Ruby arrived at their impromptu clearing, breathless and clearly in distress. Yang looked up from the fire she was about to light, and Blake set down her satchel of foraged foodstuffs. "Ruby? What's wr—"
"Weiss ran off into the forest! I dunno what I did but she just ran off and now I can't find her and she seemed really emotional and I'm scared she's gonna do something stupid!" The words flew out of her mouth without thought.
Yang raised both eyebrows and stood, but Blake seemed unperturbed, muttering, "Yeah, saw that one coming."
Yang gave her a sour look, but Ruby spoke before she could chastise the fay. "Just help me find her! Come on!"
Yang pushed up her sleeves and followed her sister, casting a sidelong glance towards Blake as she left. She groaned, but reluctantly got to her feet and joined them.
"Which way did she go?" Yang asked, running herself ragged to keep up with her companions.
"I don't know!" Ruby was shrill and panicked, her head whipping around every which way. "I was right behind her, but she just disappeared!"
Yang and Blake shared a look. Ruby hadn't been awake for the heiress' disappearing act, though they hadn't seen it from the outside either. They let Ruby run a few more fruitless yards before Yang halted them.
"Wait, wait," she called, hand raising as she breathlessly spoke. She may be a seasoned Huntress, but Ruby had always been unreasonably fast. "We need… to be smart… about this."
"Be smart?" Ruby exclaimed, incredulous. "She's lost in the middle of the Emerald Forest! We need to find her!"
"I know!" Yang shouted, pulling herself up to impose upon Ruby, at least enough to prevent any further bickering. "But it's getting late, and night comes fast here. If we just chase after nothing we're all going to end up lost, so we need to exercise at least a shred of thought in how we do this."
Ruby opened her mouth to speak, but Yang raised a hand, silencing her.
"No Ruby, wait, okay? I… I think I have an idea," Yang claimed, her brow creasing with thought.
"Don't hurt yourself," Blake snarked, unworried of their situation. "I heard those can be hard for people like you."
"Shut up, Blake, this is serious," Yang said, shooting her a quick glare. "We do actually need her."
Blake scoffed. "As if."
Yang's glare sharpened, her look demanding that Blake listen now, and talk later. Turning her gaze back to Ruby, the Huntress continued. "I remember Weiss said something about me, she said she knew I was an ignifer just by my smell. Honestly, I thought she meant it literally, but I don't really smell like a pyromancer, do I?"
Ruby and Blake shared a look of confusion, then simultaneously sent one of doubt at their blonde companion.
"Seriously, smell me." Yang commanded, raising her arms and beckoning them. "This is important."
The two girls stared each other down, both daring and begging the other to do the deed. Finally, after a long contest of stares, it was Ruby that broke first. She growled, her face twisting in frustration while Blake's lips curled with satisfaction. The smith made quick stomps to her sister and, without wasting another moment on this stupid distraction, stuck her nose towards the Huntress. She took a deep whiff, and immediately felt herself age a few decades.
Ruby shrank back and pinched her nostrils, waving her hand in front of her face. "Gods, Yang! You reek!"
"But in a normal way, right?" Yang probed, turning a little rueful at her sister's disgust. "Like how you would expect me to stink after I broke into a castle, fought dozens of men, and set myself on fire to save my sister?"
Ruby flushed with guilt. "I— I guess?"
Yang beamed, her suspicions confirmed. "So it was a magic thing!"
"Yang, could you just get to the point?" Blake drawled, her schadenfreude at Ruby's disgust having quickly faded.
"She knew I was an ignifer because I smell like an ignifer!" Yang exclaimed. "In a magic way!"
"I'm really not following…" Ruby mumbled.
"I've been smelling myself, trying to find whatever Weiss was talking about," Yang stated, as if she hadn't just said 'I've been smelling myself' with the same seriousness as an alchemist discussing their study. "And I think I get it, at least a little. It's really hard to find, and I have to tap into my Aura to smell it, but I definitely smell like something other than a standard bodily odor."
Blake blinked, equal parts unimpressed and confused. "Are you drunk?"
"No, I'm serious it's like—" she held her arm against her nose and took a deep breath. "Like smoke and… burning metal, or something! Ruby, come here!"
Yang reached out and yanked the girl back by her cloak, choking any refutations away as she pulled her sister close, then took a few extremely invasive and discomforting sniffs of her arm.
"Ha! Roses!" Yang exclaimed and unhanded her sister, who immediately scrambled away to safety. She then turned to Blake with a dangerous smile.
The fay gripped herself tightly. "Don't you fucking dare," she hissed, "I will stab you."
Yang cackled to the canopy above, then set Blake with a sly look, slowly mouthing 'lavender'. Blake blushed furiously, her face twitching as she calculated how many knives she could throw before Ruby stopped her.
Ruby yanked her arm back, annoyed. "Okay, so what does this have to do with anything! What's the point of all this!"
"Well, if an ignifer smells like burning," Yang reasoned, "then surely Weiss would smell like freezing!"
"So what," Blake drawled, her purple blush quickly fading. "You're just going to follow her scent like a dog?"
Yang smiled wide. Slowly, confidently, she nodded.
"Shepherd's fucking grace," Blake mumbled, defeated. "How did you ever get me in your bed."
Yang jauntily marched forward, giving Blake a cheeky pat as she raised her nose high. She took a deep breath, searching the wind for anything that was even vaguely… princess-y.
Dirt. Mostly dirt. It was a forest, so it really smelled like wet dirt. Pushing past that… juniper, scant hints of it floating on the breeze. She growled and shook her head, frustrated that she was only catching the forest itself. She screwed her face tight, then took a whiff of herself to get her bearings. Sweat and stink. She gripped her still-scarred hands tight, forcing her Aura to well up within her. More sweat, more stink, but also… Smoke, like if a person could be a campfire. Acid, a sharp burn that made her eyes water. Iron, like the taste of blood in her mouth, only as a smell, and also on fire. It was more of a feeling, really, but the myriad scents came together to perfectly construct the concept of an inferno made human.
With her mind set, she dropped her arm and extended that sense outward, breathing deep as she did. Blake, right next to her, smelled like lavender. Ruby exuded faint roses and a shred of something else; Yang was beginning to suspect that fay carried floral scents, but would have to sniff a wider range of examples to be sure. She marched forward, keeping her nose high.
Beyond that… wet dirt. Lots of it, but less in the material sense that she'd smelled before, more as if the scent of loam was an immutable property of the Emerald Forest itself, and that it would still smell this way if a drought had turned its soil to sand. It was a lively aroma, as well, pulsing weak and strong like a heartbeat.
Something sharp sliced across her senses, pungent and sour like she'd been assaulted by a sack of rotting ham. It was enough to make her stop in her tracks, but one thing kept her from gagging: a singular, barely discernible whiff of mint and cold— Weiss.
Yang sprinted after the scent.
AN: i know i said weekend but i realize now that my sense of 'weekend' is warped by the fact i have mondays off. sorry lol.
new sidequest for yang: sniff random people. that'll be fun.