15

"Ehm… could you let her go please? She was just… keeping an eye out for troubles." Roman attempted to diffuse the situation. After a long moment of silence the oppressive feeling disappeared and Neo was unceremoniously dropped to the ground. The person then placed a hand over her head to keep her there for the time being.

Yang continued to study Torchwick. She knew he was a thief but behaved more like a jester. Making fun of the police, running circles around powerful gangs but she didn't know whether he could get her job done.

"Tsk, I was looking for a competent supplier, not a clown." She wasn't angry at Roman that much, but she was rather annoyed that she would have to spend more time looking for the right schmuck.

"Hey! I may do some funny stuff with locals but I am a professional!" Came Torchwick's indignant reply. "If you need something, I can get it! For the right price of course."

After a second of deliberation, Yang gave Neo a folded note and let her scurry away. She ran up to Roman and handed him the piece of paper, then hid behind him. Roman unfolded the note and started reading. After a minute he looked up and spoke. "... can I get back to you in a few days? I don't know what half of this stuff is or where to get it. I'll look it up and tell you the price, okay?" This was rather awkward. His customer clearly didn't have patience to spare and was probably strong enough to put them both six feet under.

"One week. If you don't respond, I'll find somebody else." With nothing else to say, Yang turned around and left.

-BBW-

Two days have passed since the meeting and there was still no reply. It hardly mattered right now, she gave him a week and she would keep her word. In the meantime Ruby had once more dragged her away to show whatever she had made. When they reached a remote location, Yang saw a stone with a bullseye sprayed on it and promptly received a long tube with a mess of wires attached to it and a long metal spike inside. She aimed the supposed weapon at the bullseye through the digital scope on the side and pulled the trigger. The object in her hands started humming and yellow lines lit up within the barrel. After the crosshairs turned green she depressed the trigger.

The stone was shattered and the spike sunk dozens of feet under the ground. The recoil was so powerful that her semblance already started charging her up by reflex. The two explosions scared the nearby wildlife, one from the spike breaking the sound barrier and the other from the impact. And worst of all, her hair was standing on ends due to the abundance of static electricity.

"Wanna try one more time?" Ruby excitedly chirped in, already holding another three feet spike.

"Why did you make that? It's not like I need more power." Yang asked as she handed the weapon to her sister.

"Well, I thought that if we ever run into something like that thing again, you could just aim at the weak points from a distance instead of getting up close and wasting time looking for them. I made some calculations and my railgun would have been able to pierce both the flesh and those weird eggs inside." Ruby finished reloading and checked on the lighting dust battery. "And if we don't encounter anything similar we can always just use it on armored grimm."

Yang put the railgun back on her shoulder and took aim at a ball shaped cloud. A few seconds later the cloud was made into a donut.

"I'm pretty sure that's loitering…" Ruby commented as the projectile soared way out of their vision.

Yang only rolled her eyes. "Do you collect every case after a fight?" She shot back with a smirk.

Ruby stuck out her tongue for a second but decided to drop it. She had more important thing to talk about. She pulled out a small vial of finely powdered lightning dust and uncapped it. After a short burst of aura the dust activated but instead of launching a bolt of lightning Ruby created a small vortex of energized petals. She took another spike and let the petals envelop it, becoming an oval shaped sparking cloud. A wave of her hand a the projectile flew off towards the destroyed target. Both the sonic boom and the impact were weaker but still quite destructive.

"Cool, right!" Ruby turned to her sister with a wide smile on her face.

"Show off." Yang replied. "Let's go home, I'm hungry."

-BBW-

She really should have expected this. Torchwick was an utter clown so why was she surprised when he wanted to meet her in an ice cream cafe. He probably was a bit too intimidated by her after their first meeting and decided that if they were surrounded by people it would go smoother. Or he was just an idiot. Both versions were quite plausible.

The small bell chimed as she entered the place. It was clean and filled with a mixed scent of strawberries, chocolate and whipped cream. About a third of the tables were occupied, mostly by families with children enjoying some sweets. Maybe I should take Ruby here when we have time.

Yang ordered a medium sized portion of vanilla and strawberry ice cream from a shy rabbit girl and after being told that it would be brought to her table, she left to find the fool. He was sitting in the corner near the window with a large cookie flavored shake and his partner had six empty plates stacked near her and currently she was having a seventh. They looked different than the last time. Instead of a mishmash of colors his partner had now black hair and green eyes. Torchwick also had black hair but blue eyes. Yang remembered that the girl tried to mask herself with some strange glass-like illusions before she broke through them and caught her.

She casually sat down opposite of them and without bothering to greet them she started the second 'negotiations'.

"You are an idiot."

The girl either snorted or choked on the ice cream while Roman only deadpanned. "Nice to meet you as well…" he looked her up and down. "I don't know what you want, girl, but I'm waiting for someone and I doubt she has much patience." He tried to get rid of Yang, usually Neo would have already dealt with that but she was more interested in her ice cream.

"And I'm the messenger. I repeat, you are an idiot." She subtly pointed towards the rabbit waitress. "See the girl over there?"

"What about her?" He shot back immediately, only to look down at a napkin Neo passed him with a word 'huntress' written on it.

"Probably still in training but can make a mess nonetheless. Let's get this over with before something stupid happens." Yang crossed her arms and started waiting for Roman to start talking business.

Her order arrived a few minutes of tense silence later. When the girl was leaving, Roman's eyes followed her every move as if she would turn around and attack him. Although with how intently he was staring at her back it would be probably justified. After she was far enough for his cation to subside, he finally started talking.

"I can get the stuff your boss needs, but it won't be an easy affair." He said in a serious tone.

"That is your problem." Yang said after savoring her ice cream. "What I need is a price and timeframe."

Roman looked a bit uncomfortable and after exchanging a quick eye contact with his supposed girlfriend he slowly answered back. "400 million lien… and a month or two to get it all." It was a complete shot in the dark on his part. He knew how much his work cost and usually he knew how much the thing he was stealing did so he could add it to the bill but not now. He knew that he, or more precisely Neo, would be hunting down a large amount of scientific equipment. What was it used for or how much would it legally cost? No idea.

Yang kept her expression neutral. She knew that whatever Ruby was looking for would be ridiculously expensive, the main question being whether or not she would be able to cover it on her own. Paying this much would bring her down to almost nothing but it's not like she used her money anyway. She pulled out her scroll and after a few seconds of typing gave Roman a pointed look.

A moment his scroll dinged. 100 million was just transferred to his account.

"You will receive the rest after you deliver." Yang spoke to the bewildered man. "Don't try to run off, unless you want to deal with the consequences."

Roman spent a few seconds calming down before nodding and dragging Neo away so they could start working.

-BBW-

He wasn't blind. Taiyang knew that he screwed up enormously when it came to parenting or even having a family overall. He still didn't know whether Raven took off over a fight with Ozpin or it was something he did. Neither did he know if Summer just ran off on a solo mission because it was something she wanted or it was also Ozpin who convinced her to go. Unfortunately, Raven was too much of a petty ass to speak to him, Summer was still missing and even he knew that if it was Ozpin's fault he would lie his way out of taking responsibility. In the end he was left with raising two little girls and oh boy, didn't he screw that up.

First they got themselves almost eaten by grimm which led to Qrow of all people trying to be responsible and sticking around to help with the mess. He hoped that it would solve the problems but it only seemed to delay them. Ruby was a lot like Summer so he wasn't too surprised when instead of socializing she spent days on end tinkering with every piece of technology that resembled a weapon. Yang on the other hand was a lot like him. She had plenty of friends, somehow was the best in class and overall a great person to everyone around even if a bit rough around the edges. He was sure that despite his terrible parenting she would be able to bounce back and live a good life, even if she would end up punching him in the face at some point.

Then he made them fight each other as an exemplary match and for some reason everything went downhill from there. Yang's grades plummeted, on a dime she almost stopped interacting with her classmates and would disappear almost every night. She used to be all smiles then all her friends would get was calm indifference. In classes her grades were perfectly above average simply because she couldn't be bothered to ace it and in combat she would always give a single glance to her opponent and end it in one hit. He worried that her 'inner Raven' started acting up but while both of them valued strength, Raven would show her supposed superiority in the most toxic way possible while Yang was… either more calm or somehow even more arrogant. While Raven would run around 'proving' herself the strongest, Yang seemed to not even care about the opinion of other people. Save for one person. When she was with Ruby and thought nobody was looking it was easy to see. She was relaxed, a content smile on her lips as Ruby would babble away about something Yang didn't have a slightest idea. Quite a contrast with a concealed anger he felt whenever he looked his oldest in the eyes. He couldn't even blame her for it. Thankfully Ruby didn't share her opinion but the girl was just too nice to be really angry at someone.

Yang would be graduating soon, hopefully Beacon would help her open up a bit. He prayed she wouldn't do something ridiculous like wait two years for Ruby to graduate as well. Although… her pride probably wouldn't allow that.

-BBW-

How did it all go so terribly wrong? She finally got some free time to spend with her family, or at least the part of it she liked, but those damned animals had to ruin it all. Now she was rushing to one of the summer houses to save her siblings from the White Fang. The bastards who should have had already fallen apart decided to make a last ditch effort to strike at their sworn enemies. But of course they didn't have enough manpower to get to her snake of a 'father' through the army of bodyguards so they went after her sister and brother.

She didn't wait for the bullhead to land, jumping out and summoning a manticore to rush to the part of the building her siblings were reported to be before the attack started. The structure itself was heavily damaged. Several rooms were on fire and in some places walls were blown off.

"Specialist!" Somebody called from below. Winter only spared them a glance, she recognised the Ace uniform and decided to leave them to their own devices, she had different priorities right now.

When her manticore broke through the ceiling she saw that the fighting was mostly over. On the floor were plenty of scorch marks, smears of blood and android pieces. She saw what was left of the terrorists defending the entrance to one of the bedrooms. One summoned megoliath later she was rushing inside.

So much blood.

Torn limbs and crushed bodies covered the floor and large stains of blood painted the walls. She saw the aftermaths of grimm attacks but even those paled in comparison. Grimm would feast and 'celebrate' after killing a person but here it looked like whatever did this was fixated on killing every single one of the terrorists.

In the corner she saw a white dress sprayed with blood. Her heart almost stopped in that instant and on autopilot she ran up to what she hoped was her sister. There she saw Weiss lay over Whitley, covering him with her own body. After a quick check up on their vitals she knew they were merely unconscious. Then the dam broke.

When Elm Ederne reached the room, she was treated to the sight of Winter Schnee crying in relief as she hugged her siblings with trembling arms and with no care for all the blood she was getting on her clothes.

-BBW-

She was scared. She was angry. She wanted to be saved. She wanted to crush them herself. She despaired. She would fight for her dream. To the very end.

/

/

/

Infodump

The Atlesian chapter of White Fang was formed shortly before Ghira Belladonna stepped down as the leader of the organization. Even before the transition of power, they were already ignoring his calls of non-violence. When Sienna Khan became the new leader any restrain they had left broke. Kingdom of Atlas was historically most oppressive towards the faunus and they were ready to repay it all. While other chapters were just starting out with vandalism they already moved to assasinations and bombings. In response a private army funded by Atlesian companies was established and they striked back. High profile assasinations and public executions were met with terror campaigns against the faunus comunes and brandings of 'suspisious' individuals. After several months the military proper decided to put a stop to the madness, declaring all out war against White Fang while General Ironwood summoned the CEOs of the participating companies and under the threat of seizing their properties ordered their forces to be disbanded. In the end this chapter of White Fang fell apart. The radicals were either killed or captured by the army or moved to the Valean chapter. The moderates either tried to go back to their civilian lives or joined the newly formed Happy Huntresses under the command of Robyn Hill.