Yang's arm snapped to the left as she tried to track her target, her violet eyes flicking from side to side. An electrically charged blur seemed to almost teleport out of the way as she fired a series of slugs from her gauntlet. With a backward spin, she sank to one knee and fired again where she expected her opponent to appear, only to feel the crash of a flying kick against the small of her back. Yang stumbled forward as she tried to rise to her feet and whirl again. By the time she finished the turn and caught sight of Harriet, it was too late to avoid the incoming blow. She barely managed to get her guard up in time to intercept Harriet's haymaker, and the force of the blow sent her skidding backward along the tile floor of the training room.
"Damn," Yang commented as she lowered her guard and tried to catch her breath. "That's one hell of a semblance. I can barely see you, let alone hit you…"
"Adapt," Harriet said quickly as flickers of electricity pulsed through her arms and legs. "There can be no excuses against Salem and her army."
"Yeah, I'm aware," Yang rebuked as she brushed off her shoulder and raised her fists. "Just saying. You're the first real challenge I've had in a while."
"And that's a problem," Harriet snapped as she rushed forward.
Yang was too slow to react as Harriet sped up to her and then seemingly disappeared in a flash. Before her brain could catch up to what was going on, something hard and heavy impacted her back and sent her crashing down to the floor. Within seconds, Harriet was atop her and had pulled her natural arm into a lock while planting a knee firmly into Yang's back. After a few seconds of struggle and searing pain in her limb, the blonde tapped out upon the tiled floor.
"Alright, alright!"
"Better," Harriet admitted as she rose from her kneeling position and clapped her palms together to brush them off. "But I won't go easy on you."
"You'd better not," Yang grumbled as she rolled over onto her back and let her arms splay out to the sides dramatically. She heaved a sigh as she looked up at Harriet, who stood over her with a judgmental expression. "But since when is kicking my ass all day long 'a job'? I thought we were going out on first assignments."
"…we were," Harriet confirmed. The older woman took a deep breath as her expression softened a bit, though she kept a bit of an edge to her tone. "But a rotating training regimen is part of your job, just as much as it's part of ours as Aces. Besides… I wanted to talk to you. Alone."
Yang stared up at the hand being offered to her with confusion. Harriet's fingers and palm were wrapped in some sort of open-aired mechanical glove fed by red tubing. The attached steel braces extended all the way along the length of her arms and linked into a panel upon her back, where additional tubes and wiring came together. Something about the way the steel seemed to merge into the tight material of Harriet's uniform was unnerving to Yang, though she couldn't put her finger on just what was so unsettling.
"Uh… alright, sure?" Yang said hesitantly as she took the hand. Harriet pulled her up with little effort before she turned and began to walk at a brisk pace. "Is everything okay?"
"Not really, no," Harriet admitted as she made her way to the bleachers on the side of the training room and sank onto the lowest bench. The metallic bracers retracted into her back as she clasped her hands between her legs and leaned forward. "You weren't at the emergency meeting. I take it your team filled you in?"
"Yeah, they did," Yang confirmed as she slowly walked over and sat beside Harriet, keeping a distance of about six feet between them. "If you called me here to ask why, it's… personal business. Something came up. Best I can give you."
"It isn't," Harriet denied with a shake of her head. She kept her gaze fixed upon the vacant space of the training room, taking in the finer details of the featureless white tile all around them. "Did they tell you anything about me, and what I said?"
Yang blinked in surprise and raised a brow.
"About you? No, they… Sun explained that he and Ilia ran into one of her former White Fang accomplices, and the situation with Cinnamon being in Solitas. That's all they told me."
"…I'm honestly not sure if that makes this easier or more difficult," Harriet considered, her voice laced with frustration.
"Either way- if we have to have a hard conversation, I'm all ears," Yang replied with a shrug. "I'm used to it. I've had awkward sit-downs with Sun, and Blake and I are… still a little tense. Good working relationships don't just materialize out of thin air. I'm sure you know that, probably better than I do."
"Yeah. I do," Harriet agreed as she finally met Yang's eyes. "That being said, I hate these kinds of talks. I'll put it plainly, just so we can get this over with as quickly as possible- I fucked up. Badly. I blew the dust in the wall at the mines, because I was trying to compensate for you being deep into the fight. I assumed you would be incompetent and potentially cost us time, or even lives, by being an incapable fighter and biting off more than you could chew. In so doing, I… was reckless, put myself in danger, and almost compromised the entire mission."
An uncomfortable silence passed between the two women as Harriet refused to look away. Yang was the first to blink, and as she did so, she let out a soft laugh and shook her head.
"…you think this is funny?"
"Well, I mean… you're not necessarily wrong," Yang admitted with a solemn smile. "I've… rushed into things before, and it's cost me quite a bit."
Harriet watched as Yang raised her mechanical arm and rolled her fingers in a wave pattern.
"…Adam Taurus. I read up on you. That's actually part of why I acted the way I did."
Yang's expression shifted into something a bit melancholy as she lowered her arm. Seemingly unsure as to what to do, she raised it once again to run her steel fingers through her hair.
"…yeah, I… get it. I saw Blake in danger and I just… dived in without a second thought. I ended up losing an arm and putting us both in more danger. There have been countless other times with lower stakes before that, so… you kinda hit the nail on the head with your assumption. I've tried to dial back the bravado and take a more calculated approach to combat since then, but I also did think I could reasonably take Ironwood a little while back, so…"
"I may not have been wrong, but acting on those thoughts wasn't right," Harriet explained. "It wasn't fair to you, and it ultimately screwed us all over. I almost died, Ilia risked her life to save me, and Marrow almost came down with hypothermia… all because I have trust issues with new people. Especially new people I can see a little bit of myself in."
Yang hesitated as she tried to decide whether or not to push the conversation further. Curiosity won out over common sense in a matter of seconds, and so, she scooted a bit closer to Harriet upon the bench.
"What do you mean by that?"
Harriet drew in a long, slow breath, deflating as she exhaled with a ragged sigh.
"…you're not the only one the good doctor fixed up with prosthetics. These mechanical gauntlets of mine? They used to just be regular gauntlets. Now, they're a part of me."
Yang watched as the metallic sheaths once again sprang from Harriet's back and worked to encase her arms, ending in coverings over her knuckles.
"I've actually been wondering about how that works," Yang admitted. "Do they just collapse into your back? The plate on your upper back doesn't seem like it has that kind of room…"
"It doesn't," Harriet clarified. "They do go into my back… because quite a bit of it has been torn out and replaced. My entire spine is robotic, Yang. A lot of the space surrounding it and part of my ribcage is synthetic, too. The panel on my upper back is more like an anchor than anything."
Yang felt a cold shiver run down her own spine, tingling unpleasantly at the thought of what the other woman's back might actually look like beneath the suit. None of the possible images that came to her were particularly comforting, nor was the thought of the pain that would be involved in such a procedure.
"What… the hell happened?" Yang said slowly. "I mean, if you're even willing to share something like that…"
"I'd rather not," Harriet replied without missing a beat. "Not in great detail, anyway. The short version is… I used to take a lot of stupid risks out in the field. I used to be cocky, and not quite good enough to back it up when I first joined the Aces. It was my third mission with the team, and I got myself into a situation that I couldn't get out of. Vine… barely got to me in time. He saved my life, but he couldn't save my back."
"Vine…?" Yang questioned, only to immediately regret asking as Harriet's expression darkened.
"…former leader, before Clover. He's… he's gone," Harriet said quietly. "I owe him everything. He taught me so much and helped mold me into who I am today. Before that, and before he put the effort in to help me change for the better, I was a mess. Reckless, self-destructive, immature, and narcissistic. I got that exact vibe from you when you showed up, and seeing your arm along with it… I jumped to a lot of shitty conclusions and started to slide backwards. He'd be disappointed in me, to say the least."
"I… don't think that's true, if he put so much effort into helping you draw out your potential," Yang said carefully. "Sounds to me like he'd be the type of guy who would be proud that you realized all of that and that you're taking steps to fix it. We've all got personality flaws, Harriet. Admitting them and taking steps to fix them isn't easy."
"Tch. You sound just like him," Harriet accused as she stood into a stretch. Her gauntlets retracted into her back as she raised her arms over her head and cracked her fingers. "Still… this kind of talk isn't really my thing, so… can I just say 'sorry' and leave it at that? Try to improve things moving forward without making this into 'a thing?'"
Yang smirked and stood up before moving to follow Harriet back toward the center of the training room.
"Yeah, I'm cool with that. Honestly, I'm not big on 'things' like that. Knowing you give enough of a shit to try to make amends is good enough for me… though I wouldn't mind getting a little friendlier over time. Maybe talking a bit more. Maybe you should join Sun and I when we're winding down, one night. We have little… 'sessions' every so often. Meditation, just venting about bullshit, trying to get our lives under control."
"…maybe," Harriet considered. "Just don't expect me to sing songs and hold hands. Marrow's already tried getting more friendly than he should have, and gotten burned for it."
"Like… in a sexy way?" Yang asked as she rolled her shoulders and raised her fists in a fighting stance.
Harriet simply glared, her voice adopting a deadpan tone.
"No. In a 'you don't know me well enough yet to act so friendly, so back off, rookie' way."
"Gotcha. I'll move at your speed, then," Yang offered.
Harriet snorted in amusement as she once again extended her gauntlets and allowed them to wrap down and around her fists.
"You can try."
"I gave you that one," Yang said with a smirk.
"I know," Harriet acknowledged. "Round two, kid. Try to keep up."
Author's Note:
Things seem to be going pretty well between Sun's team and the Aces lately.
You know what that means.
-RD