, or perhaps just because it was easier to navigate by landmarks on the ground when there were none in the sky. Going east to the North Sea and then turning south would minimize the amount of time spent over land, presuming the Netherlands were indeed his destination. Every turn sent the rope Yang clung to swinging through the air like she was the weight on a pendulum; she gritted her teeth and hung on for dear life.
But just hanging on wasn't going to do her any good; she certainly wasn't going to just dangle there all the way across the Channel.
There was only one thing to be done: suck it up and start climbing. The longer she waited, the more tired her arms were going to get from hanging on, so there was no point in delaying. She let go with her lower hand, then strained upwards, reaching while she hauled herself up with the remaining hand. One. She'd gained about a foot of distance. Release. Pull. Reach. Two. She did it again, gaining another foot. Release. Pull.
She was just reaching out for a third time when the dirigible made another course correction. The line swayed, Yang's own weight on the end making it swing again, and the sudden motion made her miss her grab. She swung out, dangling, her entire weight being supported by her right hand as it swung out into the open air. Pain screamed through her fingers as she clamped down with everything she had, tore through her arm, shoulder, and up along her side, but she somehow held on in desperation. She swung back around as the airship's course straightened out, though, and managed to grab on with her left hand. She let out a sigh of relief; a drop into the Thames from this height might or might not kill her instantly, but surviving the fall, then getting out of the stinking, polluted water safely in the dead of night wasn't something she wanted to bet her neck on.
Ruby had already had one miracle survival. It seemed like pushing it for the family to ask for two.
No, there was no other way out of this than up. Yang started hauling herself up again, getting high enough with another couple of pulls that she could bring her feet into play, clamping her ankles and lower legs around the rope. This gave her extra stability, taking some of the the weight off her arms and shoulders. Yang started to climb again, confident that she'd be able to make it up all the way now that her grip on the rope was secure. It wouldn't take more than a few minutes to make it to the deck, and then—
Suddenly, a beam of light stabbed down from the gondola, illuminating her like she was a diva about to perform her crowning aria.
"Well, well, what do we have here?"
Yang squinted up, trying to see what was happening, staring into the light as the rain sluiced down over her face. Torchwick hadn't been flying with running lights for obvious reasons, so it was a good thing that the sudden flare hadn't startled her enough to make her lose her grip. While the glare made fine details impossible to see, she could make out the silhouette of her quarry holding what she assumed was a radiant, a Dust-powered torch using a heated filament to produce light.
She didn't know what he was doing there. Her best guess was that since he'd had a stretch of straight-line flying, he'd used the opportunity to lock the wheel and haul in the trailing lines. He'd seen a shadow on the end of hers, and that was that.
"It seems like I've managed to snare myself a stowaway. I really thought you'd be busy folding Jergens into a box for giving you that little trim. I suppose that's what happens when I trust a groom to do a barber's job." He paused, apparently taking the time to look down at her more closely. "But no, there's a nice little chunk taken out of the back, isn't there?"
"Did you seriously think that I'd care more about the man who damaged my hair than the one who nearly killed my sister?"
"Hey, for a few extra seconds' delay in the middle of a fight it seemed like a reasonable bet. I mean, you're not really the brightest candle in the chandelier when that temper has hold of you."
Yang's temper had apparently heard enough, since she let go of the rope with her right hand, drew, and fired in a single smooth motion worthy of an American gunslinger. Unfortunately, Billy the Kid and Annie Oakley rarely had to fire a revolver into a bright light while clinging to a rope being towed from a moving dirigible in a downpour, and while one of her shots clanged off something metal the best the four bullets she fired achieved was to get Torchwick to fling himself back to safety.
"And that," he called, "just goes to prove it, since I don't think you can climb faster than I can cut."
The rope was thick, so it would take him a while to hack through it, depending on what he had for a blade. A couple of minutes, maybe? If she was lucky? Was it enough time? Indoors and fresh, sure, she could scramble up the rope in time. Swinging in midair, nearing the end of her strength, the rain sheeting down around her, streaming across her face and in her eyes, there was no chance. She couldn't even shoot Torchwick to stop him; he'd ducked behind the engine housing and there was nothing that a bullet could do to anything she could see. Of course, even if she did have a clean shot, the odds of hitting anything smaller than the airship's hydrogen-filled envelope weren't high.
And then Yang laughed.
Firing a bullet into the gasbag wouldn't do anything. It wouldn't even cause a fatal leak. But firing something else...
Yang carried the LeMat rather than a newer, more accurate or easier-to-use gun for two reasons. One, its nine-round cylinder made it easier to fight without having to reload, and two, it had a second barrel that was chambered for a shotgun shell. "It's a gun, and it's also another gun!" had been Ruby's enthusiastic comment.
She didn't keep that barrel loaded with one of her impact rounds, though, or even a normal shotgun shell. She used her scatterguns for that, and an extra would just be redundant. Instead, the LeMat held something that Ruby had put together for her.
A Dust cartridge.
Unlike the cobalt Dust cartridge Ruby had used in Steel Thorn, though, this one was a reliable, proven model, a type used by elite military forces in several nations, not just courageous tinkerers.
Yes, maybe through the wind and the rain and the dark Yang couldn't reliably hit something small, but the airship's envelope actually was her target. The crimson Dust shell shot like a blazing comet from the gun and punched through the goldbeater's-skin fabric.
The history of aeronautics held many examples of what could go wrong when hydrogen gas was misused. There had been a number of fatalities resulting from incidents with hydrogen and fire. Setting off an incendiary device inside a dirigible's envelope, then, had reasonably expected results.
Yang was actually surprised that the whole thing didn't simply explode, but the actual effect was no less dramatic. The rear half of the airship was immediately consumed in flames, like an orange flower suddenly blossoming in the night, belching out rising torrents of smoke. The hungry flames began eating their way forward at once, consuming the envelope's skin like a wick as the fire reached for more and more fuel. The metal framework stood out like a skeleton's ribs, as if the airship had been transformed into a ghostly monster with a heart of fire.
They started descending at once, the lifting power of the airship being rapidly consumed. It wasn't the uncontrolled plummet that an explosion would have caused; rather, the drip was swift but steady. As more and more of the hydrogen was consumed the rate of descent increased, while all the while the engines continued to roar, pushing the dirigible forward on its fixed course.
Yang tore her eyes away from the spectacle above and looked down. They were still over the Thames; the wind hadn't pushed them off-course. It was coming up fast, too. Since the trailing rope hung several dozen feet below the gondola, she was going to hit first, before the airship did.
At the last moment Yang let go of the rope and dropped, falling the last few feet on her own. She hit the water cleanly, slicing in feet-first rather than being dragged sideways into and through the water as she would have had she hung on.
Darkness engulfed her. The black of the rainy night was nothing compared to the dark of the river, and she was relieved she'd made the choice to drop in on her own; had she been pulled in at an angle it would have been all too easy to lose track of which way was up. Even so, she found it easier to close her eyes, so her brain would stop trying to fight its way through the inky depths and she could concentrate on what she felt.
Yang kicked her feet, trying to rise, but instead found herself plunging down, her momentum and the weight of her clothing giving her more downward force than she could overcome. A moment later, she felt her boots hit the muddy bottom of the river.
The duster was the main problem: it was both heavy and bulky, so that it might have been an anchor around her body. Holding her breath as best she could, she let herself drift back to the bottom, working on tearing her way out. Yang's lungs burned as she fought to get free, but found herself getting stuck on her scatterguns. Her side pulsed in pain as she yanked off the straps and buckles of her gun rigs, letting them float free out of her slashed sleeves, and with the ironware removed she was able to wrestle her arms through the coat's shoulder holes. She then flexed her knees, crouching as best she could, and pushed off sharply from the bottom. She shot upwards and immediately started kicking, reaching with her arms, and burst up through the surface into the open. She sucked in air with a huge whoop while she looked around and got her bearings.
The burning dirigible had followed its course straight down into the water, ending up about a hundred yards east of her. By now the hydrogen had been consumed, but the skin was still burning, and the conflagration had spread to the wooden gondola, brilliant orange streaks lighting up the river and sending great gouts of smoke up to be chopped apart by the rain. She looked left and right, estimating how far it was to the nearer bank—about the same as it was to the airship—while she treaded water, conserving her remaining strength.
Which was when she heard the splashing.
Yang shouldn't have been surprised. After all, she'd survived the crash without adding any significant injury; the descent simply hadn't been swift enough to count as "falling from the sky." If Torchwick hadn't actually been on board the airship when it hit, and if he'd bailed out early enough that none of the wreckage actually landed on him, then it wasn't actually unnatural that he, too, had come out of it alive.
It still amazed her. The guy's got more lives than a cat, she thought.
Common sense said she should get out of the water, get to shore before the weight of her remaining wet clothes combined with the strain of too many fights, chases, and the fall to drag her down.
Having dangled on a rope off an airship while sailing across London, then blown up that airship while still hanging from it, it was probably a little late for common sense to enter the equation in her pursuit of Torchwick. It took her only a few seconds to set off towards the wreck.
Under ordinary circumstances, Yang was a very strong swimmer, but these circumstances were hardly ordinary. The steady rain messed with her visibility, and the constant splashing of it hitting the river made it hard to pinpoint where, exactly, Torchwick was. She moved steadily through the water towards the burning wreckage, letting the firelight make for her best guide to the general direction she needed to go.
As she drew near, though, it was easy to spot Torchwick. The ruddy light from the fire washed across him, reflecting off his white coat as he flailed in the water, painting it almost the same color as his hair. He'd lost his hat and it was evident from his desperate struggles that his coat was hampering him severely, he'd been injured in the crash, or he was just a poor swimmer as so many Londoners were.
Two days ago, Yang would have been happy to watch him drown. Indeed, the only real conflict would have been trying to decide if she wanted him to flounder, weaken, and be slowly dragged down, or if she preferred to shove him under with her own hands.
But that was two days ago.
Yang sighed, then set out towards him. She grabbed the back of his coat collar, which just made him thrash harder.
"Quit struggling, you idiot, or I'll knock you cold."
Torchwick apparently realized at once that she intended a rescue, for he obeyed immediately, letting himself fall limp. That made things a lot easier for Yang, as she turned her body and began sidestroking towards what she thought was shore, hauling the thief along behind her.
It put her on edge, though, too: his quick response suggested strongly that his thinking was still clear, and a clear-headed Torchwick was dangerous. Once he'd used her to get him to shore, something that cost her energy and him almost nothing, he'd surely seize on the first possible chance to break away if he could. At least he didn't still have that dangerous cane, having either lost it in the crash or let it go in order to free up a hand for swimming. Still, she was sure that he still had any number of potentially nasty tricks up his sleeves. Probably literally.
They made reasonable progress, the sidestroke taking less effort than a faster swim would have done. Trying to keep from inhaling any of the filthy river water was the main problem; Yang didn't want to end up in the bed next to Ruby with an infection. When she got back home, she was going to burn these clothes and then spend the next two hours in the bath. And just thinking about how long it would take to get her hair clean...
Her hair, which would now have to be cut and re-styled due to the chunk Torchwick's thug had taken out of it.
Which, she suddenly realized, said thug had almost certainly been doing on Torchwick's orders, as a distraction for her. That was the only way to interpret what he'd shouted down to her from the airship.
Shoving him under to drown started to look like a good idea again.
"Meh, we're almost out of here, anyway."
They were in fact almost to shore, and she knew she had to act fast if she was to forestall any attempt at escape by the Phantom Gentleman. Yang rolled over onto her back, at the same time pulling Torchwick up so she could get her left arm around his neck. Either she'd caught him off-guard or he really had been exhausted or hurt because it took almost no time to bring her other hand into play and make certain he was unconscious. Kicking hard, she managed to haul his limp weight the last ten feet and hauled him up to the muddy bank.
She then very methodically stripped him down to his underwear, ripped up his sodden trousers for rags, and used the pieces to truss him like a Christmas goose before finally letting herself collapse on her back on the bank at last. The rain pelted down onto her, but she was too exhausted even to try and drag herself to shelter.
By the time Jaune and a police wagon caught up to them, the fire had burned itself out, and the water of the Thames had closed over the Phantom Gentleman's last trick.
~X X X~
A/N: Yeah, I know, Yang and Torchwick really shouldn't be able to shout insults back and forth over the noise of the engines; it's pure hot-blooded dramatic license on my part. Or maybe Torchwick's engineer just invented really quiet engines; after all, I already had to dance around Jaune not really noticing the sound of the airship flying overhead in a previous chapter, so my dramatic license is at least internally consistent!
"Goldbeater's-skin" does not mean that they made the airship envelope from the skin of Faunus laborers. Probably. It's a parchment made from the outer membrane of a calf's intestine and, yeah, it really was used for dirigibles.
...I bet Annie Oakley actually could have made that shot. The woman was kinda awesome.
Yang's LeMat is a real gun, by the way. It shows up in a lot of historical fiction because the concept is extremely cool. (The execution thereof, somewhat less so. Two-in-one weapons really work better on paper than in reality, as a general rule.)