Over the next few days, the good vibes continued. They continued their operation, going from the hard-and-fast tactics Yang excelled in to a strategy of methodically searching for dug-in Grimm and destroying them wherever they found them. It wasn't her forte, but that was good: Yang was getting a firsthand view of how things went in the field, getting pointers from Chi and Violet about the practicals, not just how to operate with real Grimm nests, but how to operate when you had to clear out multiple Grimm nests a day. How to keep her focus and rigor while also not exhausting herself while keeping up her tempo. Violet had actually even showed her a trick for spotting the ground disturbance for a Remhoraz's trace—something that she'd been beating her head against at her midterm when it came so easy to Blake. She never would have thought to check for disturbed beetles!
Yeah, it wasn't all good… but what wasn't so good wasn't that bad. She could tell: things were a little strained between her and Finn, the look on his face before he quite visibly turned his back on her told her this was going to be an issue and it was. He was much more curt with her and there weren't as many jokes at the campfire. Nor had he been particularly helpful when Yang needed to move a fallen tree out of the way so they could investigate a crevasse. He was gonna be a mean girl about it, but… whatever. She'd buy him a beer or something later, show that there were no hard feelings.
And at least, it hadn't affected their unit cohesion. Not even that Finn hadn't shot her in the back or anything, but he was holding up his end of the formation and, really, they were working together well as a team. When Grimm were in question, they were all on the same side, and that meant everything to Yang. She and Finn had beef right now, but with time, it'd pass. Especially because they had something else coming up that'd put all their antagonism aside and make them work together.
Right now, they were clustered around the map, looking at how they were going to handle a new problem that had come up just as they had begun the process of more methodically clearing out the zone. It was a pretty straightforward situation: they'd found that a large group of Beowolves had started moving into their operation area after they'd done their earlier sweeps. Big group, likely headed by an Elder Alpha who was smart enough to move away from a bigger force and move to easier targets up north. According to Violet, there weren't any reports of a big VHA operation south of them, but it could have been a private company looking to clear land or any number of things that might be off the official books. Yang had joked that it might have been a Maiden, rising out of mythology to righteously crush the Grimm, and even Finn had cracked a smile at that.
But whatever the cause, the Beowolves were their problem now, and they were a big enough problem that they'd need to pull off an organized maneuver to split the pack and whittle them down before they launched the real offensive.
"It'll be a standard Port-Vermillion maneuver," Chi explained—it was also kind of crazy to learn that Port was a big deal to people who'd never slept through his classes, dude actually was a legend in his prime—"so I want Violet and Yang here," he jabbed a finger at the map, "making the cross sweep while Finn, you'll be on the East and I'll take the West. We move hard and fast, see a fight that seems even mildly out of your ability to take, break off fast and bail."
"He means it," Violet said quietly, "You're good, Yang, but in a situation like this one, the situation on the ground changes fast, and if you get cut off, we can't bail you out. Get caught, get killed—so be prepared to fall back."
Yang gave a sober nod of acceptance. She'd learned lessons about getting cocky—with an arm to prove it—and she was not about to blow a mission like this. And these packs were serious business. Beacon, with its concentration of aura and the Zephyr-West effect of the CCT's intercontinental communication array attracted Grimm by the boatload, but it was also the center of the Kingdom's population and had routine operations conducted by students, professional Huntsman, and Valean State Security forces to keep the numbers managed. Even in places like Mountain Glenn, the Grimm got regularly surveyed and culled as best they could. Out here, this pack could be old, could be larger than they knew, could be just about anything.
"Violet's right," Chi continued, "But don't let yourself get too freaked out: we're playing with an abundance of caution. These packs have a lot of unknowns, but with Beowolves, we can whittle down their numbers, pick off the big ones, and cut them down so long as we stick to the plan. We can do this if we do our jobs properly and look after each other. Any questions?"
Yang looked at the map, trying to put her Beacon education to good use as she scanned it for details and- well, there was one big, obvious one she immediately spotted.
"What about the farm here?" she asked, putting her finger on the small country home marked on the maps. It made a tricky problem for them—their current plan put it in the exclusion zone, the space they weren't supposed to have any civilians in since a proper horde could easily be deflected right at them after they made contact with the Huntsmen.
"What about it?"
Yang blinked. She wasn't reading this wrong, was she? But no… no, that was way too close for this kind of operation.
"Is… is it already abandoned?" she asked, trying to follow what the deal was. They hadn't been able to check if it was or wasn't inhabited. Maybe they'd evacuated already? But… they only just put up the alert, so no evac could have been pulled off.
Chi looked down at the map, then slowly repeated, "What about it, Yang?"
She laughed nervously. "It's… within the exclusion zone. The hard exclusion zone, we might be driving the Grimm right into their house!"
No one said anything, eyes darting around as Yang felt an uncomfortably sickly feeling rising up in her chest as she realized something she very much didn't want to realize.
"It's… standard operating procedure is to establish the exclusion zone by three degrees…" she babbled, defaulting to reciting from her textbooks when faced with something so far from what she expected. But her words died off as the other three just stared blankly at her. They- they knew the procedure, they had to know the procedure they- Yang had been taught this maneuver by Profesor Port himself! Yeah, she blew it off because it was named after him, but she understood you didn't drive Grimm into people's houses! That was- that was beyond reckless, even she wouldn't joke about it with RWBY!
A sudden surge of anger rose up inside her as she continued, "You- you can be reported for this! A formal-" she searched her mind, trying to remember the terms from a class she'd mostly slept through, "The- the VHA handles Huntsman discipline for shit like this, you could lose your licenses!"
She knew damn well how whiny and pathetic she sounded, but she couldn't do nothing! The group remained silent as Yang looked around at them. Finn's lip cracked into the slight trace of a smug smile. Violet looked annoyed more than anything. And Chi…
He sighed, heavily, as he turned to face her. "Yang, I really need you to be cool right now now, things aren't-"
"Don't!" Yang snapped, "Don't you tell me to be cool! You took an oath-"
"Oh for fuck's sake!" Violet erupted, arms folded over her chest in annoyance, "Don't lecture me on the oath, greenhorn, you're the only one here who hasn't taken it, only one who hasn't had to deal with the real shit they don't teach you in the classroom! This ain't Beacon, you're not in your pretty fairy tale castle and fretting about your crush and your easy bullshit jobs, this is real shit."
She then swung around to the rest of the crew and added, "If any of the rest of you want to get lectured by some teacher's pet on the rules, you can have her, but Chi, either shut her up or tell her to get lost!"
All eyes turned to Chi. Yang already knew what was happening, Yang already knew what was going to happen. But still… she gave him a silent, pleading look, a desperate call for things to be better, that the world of storybook Huntsmen wasn't just a tale for children, but… she already knew how this ended.
"Yang…" he sighed reluctantly, "We have a mission, and there are situations where you've got to-"
"We're here to protect people!" she protested, starting to point at the map as she explained, "You- we could move up to… we just have to redraw-"
But Chi just shook his head. "This is the safest route for us, and Yang… if it's a few farmers against actual Huntsmen, there's really no question. Your job is to come back alive, you-"
"Our job is to protect the people!" Yang snapped, already feeling the sting of tears, "We- we're here to protect people not- not rob them not-"
She blinked away the tears as she looked at the map, a cold realization building within her. "If… if we have to break off the attack… you want the farm to be there, because… because it'll serve as a distraction."
"They have shelters," Chi said, still using that damn paternal voice like he was sad he had to teach Yang the way the world actually worked instead of a- instead of a-
"I won't stand for this," Yang said, "And I won't- I'm a Huntress, I won't let you do this."
Chi sighed, looking over to Violet, who glared at Yang, then Finn, who was now grinning ear to ear like the son of a bitch he was.
"Yang," he said at last, "You're a proper Huntress. Nobody doubts that. But… there are three of us and one of you. You have to learn to let it go."
Yang blinked, his words suddenly sweeping across her face like a gust of wind, hardly forceful, and yet… enough to snuff out the fight in her. She looked around the group, seeing all of them poised to be ready if she decided to start swinging, but it wasn't fear she felt, but a sudden, unfamiliar feeling springing up in her as she… she realized…
She couldn't do anything about this.
"F-fuck you," she blurted out, then whirled around to storm off, both gestures as impotent as anything else she could do.
What could she do? Tell 'em off more? Promise to write up a report? Wouldn't that be terrifying… at least when Weiss threatened a scathing review, she was saying it as a Schnee, disinherited or not. Huntress-in-Training Yang Xiao Long putting a complaint in Chi or Violet or Finn's file in the VHA… maybe she could go to the Guild and see if she could cost them their Good Standing status, but all that would do was require them to give up their Sunday for an online training. She'd heard Uncle Qrow joke about bullshit they were!
Some part of her, the part of Yang that had seen her little sister grow into being a leader, who'd seen her partner learn to trust others, just as she had seen Weiss let go of her hard-fixed assumptions of the world. It was the part of her that believed in Beacon, that the world could be better, that things could be like the stories… and as much as she presented herself as the practical realist of her team, there was a part of Yang that was as starry eyed as Ruby, and that part couldn't believe… couldn't accept that she was now…
There were three of them. Experienced, capable Huntsmen. She'd seen them in battle, they were the real deal. Even if Yang was Beacon-class, Vytal class, they weren't going to roll over, and in a fight… she might not even win. And they knew it. She couldn't try and threaten and bully them, all she had in her corner was the threat of a report, and they'd already made it clear what they expected that to do. She had… nothing. Nothing more than idealism and naivete that made her think that the "rules" meant anything out here.
And that just… that really fucking sucked! She didn't have a better word for it, she couldn't rally some high-minded words about injustice like Blake could, all Yang could do was just sit there and live with it. It sucked. It sucked. It really fucking sucked.
No one was talking to Yang.
It made things… better and worse. Better in that she didn't have anything to say to the rest of the team and she couldn't imagine they had anything they wanted to say to her. They'd carried out the operation, a hard day's fighting where Yang got to see that it was a big pack, that the Grimm were both old and numerous and it had taxed the whole group to take the pack on. If Yang wasn't dealing with a hundred other things on her mind, she'd have been awfully curious to figure out just what they'd been running from. Whoever was displacing a pack like this had to have some serious force behind them… but Yang's thoughts were a lot more local at the moment.
The pack hadn't done anything too unpredictable and hadn't zigged any time they expected them to zag, so, by luck as much as anything, there was no evidence that any civilians had been put in danger by their actions. They'd gotten an all clear signal from the house Yang had pointed out—which meant it was occupied, but also, that it wasn't in any undue danger. Yang had braced herself for getting an "I told you so," but Chi hadn't said anything and, at least, Violet and Finn had the sense not to gloat. They all just gave her a wide berth.
But… Yang was an extrovert. She was a girl who liked being around people, liked talking with people, and one of those reasons was that she didn't like being alone with her thoughts. Especially not heavy ones. She always admired Blake, how she could just sit in a corner and read a book or take a late night walk around the campus with nothing but her thoughts for company… how did a girl with so many turbulent thoughts, so many regrets manage them so well? Yang was in the woods to "gather firewood," and she was already at the end of her rope and liable to just start punching trees and screaming out her frustration!
"You seem troubled."
No.
Absolutely… absolutely not. And not right now!
Yang heard the voice and immediately placed it, just as surely as she told herself she did not want to place it. It was someone she did not want to see so severely that she forced herself to second guess it, to doubt it, because, with all the shit Yang was dealing with, she didn't want to believe she was going to have to deal with this too.
So she turned, disbelieving, until she saw with her own eyes…
Raven Branwen.
Her mother.
"Not a good time, mom," Yang said through gritted teeth. Things were, at the least, strained between the two of them. Yang had made contact with her birth mother her first year at Beacon, had been saved from a bad situation by her appearance and, after the Battle of Beacon, Yang had evidently "earned" the opportunity for a conversation. It was what Yang wanted most out of her first year at Beacon and then it turned out that it had been a real stupid wish. Took her nearly a year to see through all her childhood issues and realize that her mom was a vicious, manipulative sociopath, a bandit who taught Yang just why it was so important to be ethical. So she didn't turn out like her.
"Is it ever?" she answered dryly, "But it seems like you are in a situation that could benefit from my particular-"
Yang's overstretched temper immediately exploded.
"Why do you even care?" she cried, "How do you even know about—what, are you following me?"
"You are my daughter, it's not unusual that I took an interest in your first proper field-"
"Nothing," Yang barked, "Nothing is 'usual' for you and especially not with our relationship, what are you doing here and what do you want from me?"
But Raven gave her an unimpressed look, yet another reminder that Yang could dig in her heels and bellow as much as she wanted, in the eyes of the world, she couldn't change a damn thing.
"Fuck off," she muttered, hoping that the less she said, the better.
"I wanted to see how you'd handle it, your first time in the real wilds, no supervision… no rules."
Yang's eyes narrowed into a glare. How the hell… no, there was no questions about how Raven found out about things, just the acceptance that she was showing her face because this had something she wanted. It was always about what she wanted.
"You're discovering that the world of Huntsmen is not what it looks like from Beacon's spires, you're beginning your real education, and I wanted to know what your thoughts are."
"My- my thoughts?" Yang asked, aghast, "You show your face here, now, after all this time and- and you want me to write you a damn reflection essay?"
An amused smile crossed Raven's face and she actually laughed—briefly making Yang wonder if this was her mother or just an illusion of her, but just as soon as her laughter faded, Yang saw that cruel, predatory glint in her eye that could only be her mother in all her horrible self.
"I always hated those assignments," she said wistfully, "But I find you at a crossroads: your… associates put themselves against your morals. They're not wrong, of course: they are strong, civilians are weak, and the rules only matter if they're enforced. So will you…" her eyes drifted down to Yang's fists, still balled up, before looking back to her eyes, "enforce them?"
Rolling her eyes, Yang tried to make a show of not caring what her mother had to say… because she was trying to convince herself not to care what her mother had to say. She tried… tried to think about what Blake said or Ruby said… hell, what Dad and Uncle Qrow said, all across her second year at Beacon telling her she didn't need Raven's judgment or approval. She was her own woman, a strong woman, and her mother… was a damn bandit stuck living in the woods because she was too damn proud and too damn selfish to care about her family.
"Because that's what you'd do?" she asked, hoping she was delivering a sufficient dose of teenage sarcasm to make up for the years she'd skipped out on by being a deadbeat, "Or wouldn't your move really be to run away rather than-"
"Because you are looking at it blindly," she interrupted, "Rules only matter because of the force behind them. You think to go back to Vale, to get the government, the Guild, to get Ozpin or Beacon or my brother to provide that force… but tell me, what force can they give? Do they really want to try and discipline their Huntsmen out here, understaffed, underpaid, stretched too thin… or will they just tell you to think practically, that the system needs time or a dozen other excuses to explain why this is just the way it has to be… maybe you'll get new excuses, maybe you'll get the exact same ones I heard when I was your age."
Yang bristled at the claim, but… she knew she was speaking the hard truth. She already could feel the futility of filing a formal written complaint—the Brothers knew she'd teased Weiss often enough for believing the words on a piece of paper meant anything—and… she knew, deep down, she knew that she wasn't going to be able to get any results from anyone else. She could already picture the conflicted expression on Uncle Qrow's face where he agreed—just like Chi agreed—that she was right to speak up, right to refuse to participate, but… there was only so much they could do. Could she really expect more than a slap on the wrist, some measure to give herself the personal satisfaction that she could feel like she had the last word... but nothing for the ideals she was arguing for.
"So," she said at last, "I can't fix this at Beacon and I can't fix things here. I feel powerless and I feel like shit. Great talk, mom! Anything else you wanted to add?"
But Raven just smirked. "Yes, you, on your own, might not be able to defeat them, but…"
Her words trailed off as her fingers drummed on the hilt of her katana.
The air suddenly got cold. Real cold. Yang saw her sword and remembered how she felt the moment Chi told her There are three of us, and the way she felt. How small, how irrelevant, how childish she felt.
With her mother's help… it wouldn't even be a fair fight. They were good Huntsmen, but they weren't the cream of the crop. Yang was nearly enough to take them, a painful "nearly enough," and her mother was capable of frightening off hardened killers by reputation alone—Yang knew from Qrow that Raven Branwen was a dangerous woman, one of the most dangerous women alive. There wasn't much Chi, Finn, or Violet could do if they marched in and demanded they follow the rules… she could make them feel small and helpless, turn the tables, show them some frontier justice and send a message…
But could she team up with her mother?
What, could she claim to be on the side of justice when she was side-by-side with an actual bandit? The team might be crooked Huntsmen, reckless, indifferent, and unprofessional, but they were a world away from the Branwen Clan.
And the more she thought about it… the angrier Yang got. Was this what her mom thought of her, some child throwing a tantrum, someone who felt the frustration of injustice and powerlessness and immediately abandoned her values? Wouldn't this just put her in the same position, running off to mommy when things went badly, without even being able to say she'd stood up for the principles of being a Huntsman? Was that what she wanted?
She shot her mother a cold glare, admittedly to no effect, as she squared up her stance and replied, "If you think I'd call you an ally, then you really don't know anything about me. Yeah, maybe the bureaucracy isn't going to fix the problem overnight, but I don't accept that the only thing that matters is strength. It's slow. It takes time. And it frustrates the hell out of me… but it's better to do things by the books here. Vale has procedures for reporting bad behavior, and you better believe I'll stay on this case until the VHA decides it's easier to discipline them than put up with me!"
Then she braced herself for the counter-argument, the insult, the mockery, whatever her mother-
"Alright then."
Yang braced herself for the catch, the way Raven would twist the knife like she always did, but instead… silence.
"Well… what the hell does that mean?" she asked, hating how weak it made her feel, like she was in Weiss's shoes.
But Raven just shrugged. "It means what it means," she said, airily, "If you're not interested in my help then you don't have to worry about it. If you're my daughter, then you'll solve this on your own without my help."
Yang blinked.
"That's it?"
"That's it."
"Bullshit," Yang spat, her reserves of patience already drained before she even had this conversation, "Nothing- it's never this easy with you. What are you planning?"
If she hoped to bait something out of Raven, it didn't work, her mother's red eyes remaining as impersonal—maybe even disinterested—as ever.
"Many things," she said, as though it cleared a damn thing up, "But I offered you my help and you declined it to handle your problem yourself. So your time would be better spent on that then trying to figure out what my true intentions are. You pledged to do things by the book, so… better get going with that. It's going to take a while."
With that, she opened a portal and walked off into it. No goodbye, no last jab, nothing but her utter disinterest as she turned on Yang and walked away.
Who felt like she ought to start getting used to that feeling.
But she hadn't. As the portal closed, Yang realized she was clenching her fists so hard, she'd left an impression of her fingernails in her palm. It was… just the way of the world when Yang learned a new lesson in just how unfair the world was and how powerless she was to change things, her mother arrived to underscore all her feelings of worthlessness and weakness. She… really wished she had RWBY here. Wished she could call them, but… she couldn't imagine how she could, what she'd say. This was supposed to be her getting the real experience of being a Huntsman, what life would be like with her license and all the freedom it entailed… she couldn't just go running back to her Team, tears in her eyes, hoping for them to commiserate with her, hoping for them to promise to back up her complaint or get some advice from Blake or Weiss on who she could complain to. Because… because none of it would work.
Her mom was right, the only other option to sucking it up and living with it was to team up with her, and if that was too much… there was no sense dragging Ruby and Blake down into her miserable bullshit situation, too.
So all she could do was slug it out. Do her job, enjoy everyone being bitchy to her, and run out the clock until she could get back and write up her complaint. That was… that was the only thing she could do.
And that fucking sucked.
Thanks to Renarde for feedback on this work!
One of the worldbuilding elements for this fic is looking at the Huntsmen who aren't Beacon level and how they relate to the peak of Beacon. They're not mooks, they're professional fighters, but Yang's at least two full categories above them. It's a situation where these are skilled and experienced Huntsmen, but our perspective is skewed because we only see the world of Remnant through the eyes of the best of the best and we lose perspective... and then there's Jaune who kind of just throws a wrench in the whole system. But in the world of Remnant, most Huntsmen aren't potential competitors for the world championship, they're just ordinary Huntsmen... which is to say, still competent, seasoned professionals who fight monsters on the regular. Which ties into the central theme of this fic. They take an oath and they consider that oath sacred, but at the same time, they have their limitations. They start thinking of themselves as more important than non-Huntsmen. They put their own lives ahead of civilians. Yang's furious at what she sees as a betrayal of what a Huntsman's supposed to be, but at the same time, they're not bandits. There's a lot further for them to fall if it comes to that.
Also, I have two headcanons with the CCT's "Zephyr-West" effect. One, it's part of the reason there are only four CCT towers—there are really only four places in the world you can build them because you need a capital city's worth of defenses to counter the Grimm it attracts. The second: it's pure Ozpin horseshit invented to cover for the Relics being hidden at the Academies, and if anyone built a fifth CCT tower, they'd notice the tech doesn't actually attract the Grimm by any appreciable amount. Perhaps a fic with Argus getting prominent enough to start challenging Haven as the urban center of Mistral and gunning for their own CCT as Ozpin starts sweating bullets?
