Ch 70: I Burn (2)

Flipping through the air, Yang brought an ax kick down on one of the black-suited goons, flattening him. Spinning on her toes, Yang delivered a fiery uppercut to another, followed by a mid-air kick that laid out two more.

After taking out three in rapid succession, Yang was quickly set upon by the rest of the suited thugs that had climbed back to their feet and started dropping them like the beat that was still thumping.

*Bang* Right straight to the diaphragm.

*Bam* Back kick to the solar plex.

*swoosh pow boom* Leg sweep followed by a jaw-breaking uppercut and finished with a hammer arm that sent one man slamming down into another.

*yah swaa* Yang landed on another man's chest and jumped off him as he tried to swing his ax at her to clothesline two more goons to the ground.

*Bang* a shotgun powered back elbow and the man she had jumped off earlier folded like a wet rag.

*swsss* A spinning kick to the neck.

*Clang pa pa bam crash* Yang blocks a machete blade and delivers a one-two combo to the chin and chest before side kicking him into two more of his buddies and sending all three of them through another glass column.

*ta-ta-ta-ta-ta* The dance floor cleared of badly dressed suites, the bear headed DJ opens on Yang with a tommy gun. Yang jinks and jives through the rain of lead. Firing Ember Celica behind her, she launches herself into the air onto the raised platform the mafia wannabe is firing from, plants her hands on his mixing table, and double kicks him back into the wall. A quick elbow to the chin and a head slam into the mixing table, and the music sputters out along with bear boy's consciousness.

"Mai, who is this girl?" Miltia asks mockingly as she and her sister finally make their way through the crowd of their fleeing patrons back into the club. Both were dressed similar to how they were when Ray had first met them a couple of years earlier in the same club in matching short strapless dresses, lacy gloves, thigh-high leather boots, and prominent eye shadows accenting their vibrant light green eyes. Miltia was still dressed in red and black, and Melanie was still in white and blue.

However, someone who had seen them back then would have difficulty recognizing them as the same girls now. It wasn't just that they had matured even more or that their clothing was of a noticeably higher quality. They carried themselves with a nobility and pride that said they were used to giving orders and those orders being accepted without question and a lethal grace that spoke of fatal consequences for any that dared to say otherwise.

"I dunno Miltia, but we should teach her a lesson." Melanie answered, playing along with her sister's sarcastic dismissal of Yang as someone not worth remembering.

*Hmph* Yang snorted. That was fine with her.

*Click Klink* *Baa* *Click Klink* Not bothering to exchange words with the troublesome twin, Yang reloaded Ember Cilicia and charged.

Leaping over the ruined DJ table, Yang fired two Aura enhanced shotgun blasts at the girls in mid-air.

*HA HA* Miltia and Melanie performed a double back handspring to dodge and then split to both sides to charge her, trapping her in a pincer. Yang fired several more rounds, trying to disrupt their coordinated advance, but they dodged all her shots until they were too close to avoid, and then, with a quick flip and kick, Melanie parried Yang's shotgun shell with her heel blades.

While Yang was distracted by the explosion less than a foot from her nose, Miltia dashed at her from behind to slash her with her claws. The razor-sharp blades skidded across Yang's Aura shield as she ducked underneath and tried to counter.

Before she could, Melanie followed up her sister's attack with another flanking attack. Yang just barely got her guard up in time to block the heel blades aimed at her neck but was sent sliding back by the impact.

Yang snapped off an unaimed shot back at them, hoping to buy some time. But the Malachite twins calmly continued running forward as the round passed harmlessly between them and destroyed the third glass column.

The twins continued their synchronized attack on the hated blond. Coving for each other and maintaining a seemingly endless stream of attacks, not giving her time to react or focus as they began chipping away at her Aura. Under the pressure of their attacks, it was almost all Yang could do to defend herself, never mind utilizing her greatest advantage over the twins, her Aura manipulation to turn the tides.

Almost, but not everything. Even as Yang endured the ruthless assault and her eyes turned red, she began gathering energy in her center for a counter that would turn everything around. Finally, she had gathered enough power, and the next time Melanie came flipping and kicking at her, she acted.

*BANG* Melanie was caught unprepared in midair as the simple block Yang had used to defend herself countless times already turned into an explosive counter that sent her flying backward and her coordination with her sister broken.

Not giving Miltia the chance to retreat and regroup, Yang pressed the attack.

Straight, left, right, jab, hook, slice. The red and yellow sparks exchanged innumerable punches and swipes as they traded blows in those few brief seconds. Neither girl could get an advantage over the other till Yang decided Miltia's attention was sufficiently focused on her fists and kicked her legs out from under her with a quick snap kick.

*Kyaaa* Miltia cried as Yang swept her off her feet. Without her base, she couldn't defend herself, and Yang delivered three powerful uppercuts to her diaphragm that lifted her further into the air. As Miltia began to blackout from the force of the impacts traveling through her Aura and forcing all the air out of her body, Yang gifted her a shotgun and Aura enhanced right cross to the face and a one-way trip through the fourth glass pillar. Any other girl would have been permanently injured or even killed by such a ferocious assault, but thankfully for Miltia, Ray had been teaching Aura manipulation to his subordinates, especially the ones he was sleeping with, as well as his family. So, while she was down, she would recover.

With red out of the way, Yang flipped exaggeratedly over to where white was scrambling to her feet.

*Bang Bang* Yang greeted her opponent with several shotgun rounds that she dodged by flipping backward and then abruptly changing directions to dash through the fire and into Yang's face to offer her own hello in the form of a jump kick.

*Yah* *Click* *Ha* *Swish* *Yah* *Cling* The two long-haired beauties exchanged a lively series of deadly kicks and sweeps as they sparred with their long beautiful toned legs. After a couple of exchanges, Melania showed her superiority in kick-based combat and sent Yang sliding backward with a powerful front kick.

As Yang regained her footing, Melania quickly closed the distance with a sliding step and tried to seal the blond's footwork with a stomp.

Yang dodged backward with a quick hop-skip and maintained her stance, but unwilling to admit inferiority to the raven-haired girl in anything, Yang refrained from unleashing any punches. Instead, this following exchange became one of footwork as the two beauties appeared to dance across the floor. Making quick steps and faints into and out of each other's range as they vied for the best position and tried to seal off their opponent's movements. Melanie found it first and unleashed a high kick at Yang's face, or at least she thought she had. Prepared for the attack, Yang ducked and half turned to deliver a solid elbow to Melanie's solar plex.

The blow bent Melanie over and sent her stumbling back, but, rather than let the dance end, Yang reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling the stunned girl back in. Pulling her and spinning her around like she really was her dance partner, Yang jumped into the air to deliver a devastating kick to her pretty little face.

However, a red blur zipped in between the two at the last moment, and Yang's kick connected instead with the barely recovered Miltia. However, she was only barely able to intercept the kick but was unable to block it entirely and could only try to absorb the strike by letting it carry her backward, sending her into her dizzy sister and launching both of them up through the fifth glass column leaving only one left standing and out of the club through a window.

Determined to make sure she had finished this, Yang jumped after them.

"Yang?" A familiar cute voice asks as Yang lands in a superhero pose outside. "Is that you?"

"Oh!" Yang quickly stands up, a bit embarrassed as her eyes turned back to lilac. "Hey, sis! Hey, bro!"

*Ha* "Yang." Ray sighs in exasperation as he holds a seemingly unconscious Miltia in one arm and Melanie in the other, having caught them after Yang had blasted them out of the building. "Hold on a second. Let me set these two down inside and settle whatever damages you have caused before we go to From Dust Till Dawn."

"So… What are you doing here?" Ruby askes as they watch their brother go inside the club Yang had just devastated.

*Haaa* "It's a long story." Yang answers with a sigh, knowing she will be in for an earful from both her father and brother when she gets home.

######

*Snort* "That isn't an answer." Ray replied to Yang's joke about trusting her. "Just remember, it may be Junior's name on the door, but it's my pocket that gets lighter if we have to rebuild again." Ray's voice and the feel of his muscular chest pressing harder against her back brought her back as he leaned forward to grin sadistically at his sister from the side. "So if you break anything this time, you'll be working it off. I'm sure Melanie and Miltia would love the chance to boss you around for a couple of weeks."

*geh* Yang almost lost control of her bike at the thought. *gulp* She swallowed hard and shook off the cold sweat dampening her clothes as she steadied the bike. The idea of being at the beck and call of her two nemeses sickened Yang so much it had made her almost throw up on the spot.

"Yeah, we should probably go somewhere else," Yang said as she promptly popped a wheelie, spun the bike around, and floored it in the opposite direction.

"This the place?" Yang asked a couple of minutes later as she pulled up in front of a two-story brick building with large windows and a sign saying "Blue-Ray's" above the door.

"Yep*. It might not be as hip as the clubs you frequent, but it's one of my favorites." Ray answered as he got off.

"And I suppose the name is pure coincidence?" Yang sarcastically asked with a raised brow and a serious face as they walked towards it.

"Oh, I'd never noticed. I should sue them for using my name without my permission." Ray smiled back at her, his eyes laughing as he tried to keep his voice straight.

…*pff* The two siblings held it for a minute, looking each other dead in the eyes, then simultaneously guffawed at their lousy joke.

*aww* "And here I was hoping for some dancing." Yang half-joked as they walked in. The place was more of an oldies bar and grill than a club with rough wood floors, an expansive bar made of polished cement occupying the entire left wall, a simple open mike stage off to their right, and two to six-person tables scattered throughout the first floor. Above that, an open balcony ran around the edges of the room, letting people in the booths on the second floor, some in private rooms and others in an open area facing the balcony, watch everything that was happening down below. A young man was currently strumming away on an acoustic guitar as he sang a song about momma, and trains, and trucks, and prison, and gettin' drunk on the stage.

*haha* "Sorry, the only dancing that goes on here is the boot-scootin' boogie. And that's only on Friday and Saturday nights." Ray replied as he started threading his way towards the bar.

Yang hummed in acknowledgment as she followed behind him. She wasn't that disappointed in truth. She had something important to talk to her brother about, after all, and a more subdued venue than the ones she usually haunted would probably be better anyway. Yang would never admit it even to herself, but after searching for so long, she was apprehensive about finally having answers about her mother. She had been searching for answers for so long, but now that she might have finally found them, she found herself afraid of what those answers might be.

Did her mother not love her? Was there something wrong with her? Did her mother leave her willingly, or was she forced to? She had so many questions and plenty of time over the years for her imagination to invent the worst possible explanations for each. It didn't help that her beloved little brother obviously didn't like her mother at all.

As they reached the bar, Ray waved to get the bartender's attention. "One Galaxy Nova for myself and a Strawberry Sunrise for my date."

The bartender nodded and, with deft professional hands, quickly fixed the two cocktails.

Yang's Strawberry Sunrise was a red and orange fruity drink of medium strength made with tequila, orange juice, and pureed strawberries and garnished with a whole strawberry.

Ray's Galaxy Nova was a purple and blue cocktail that was also a fruity drink with a medium alcohol content. It was a mixture of tequila, grenadine, blue curacao, vodka, peach schnapps, and lemonade, along with a secret ingredient mixture that was known only to bars under the same corporate umbrella as Blue-Ray's. Or, in other words, owned by Spider Lotus.

After delivering their drinks, the bartender gave them some space and pretended to be polishing a glass but kept an eye on them. Ordering a galaxy nova had special significance, but just knowing to order the drink wasn't enough.

Both Ray and Yang took appreciative sips of their drink before planning to vacate their spots at the bar. As they did so, Ray subtly ran his semblance through the glass. As he performed electrolysis on the drink, the colors began to shift and swirl, splitting to add reds and blacks to the blue and purple mixture and causing little stars to form as the sugars in the liquids were drawn together and crystalized. It looked like a swirling space nebula dotted with dozens of shining stars brimming with life. All contained within a single glass.

The bartender's breath hitched as he saw this and caught the eye of Ray, who was looking meaningfully at him as he swirled his evolved drink in his hand. The transformation of the galaxy cocktail into the authentic galaxy nova was one of the signs his manager had warned him about. If he ever saw it, he was to treat the person as a VVIP guest and make every effort to accommodate them. He had never been told why or who the person might be, but it had been stressed on him and all the employees the importance of not asking any questions and displaying only the utmost courtesy.

He quickly signaled to one of the bouncers guarding the stairs to the second floor to come over and hurriedly whispered into his ear. Before Ray and Yang could take their second step away from the bar, the beefy Faunus intercepted them with what appeared to be an attempt at an amiable smile on his rough, scally face.

"If the lady and gentleman would follow me, please, we have a private table available for you on the second floor." The man dipped his shiny bald head slightly and gestured towards the stairs with a meaty hand the size of a dinner plate.

"Thank you." Ray said with a nod acting like this was natural and expected even as whispers started up from the nearby patrons over who the couple might be to be invited so amicably to the VIP rooms upstairs.