Sunburnt Black

Yang Xiao Long is having another restless night as the memories of seeing her mother, Raven, and Silva making love plague her mind. To make matters worse, the fact she is almost identical in appearance but with different hair, eye, and skin coloring to her made her hormone-fueled mind picture herself in Raven's place. The blonde buries her head in the pillow to muffle her screams of frustration. All Yang wanted was to make one big happy family with her mother, father, and little sister, but any plans of that happening got thrown out the window by the snow leopard faunus's relationship with the former bandit chief.

Yang spent most of the day giving both Raven and Silva a wide berth, plus she couldn't look either of them in the eyes on top of it all. The blonde felt a strong need to relax and took out her Scroll to play Ultimate Ninja Combat 3, a popular fighting game in Remnant, to help distract her from thinking about the other night. After several online matches, Yang finally felt like she could sleep in peace as her eyelids got heavy, and she kept on yawning up a storm. As dreamland called for her, she heard something that made her get up.

The blonde followed the noise to her mother's tent and peeked through the opening to see Raven and Silva going at each other again. As Yang practically felt compelled to watch, she felt her body get hot, which soon turned cold as the former bandit chief spotted her. The blonde tried to run away but instead found herself on her mother's bed with the snow leopard faunus pinning her down. Silva then asked in a distorted voice.

" Are you ready, my love?"

Yang felt his hot rod against her lower mouth. The blonde's heart pounded against her chest as she said.

" Yes."

Yang waited expectantly when suddenly she heard her alarm go off. The blonde fell out of her bed in her tent, and she realized she had just had a wet dream, considering the dampness of her panties. Yang groaned, feeling frustrated and embarrassed by the dream she just had and wanting to find a hole to crawl into to hide in for the rest of the day. At least the blonde returns home tonight and will be sleeping far away from her mother and Silva, much to her relief. Yang picked herself up and trudged out of her tent to get some breakfast.

When she reached the campfire, she saw everyone except Silva around it, and the blonde asked.

" Um, where's Silva?"

" He went to his lab to get to work on a project of his Yang."

Raven answered as she enjoyed some sausage links roasted on a stick. Ruby excitedly asked with stars in her eyes.

" He has a lab?! Where is it?!"

The former bandit chief swallowed her current mouthful of food before answering.

" It's in that cave I told you about to stay away from because it is full of fragile and volatile materials that need to be handled with care. So Ruby, Yang, I will remind both of you not to go there without my or Silva's permission, especially since Silva is busy working on his current project and does not wish to be disturbed."

" Come on, please take me to Silva's secret lab where he has experimental weapons, Raven. Please, please, please!"

The young reaper pleaded with Raven, and she deflected the plea.

" Ask Silva the next time you see him, Ruby."

Ruby quietly implored with puppy dog eyes to get Raven to agree to show her Silva's lab. It was ineffective as the former bandit chief finished her breakfast and returned to her tent to brew some tea. Not long after, Yang entered her mother's, and Raven offered as she noticed her daughter.

" Would you like some tea, Yang?"

" Sure..."

The blonde meekly replied, which caused the former bandit chief to look at her daughter with an arched eyebrow but didn't say anything as she poured another cup of tea. Raven and Yang drank their tea in silence until the blonde asked her mother.

" What is Silva working on, mom?"

" He is apparently making some robots to get started on building his homes in Vale and Anima."

Yang asked with a curious look.

" What do you mean his homes?"

" Aside from setting a place for April and me, he also has a plot of land near Forever Fall Forest that he plans on having a manor there for him and his strays."

" Strays?"

The blonde asked her mother in confusion, and the former bandit chief sipped her tea before answering.

" Yes, strays, Yang. Silva has picked up a few girls that have nowhere to go and is taking care of them until they can look out for themselves without his help."

" How many?"

Yang asked as she had mixed and complicated feelings about Silva having multiple girls waiting for him elsewhere. Raven drank some more of her tea and then poured herself another cup as she told her daughter.

" There are the twins, then the girl that makes me think of a tub of three flavor ice cream, the mint-haired thief, well, former thief, and the vampire bat faunus that is little more than a broken puppet."

" What do you mean, a broken puppet?"

Raven took a sip of her tea in an unhurried fashion, then explained Argint's situation.

" From what Silva told me, he found out about an illegal slave auction in Atlas and couldn't ignore it, so he went to deal with the scum attending it and free the faunus captured there. He managed to get everyone home or at least on their way home except one. That girl has no past except darkness and the training she was put through to be a toy for whoever bought her, then tossed aside when they got bored of her."

Yang looked aghast and bellowed with righteous anger.

" Slavery is illegal!"

Raven gave her daughter a pointed look for shouting in her tent, which made the blonde settle down a little. The former bandit chief then said as she looked at her reflection in her tea.

" Even when I led the Branwen tribe on raids for supplies, I refrained from human and faunus trafficking as I found the practice disgusting and abhorrent even by my standards back then. So currently, Silva is trying to help that girl adjust to a somewhat normal life by having her interact with people he trusts and make her own decisions without his input as her master."

" Wait, master?!"

" Apparently, the girl he calls Argint was in a sleep-like state until before he used her trigger to have her imprint on him as her master."

Yang slumped back at hearing all this and wandered out loud, learning a bit more about Silva.

" Isn't he practically a Huntsman already?"

" He does not have a license, but he has been busy with his travels when he first left the tribe and had me realize that I was... mistaken about a lot of things that I now greatly regret."

Raven said with a melancholy smile as she drank her tea, and the blonde asked with an unsure expression.

" Does that include me as well?"

" Yes... Silva had me see what a fool I have been in the past, especially regarding my old team and family. I won't ask for forgiveness Yang as I did what I felt I had to despite how it all turned out in the way it did in the end."

The former bandit answered with an even look as apologizing is not her way of doing things. She lets her actions speak for herself as she makes an effort to reconnect with her daughter and try to make up for a lost time as best she can.

***

My name is Silva Branwen, and currently, I am drawing up some rough drafts of the construction bots I am going to build, plus an armored assault vehicle for the trip through Anima to Menagerie. Going completely by foot now that I seriously think about it seems more than a little silly; what am I, Ruby Rose? Jokes aside, I am so far leaning towards making the construction bots resemble ants in design because of how well it might work in the long run.

They would have stable footing with magnetic grips to scale the construction site, plus a few flying variants for situation-specific uses. The construction bots would have a central processing unit that would relay orders from a distance and have excellent mechanical strength for heavy lifting of the necessary materials. With some fine-tuning, they would more than serve their purpose, and after they built my two homes and secret base, I could rent them out for construction services. As I worked out their design and ran a few simulations, I felt giddy at finally building a place of my own.

Of course, I am starting it today to give Yang some space after, well, everything that has transpired as of late. Raven definitely owes me big time for playing the bad guy in this situation so that all the progress she made with her daughter doesn't slide backward. Well, I hope things will work out between me and my favorite blonde in the end, as we still got years before Beacon starts, not that the canon is still going to be applicable after I deal with Salem, one way or another.