Yang Xiao Long

Yang Xiao Long (阳小龙，[陽小龍], literally; Sun Little-Dragon) is one of the main characters and the fourth character introduced in RWBY. Her weapons of choice are the Dual Ranged Shot Gauntlets, Ember Celica. She made her appearance on June 1st at A-Kon in Dallas during the premiere of the "Yellow" Trailer, in which she interrogates Junior for information, and later fights him and his henchmen at his club.

Appearance
Yang appears as a teenage girl, wearing yellow, brown, orange, and black. She wears a tan vest with gold piping over a yellow, cleavage-and-midriff baring shirt with a black crest that resembles a small body of fire. The vest has puffy cap sleeves with black cuffs. On the sides of the cuffs, there are two small golden buttons. She wears a brown belt with a buckle, a pouch, and a small banner-seeming object. The same black crest appears on this banner, only golden in color. She wears black shorts under her belt, which in the back, resembles a pleated skirt. Over the shorts but under the belt is a white, asymmetrical back skirt.

She wears an orange circle scarf (with no apparent edges) around her neck, but no other discernible jewelry. She wears brown, mid-calf platform boots that look like leather, with orange socks of different lengths. The right leg also has a grey bandanna-like object wrapped around the top of her left boot. She also wears finger-less black gloves. Her weapons, which look like two yellow mechanized gauntlets with a black design, go over these gloves. Her hair flows loose and messy, with a few tendrils sticking out and a small cowlick on top of her head. She has a pale complexion and lilac eyes. Her hair seems to burst aflame and her eyes turn red the longer she fights, or when she becomes angry.

While on her motorcycle, she wears yellow goggles and a matching helmet that bears her crest in black.

Yang's pajamas are an orange tank top with her flame emblem on the front, and brown short shorts.

When outdoors she sometimes wears a pair of yellow-rimmed aviator sunglasses.

Personality
Yang is shown to be a bright and cheerful young lady who doesn't back down from any challenge. She's also witty, evident from her retort directed at Junior when they first met. She seems to enjoy fighting, as she is constantly smiling while doing battle. Yang seems confident in her abilities as well, going to the club by herself without any assistance, knowing that she would most likely have to fight her way out. It seems she likes to use force to get information out of people, shown when she grabbed Junior's genitals in order for him to reveal a certain girl's location. Yang is little headstrong, as there were probably more tactful options she could have used to get more information out of Junior. Also, she charged into battle quickly without any provocation. This shows that she may not always use her head and just punch first, implying that she is reckless. However, she has shown that she uses her head sometimes, visible when engaging Melanie in a series of footwork fake-outs. Most notable however, is her attitude regarding her hair. When Junior pulled out some of her locks, Yang became extremely angry and delivered the final blow, implying she values her hair greatly. According to Yang's voice actor, Barbara Dunkelman, she was described by the writers as "the kind of person who would teach someone how to swim by pushing them in the water". Yang has shown herself to be somewhat irresponsible and impulsive, seeing as she abandoned Ruby for her other friends soon after the pair entered Beacon. This may be part of the "sink or swim" strategy, however, since Ruby had stated she didn't need friends other than Yang right before Yang's departure forced her to socialize.

Despite abandoning Ruby on the first day, Yang is shown to really care for Ruby and shows extreme pride in her baby sister. This is illustrated in "The Shining Beacon, Pt. 2" after Ruby and Blake shared a friendly moment, Yang embraced her, excited that she had made a new friend. She even sticks up for Ruby, after Weiss picks on her again. She's very much outgoing, evident when she tries to get Ruby to make friends, which she did by (unsuccesfully) playing the mediator between her and Weiss, and even going so far as to drag her towards Blake in order to introduce themselves. Her act of dragging Ruby towards Blake also shows that she is a bit forceful. Yang seems to be a bit of an optimist as well, as she was constantly looking on the bright side of things (to Ruby's annoyance), but even her optimism has its limits as shown when at first meeting a somewhat unresponsive Blake, Yang referred to her as "a lost cause". Currently it seems that Yang has a dislike for Weiss, due to the fact that Weiss keeps berating Ruby.

She also mentions not having any problem with sleeping in the same room with a bunch of guys, which indicates that she may enjoy the opposite-gender contact, although she pointedly doesn't think Jaune is particularly attractive.

Abilities
Yang's fighting style is a drastic turn compared to Ruby, Weiss and Blake, who each use a blade of sorts. Yang fights using a pair of gauntlets/braces that can retract into wristlets, and her fighting style is much more aggressive than the other members of Team RWBY, from what was seen in the trailers so far. Her way of fighting is similar to Kickboxing given her footwork. Along with this, Yang seems to be the physically strongest of the group. This is seen on numerous occasions throughout, from Junior flying several feet away (and breaking through a glass structure) due to the impact of Yang's punch, not yet augmented by Ember Celica, to her throwing the DJ across the room.

Ember Celica has barrels implanted inside that use bullets, and, when triggered, cause flames to erupt from the gauntlets to deal more damage. Her punches can shoot explosive rounds (due to the gauntlets) towards enemies at a distance, or create explosions in her foes' faces. Yang is also quite agile, and quick on her feet, swiftly blocking and dodging attacks while moving from place to place without lag. She can also use the momentum from Ember Celica's shots to propel herself in battle as well as spin herself around extremely quickly, much like how Ruby fights with the Crescent Rose. As she fights, the fire extends to her hair and her eyes turn red. The cause of this is unknown but it is possible that her emotions trigger this "Wreathed in Flames" state as seen towards the end when she was angered over the fact that several locks were pulled out by Junior. All of her hair glowed white. She seems to be able to naturally summon fire around her as well. This is most notable when she prepares to attack Junior again, letting out a burst of fire energy around her.

Trivia

 * Yang (阳) is the Chinese character for sun and/or light, Xiao (小) is the character for small, and Long (龙) is the character for dragon. Therefore, her name roughly translates into "Little Light Dragon" and/or "Small Dragon of the Sun".
 * In Eastern culture, names are written with the last name coming before the individual's name, as in "Last name First name"; however, although Yang has a Chinese name, it seems she is referred to as Yang as opposed to Xiao Long, which is the Western style of name sequence. Therefore, although her name is Chinese, it is not written in the traditional Oriental style.
 * Yang's weapons and fighting style bear an uncanny resemblance to those of Ieyasu Tokugawa from Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes. She also shares the theme of the sun with him.
 * In the "Yellow" trailer, Ruby encounters Yang, who calls her "sis". It was believed that this was just a greeting between one another but Monty has recently confirmed on Twitter that it was not just a greeting.
 * Among the four main protagonists, Yang is the only person to fight humans in her debut trailer.
 * Like Ruby, Yang uses two different sets of ammunition; one is colored gold and the second is colored red.
 * Yang is the only character seen so far that has her own vehicle. She is also the only one who appears to have a cellphone.
 * Yang uses the "Dempsey Roll" when fighting Junior.
 * In the "Yellow" Trailer, it appears that Yang is looking for the "Transient Princess", an artwork by Monty Oum based on Final Fantasy VIII's Rinoa.
 * So far, Yang is the only character whose eyes have the ability to change color.
 * She has her own official Twitter account at RT_YangXiaoLong, like Ruby and Weiss.
 * Although confirmed to be based on Goldilocks by Monty Oum, many fans have speculated several other instances that fit into other fairy tales.