Shattered Tomorrow | Yang Xiao Long

The full body poses for the final sketches can get pretty awkward when you’re working with a landscape-oriented A4 sheet.

Thus completes team RWBY. Previously: Ruby – Weiss – Blake.

Click Keep Reading for more info on this RWBY AU!

About

The Kingdoms are in grave danger.

Vale, the epicenter of the catastrophe, had been hit the hardest, the people fleeing for their lives or taking cover in the abandoned buildings. Huntsman and Huntresses are scrambling to save the civilians, but they don’t know where to put them, because no safe place is in sight.

As a sort of sadistic move of mercy, Cinder allowed Amity Colosseum to be filled with refugees and left floating out of reach of most Grimm, but the people are at the mercy of her whim as the entire floating structure is hers to control (Author’s Note: may or may not keep this idea later on though). The underground bunkers all throughout Vale are absolutely packed, and the sounds of scratching on the walls underground and hissing noises at night spell clearly that even those shelters may be breached soon.

Several weeks later, Ruby and her friends are able to secure a few key, easily defensible areas of the city and maintain some semblance of stillness for the frightened civilians, hoping to evacuate Amity Colosseum as soon as possible and relocate the people inside as well. The only Grimm that pass through into these areas in the city are easily killed, while the elder Grimm wait on the very edges of their defense perimeters, laying siege to prey they already know are theirs.

In this uncomfortable calm, the Huntsmen at Vale received a dire distress call from Vacuo, their neighbouring Kingdom. The Grimm have swarmed the stretch of land separating them, and now that Vale has already been ravaged by them, they now turn their attention to Vacuo. It’s estimated that Vacuo will be completely surrounded within a month or two.

As more news of the distant chaos also looming in the other Kingdoms reach their ears, Ruby and her team decide that though they’ll be stretching themselves thin, there are other places in desperate need of help as well. Faced with this tough decision, and not having any attractive options, the members of Team RWBY agree to split up and go assist the other Kingdoms.

Ruby decides to stay at Vale and defend the pockets of refugees, Weiss chooses to go back to Atlas where Cinder derives much of her power and resources and to rescue her family, Blake takes a risk to go to Menagerie where she believes she can cut off the White Fang at its head…

And Yang decides to answer their neighbour’s desperate call for help, heading for Vacuo.

While Ruby’s position calls for defense, Weiss using tactics and Blake stealth, the only way to reach Vacuo is through sheer force – or else nothing will be able to pierce the wall of Grimm on the land between Vacuo and Vale. Luckily, Yang is suited well for the job, and is more than up for it. Saying farewell to Ruby and assuring her she’ll come back in one piece, she sets off. Along the way, she finds and gathers her allies that’ll no doubt be a tremendous help in her advance: Sun Wukong, Coco Adel and Nora Valkyrie.

Character: Yang Xiao Long

Oh boy, the world just had to end before you guys even get to see graduation day, didn’t it?

After some mishaps in the past Vytal Tournament, Yang was able to clear her name (somewhat) and she has wanted to change herself since. However, she was not allowed to return to Beacon as a student. Officially, that is. However, not long after, she actually got a job being an unknown, obscure secretary at Beacon working under Glynda Goodwitch, a job opening which suddenly and conveniently popped up. What she does there - like, oh, training - happens behind the closed doors of Beacon.

Yang was intensely grateful to Glynda for this opportunity. Since then, she’s become much wiser and receptive towards others, taking everything with a smile and meaning it. Her temper is mostly under control too, but of course, she still lets loose just for the heck of it sometimes.

She managed to clean up a bit of her tarnished reputation, going around as a licenseless Huntress running around town whenever she isn’t at Beacon either learning or doing book-stacking duty in the library (her convenient job offer is still a job, after all). Since she tries to only operate within Vale, she soon gained the trust of the townspeople, soon followed by a mutual understanding between her and the police to let her exploits slide. She greatly improved in skill and was quickly becoming one of the best and most promising Huntresses in Vale – unofficially.

However, this later worked out in Yang’s favour, as her greater freedom to spend her time away from Beacon’s school grounds allowed her to make numerous contacts and connections within and even outside Vale. She’s become incredibly streetsmart and privy to the Kingdom’s workings, and her team find the information she provides incredibly helpful in their fight against Cinder.

Cut to the present. Yang, knowing the road to Vacuo will be a battle of attrition, requiring large amounts of firepower to punch hard enough through the hordes of Grimm to last her all the way to Vacuo, humbly and gratefully accepts her team’s decision to allocate most of their Dust stashes into her care. They said she deserved it since it was her who found and rescued most of the private Dust shop owners anyway. It definitely would come in useful once Coco, Sun and Nora, all Dust-using fighters, join her.

Design Process

Giving Yang a cowboy hat was one of the greatest ideas the RWBY fandom has come up with. Just my two cents. Logod did it well in his AU, and Kuma was one of the first to use that idea, too, if not the first.

Based Yang’s redesign mainly on her Hunter outfit from Volume 2. It was really different from her normal outfit in terms of materials and colours, which was good for seeing how far I could push the design.

In the second sketch page, I tried her with long pants, but when I saw that combined with the coat and everything, it looked an awful lot like Neo’s outfit, so… yeah, kinda awkward. Took another direction, which is what you see now.

What I was particularly excited for with Yang was upgrading Ember Celica. I wasn’t entirely intending to overhaul it at first, but after doing some sketches, I liked how it was going and the final design ended up pretty cool.

Some specs for fellow weapon geeks, which you can also read in the sketch pages:

“Bear claws”: Ember Celica’s primary firing mode, now with 4 barrels. GREATLY enhances her impact power at the cost of faster ammo usage, which she can adjust by controlling how many barrels fire at once.

“Hammerforce” (better nickname pending): Two secondary barrels on the side, further increasing versatility of Yang’s fighting style by using sideswipes and chopping motions.

“Bristles”: Folding spikes on the forearm area. When activated, they stick out and can be used for slashing, though not entirely practical for that use due to being located quite far towards the elbow and being not that sharp. They are primarily used for trapping blades and for extra versatility against human opponents.



Anyways, the last two images are, like with Weiss, subtle iterations. Just variations on the stripes on Ember Celica. Little details. It’s a real thing.

What’s Next?

Thanks for the support thus far! Now that I’ve finished Team RWBY, I can go ahead and work on the actual post detailing the AU itself – the concept, setting, basic plot, etc. I will be reworking Team RWBY later slightly though, most likely for an official group pic or something. Until then.