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Not fine at all... — Description

Here's an aftermath of Yang's meltdown in shadows, within the third chapter of the Xiao Long series.
After Yang confesses that she feels pure anger, betrayal, and loneliness, transforming into her Werewolf form in the process, it was than Raven, Blake, and everyone to reconfront her.
The Weight of the Past: Ruby has to listen to Yang confess that she felt entirely abandoned as a child. Because Taiyang shut down from grief and Raven was gone, a young Yang had to swallow her own childhood to raise Ruby himself. This also happened in Volume 3 where Yang finally opens up to Ruby.
The Terror in Nightmare: This breakdown ties directly into the psychological horror explored in Xiao Long 3: Shadows. In that story, Yang is plagued by terrifying nightmares where Salem's lingering Grimm infection takes over her, overpowering her Werewolf instincts, and force Yang to kill Ruby.
Aiden Cohen (The Blue Arachnid) feels an intense mix of psychological trauma, heavy responsibility, and deep loyalty following the chaotic events of Spider-Man Clone-Mania: Grimmified:
The Weight of Survival: Aiden is acutely aware of how close he came to dying. During Yang's berserker rampage, she inflicted a near-fatal wound on him and injected him with highly toxic Grimm poison. His survival was entirely dependent on Eddie Brock letting the Venom Symbiote bond with him to halt the infection, transforming him into The Venomous Arachnid.
Deep Platonic Loyalty: Despite the horrific violence he suffered, Aiden holds zero malice toward Yang. He views her strictly as a victim of Salem's mental corruption rather than a perpetrator. He acts as her absolute psychological anchor, using his own mental resilience as a foil to help her fight off the remaining dark impulses.
The Ghost of Yang's Nightmares: While Aiden is fully committed to helping Yang build secure attachments in therapy, he is a primary fixture in her severe PTSD nightmares in Xiao Long 3: Shadows. Yang is constantly plagued by guilt over almost murdering the one person who truly understood her, as well as the terrifying "What If" scenario where Aiden and Venom would have been forced to put her down as a mercy kill.
Ultimately, Aiden feels a quiet, resolute burden as a survivor, he is determined to be the hero Yang needs to heal, even if the memory of what they put each other through taints their bond with an underlying layer of trauma.
Standing outside the bedroom door alongside Ruby and Raven, Taiyang is forced to listen to Yang's devastating emotional breakdown:
The Weight of His Absence: He hears Yang explicitly point out that after Summer Rose died, Taiyang completely shut down from his own grief. Because he became emotionally unavailable and absent, a young Yang was forced to swallow her own childhood trauma to raise Ruby herself.
Stunned into Silence: Unlike his typical protective or guiding fatherly role, Taiyang is left utterly stunned and speechless by the sheer raw anger and pain pouring out of his oldest daughter.
A Reality Check on the Family Dynamics: Hearing how Yang's repressed abandonment issues directly feed into her volatile, dark transformation forces Taiyang to stop hiding from the past. He is left realizing that his own withdrawal years ago heavily contributed to fracturing Yang's psyche, bringing her to the brink of losing herself to the monster within.
How my RWBY AU explores What if scenarios
In the Turboverse, my RWBY AU utilizes a series of What If scenarios to significantly diverge from the original series timeline. These scenarios often focus on alternate character choices that goes alone within this story?
What if Raven tell Yang why she left?
What if Yang shared her motivation in coming to Beacon to Raven?
What if Yang shared her motivation in coming to Beacon to Taiyang?
What if Yang shared her motivation in coming to Beacon to Team JNPR?
What if the Spider-Man recolor clones found out about Yang's meltdown and motivation to come to Beacon?
What if Yang shared her motivation in coming to Beacon to Penny?
what if Yang cut ties with Raven?
What if Raven Branwen reformed after being arrested? (She got herself arrested in Xiao Long: Shadows as well as her bendit followers to make things right for Yang)
What if Ben Reilly, Kaine Parker, and Venom learned about this from Aiden?
Even though Raven finally comes clean, explains exactly why she left the family, and asks for her daughter's forgiveness, Yang completely denies her. Seeing how much of a ruthless, disguised Huntress Raven has truly become, Yang fiercely rejects her apology and refuses to let her off the hook.
Pyrrha’s Intervention: Pyrrha Nikos steps in to back Yang up, firmly telling Raven that she has to face the actual consequences of her actions. She points out that Raven can't just undo a lifetime spent as a brutal Bandit leader with a single explanation.
The Ultimatum for Redemption: To truly make things right, Yang and Pyrrha urge Raven to take real responsibility. Yang demands that Raven return everything she and her tribe have ever stolen, face the reality of how many innocent lives she has ruined or taken, and ultimately turn herself and her entire Bandit crew into the authorities.
The Path to Reformation: Taking Yang's harsh words to heart, Raven actually goes through with it. She allows herself and her followers to be arrested in Xiao Long: Shadows, choosing prison and legal submission as her grueling, genuine path to attempting reformation and fixing what she broke.
Yang's motivation...
When Yang lays bare her initial, raw motivation for becoming a Huntress and coming to Beacon Academy, confessing that she didn't care about glory or duty, but was entirely driven by a desperate, obsessive need to find the mother who left her, the dynamic between them fractures in a whole new way.
Raven's Realization of the Obsession
Hearing that her departure didn't just make Yang bitter, but actively warped her entire life path, hits Raven hard. She is forced to realize that Yang threw herself into the lethal life of a Huntress not out of a pure desire to protect Remnant, but because she was tracking a ghost. For a woman who prides herself on survival and calculated logic, seeing that her actions bred a reckless, self-destructive obsession in her daughter shatters her facade.
Yang's Final Detachment
Instead of this confession leading to a tearful reconciliation, it acts as Yang's ultimate closure in her goal. By sharing this, Yang isn't asking for a maternal bond anymore; she is letting Raven know that the little girl who searched for her is dead. Backed by her friends, Yang uses this moment to completely cut the emotional ties, making it clear that Raven is no longer her goal, her family, or her shadow.
Fueling the Reformation
This exact conversation serves as the final emotional breaking point that pushes Raven toward her extreme choice later in the Shadows story. The sheer weight of realizing how deeply she poisoned Yang's life from day one is what ultimately convinces Raven to surrender. It directly influences her decision to dismantle her bandit tribe and willingly turn herself over to the authorities, accepting a grueling path of legal submission and prison as her only real way to answer for what she put her daughter through.
Taiyang’s Ultimate Wake-Up Call
When Yang finally drops her guard and confesses her original truth to him, that her entire reason for becoming a Huntress and pushing herself to get into Beacon Academy had absolutely nothing to do with duty or heroism, but was entirely driven by her desperate, childhood obsession to find Raven, the impact fractures their family dynamic in a completely different way.
Hearing this truth completely shatters Taiyang. For years, he watched Yang throw herself into high-risk combat training, assuming she was simply inheriting the family's passionate Huntress legacy. Learning that her drive was actually a toxic, self-destructive coping mechanism bred from profound abandonment issues hits him with a wave of intense guilt.
He is forced to realize that because he completely shut down and became emotionally unavailable after Summer Rose died, a young Yang was left entirely alone with her trauma. His withdrawal didn't just leave her to raise Ruby; it allowed her abandonment issues to fester into a dangerous fixation on a ghost.
Breaking the Cycle of Silence
Unlike the typical timeline where past grief is quietly swept under the rug, this confession shatters the wall of silence between them:
The Confrontation: Yang makes it clear that she doesn't blame him for grieving Summer, but she fiercely rejects the fact that his grief forced her to abandon her own childhood.
A Father's Accountability: Rather than getting defensive, Taiyang completely breaks down and accepts full responsibility for his parenting failures. He stops hiding behind his depression and commits to being the present, supportive father both of his daughters actually needed years ago.
The Ripple Effect on the Family
This raw conversation changes how Team RWBY and the family move forward in the Shadows arc:
Ruby's Realization: Ruby, overhearing this, finally understands the true depth of the burden Yang carried for her sake. It shifts their dynamic, prompting Ruby to step up and act as a pillar of emotional support for her older sister rather than just the protected younger sibling.
A United Front Against Raven: When Raven eventually attempts to reappear or justify her past actions, she no longer finds a fractured family she can manipulate. Taiyang and Yang stand entirely unified. Because Yang got the closure and validation she needed from her father, she is able to completely cut the emotional cord with Raven, leaving her birth mother to face her legal reformation entirely alone.
Pyrrha Nikos: The Protective Shield
Since Pyrrha is already a major supporting figure in Yang's life (and was the one in the room during her initial werewolf transformation breakdown), this confession deepens her fierce protective instincts over Yang:
Validation Over Judgement: Pyrrha heavily validates Yang's feelings, ensuring she knows that her worth isn't tied to how well she functions as a "perfect Huntress."
Enforcing Boundaries: When Raven or external pressures try to force Yang back into the fray before she is ready, Pyrrha steps in as an emotional and physical shield, fiercely defending Yang's right to heal on her own terms.
Nora Valkyrie: The Shared Pain of Abandonment
This confession hits Nora harder than anyone else on Team JNPR, bridging a deep, mutual understanding between the two powerhouses:
The Orphan's Empathy: Having been abandoned as a child herself, Nora completely understands the agonizing, hollow feeling of wanting to know why you weren't enough for the people who were supposed to love you.
A Primal Bond: Rather than fearing Yang's volatile Werewolf form or her post-Grimm PTSD, Nora completely embraces it. She fiercely reminds Yang that family isn't blood, it's the people who choose to stay when things get ugly.
Jaune Arc & Lie Ren: Grounded Pillars of Support
For Jaune and Ren, the confession strips away the intimidating, untouchable brawler facade that Yang usually carries, prompting them to adjust how they support her:
Jaune's Leadership Focus: Jaune stops viewing Yang merely as a top-tier heavy-hitter for combat strategies. He shifts his approach to look out for her psychological well-being, making sure she isn't pushing herself into dangerous situations just to prove her strength or bury her trauma.
Ren's Quiet Sanctuary: Ren offers Yang a calm, judgment-free space to process her thoughts. Recognizing the extreme emotional turbulence feeding her dark instincts, he helps her find ways to ground her mind and separate her true self from the lingering psychological shadows of Salem's infection.
The Shift in Group Dynamics
By sharing her deepest vulnerability with Team JNPR, Yang builds an safety net outside of Team RWBY. This prevents her from spiraling into isolation or feeling like a burden to Ruby. When the time comes for Yang to completely cut ties with Raven and force her birth mother to face legal reformation entirely alone, Team JNPR and than her teammates stands firmly behind her decision, proving to Yang that she will never have to chase a ghost just to feel wanted again.
Blake and Weiss' roles: The Devoted Anchor and Burden of Resentment
After the Grimmified crisis, Blake Belladonna and Weiss Schnee experience deeply complex emotional reactions to Yang's trauma and past actions. Because Yang successfully fought off her inner darkness to confess her romantic feelings to Blake, their bond is incredibly deep, but it is heavily shadowed by the trauma of what happened. Weiss's perspective is shaped by the dark underlying motivations of Salem's Grimm infection:
Deep Fear of Loss: The darkest, most painful "What If" scenario haunting Yang's nightmares is the terrifying thought that she could have ruthlessly murdered Blake during her rampage. Knowing how close Yang came to completely losing her humanity leaves Blake fiercely protective of her recovery.
Standing as Yang's Shield: In the overarching plot of Xiao Long 3: Shadows, Blake takes on the role of Yang's primary caregiver and romantic anchor. Because Yang's psychological trauma is entirely rooted in her profound abandonment issues, Blake actively steps in to fill the void left by Raven and Taiyang, focusing her energy on keeping Yang grounded so her volatile Werewolf powers don't go feral
The Werecat Mirror: Having dealt with her own transformation dynamics as a Werecat in this universe, Blake serves as a primary source of empathy. She doesn't view Yang as a monster; instead, she actively supports her through therapy with Dr. Bartholomew Oobleck to help Yang build secure attachments and move past her profound abandonment issues.
The Target of Envy: During the infection, Yang's core emotional driver was a twisted, desperate fear of being left behind by those she loved. To prevent this, Grimmified Yang actively and forcefully infect Weiss and Nora so they would be trapped with her forever and could never abandon her again.
Complicated Grace: While Weiss is fully aware that Yang was a victim of Salem's biological mental corruption, knowing that Yang's subconscious harbored enough deep-seated resentment to forcefully twist her teammates into Grimm-hybrids adds an underlying layer of tension. Weiss supports her teammate's healing, but the reality of how quickly their sisterly bond was weaponized during the crisis remains a stark, heavy memory.
What if the Spider-Man recolor clones found out about Yang's meltdown and motivation to come to Beacon?
If the Spider-Man Recolor Clones from Miles Warren’s lab including regular clones like Goliath-Spider from Ultimate Spider-Man TV series, found out about Yang’s meltdown and her true motivation for coming to Beacon, it would create an incredibly deep, empathetic bridge between them.
Within Spider-Man Clone Mania stories, these clones are defined by their agonizing struggle with identity, autonomy, and the trauma of their creation. Yang's realization that she was "chasing a ghost" would mirror their own existential battles in a powerful way:
An Immediate Bond Over Created Purposes
The Recolor Clones and other clones spent the first part of their lives believing they only existed to serve the twisted, obsessive whims of their creator, the Jackal. When Yang confesses to Team JNPR or her family that she didn't become a Huntress out of a noble desire to protect Remnant, but because of a toxic childhood fixation on tracking down Raven, the clones would completely understand. They know exactly what it feels like to realize an entire life’s trajectory and training were dictated by the shadow of a "parent" who never truly cared about them.
A Group Reality Check for Yang
When Clones such as Huntsman Blue (Kevan Davis), Blood-Weave (Anderson Lucas) or any other clone were present in Yang's meltdown, they wouldn't judge her transformation or her anger. Instead, they would offer a very specific flavor of tough love:
Rejecting the "Monster" Label: Because they themselves are genetic experiments often viewed as freaks or weapons, they would fiercely reject the idea that Yang's Werewolf form makes her a monster.
The Shadow of Peter Parker: They would draw on their own experience of trying to step out of Peter Parker's shadow. Black Web (Another clone who also named himself, Alix Simson) said "We spent our lives trying to figure out if we were just copies of Peter or if we had our own souls. You aren't just an extension of Raven's strength or Taiyang's failures. You have to decide who you are when your not chasing you mother."
The clones have zero tolerance for manipulative, abandoning figures because of their history with Miles Warren. If Raven attempted to crawl back into Yang's life with justifications, the Recolor Clones, backed by Aiden Cohen (The Blue Arachnid) and Kaine Parker, would stand like an iron wall alongside Team JNPR. Kaine, in particular, acting as a hardened mentor figure who dealt with his own status as a "failed experiment," would ruthlessly call Raven out on her cowardice, helping Yang find the strength to completely cut the emotional cord and leave Raven to her legal reformation. Speaking of which...
Ben Reilly: The Empathy of the "Spare"
Ben Reilly knows exactly what it feels like to have your identity completely hollowed out by a creator's twisted obsession.
The Shared Void: Hearing that Yang only went to Beacon because of a toxic childhood fixation on tracking down Raven would hit Ben hard. He would pull her aside and share how he spent years feeling like a "fake" Peter Parker before forging his own path.
The Ultimate Reassurance: Ben would look Yang in the eye and give her the validation she desperately needs: "Your life didn’t start when Raven left, and it doesn't end because she's a ghost. You aren't a broken legacy, Yang. You're just you."
Kaine Parker: The Aggressive Protector
Kaine has the least forgiving for bad parents or manipulative creators due to his history as Miles Warren's "failed experiment."
Fierce Validation: Kaine wouldn't be remotely intimidated or put off by Yang's volatile Werewolf form, in fact, he’d respect the raw anger of it. He would validate her rage completely, telling her that she has every right to want to rip the world apart after what she went through.
Drawing the Line with Raven: If Raven ever tried to step back into the picture to justify her actions, Kaine would act as an absolute brick wall. He’d be the first to violently threaten her if she ever tried to manipulate Yang's psyche again, helping Yang find the cold resolve needed to cut the emotional cord permanently.
Venom: The Ultimate Symbiotic Understanding
After Aiden was cured from Salem's Grimm poison and now boned back to Eddie, the alien entity has a literal front-row seat to the residual trauma of that night.
No Judgement for the Instincts: Venom understands primal, predatory, and violent urges better than anyone. Through Aiden, Venom would communicate to Yang that having a dark, feral side doesn't make her evil... it just makes her a survivor.
A Literal Anchor: Venom would use its connection to Aiden to help stabilize Yang's emotional spikes, acting as a calming presence that proves her inner "monster" can be coexisted with, mastered, and channeled into protecting the people she loves.
The New Brotherhood
By finding out about her motivation from Aiden, the older Spiders stop viewing Yang as just "Ruby's tough older sister" or a powerhouse student Huntress. They claim her as one of their own, a fellow survivor of a crazy origin. With Ben, Kaine, Venom, and Aiden standing firmly behind her, Yang is handed an nice brotherhood that completely replaces the empty void left by Raven, ensuring she never has to chase a ghost to feel like she belongs.
Last but not least... Penny...
When Yang drops her guard and confesses her original truth, that she didn't join Beacon Academy out of a noble desire for heroism, but because of a toxic childhood obsession to track down Raven Branwen, the revelation reshapes Penny's perspective and their burgeoning bond in a powerful way:
Penny’s Unique Perspective
As a synthetic being who has constantly fought for her own autonomy against her pre-programmed directives, and searching her own humanity modeled after the deceased girl she's based upon, Penny would connect with Yang's confession on a literal and philosophical level.
The Blueprint Mirror: Penny knows exactly what it feels like to having a operational purpose dictated by a parental figure (General Ironwood and Pietro).
Rewriting the Code: Hearing that Yang's entire path as a Huntress was "programmed" by a childhood trauma rather than a genuine personal choice, Penny wouldn't judge her. Instead, she would view it as Yang finally breaking free from an artificial directive, telling her: "Your motivation was your old programming, Yang. But you are a real girl, and you get to choose what you protect now."
Because Penny is naturally pure-hearted and empathetic, she provides Yang with an entirely judgment-free sanctuary. She helps Yang realize that wanting to stop fighting and lie down to recover isn't a sign of weakness or a failure of her legacy, it is a deeply human right.
Building the Future Sister-in-Law Bond
Because of Nuts and Bolts being canon to the Turboverse timeline, Yang and Taiyang already accepted Penny into the family in Volume 1, this hardens Penny's absolute loyalty, relationship, and promise between Ruby and Yang, Penny's promise to look out for Ruby becomes even more sacred. It transitions Penny from just being Ruby's quirky companion to a protective, grounding anchor for Yang as well.
By sharing this with Penny, Yang secures a friend who views her completely outside the context of the "tough, legacy brawler." Penny sees Yang for exactly who she is, giving her the emotional clearance to let the ghost of Raven go, leave her birth mother to face her legal reformation alone, and finally begin healing alongside the people who actually choose to stay with Yang.
MY GOD... This took long...