It was like all of Yang's zest for life had been contained in her right arm, and when that was lost, so was her will to do pretty much anything.

Yang leaned back in the tub, pulling her legs up to her chest and wrapping her good left arm around them. She used to enjoy sitting in the bath; it always brought back memories of when she was younger, when she and Ruby would get into splash fights and inevitably drag Summer Rose into their playful quarrels, but now it only served to wash off the dried up swear she'd accumulated during the day. It was just a thing to do, the same as eating and sleeping. Even washing her hair, something she used to be passionate and meticulous about, became merely a routine, just another step in bathing.

She sighed, resting her chin on her knees. Now that baths had become so mundane she often let herself get lost in thought, and this time was no different. Lately, her thoughts turned towards her sister and the journey she was on, and how much she missed her.

It had been two months since Ruby left with what remained of Team JNPR on a quest to...do something heroic. Yang couldn't be bothered to recall what the specifics were anymore, but knowing her sister she'd probably try to right wrongs and help the downtrodden, like the heroes from the stories she loved.

"Ruby…," she muttered, "damn it, why do you have to be so much like Mom?" She tried to hit the side of the tub with her free hand, only to suddenly remember that she was missing that appendage. Her mind immediately brought up an image of the fiery haired Faunus who cut her arm, her eyes changing from lilac to bright crimson as rage built inside her.

Screaming in frustration, she lashed out with her left arm, slamming a fist into the

tiled wall next to the tub; a couple tiles cracked on impact, leaving a shallow crater there.

Her palm stung a little as she pulled her arm back. It wasn't the worst pain she'd ever felt, her missing right forearm was proof of that, but it definitely hadn't been there a second ago.

Upon further inspection, Yang saw a fresh cut, with a few bits of ceramic still in the wound. A glance at the wall revealed a splotchy red stain in the center of the crater.

"...huh," she said, putting the incident out of her mind; it wasn't like it was life threatening, or even all that serious, anyway.

Suddenly, she heard a knock on the other side of the bathroom door.

"Yang, is everything alright on there?" a sweet, feminine voice asked. Without waiting for an answer the door was opened and in walked a woman with cerulean hair, who took one look at the scene before looking directly at Yang. "What happened?" she asked in a simple, no nonsense tone.

Yang shrugged. "It was looking at me funny," she answered, more on reflex than anything else; she hadn't been in the mood to actively crack jokes in a while. "Almost like I'm naked or something."

The woman shook her head, sighing, and grabbed a towel from the nearby rack. She then motioned for Yang to get out of the tub, holding the towel out to her. "Dry yourself off," she ordered Yang, "and I'll take care of your hand."

Yang grumbled something under her breath but complied anyway, slowly getting to a kneeling position, then a standing one, before stepping out of the tub. She grabbed the towel from the woman, who went over to the cabinet under the sink while she set about drying herself off.

"It's not that bad, Lea-" Yang started to protest before being silenced with a gesture.

"It could still get infected if it's not treated," the woman, Lea Nightengale, explained. She placed a first aid box on the sink and opened it up, pulling materials out. "You really should be more careful, you know."

"...what's the point?" Yang sighed, "It's not like things can really get any worse." She waved her stump around for emphasis.

Lea was nonplussed. "Let me see your hand." Begrudgingly, Yang draped the towel over her shoulders and held out her hand. Lea took Yang's hand in hers and held a small bottle over it, warning "This is going to sting" before tipping the bottle over, pouring its contents on the wound.

To her credit, Yang only winced a little as her wound was disinfected. She'd gotten more than her fair share of scrapes as a kid, so this was nothing. (She hadn't even noticed the pain all that much when she smashed the wall.) Then again, when you lost an arm, anything seemed trivial in comparison.

"Now tell me why you actually hit the wall," Lea said, dabbing the wound with a cotton ball. "I doubt it was because the wall was leering at you."

For a couple seconds Yang debated giving a half hearted shrug as her answer, but ultimately gave up on that idea.

"I was thinking about Ruby," she revealed, "and I just got really angry. I don't know why, I just...did." Lea began wrapping bandages around Yang's palm. "...why did she have to go?"

"She wrote a letter, right?" Lea prompted, "What did that say?"

Yang shook her head, some of her still damp hair falling over her eyes. "I know that much, what I'm asking is why she thought it was a good idea to just pack up and leave like some uncaring, irresponsible…!" Her eyes began to turn red again. "I know I shouldn't be mad at her, but I can't help it! Every time I think of her out there I just-"

A sudden, sharp pain in her right wrist prevented her from finishing her thought. She tried to grab at it, but instead met only thin air, her mind realizing that the appendage in question was no longer there.

"Damn it!" she swore, "Why the hell is everything bad happening to me?"

"You know that's not true," Lea admonished, gently taking the blonde's hand back, "everyone goes through hard times in their lives, it just so happens you're going through yours now."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Yang demanded, "'Cuz it's doing the opposite; I thought you nurses were supposed to comfort your patients."

If Lea took offense to that statement she didn't show it, instead tying off the bandage. "My job is to help people heal physically and properly," she explained, "not to coddle them. That said, after you get dressed it's time for dinner; your father's trying to cook some eggs, though 'overcook' might be more accurate where his culinary ability is concerned."

"I'm not hungry," Yang said, pulling her hand away. She moved the towel from her shoulders to her head and started rubbing her hair dry.

"You should eat something anyway. The doctor said-"

"The doctor can go stuff it!" Yang blurted out, whopping the towel off her head. "'You need to keep your strength up'!" she said mockingly, "Bullcrap! Why do I need to stay strong if I can't even fight anymore? Not that it really matters, I'm still plenty strong." She jerked her head at the ruined, tile wall.

"And that bandage says you Aura still needs to recover," the nurse countered, "and physical health is part of that process."

"Well, maybe I don't want to get better, what about that?" Without waiting for an answer, Yang shoved her way passed the nurse and stomped out the door and down the hall, roughly opening the door to her room and slamming it closed after her. She flopped down on her bed, and buried her face in the covers.

She laid there for what must have been an hour before there was a knock on the door, Lea's voice coming from the other side. "You left your clothes in the bathroom," she said, "I'll leave them outside. Will you at least come sit with your father?"

Yang didn't bother responding.

"...very well, I'll bring you something later." After that there were the faint sounds of receding footsteps.

When she was sure Lea had left, Yang got up and retrieved her clothes; now that she'd had a chance to calm down she was starting to feel a little uncomfortable remaining in the buff, as well as feeling strangely vulnerable. It wasn't an uncommon feeling, one she could easily recall feeling throughout her life. (The time when she and Ruby were rescued by Uncle Qrow, for example.) But ever since "The Battle of Beacon", as people tended to call that event, she hadn't really been able to shake the feeling completely off. Sure, sometimes it was weaker than at others, but it never fully went away, and that pissed her off.

She hated feeling that way, like it was just so easy to take her down now. And it wasn't like she hadn't known before that she wasn't totally invincible either, but with half her right arm gone it was a constant reminder that even at her most powerful she wasn't safe from harm.

It was that blow to her ego more than anything else that left her feeling useless. After all, if it was so easy to beat her when she had both arms, what chance did she even have with just one?

As she tugged her shirt on she glanced out the window at the show covered ground; aside from the odd bit of animal tracks the snow remained undisturbed, still as pristine as it was when it first fell.

Yang sighed, her thought once again turning towards her wayward sister.

"I wonder if it's snowing where Ruby is," she wondered.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

3 months later...

"Any luck so far?" Port asked, setting a mug of coffee down on the desk of his friend and colleague, Dr. Bartholomew Oobleck. Once the chaos had died down, the hyperactive man had been working nearly nonstop, going through the surviving records and footage from the Battle of Beacon for anything that could shed light on why and how it happened.

"Nothing so far," the bespectacled man revealed, his normally rapid fire speech tempered by fatigue. Not surprising really, considering the man had been at this for nearly a year now, sifting through data from the time he woke to when he headed off to bed.

Port highly suspected his friend would forget to breathe if someone weren't around to remind him to do so.

"But I'm close to something this time," Oobleck continued after taking a sip from his new cup, "I can practically feel it!"

Port leaned in and squinted at the display. "...the tournament brackets?"

"Precisely!" He furiously tapped on the keyboard and brought up the brackets for the current Vytal Festival, highlighting the match of Yang Xiao-Long and Mercury Black. "I've always had my suspicions about this match ever since the controversy at the end."

Port nodded, "I have as well. Shame that, glad she was let off with only a disqualification from the tournament." The rotund man raised an eyebrow. "I take it you've an idea about that?"

"Indeed!" Oobleck typed some more and brought up a different screen, this one just consisting of seemingly endless lines of code. "This is the algorithm for the Single matches roulette, though granted it's only a portion of it. As you can see, it's fairly complicated. Notice anything off about it?"

Port squinted harder, scanning the code from top to bottom. "It just looks like a bunch of gibberish to me," he eventually admitted.

"The same goes for me, for the most part. However, I can't shake the feeling that something about it is off." Oobleck took a long swig of his coffee, downing the rest of the cup. "It's staring me right in the face, I know it! If only this were field research, I would have solved this conundrum by now…." He looked tiredly over his shoulder at Port. "I don't suppose you know any good programmers, eh Peter?"

"None off the top of my head," Port said, his bushy mustache dropping a little. "I'll ask Glynda if she can spare you one next time I see her."

"Thanks, old friend," the traces of a smile worked their way into Oobleck's face, "Give her my regards when you do."

Port nodded and headed back over to the nearby coffee machine. "Refill?"

Prologue: Why angst?

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

And so begins a new journey, one I didn't think I'd partake in before Volume 4.

Hey everyone, and welcome to my newest RWBY fic! This is something of a return to my roots, in that this will primarily be a Yang centric story, though I guess it's sort of in a similar vein as Stages was. Not nearly as oppressively dressing as that was, but still similar.

Basically, the title says it all; this is going to be the story of how Yang Xiao-Long, Mistress of grabbing the bull by the horns (See what I did thar?), stops Yangsting around (OK, I'll stop now!) and once again becomes the fun loving, pun spewing, punch happy Huntress we all fell in love with. It may be a rough journey at times, but the end of the day things should turn out for the better. (On that note, I think it goes without saying that this isn't going to follow the RWBY cannon very much, though I'll do my best to keep it in line with what Rooster Teeth has and will establish.)

Next chapter the plot will start moving. How? Either keep refreshing the page, or fav and follow the story; both methods work, though the latter is a lot simpler. And leave a review while you're at it, I enjoy hearing what people think of what I write.