Chapter 2 Yang's Fate

After successfully evading the second strange person, Ruby heads towards the island's southern side, if that is the actual south side, as she has no compass to tell her. But having no compass is the least of her problems as she keeps her head on a swivel, ready to activate her semblance at any faint sudden sounds as she now knows that they are looking for her, 'Hopefully, Yang, Wiess, and Blake are ok.'

Right now, Ruby's teammates and sister are on her mind, and they may or may not be on this weird island, too. For now, her goal is to find a way off the island while keeping an eye out for her team or clues that they are here. As she continues her cautious walk, she soon spots a teeny-tiny island with a gigantic rock embedded in the center that barely connects to the main island by a short, shallow sandbar. Curious, Ruby walks towards it, and as soon she steps onto the sand, she quickly spots a trail of tracks, so she quickens her pace over to them. Once she is next to them, *GASP, Ruby immediately recognizes whose large, bulky footprints are, "Yang!"

The footprints heading inland, so Ruby follows the tracks, but once they reach land, the tracks become more challenging to follow, and from the point they are heading, Ruby's eyes widen in fright as she sees that her sister is heading towards the possible home of those large scaly people and *Distant Boom*

Ruby stops as she hears an explosion, and her fears become more apparent, "Hold on, Yang, I'm coming!"

Ruby uses her semblance and dashes over a few rolling hills and soon reappears next to a tree on one of the hills surrounding a barren, charred patch of land, and at the center of this burnt land is a slop crevice filled with lava. The only vegetation is the dry grass at the bases of the hills, and the last thing of note are three beings standing near the lava, two of whom Ruby has already seen.

The third being is...bulky with dark metal gray color scales with large patches of bony plating, a turquoise sphere, dark brown messy hair with twigs and leaves intertwined everywhere, very muscular, and a large menacing club at the end of her tail. Her humanoid part is very tan, with many cuts up and down her arms. All three of them are breathing heavily, with the green one and the feline-looking one looking very battered, and they quickly notice her. The third notices its two companions suddenly looking at something, so the Gray one twists around, and her blue eyes meet silver. As this new being turns around, Ruby spots something in her right claw, and when she finally sees what it is, Ruby feels her heart skip a beat, and she can't breathe.

Tears start forming as Ruby mumbles in sorrow and dread, "Yang...no."

In the being's claw was Yang's prosthetic arm, but there was no sign of Yang herself anywhere unless...Ruby looks at the lava-filled crevice but shakes her head, "No...she can't be...she couldn't have..."

The three beings move towards Ruby, and while the two she has encountered before somewhat limp towards her, the third one approaches her slowly but steadily with her left claw extended out and open. Ruby closes her eyes with a few tears running down her face, and while the Gray one gets closer to Ruby, Ruby suddenly shouts in disbelief, "She isn't gone!"

Ruby activates her semblance and rockets over the three stunned beings, over lava, over the hills, and out of sight of the ones that might've killed her sister. After a minute or two of flying through the air, Ruby stops at the base of a large hill and falls to her knees as she starts crying, "Yang...*silently sobs*."

Ruby stayed there for a while weeping until she stopped and corrected herself with self-defiance, "NO, she has to be alive; just because they have her arm doesn't mean she didn't escape. She could have needed to detach her arm and flee before they could do something to her."

Ruby gets back on her feet, wipes away the tears, and hardens her expression and mind, 'Unless I see her body, she is still out there, and if she is here, then so are Wiess and Blake. I just need to find them before they do. I should head back there and see if they have left; if they have, I can check for clues of where she ran off to.'

With a goal in mind, Ruby heads back to the lava but not directly, as she doesn't run into them if they decided to go after her. Ruby would first go around this large hill and then head southwest, only to make a curve walk down south towards the battle site. Halfway in the curve, Ruby faintly hears sounds, so she goes prone and places her ear on the ground while steading her breathing. It didn't take long for her to not only hear but feel ground vibrations and they were getting closer. Ruby slowly gets back up, heads to a nearby bush between two trees, and squats behind it.

Ruby soon sees the trio slowly moving around a hill, heading in her direction, and from what she can see, the three beings seem to be chatting among themselves, with the Gray one in the middle still holding onto her sister's prosthetic arm.

'Yang must have given them a good wallop, especially that green one,' Ruby sees the Green one on the right, cradling her left arm while slightly limping. As the three get closer, Ruby ducks her head down and leans closer to the bush, she then hears them. *Various deep-throat growling and hissing sounds*

Ruby couldn't understand a single thing they were saying and as they walked past the bush Ruby is hiding behind, her body slightly shakes as their large claws stomps pass her. To Ruby's relief, they didn't notice her, but she stayed there for a while until she couldn't hear, feel, or see them. Once gone, she gets back up and hurriedly runs towards her destination.

She gets there in a short amount of time and begins her investigation with the first thing she notices is the amount of destruction around the area. She sees craters litter around the ground, some spots had deep claw gauges in them, even a tree closest to the charred ground got snapped in two. All clear signs of a fierce battle has happened here, but Ruby was only interested in one spot, along the lava bank. She carefully steps towards and down the gentle slope, looking for signs like drag marks, clomps of ground pulled out, and the like. She sees a few pieces of rocks near the edge of the lava, but that could have been from the battle and (Hopefully) not Yang being in there. Ruby moves along the back, looking for any other clues, but, to her relief or frustration, she doesn't see anything around the lava, so she moves away from the sweltering heat and back near the battle scene.

She spots several shotgun shells in a small crater and a shell casing here and there. She moves to a different spot and spots some splotches of blood, 'I hope that ain't Yang's, but those three were bleeding, so maybe the shotgun shots caused this.'

After more searching, Ruby had enough and a better feeling that her sister might still be alive, but that leaves the question: Where is she? Which way did she go? Ruby thinks for a moment, 'She didn't go west or north as I would have come across her or at least flow over her. That would only leave the east side, maybe she went to that pyramid place? *Sigh* I guess I better go check and see. Hopefully, she is choosing to be sneaky like Blake, and it would be nice if she met her or Wiess somewhere over there.'

Ruby reluctantly starts heading toward the pyramid but eagerly hopes that her sister and friends are somewhere there. But for now, she still needs to be careful as these beings are still out, and they must be strong if they made Yang flee. There is one question in Ruby's mind: Are there more of them on this island that she hasn't seen yet?

I know that this is a very short chapter, but they'll get longer in the future.

To D.J. Scales: Your prediction of this story being an exploration is correct for at least the first few chapters.