Summary: Volume 3 Spoilers. After her death, Pyrrha Nikos is cloned using Atlas technology. 'Little Pyrrha' has the original's manners, personality, and smile. She looks like her, acts like her… but doesn't feel truly her. For the March 2016 r/RWBY Mon Con.
The Little Pyrrha
Chapter One
Fly me to the moon
Written from the perspective of "Pyrrha Nikos"
The day I was born, they called me 'Pyrrha Nikos'.
It was fortunate that they did, for I did not know my name at the time.
My first memory is of a white room that smelled of lilacs and lavender. I rose from a white bed. There were no windows in this room. There were no pictures. There were only charts and figures and diagrams I could not understand. There was also the unfamiliar ceiling.
A nurse opens the door. She is very surprised. She calls for a doctor - a grey man in a white coat with broken teeth. He is very pleased. They both make sure that they will contact 'my friends' as soon as possible.
That was when I learned I had friends.
Or at least, the Pyrrha Nikos before me did.
The nurse was very pleasant. She made sure I had enough to eat. She placed a tray of food by my bedside. She told me they were my favorite. I smiled and said 'This is too much, thank you'. The words that slipped from my lips were so natural it felt like they were lines from a script.
Polite. Submissive. Eager to please.
When she left, I turned to the tray before me.
Food. It is the stuff of subsistence. For some it is a daily luxury. For others it is something that keeps me from teetering on the brink of death.
I raised a spoon filled with green orbs. 'Peas' was what came to mind. A vegetable. The other thing was meat. 'Lamb'. It has a gamey texture and is a good source of protein. How strange. These words that came to mind, yet I didn't know what they were.
Taking a spoonful of peas, it tasted unique - as if I had tasted such a thing before yet for the first time. It was deja vu. It all tasted so new, so peculiar, yet it was as if I had tasted this countless times before.
I chewed a little. It was okay.
The more I chewed and the more I ate the more I suspected the problem was with me.
These foods were to be my favorite, yet they did not taste good or bad. Thinking of it afterwards, perhaps knowing they were my favorite only to taste the reality left me with disappointment. Children eat snacks and sweets from cheap candy stores and cannot appreciate a expensive ingredients made by a master chef. Likewise, an adult with no childhood cannot taste the nostalgia of a common sugary treat.
I found the freshness of the meat and vegetables preferable to the artificial sweets.
Are foods only delicious if they were made with natural ingredients?
As I finished the last of my meal, the door opened with terrible force. That was when I first saw him. He was a stranger who looked at me with such sad, blue eyes that I could not help but pity him.
"Pyrrha!" The shout rattled my bones. It took a moment to registered he was referring to me. Pyrrha was now my name. It took even longer to realize I was caught tightly in his embrace, like a meandering fly bumbling into a spider's web. "Pyrrha, you're okay… you're okay…"
He was sobbing. I did not know what to do, so I embraced him back.
"There, there, Jaune." I do not know how I knew his name but I did. It felt easy to say, like the most natural name in the world besides my own. I patted him on the back. His tears moistened my white hospital gown. I blushed at the thought that his tears may cause it to become transparent and reveal my lack of undergarments. Yet somehow, that did not bother me as much as I thought it would.
After a moment, he released me. He held my shoulders. He was smiling with tears in his eyes. I smiled back. I have to admit, his touch was strange but not unpleasant.
Raising my hand, I placed it on his cheek.
It was so warm.
This boy, Jaune, was the leader of my team. Or at least, he was the leader of the original Pyrrha Nikos' team. Goofy. Genuine. A bit of genius strategist laid hidden beneath his goofy exterior. The old me had a lot of trust in him - trust that bordered with hormonal confusions of love and infatuation.
"I'm just so glad to see you again." His words were soft and poise and spoken with a genuine smile.
Pyrrha Nikos was dead.
My purpose in this world was to fill the void left in her wake. That is the reason for my life - my existence. My lips curled into a smile as deliberate as a clock with mechanical gears and pendulums driving it to act at the precise moment in perfect timing.
"It's good to see you again too, Jaune."
Chapter One Fin
'Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.'
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery