"You really have to do that, Junior? You know I could always just knock her out again if she starts swinging."
"Yes, I do know that. And I also know you'd happily let her wail on me first before stepping in. Again."
"Now why would I ever do that?"
"Because you're an ass."
"Okay, fair."
There are two things Yang Xiao Long notices when she regains consciousness.
First, that her jaw is sore. Second, that her hands are bound.
It doesn't take her brain very long to reboot and start trying to figure out what the hell is going on. She has always been an early riser and that sort of immediate situational awareness is one of the lessons they drilled into you on day one of huntress training. It's never nice to have to plan for what you're going to do when someone knocks you on your ass, but better to know what to do in that case than not.
She remembers heading to Junior's, an uninspiringly named club run by Junior Xiong, head of the Xiong Family. She wasn't there in any official capacity as a huntress looking to take down some bad guys. If anything, it was a whim.
Yang would be headed off to Beacon Academy soon. A new chapter in her life. Sort of. Not really, actually. She'd been training to become a huntress since she was a little girl, and while Beacon is definitely a step up from Signal, it'd still be the same old same old.
Train to become a kickass huntress. Go out and help some people, kick some ass, kill some grimm. Then back to training. Rinse and repeat for four years until graduation. Still, there was a part of her that wanted to tie up any loose threads before heading to Beacon.
That included the ever present thread of her birth mother who apparently plopped her out, went out to buy milk and never came back.
Taiyang and Qrow were always tight lipped when it came to her biological mom. Their former teammate. Maybe things just didn't end nicely between Taiyang and her. Maybe the woman just isn't the type of person you want to be around a kid. Whatever the reason, she could never get anything from the adults of the house whenever it came to the 'R' of Team STRQ.
Then, she heard there was a certain bar owner who had a reputation for 'knowing' things. Sure, he may be the head of one of the biggest crime syndicates in Vale but hey. Worst case scenario, she gets in a bar fight. Best case scenario, she gets a lead on the woman who's been missing in her life for her entire life.
She wasn't really worried about the 'worst' case scenario. If there is one thing she's always had confidence in, it's her ability to hold her own in a fight. To her credit, things were actually going pretty well.
At least until that masked weirdo showed up and proceeded to catch a punch with the full force of her semblance behind it like said punch had been thrown by her little sister.
Honestly. She loves the girl to bits but take away her weapon and she's hopeless in a fight.
Anyway, she'd like to say "now back to the epic showdown we had where I totally didn't get laid out in one punch" but that about sums up how the rest of the encounter played out.
And back to the present.
"You really couldn't have intervened at some point before that crazy bitch decided to wreck everything and set it on fire?"
"I was bored and it amused me. What'd you even do to her anyway?"
"Nothing! Literally nothing! I just told her she looked too young to be here!"
"Uh-huh… is that how it went down, goldilocks?"
Damn. He's good.
"Pretty sure I remember your goons pulling their weapons on me," Yang says, opening her eyes, first noting her clothes hadn't been touched, second the rope in place of her shot-gauntlets, Ember Cecillia and third the source of the voice lounging on a bar stool.
Even from her position on the floor, she can see that he isn't very tall. If she were to guess, he'd probably be an inch or two taller than her little sister Ruby, if even that. Sandals. Shorts. A t-shirt with a stylized spiral of flame. His hair a wild mess of white that seemed to fade into a light blond at the very edges, the masked… man? Boy…? The masked whatever would probably look like any other civilian if not for said mask.
A full-face mask that looks to be made of some bone-like material… that seems to lack any sort of features outside of a crudely drawn smiley face with three whisker marks on each 'cheek'.
"That's cause you…!" Junior starts, only to trail off with a frustrated expression. Apparently unwilling to mention how she manhandled both his boys and his 'boys'. "You know what you did!"
"Come on, Junior! That was just us getting to know each other!" Yang grins shamelessly.
She probably should be more concerned that she is technically at the mercy of the head of a crime syndicate but a combination of the fact that she can probably tear the ropes around her wrists like cheap linen and how amused the masked boy is at Junior's asskicking just makes it hard for her to feel like she is in any sort of real danger.
"That so?" the masked boy tilts his head. Despite the mask having no visible eyeholes, Yang can all but feel the boy's gaze on her. "Only reasons people get to know Junior are for canon fodder and info."
"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" Junior protests indignantly.
"You know it's true," the masked boy shrugs. He turns back to her. "You don't seem like the type who'd care for hiring a mook squad. So, what do you want to know?"
"I'm looking for someone," Yang admits, getting to her feet. "But, according to Junior he's 'never seen her before'. You think you can do better?"
Mask boy turns to Junior again. Junior crosses his arms with a shrug. "Think I might've seen someone like her in the Bingo Book. Not sure though. I only keep track of A-ranks and above."
The Bingo Book. A catalog for the worst of the worst of humanity, where the people registered on those pages designated with a threat level, a holistic ranking based on their overall power level, their 'enmity towards others' and a whole host of other factors. Every year, the heads of the four Kingdoms and the Great Villages meet in a summit to amend its pages. It's said that there is no real huntsman or huntress out there who doesn't know its pages by heart and as a rising freshman to Beacon Academy, Yang would be receiving her first Bingo Book in only a few months.
Needless to say, that is the one place she'd never thought to look for information about her missing mother.
"What the hell, Junior?! You said you'd never seen her before!"
Junior shoots her a dull expression. "Sweetheart, if I spilled my guts to every pretty girl who batted her eyelashes at me, I'd have been out of business a long time ago."
Oh, she is so kicking his ass later. She should've known the guy was holding out on her.
"He'd have been out of business even faster than that if he blabbed to everyone who could kick his ass in a fight," the masked boy laughs.
Junior scowls. Yang can't help but smirk at the dig. Though, speaking of which…
Meh, it's worth a shot.
She looks at the masked boy and 'bats her eyelashes' at him, bringing her arms down to squeeze her boobs together and pushing out her chest. She leans forward at just the right angle to give him the perfect view on the off chance he's actually the age his height and slight squeakiness to his muffled voice would suggest.
"So, what about you, whiskers? Any chance you'd be willing to help out little ol me?"
"... not so 'little'... " the masked boy coughs and clears his throat. "I can think about it. You got a picture?"
"... Really?"
"What? Fuck off, Junior. I'll dye your beard orange. And it will never wash out. Never."
Yang can't help but snort. It's been all of ten minutes and the little masked weirdo is already growing on her. "Got a picture on my phone if you want to untie me."
"I watched you punch several grown men across the dancefloor, you can 'untie' yourself."
"Dang, nothing gets past you, does it?" Yang shrugs and brings her bound wrists up. She activates her aura and the faint embers of what's left of the power her semblance had accumulated in her fight with Junior and his thugs. Her long blond locks come alight with a faint glow, and with a flex, the ropes come apart like cheap plastic.
The various henchmen that had been working on cleaning up the club all freeze at her newfound freedom. Junior shoots an incredulous look at the masked boy.
"If she's strong enough to just snap the ropes like that, then why the hell did I tie her up?!" Junior asks.
"I dunno," the masked boy shrugs. "That's why I asked. You have a very pretty semblance."
Yang blinks when she realizes the last sentence was for her. "Oh. Uh… thanks."
It isn't as if she'd never been complimented on her looks before, both welcome and unwelcome. Yang Xiao Long is hot and she knows it. That being said, the words most typically associated with her semblance are 'scary', 'oh shit' and 'run'. Which, to be fair, is generally the appropriate reaction with how Burn tended mostly to make an appearance when she's pissed off.
It takes a second for her to shift her thoughts away from the offhand comment to her original task. Just long enough for her to internally bemoan that she hadn't responded with 'if you want a closer look, we could always have a rematch' and the moment had passed. With a mental sigh, she pulls up the picture she took of her mom, a photo of an old team photo of Team STRQ. Pretty much the only picture Taiyang and Qrow kept of her in the house, and likely only because of the three other members of the photo.
Yang tosses her phone to the masked boy. "Any chance you know who she is?"
The masked boy catches her phone and looks at it.
"Raven Branwen. Ex-huntress. Leader of a small-time group of bandits that operates in the forests of south Mistral. The Unofficial Anima Bingo Books has her at a threat level of B."
He tosses the phone back to her.
It meets the bar floor with a sharp crack.
There is so much to unpack there. Too much. "Unofficial Anima Bingo Book? What do you mean, 'B-rank'? She's with bandits? You know where she is? Where in south Mistral?"
Yang gets closer with each question until she basically has him pinned against the bar, grabbing him by the shirt. She still isn't actually sure whether or not he can actually see her through the mask, but she presses up against it anyway, trying her best to stare through the crudely drawn smiley face to the person on the other side.
"Okay first, take a deep breath." He takes her hands and gently but firmly removes them from his shirt, moving them to her sides…
… then he lifts her up, placing her on the stool next to him.
Right. Strong enough to floor her in one punch. Almost forgot with the whole 'might be able to help her with finding the person she's spent most of her life searching for' thing.
Yang takes the breath. Because she wants to shout at him that the last thing she cares about right now is breathing and what she wants are answers but hyperventilating and passing out will only get in the way of that. The hands move from her wrists to her shoulders. The mask doesn't change, but she swears she can see bright blue eyes staring deeply into her own.
… wait. Blue?
"Why don't you start from the beginning?"
…
"-ang…?"
It's been a week since the encounter at the bar. Since whiskers, as she dubbed the masked boy with the white-blond hair, hit her with a blow that still has her reeling.
Raven Branwen. The 'mom' who left. The woman whose shadow has hung over their family for almost two decades now.
In truth, Summer Rose deserved the title of 'mom' more than her birth mother ever did. Ever will. She was the one who was there. The one who baked cookies for her and her little sister, who read them bedtime stories and tucked them in at night. Ruby may be Summer's biological daughter, but for both of them, the former leader of team STRQ was their mom in every way that mattered.
And if that 'was' had stayed an 'is', then the question of Raven Branwen may have been one Yang would never have needed to ask herself.
But it hadn't. Over a decade ago, Summer Rose had left on a mission and never came back. Young and stupid and reckless and naive, Yang had thought it would just be a matter of finding another mother. So, she'd loaded up her little sister in a wagon and proceeded to almost get them both killed.
"-ang."
That day she'd promised to never let her search for birth mother put them both in danger like that again. Ruby probably doesn't even remember what happened. But, that's for the best. This is her baggage. No reason to dump it on her little sister.
Especially now that she knows what 'dear old mom' has been up to.
Whiskers had explained it to her after she'd calmed down a bit. The 'unofficial' versions of the Bingo Book are essentially versions of the official Bingo Book that circulate in the underground. Their pages are filled not only with the people from the official Bingo Book, but also the people in their specific region the other members of the summit refused to add to the official registry for some reason or another.
And in the unofficial Anima Bingo Book is a page dedicated to Raven Branwen. Leader of a bandit tribe that operates in the southern forests of Mistral. A B-rank, small-time criminal infamous for praying on smaller settlements with weaker defenses and leaving them easy pickings for the surrounding grimm.
No wonder Taiyang and Qrow always got so tight-lipped when it came to her biological mother.
"Yang!"
"Huh? What?" Yang blinks, jolting at her name being yelled.
That when she realizes she'd been sitting there, staring at her burger and not saying anything for about five minutes.
"Sheesh, losing to that guy really threw you for a loop, huh?" Cheng, one of her friends from Signal, says.
To be honest, Yang is kind of surprised at how not upset she is about how whiskers had literally one-punched her. But, it was a convenient excuse to not tell people that she may or may not be considering hiring an actual assassin to track down her missing biological mother, and that said biological mother spends her free time robbing from the poor and giving to herself.
… Putting it like that, she's really glad she decided not to share that little detail.
Lan, the third of their merry band in the restaurant today, nods in agreement. "You shouldn't get hung up on it. After you spent all that time fighting those other thugs, he probably just got a lucky shot."
"I wouldn't call 'catching my punch and laying me out with a single hit' a lucky shot…" Yang grumbles, digging into her burger.
… Okay, maybe she's a little upset.
Still, his potential for being able to help her track down her crook of mother easily beats out any irritation she may feel at how their first only fight went.
Cheng blanches. "So, he actually did that?! Like, straight up in those shows where they want to show one guy just completely outclasses the other 'punch catch'?!"
Yang's eye twitches and with a mouth full of burger she just grunts.
… Maybe she'll ask him for a rematch after everything with her mother is said and done…
"Ahem," His hand twitches upwards for a facepalm, but instead Lan only clears his throat, not so subtly elbowing Cheng. "Well, there are some people in this world who are just built differently. You know, I saw on the news last night, apparently there's talk that the Demon Fox has been sighted in Vale."
That sends a shiver down Yang's spine.
The Demon Fox. The youngest person to ever be given the S-rank, 'threat to humanity', designation in the Bingo Book. The one responsible for the destruction of the Hidden Leaf, the once strongest of the once-Five, now-Four, Great Villages alongside a whole host of other crimes. A human-shaped disaster some believe even to be the reincarnation of the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox, an ancient grimm that was thought to be immortal prior to its defeat by the legendary Fourth Hokage almost sixteen years ago.
Fear. A cold, unyielding fear that at any moment, the maniac could be in the process of recreating the same tragedy that befell the oldest and most powerful of the Hidden Villages right now.
That's the appropriate response to hearing that the Demon Fox is in a thousand-mile radius of you.
"Really?! Oh man, I sooo~ hope I'll run into him!"
Not that.
This time, Lan can't hold back the facepalm. "Cheng."
"What?"
"Cheng." Yang echoes the sentiment with a raised brow.
"What?! It's been five years since what happened with the Hidden Leaf!" Cheng says defensively. "Plus, he's supposed to be fifteen! That's the same age as your little sister, Yang! I mean, don't you think that's weird?!"
"Wait, what?" Yang blinks at that piece of information. "He's the same age as Ruby?"
"Yeah! Didn't you know? And that means he'd have been ten when the Hidden Leaf was destroyed!" Cheng continues. "Don't you think that's weird?"
"Not really," Lan says with a shrug. "Remember, this is the same place that produced Uchiha Itachi, the man who killed his entire clan at thirteen, Orochimaru, the reason the Great Villages and the Kingdoms agreed to formally codify laws surrounding human experimentation, and Uchiha Madara, the Man Who Declared War Against the World and almost won."
"Yeah. Honestly? It kind of tracks." Yang agrees. "My parents used to be pretty close friends with some folks from there back in the day but the Hidden Leaf, and sort of Soshima in general, sort of has… well, had a reputation for pumping out crazy powerful crazies."
Well, at least if you ask her.
If you ask her Uncle Qrow, you'd probably be on the receiving end of a three hour lecture about how the Fourth Hokage, Namikaze Minato, was the Brother God's gift to Remnant and that if he'd still been alive, the Uchiha and the Hidden Leaf would be around, Orochimaru would be rotting in a jail cell, and the man would have somehow invented time travel to go back in time to stop Uchiha Madara from decimating half of the human population of Remnant, so the fact that Minato was born in the Hidden Leaf just meant that the universe had to balance things out by having it churn out insanely powerful insane people on a near-generationally basis.
Yeah, she'd made that mistake once before. Never again.
"But-but-!" Never one to be deterred, Cheng clasps her hands together with a wistful sigh. "What if that's just the story they want us to believe?! Can you imagine it? A poor orphan, on the run, blamed for the destruction of his beloved home. He wanders alone and lost in a world that hates him for circumstances that were outside of his control, only to meet a kind big sister who helps to heal his shattered heart…"
"You read too many trashy romance novels," Lan deadpans.
"Yeah, and what's next?" Yang scoffs. "The Uchiha were planning on kick-starting the Fourth Great War and that's why Itachi killed them all?"
Cheng sticks her tongue out at the two of them.
…
Sitting on her bed, Yang sighs, staring at the piece of paper in her hands. It is the second week since her encounter at the bar, and only a few hours ago had one of Junior's boys arrived at her doorstep, looking scared out of his mind and like he'd rather be literally anywhere instead of at her house. He had handed her this sheet of paper, and promptly fled like a grimm was on his tail. On that paper are six words. If not for the whiskered smiley face drawn in the corner, she may not have even realized who it was from.
I'm leaving next week. Last chance.
There it is. A deadline for her to make her decision.
Part of her wonders if she's being an idiot for trusting him. For all she knows, this could be some sort of scam or a trap. But then again, she'd been completely at his mercy that night, and he'd only been good to her that night as she freaked out about finally having a way to track down her biological mother, even letting her off without any issue, much to Junior's chagrin. Not to mention, he even agreed to a fourth upfront and the rest after the job is done.
His price really isn't even that big an issue either. 'I'm heading to Mistral anyway for something else', so he'd given her a 'discount'. But it wouldn't even dip that deep into the fund she keeps for spare parts for Ember Cecillia and Bumblebee.
Granted, Taiyang would probably be more upset about the whole, again, 'hiring an assassin to track down her biological mother' than the slight dent in her bank account but that's neither here nor there.
… Honestly, every time she says it, it comes off that much worse.
"Yaaang~! Your new phone's here!"
The voice comes from outside her room. Yang folds the message and shoves it in her pocket. The adults of the house aren't exactly the type to be snooping around in their rooms, and not just because of how suspect it is for a pair of old farts to be looking around where a teenage girl sleeps, but for something like this, better safe than sorry.
"So, who's this guy people keep talking about?"
"Oh, is little sis finally graduating from being interested in weapons to being interested in boys?"
"Yang, quit being gross!" short red-black hair and round silver eyes, her adorable little sister, Ruby Rose, huffs with an adorable pout. "You know what I mean!"
Yang does, to her growing annoyance.
'I got my ass handed to me on a platter and can't stop thinking about it'. That was the excuse she gave to avoid having to tell people she may have found a way to answer the question that has haunted her for almost her entire life. She just isn't the type to air her dirty laundry like that. Sure, if someone is being a dumbass about something, she doesn't mind pulling the wagon and the forest out to let them know how that story goes, but it just isn't the sort of thing that comes up between classes or while hanging out with friends.
It didn't seem like a bad idea at first. She was one of the best fighters at Signal and is just generally able to kick ass and take names harder than most. That's something she takes pride in, and something that people know she takes pride in. Anyone with pride in anything wouldn't take being beaten so thoroughly in that thing lying down.
Unfortunately, somehow over the past week "Yang can't stop thinking about a boy who beat her in a fight" turned into "Yang can't stop thinking about a boy", the rumor mill churning so hard that, despite it being summer, it even spread from her friend group to their soon-to-be-former classmates two years their junior.
At least people seem to think it was one of her future classmates at Beacon. Good thing 'he's only barely taller than Ruby' was not one of the details she let slip.
"Haaa~..." Yang sighs and rolls her eyes. She repeats in an almost mechanical tone the words she's said over text and in person enough times that she's lost count. "It's not like that, we just had a fight where he completely smoked me, no you can't meet him."
She's really not sure what to think about having to add the last part, but that probably appeared at right about the same time 'who beat her in a fight' disappeared. As chill as the little assassin may seem, that's still not exactly the sort of person she wants to be introducing to friends and family.
"Why not? Ooh, ooh! Is he really from Beacon?!"
"Don't you have a lesson with Uncle Qrow to get to?"
Ruby shakes her head. "Nah, he's been out all week on some super secret mission. But that means tonight, we can settle the score!"
With an overdramatic twirl, her little sister flourishes her cape and brandishes a controller. "One v. one! No items! Final Destination! And if I win, you have to tell me about this guy!"
Yang crosses her arms with a smirk. "And what do I get if I win? The rest of the double chocolate chip cookies?"
Ruby gasps, her lips then forming into a thin flat line, the conflict obvious on her little sister's face over her love of cookies and the desire to snoop into her older sister's apparent love life.
It's not like she's ever really tried to keep that a secret. Some boys. Some girls. But then again, it's probably the fact that she's been so tight lipped about this boy in particular that has little Rubes so curious.
"Fine, you're on!"
…
…
"Uh… goldilocks?"
"What's up, whiskers?"
"What's that?"
"A bag."
"What's in the bag?"
"Oh, you know, some clothes, some spare ammo and the sorts of things any girl needs when she's traveling."
"And why do you have a bag with all that stuff and 'the sorts of things a girl needs when she's traveling'?"
"Well, I'm going with you. Obviously."
It's times like these that Yang wishes she had x-ray vision. She can only imagine the expression the boy is making behind that mask. His mouth is hidden, but she can imagine with the way his hand opens as if he wants to say something, then closes after a pause and opens again.
"... You know, the way I pictured this going down was I'd just find where this lady is roosting and just send you a message after I'm done."
"I mean, you said it yourself. Most bandit groups will regularly move around to avoid huntsman patrols, right? So even if you did find where she is, no telling whether or not I'd actually be able to get there in time." Yang grins, hefting her bag over her shoulder. "Besides, school starts back up in a month so I figure, what better way to cap off my summer break than tracking down my deadbeat of a mom?"
"Haa… perfect excuse for a roadtrip to Anima, eh?"
Yang just grins wider. The masked boy just throws his hands up with a shrug.
"Well, whatever. Just so you know, there will be people trying to kill me so if you get yourself stabbed, that's not on me."
"What, you piss off Mistral's version of Junior or something?"
"Something like that."
The masked boy hops off the bar stool and takes a few paces, shoving his hands in his pockets. A pause. He glances back at her. Or at least she thinks he does, as much as she can tell with the mask.
"You understand I kill people for a living, right? When I get these sorts of requests, what I usually bring back is a head, not a place."
"Yep, kind of figured," Yang says. She glances at the thugs making a non-too-discrete effort to stay as far away from her as possible. "I know what sort of place this is. You got a name, whiskers? Or should I just keep mentally referring to you as 'the weirdo in a mask'."
That gets something between a scoff and a chuckle. The masked boy tilts his head back for a moment. "... Just Uzumaki is fine. What about you? I've been bouncing between 'fire-tits' and 'mommy issues'."
Yang throws her bag at him. He catches it without any issue.
"Yang. Yang Xiao Long. How old are you, anyway? Trying to decide whether that's cute or we're gonna be needing to book separate rooms at night."
"I am older than the land itself, my wisdom spanning timeless ages. I have seen civilizations rise and fall, forests be born and turned to ash, mountains built and toppled. Behold me in my ageless, magnificent form and despair."
The masked boy, or 'Uzumaki', spreads his arms, still in sandals, shorts and a t-shirt, the design today being a cartoon bowl of ramen. Yang just smirks at the 'timeless being' who just barely reaches her nose with the very tip of his spiky white-gold locks(thank you combat boots) and puts her hands on her hips.
"You know what? You're about the same height as my little sister, so I'm just gonna guess you're the same age too."
"... And how old is this 'little sister'?"
"Fifteen."
"..."
"Wait, seriously? Actually, now that I look at you, I think you're a little bit shorter…"
The reply is a bag to her face.
AN: I swear this idea is going to haunt me until I die or actually finish it. Yes, this is the fourth 'rewrite' of 'Of Heroes and Monsters'. I say 'rewrite' because I have a much more solid idea of how to fuse the Naruto and RWBY universes at this point which is why I'm starting all over instead of just picking up where I left off.
Let's just say the Realm Between is pretty much the piece I needed to tie it all together.
Now, notes.
I was this close to not even giving Yang's 'friends' names but hopefully that section was entertaining for other reasons.
Cheng = Chengzi = Orange
Lan = Lan se de = Blue
I was also very iffy about how to handle Yang being angsty here. While she's not a very angsty person at this point, the whole plot is about mashing on her trauma button. Same about her trusting Naruto but again, trauma button with no 'Ruby is in danger' crisis to distract her.
Anyway, read and review. I will try to not disappear for another 4 years this time.