This is probably the strangest thing I’ve ever done, Yatsuhashi thought as he rode the large Grimm across the battlefield, steering by yanking on each of its remaining two necks. He waved at Neptune, Olive, and Arslan as he passed their astonished faces.

No, he realized, remembering his ride on the back of a giant desert turtle. This isn’t even the strangest thing I’ve done this year.

He watched as Gill crumpled to the sand and Jax stood over her. Yatsuhashi glowered at them both. As the Ziraph drew near and attacked, Yatsuhashi launched himself from its back and tackled Jax out of the way of the Grimm’s snapping jaws.

They wrestled on the ground, each of them using their Semblance on the other.

“Stop fighting me. I’m not your enemy!” Jax said.

The battlefield swirled around Yatsuhashi, and Jax’s voice seemed to hammer into his brain. His grip loosened, but he shook his head and flipped Jax onto his back forcefully. “No,” Yatsuhashi growled. “You listen to me! Forget.”

Yatsuhashi pinned him, knees pressing into Jax’s chest. Now that they were so close, he could see that Jax wasn’t much older than him.

Yatsuhashi was stronger, heavier physically, but Jax had more Aura right now, and Yatsuhashi was running low. Too low to put much into his Semblance. After all of this, he was going to fail.

He felt himself slipping back into the dark corner of his mind as Jax reasserted control over him. Then he felt a hand on his arm. He looked and saw Gill. The last thing he needed.

He started to shake her off when he saw her other hand was on Jax’s shoulder. And then Yatsuhashi felt Aura flood into him, like a breath of fresh air.

He punched it all into his Semblance, making Jax forget. Jax suddenly went slack. He felt Jax’s presence jolt out of his mind. And when he looked around, he saw many Crown soldiers’ faces waking up on the battlefield.

“It’s over,” Gill said weakly.

“Yes. He isn’t controlling you anymore,” Yatsuhashi said.

She gave him a puzzled look. “Jax wasn’t controlling me.”

Yatsuhashi gaped at her. “He wasn’t? You mean all those things you did …” He looked out over the battlefield. “All this. You did it because—”

“I love him. He’s my brother. And we had a destiny.”

“Then why did you help me?” Yatsuhashi asked.

“Because if I didn’t, we both would have died.” She closed her eyes. “I almost killed him myself, at the end. Because I didn’t want to go.”

The Huntsmen on the battlefield were either running away—those who had always been loyal to Jax, without the need for him to control them—or fighting the Grimm side by side with Shade’s students and faculty.

Jax, meanwhile, was lying still, stupefied at Yatsuhashi’s feet, eyes wide open.

“Jax?” Yatsuhashi asked.

No response. But tears were streaming down the man’s cheeks.

If you wanted to, you could wipe anyone’s mind clean, Jax had said.

Yatsuhashi stumbled back, disgusted with himself. In the heat of the moment, he might have overdone it—but he’d never intended to go that far. This was why he had avoided using his Semblance for so long.

“Yatsu?”

Velvet was standing behind him, looking from him to Jax on the ground. She drew closer and reached out to hug him. He pulled away. “Don’t touch me,” he mumbled.

She froze. “You did good. You did what you had to.”

He nodded, but he didn’t want to talk about it. Not yet. “There’s still a bit to do.”

They surveyed the battlefield as dawn broke over the horizon. It was humans and Faunus against Grimm, as it should be—everyone in Vacuo united for one cause. That had been Velvet and Sun’s doing, and, in a strange way, it was also because of Jax. He had wanted to bring everyone together like the Vacuo of old, and he’d succeeded.

“It’ll be nice to just be fighting Grimm again,” Velvet said quietly.

“I was just thinking that,” Yatsuhashi said. A Ziraph spotted them and charged in their direction.

Velvet summoned a hard-light version of Coco’s gun. “We’ll defend them.” She nodded toward Gill and Jax. “We won’t leave their sides.”

Yatsuhashi stood next to Velvet and drew his sword.

- RWBY: Before the Dawn, Chapter 21