Yang Xiao Long was in a state.
She knew Weiss and Ruby had a weird thing going on. There wasn't really a way not to know— they were partners, after all, and all partners had weird things going on. Her and Blake, for example: they were good friends. Great friends. Really-good-at-sex-friends. But that was it. There wasn't really some romantic spark between them— no swelling of her heart or burning need in her chest for nearness to her friend— and that was wonderful. They worked perfectly together, fought perfectly together, enjoyed being friends, and didn't have to deal with any of the odd romantic hangups that came with, well, romance.
When Yang had (justifiably) punched Weiss in the head for being a massive piece of shit to her sister, she'd known something was up. Ruby was on her too quick. In too much of a rush. She was always a terrible liar, too, so it'd been obvious something else was going on. But Yang, naive or perhaps just overly trusting of her own sister, simply hadn't thought it her place to question A) her leader, B) her sister, and C) half of a partnership between two young, independent women in which she only had enough skin in the game so as to cover the extent of a half-blooded sibling relationship. God forbid she try to give her little sister some much-needed independence.
Now, whatever the hell was going on between them, it was something for which the explanation could not be any further be-fucking-layed.
Weiss' head unexploded. Her shoulder came right back together. Her heart— which had sprayed in pieces all over Blake's now-forever-traumatized face— visibly reformed inside her chest, followed by veins, arteries, bones, muscle, and skin. All the while Ruby— who had thrown her face onto Weiss' way too quickly— flopped unconscious beside her. Weiss shot up and clutched her chest.
Yang needed an explanation. Further lack of explanation would lead to catastrophe. Unfortunately, with all these Fourths, this little baby-kid who she could not fucking hit, the other kid who had just shot Weiss, and Roman fucking Torchwick, of all people, her explanation (which, again, could not be delayed any longer) was at risk of— you guessed it— a delay!
Yang was unhappy. Severely unhappy. She was further from happiness than she had ever been. Blake saw this and winced, stepping smartly away.
"Weiss," Yang growled. "You and my sister. Now."
Weiss— apparently pretty quick for someone whose brains had very recently been on Blake's forehead— shot out an explanation: "I— I absorb Aura through my body! Flor— Ruby gave me hers! It heals me but I don't have one of my own!" She looked down at Ruby, her face just as panicked as her voice. "She might be dead!" She quickly shuffled her sleeve over her fingers and pressed them over Ruby's carotid. "She's not dead! Yet!"
Cool. That was about 10% of the explanation she needed, which was enough to dissuade her from engaging in friendly fire. Thankfully, she had plenty of unfriendlies to fire upon.
Ha. Fire. Like her… you get it.
With all the guys still stunned by both whatever the fuck was going on and the fact that Yang was probably starting to self-immolate, she had a very easy time lunging into the nearest guy and punching him so hard he flew back, his collar shattering with a meaty crunch at the impact, his body knocking Fourths aside like bowling pins. Yang leapt into the divide, punching left and right, missing and hitting, focused more on parting the way to the main assholes so the other Fourths would lose heart and ditch. The crowd was like paper, paper through which she burned a hole straight to the revolver-toting kid. His face was covered in ban— Yang's fist as she punched him mercilessly, sending him immediately limp and flying straight through the conjoining door to the engine room. Beside him, Roman Torchwick flinched, but raised both hands in defeat.
"Woah, firecracker, easy there," he said gently. "I'm not gettin' paid enough to fuck with you. Plus, I got a kid to feed— tell me, did they fight good?"
Yang looked back at the indecipherably gendered preteen (apparently Roman Torchwick had a kid) and huffed out great gouts of smoke from her nostrils— a begrudging sigh. "Yeah," she acknowledged, smoke climbing out her throat with each word. "You should enroll 'em in school, they're gonna get hurt like this."
Roman furrowed his brows and opened his mouth to object, then closed it and looked up pensively at the ceiling. "That… huh."
Yang let him go with a push that sent him into the boxcar's sidewall, proving its aged integrity as the shoddy boards cracked beneath the impact. His kid came to his side quickly, patting him down and sending an imminently lethal glare at Yang, but she ducked through the last set of doors before their look could fully kill her. She trusted Blake to handle the rest of the losers if they tried anything. And Weiss, to a lesser extent.
The kid— white-shirted and bandaged, revolver hanging limply from his hands— coughed at Yang's entrance. He was bent around the locomotive engine, half-straddling the waist-height ignition compartment, both of his legs covered with crystalline shrapnel from the orange dust cores he'd shattered on impact. The metal stack was bent and crumpled behind his back, a broken tube blasting something that had to be extremely hot over the entire left side of his torso. One of his eyes— a cold and steely blue— stared at Yang with discomforting ease. The rest of his face was worse.
His bandages had been burned off by Yang's fist, revealing a cratered nose, a splintered left cheek, and a trio of angry scars that split his lower lip open at the corner, exposing bloodied teeth and ripping down from his left eye— with her punch probably shattering that orbital bone, however, it was too swollen and bloodied to see the eye itself.
"Ah, the Sec—" he hacked blood all over his wet shirt, then breathed a ragged breath and tried again:
Now you're a real Second, aren't you.
It wasn't a question. And it was in a tone that shouldn't be coming out of some half-dead kid. It was made for good men like Pastor Verron.
I can see it, you know. The other one— the not-Second— oh, I thought I had her down pat for a second. But…
He coughed again, losing his tone to something shakier.
"N-nah." He sucked in half a breath, then coughed it all out with blood. "Oh… oh, shit. I'm dying."
Yang blinked. She'd never killed anyone before. Not that she knew of, at least. She moved towards him, her anger draining away beneath the immediate crush of guilt, but she recoiled as a loud, hard impact struck her Aura right between her eyes. Her eyes took a minute to refocus, eventually realigning on the kid's raised, smoking revolver.
"Don't—"
Don't—
He hacked out blood again, his gun-arm dropping limply between his legs, its metal form panging against the engine that was probably sterilizing him via heat-treat. His other arm was pinned back behind his head, stuck and mangled somewhere deep in the mess of machinery. "Don't patronize me."
Yang raised her hands placatingly. "S-sorry. I'm sorry. If you tell me how to stop the train, I'll stop it and we can get you some help. You…" her eyes roamed over him. She gulped. "You're gonna die if we don't."
"I… won't die," he said, taking a moment as if he actually had to decide. "No, I'm good. Not today. You want to stop the train?"
Yang stared at his left side, where the stuff that hopefully wasn't hot steam hopefully wasn't cooking him. "Yes. Please."
The kid's gun-arm shakily lifted up, drifted to Yang's left side, and indicated a lever with the barrel. "There. The brakes. That's…" he breathed through what sounded like gallons of blood. "That's all you need."
Yang stepped—
"You'll save me?" he asked slowly, his voice thin, dripping with insecurity. "You really will?"
Yang stared at him. "I… I think I know what happened to you— Ironwood, right? James? Junior?"
His head elicited a metal clunk as it tipped back against the floor-to-ceiling engine stack behind him. He laughed, blood seeping out of his riven lips. "Jeez, no one's called me junior in… I dunno how long."
"Since your family…"
"Committed mass ritual suicide?" James Ironwood II finished, laughing again as if he'd made a joke only he could understand. He adjusted himself, wincing, pushing himself up so the stack could support his neck and allow him to look down on Yang. It achieved nothing in relieving his left side of the stuff that was probably giving him third and fourth-degree burns, but he made no indication of noticing. He breathed as deeply as he could, shaking out with the same loud, uncannily boistrous timbre as earlier:
Penny for your thoughts?
Yang nodded slowly, making even slower steps towards the brake lever. Something happened in the boxcar behind her— some kind of commotion— but she couldn't stop now. She had to trust Blake and stop this train.
My… my pops was a, uh… pan… Pan-Archvist. All the movements together. In harmony.
"Except the Seconds," Yang dared, still inching to the brakes. He chuckled— wheezed, really, but Yang assumed it to be a chuckle.
No, even some Seconds. A lot of Seconds. It's the funniest thing— we've all got one little issue in common. Fourths, Firsts, Thirds, even Seconds:
Faunus.
Yang opened her—
Now wait, just hear me out. I'm… I'm dying, right? I deserve some words.
Yang closed her mouth and inched towards the brakes. The cult kid continued.
Unity… it was all he wanted. Peace and love, for everyone. For humans. Even for Faunus.
Yang's step stuttered.
And when were Faunus happiest? When is anyone happiest?
When they have… a job. When they have something to do that they… can be trusted to do. Something they can get good at— s-something they can be… known for… and when you don't have to worry… about feeding yourself… about paying… rent… life is just your craft. You can… pursue… perfection. They were all… so... happy…
He hacked up another gout of blood. His head lolled to the side. Yang stopped, thinking he had died until his voice rang out once more, weak but clear.
But… y'know who ratted us out?
It… it was a Fourth. A human Fourth. He said… we were cruel. He said… we were… brain-washing. He said… we were… indoc-trin-ating—
"But we were just making people happy!"
Yang flinched at the violence in his voice, her body jolted away from the mesmerizing trance of his pastoral tone and putting her back in a world where she needed to get the rest of the way to the brake lever. She was almost there. Ironwood's voice dipped in and out, shaky and uncontrolled.
"So—
So—
"So I—
So I— when I— when I—
"Lost them—
I— I— I had— I had nothing!
"Nothing! They— they took it from—
From me! My life! I was… we were… it was all so good! Until some
"Fucking Fourth had to come and ruin it."
Yang could see tears tracking down his one good eye. She could almost reach for the lever. The voice calmed.
So… so I… I realized I…
I had to— to— to understand the… the hate. The hate that can just… r-ruin people. Families, a whole community of people— peaceful, happy people.
How… how could you be a… a sect of rulers— a sect of ruling— a s-sect of leadership— when… when you'd just tear it all down for… for what?
And I… I…
"I found it.
It… it was like… it was— it was in me… all along. I knew. I knew in my soul— the truth, I— I had it right in my hands— I found it. I just needed… I just needed… to… to…
"To lead."
Yang's hand twitched towards the brake lever. Whatever was happening in the boxcar behind her was loud, and only getting louder. She couldn't turn away. She needed to stop the train.
I needed to take it… the… the crown. I needed… to make it, to cast it, to… be… w-worthy of it… to wear it. Then… then nobody else would be able to… I'd… I'd bear the weight of it… of ruling…
So long as…
"So long as I was… the only…
The only… one…
"And… and only then… I could… I could…
Start… re-start… the… the work… I…
"I could…
I could… I…
"I could make papa proud."
Yang grabbed the lever and yanked it right off the base. Easily. With no resistance. Because Ironwood had already shot it at the base. And now she couldn't do the one thing she needed to do. She couldn't stop the train. The train would crash into something. Any bombs or explosives still on board would detonate. If there weren't any bombs or explosives on board, the train would simply collide with whatever was at the end of the tracks, killing them slightly less spectacularly. James Ironwood II sighed. It sounded like his last breath. Yang would make sure of it.
She lunged towards the three-quarters-dead kid, only for his gun-arm to whip up with mechanical speed, blasting into her Aura so hard that it buckled, the sixth shot breaking through the energy-barrier of her soul and hitting her stomach like a sledgehammer. Before she could even crumple from being fucking shot, another impact slammed into her back and sent her face-first into the hard floor of the engine room. Her abdomen screamed at her, wailing in pain beneath the thick blanket of adrenaline. She glanced up just in time to watch the horrific sight of a sparkling, black-gushing, skeletal girl-thing with a sword still in its side hover up on flickering green feet, rip James Ironwood II off of his stuck left arm (leaving it behind in the process), and blast itself through the front windshield with his mangled body in its arms.
Yang bit her cheeks— screaming through her teeth as she pushed herself up— trying to focus, assess herself, assess the situation, and what she was going to do.
She felt around her lower back. The bullet had gone through fully, missing her spine but surely ripping through her intestines. The exit wound was too gnarly to burn shut. The entry wound wasn't. Her Semblance turned emotion into flame, but the 'you're gonna die' chemicals in her brain were keeping her too calm and sensible to tap into that. Instead, she grabbed the broken brake lever, jammed it into the most brightly glowing compartment of the locomotive engine, and proceeded to cauterize her frontal bullet wound with the heated metal stick. It was just as pleasant as she expected it to be, but Blake showed up shortly thereafter as a consolation.
"Y-Yang!" they yelped, kneeling beside her. "O-oh… f… fu…"
Yang grabbed their hand. "How're the others?"
"T-they— like— idk! They're not dead! Idk!"
Yang squeezed their hand. "Get 'em in here."
"Wut? B-but y th—"
"Train gonna crash," Yang bluntly stated. "100% gonna crash. This room's safer than those shitty boxcars."
"B-but it's the first—"
"You want metal walls or rotted wooden walls between you and whatever we're about to hit?"
Blake needed no further convincing, and briefly disappeared into the boxcar before coming back in with Zwei, Oobleck, and an unconscious Ruby slung over Weiss' shoulders. Everybody gaped at Yang's state, but she waved them off.
"Someone cover up my exit wound," Yang demanded calmly. "If we survive the train crash, it'd be, uh…" she sent a beseeching look to Blake, who was already cutting strips off Oobleck's trenchcoat (without permission) and layering them over the wound.
"W-wicked c-cringe?" poor, shakily Blake supplied, getting a nod from Yang that visibly soothed them.
"Yyyyup— wicked cringe, to die of blood loss," she finished, then addressed Weiss more seriously. "You. Explain you and my sister."
"I already—"
"More," Yang commanded. "Now."
Weiss vacillated with an open mouth for a couple seconds before begrudgingly setting Ruby down next to her sister. She pulled in a deep breath. "I… I have somatic animaphagia. I have been… helping Ruby by— a-and I know this does sound very bad, but everything grows back, I-I solemnly swear—"
Yang growled.
"Suckingbitsofhersoulout," Weiss shot out squeakingly, then added when Yang's hair started to smoke: "W-with her consent! It relieves her tics! I— I swear it! By mine honor and by the honor of my nemesisship with F— Ruby!"
Yang's growling eased. Slightly. Her eyes slowly moved to Ruby, then drifted to Weiss, narrowed, then drifted back to Ruby, then back to Weiss a final time.
Laying 'claim'… the general weirdness… Ruby's weird confidence as of late… 'my Florabel'...
It wasn't, like, a realization. She'd figured it out. Mostly. This was just confirmation.
"You've been banging my sister."
Weiss froze. Her good eye went wide. The other one had a silver tinge to it, which was hilariously obvious now that Yang knew. The soul-sucker stuttered: "I— I— You—"
Yang rolled her eyes and snorted. "Dude, she's an adult. I'm not gonna regulate who she—"
A cold wind blew at Yang's back. Her generously neutral look died. She did not turn. She did not need to.
"Sorry I'm late," Raven's always-uncaring voice said. "I was… doing something."
The grind of an ungodly scythe scraping metal made everyone wince. Everyone but Yang. She didn't need to look to know it was Summer stepping through the portal behind her mother, her voice ringing out with the ease of someone who hadn't yet noticed their child passed out on the floor below her:
"I'm something."