Hello! Xavencain here with my first story! At first I was going to go with something a little different, but then I saw the season 3 finale and figured that I wanted to write a story for Pyrrha. So spoilers to anyone who hasn't seen the finale of Season 3 Anyway, this is going to be the start of massive multi-crossover story, with one of my person OC's being the main instigator. The chapters after this will be put in their proper crossover sections, and will be marked chronologically. Read through, and let me know what you think.
Pyrrhic Travels Part 1: The Start of a Dark Journey
She watched.
The fight raged on below her. It wasn't hard to see how the fight was going against the humans who fought to protect their kingdom. In addition to the Grimm who stood against them all the Faunus who were long oppressed had turned and fought. Various defenses, from the walls that once protected the country to the robots who should have saved them all had turned against their masters, hemming them in and destroying any who fell. Hundreds have already died, and more would soon fall.
Still, there were some humans who fought. A witch who broke those who challenged her with a flick of her wrist. A metal man who stood and fought even when his partial daughter died and his mechanical allies turned against him. A crow whose talon reaped death upon all who confronted him. A rabbit who fought with the powers of others. A princess who stood with mystical might. A reaper who challenged silence and anarchy despite the odds. A cat and a flame who challenged a Minotaur in beliefs and will. All these and more stood and raged against the inclosing darkness. Even now, with the odds against them and the powers of the world focused on destroying their souls they still had not lost hope.
However, that might soon change. She felt one of her sister's most powerful Grimm rise from its mountainous slumber, ready to fight them all. In addition, her sister's apprentice had found the hidden vault and taken the power of the Maiden from the wizard's descendant. Despite all that happened, she smirked. Why in any of the realms do humans put so much power in the purity of a woman? In her eyes being a maiden was like being innocent: it is a good thing for a child to have, but when a woman matures it should be removed as quickly and painlessly as possible. Regardless, with the dragon and the maiden standing against the humans, there would be little chance for those who fought the darkness. Still, that doesn't mean there was nothing for her. The Grimm would not dare challenge a sister of their creator, and she could just grab a couple of humans to feed upon before they were all slaughtered. Idly, she made a checklist of who to take.
Maybe one of the reapers? No, one was too innocent and the other too scarred for her taste. The musician and princess were physically weak one trick ponies, heavily reliant upon the magical powers of the earth they lived on. The flame and cat had been injured too much for them to be of much value to her. Despite being uninjured, the bird knight was weak mentally and spiritually, so he would be lousy prey. The witch would have made a wonderful prize, but she was too much of a hassle to take, and had already sacrificed so much energy just keeping herself and others alive. Metal was not to her taste, and the metal man had lost of most his energy as well. The thief and the assassin would be decent meals, but she didn't want to occur the wrath of her sister just yet. Most of the other fighters stood together, and if she wanted one then she would have to fight them all. Perhaps she should just abandon this area and go to one of the other countries? She heard the sister of the princess was a decent meal.
At this point she felt a huge amount of energy. Honestly, the energy surprised her. The powers was released and accessible to whoever had it, but was almost completely whole as if it had barely seen battle in the chaos below her. A very delicious meal indeed. Almost salivating at the thought, she looked for the person with the energy, and found it. A pair of warriors, one a boy trying to be a knight but whose energy made him better suited to be a mage and another a female gladiator, ran from the maiden. This was not a bad plan, since if her sister's apprentice could absorb power than the boy would be an easy target. She was having to hold herself back from just consuming him right then and there, and she had several centuries of willpower. If the maiden actually felt the Hunger, then she would probably rip him to shreds for his energy. It would be better for everyone involved if she just snatched him. After all, her sister doesn't want her apprentice too distracted, right?
However, before she could step in and take the boy warrior, there was a rush of energy. Apparently the new maiden had managed to defeat the wizard's descendant sooner than she thought. Idly she noticed a change in the gladiator, it appeared the gladiator wanted to fight the maiden. She snorted at the thought. Even if the gladiator could take the maiden, at the first sign of serious trouble her sister would just use the maiden's body as a temporary host and lay waste to the kingdom. It appeared the boy-knight agreed with her, and was trying to get the gladiator to run with him.
Eventually the gladiator silenced the boy, first with words and then with a kiss. Idly, she set up a little barrier around them. The gladiator had a nice amount of energy as well, so if they were so distracted by their lust they planned to do a last sexual act now then she would just take them both. Anyway, this way if the two decided to consummate their relationship, they would have no interruptions and she would have a nice show. At that point the gladiator shoved the boy-knight into a conveniently-placed locker. She was a little shocked at this. Could the gladiator be the kind of person to bully a lover? Then the gladiator started typing something into the locker and when the gladiator was done the locker shot up through like kind of rocket. With a snap of her fingers she wrapped some of her energy around the locker, which would let her keep track of where it would land, and if the boy-knight found a way out of the locker it would protect him until she was ready for him.
Even now she heard the boy yell out a name. "PYRRHA!" he wailed. Was that the gladiator's name? Looking at her, she could see the gladiator's hair and the eye color. They matched those of the Pyrrhus she had once met several centuries ago, so maybe that's where it came from? As she eyed this so-called Pyrrha, she saw her wipe away sorrow for a fierce determination. The gladiator was going to fight? Even with the boy-knight now her lover she chose death? No, she thought feeling her energy that was wrapped around the locker. The locker ended up crashing into a manufactured safe zone, just far away that if the maiden made a serious move he would have plenty of time to retreat. It seems it was a "remember me" confession. She smirked to herself. Okay then, if this Pyrrha wants to disappear, maybe she should grant her wish. She let her energy dissipate around the boy and went to find his precious gladiator.
Apparently this Pyrrha had taken an elevator straight up to where the Maiden stood waiting, conversing with the dragon. She sighed a little. Pyrrha might be a brave warrior, but she wasn't that smart. There may have been no electricity flowing through the elevator, but it was still repaired enough that if Pyrrha moved the elevator up carefully there would have been no sound. Despite this, the gladiator rushed the elevator upward as fast as its screeching counterweights would allow, throwing away the element of surprise and wasting a good amount of energy in the process. She flew to the windows to get a better view of the fight, but even now there was a clear winner. Both fighters went at each other with everything they had, with no power being held back. Problem was, the maiden had a large amount of energy to spare even after the duel with the wizard's descendant, while Pyrrha had wasted over half of her energy simply getting to the fight. Not to mention, instead of relying on small attacks that would minimize the power needed the gladiator seemed to want to match the maiden in power instead of skill and fought accordingly. This turned out badly when the maiden performed a quick combo that not only broke Pyrrha's weapon, but destroyed the observation tower as well.
As the dust settled, the maiden waited for her opponent to stand. Eventually the gladiator crawled to her shield, which was thrown like a discus at her combatant. Smirking, the maiden knocked the blunt object away barehanded, only to be blindsided by a piece of fallen debris. When the maiden knocked that away, Pyrrha had taken a set of metal gears and levitated them off the ground, surrounding her adversary. It was hard for her to resist clapping at the move. If the maiden attacked liked before she would be slammed from behind, but if she turned to flee or analyze her surrounding she left herself open. The best maneuver would be to simply wait and let the gladiator run out of steam. Unfortunately for Pyrrha, that was exactly what the maiden did. After taking a few blows from first the shield and then a gear that had been levitated above her, the maiden let herself be trapped with her back against the ground and removing her ability to be blindsided. Overconfident (or perhaps desperate to finish the fight?) Pyrrha slammed all of the gears onto the maiden. This turned out to be a terrible mistake, because Pyrrha had forgotten to organize the gears so that instead of all the gears striking flesh, the pegs all got in the way and created a small dome instead of crushing the maiden. The maiden didn't waste the opportunity, creating a blast of energy that scattered the gears and slammed Pyrrha to the ground, draining her aura.
At this point, the analysis of Pyrrha was complete. The gladiator was decently strong, had a nice amount of aura and relatively smart, but lacked proper combat awareness, and seemed to have limit practical combat training. All in all, the gladiator would make a decent pawn if trained properly. This is good, because that is exactly what was going to happen. She sent out a wave of dark energy into the ground around the tower remains, which rapidly crawled up to the base. No one noticed the shadows creeping up, not the gladiator, nor the maiden, nor even the reaper who was running up the tower with help from the princess. The energy reached the gladiator right when the maiden made her last counterattack, striking Pyrrha in the foot and crippling her while knocking away Pyrrha's shield. As the two enemies conversed one last time, the shadows quietly flowed up the gladiator's body, providing a thin spider web layer of darkness unseen by all due to the evening light.
When the maiden shot one last arrow at her fallen foe, a small fragment of the shadow wave traveled to right over the maiden's heart and covered it, creating a small portal just under the flesh that allowed the arrow to pierce the skin, but mitigated the damage to just a flesh wound. At this point, the maiden moved forward to finish the kill, but by this point the darkness used the gladiator's circlet as a base to morph into a small bright exoskeleton that took the final strike while knocking the real Pyrrha into a portal. There the new apprentice would rest and heal from her fight until it was time to recover her. Idly she wondered whether or not to explain to the maiden what was going on. Explaining might be a bit of headache, but at least her sister won't do anything stupid in the meantime. And after that maybe there was enough time to find and feed upon the boy-knight?
Unfortunately at this point the reaper had come up to help her ally, only to see Pyrrha's so-called corpse fade into nothing. Screaming, the reaper released her own energy, drawing upon all of it in an attempt at… something. Desperate, everyone else involved performed their own tricks to stop the attack. She created a barrier in front of her while the dragon rolled itself up in an attempt to protect its vitals. The maiden wasted her time to let out a surprised "what?!" and almost took the full force of the technique, but her sister summoned the maiden at the last millisecond, so she escaped unharmed. The energy blast struck her barrier and dragon, wrapping around them in a bright arc. At this point she realized the point of the technique was not destruction but binding, with the light wrapping itself around the dragon and the barrier. If she let down the barrier for a second, the energy would wrap around her as well, and who knows what it would do to her flesh. Still, the energy was fading already, and she could see cracks that she could feed her power through.
Wrapping the barrier and its assault of light in a second layer of darkness, she made the outer layer match its surroundings exactly, hiding her and the assault from prying eyes, human and otherwise. With that, she put herself into a small stasis to rest until the energy weakened enough for her break through. Two centuries stuck under a seal was enough for her, thank you very much. Better to wait a few months then risk that again. It looks like the Pyrrha girl would be beginning her training without outside help. "Ah well," she thought with a sigh. "In the end, it will be interesting to see what this warrior would do in the other world." The Lillim thought as the base of wonderful darkness wrapped itself around her.
And that is the end of the prologue! Like it? Hate it? Send me your reviews and constructive criticisms (Though no flames. Those will be sent to Yang with usernames and derogatory comments about her hairstyle)
