This is more of a writing exercise for me than anything after a long period of not writing anything. Enjoy. Updates will be either infrequent or every fortnight, depending on where this takes me.
From what I gathered, Sangria Grey tried to commit suicide.
Tried to.
She'd led a happy life. Single child, surrounded by friends, popular in school. It was the kind of life that I, as the eldest child of my family of five, could only dream of. Her parents doted on her significantly, showering her with gifts and their love. Whatever she asked for, they gave her without a second thought. Her friends stuck with her even in her worst moments, and she was the kind of person that could've been canonized as a saint by the Vatican.
That didn't stop her from rushing into a forest to get herself killed at the tender age of eight years old.
In hindsight, it was understandable. That perfect life had collapsed over the course of a week. Sangria's parents had been killed in a terrorist bombing; her friends had abandoned her; and the other, estranged Greys had begun to circle around her like vultures when it became clear that the poor girl was not fit to inherit her parents' fortune.
Some good Samaritan - Hunter - had found Sangria (me) lying down on the grass, surrounded by beasts - Grimm, my (her) mind whispered - all but ready to tear her to bits as their new meal. He'd managed to drive them away, carrying her to the nearest hospital and leaving her in the tender care of its' staff.
She didn't wake up. Her wounds weren't that severe at first glance. Broken bones, some internal bleeding. It should've been survivable, considering the world I was in… but she died. Her heart gave out in the middle of an operation.
Then her heart started beating again and I woke up.
And there lies the crux of the problem - I should be dead as well.
It was a far less dramatic death than Sangria's, admittedly. Killed by a car speeding past a red light in the early morning while I walked back home. But it was still death. You don't usually expect someone to come back from the dead by hijacking a new body somewhere else in the multiverse, but here I was, in the body of an eight year old girl with the soul of a seventeen year old male.
I shifted my (her?) gaze to the ceiling.
Unfamiliar ceiling.
Heh. Evangelion quote.
It was… strange, feeling so small and tiny. I hadn't been that big back home, but it was still a striking difference between then and now. I felt almost helpless, feeling so small in this bed.
Strange. For all my verbosity, that was the only word that my mind managed to dredge up from the murky depths to describe my situation. Strange. Like being stunned to near-speechlessness and only being able to repeat one word, I guess, though I don't have any personal experience regarding that. Except for right now.
There's the contradictions.
I blame the blending of my memories and Sangria's. Trying to sort out which ones were hers and which ones were mine was getting trickier, and I'm pretty sure I've been at it for the past few hours. Or days. I don't know. I could feel her thoughts and her memories leaking and trying to subsume mine and it's annoying and frustrating and several other expletives that I'm not going to try to force myself to say.
Think, even. God, this is such a shitshow.
Would it be prudent to just wave it off as me becoming Sangria? Or Sangria trying to become me? Metaphysics was always beyond me, if you could even call this metaphysics. This sort of thing just… didn't happen. I don't even think the Man Upstairs would do something like this for one of his followers, with the whole Revelation book and all.
A sigh escaped me.
I just… wanted to live. I didn't want to die so soon after beginning to make my first steps out into the world. That was just a tragedy. Seventeen and dead.
On the other hand, Sangria wanted to spare herself the pain that the world had forced on her. Her parents, dead. Relatives? Trying to use her as a stepping stone. Friends? What friends?
Write us as main characters and we'd be suffering a tragedy.
I guess, in a sense, we both got what we wanted. I'm alive, and she's gone. Passed on to the great hereafter to follow her parents and join them in that place beyond the mortal realm and leaving me her body to use.
How considerate. And damn, I really need to work on my wording. That came out horribly wrong.
I opened and closed my left hand, feeling the sharp pain of my broken bones shoot up my nerves and forcing me to bite back a hiss.
It disturbed me to a degree, just thinking about it. Someone as young as Sangria, trying to kill herself and succeeding. Succeeding in a strange way, but still. The entire thought process leading up to that climactic decision was fresh and clear in my mind as I dared to take the briefest look and it was horrible-
-and I snapped myself back into a calmer line of thought before I could let out a scream and attract the attention of the nurses patrolling the ward. If there were still any of them at this time of night, staring out the window and seeing the stars sprinkle the night sky.
I couldn't tell if I hated Sangria. She was just a kid who'd lost everything over the course of a week and… took the easy way out? Was I even justified in calling it that? The girl was just so young and sheltered from the world beyond her bubble at a quick glance at her memories - could she have known any better? To suck it up and move on?
Who knows? Definitely not me.
It still left me. Us. I don't know. Sangria Grey died a few hours ago. Or days. I can't tell anymore; the gap between her charging into the forest, screaming her soul out for the monsters to hear and me waking up intermittently in the hospital was unclear and hazy.
This wasn't a dream, as much as my mind disagreed with me. The feeling of the hospital gown against my skin, the odd locking of my joints when I tried to shuffle into a slightly more comfortable position, the dull hammering of my heart against my ribcage that thundered in my ears; it was all too real to dismiss as a fabricated fantasy.
And that was terrifying because of two things. Facts. Truths. I'm starting to ramble.
The first reason? That means I wasn't home anymore.
Perfectly reasonable reaction, I would say. I really, really doubt that people will be able to take the fact that they'd been transplanted from their original world to another one with a straight face. Five stages of grief comes standard - I think I'm at bargaining or depression now, taking a step back and reviewing my situation.
It's both sobering and horrifying. I'd already come to terms with the fact that I died - hard to argue with my memories of being pulped by a sports car - but being transplanted into another reality was another thing entirely. I would've taken reincarnation on Earth instead of this; at least I would be able to see my family instead of moping around about never being able to see them again-
…
I had to blink some tears out of my eyes. Damn it. I shouldn't have led myself down that line of thought.
Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Don't think about them right now. GOing down that path will only lead to more pain and that's not what I needed right now.
The other reason why this was terrifying? Sangria's memories told me exactly where I was.
It most certainly wasn't something you could call safe when comparing it to Earth. Hunters, monsters, people with animal traits helping out patients in the hospital - definitely not part of what made up Earth. There was no mention of Earth in Sangria's memories either. No mention of the Americas, for Europe, of Asia, Oceania and the major nations; only continents and names of unfamiliar (yet familiar) states.
My lips curved into a smile. It wasn't a happy smile; no, it was a smile without any sort of mirth whatsoever. One born out of nervousness? Insanity? My emotions were growing muddled with every minute that passed while my vision started to swim with black spots appearing at the edges of my sight.
This was crazy. Too crazy. Things like this just don't happen. It just doesn't.
I was aware that I'd looped my thoughts around again, but reality and Sangria's memories starting to meld with my own wasn't really helping me on that front. The walls of Jericho were tumbling down despite my best efforts, and the complete merge was bound to happen soon.
After that? I don't know. Whoever came out on top when the merge finished would determine who the new Sangria Grey would be. Whoever came out on top when the merge finished would determine who the new Sangria Grey would be; either a mix between me and her, a 'her' with my memories... or 'me' with her memories. There were a lot of possibilities, really, but it all hinged on whose memories the new Sangria would see more clearly.
I was hoping for the latter, but really; would it really be 'me' if it turned out to be the case? Or would it be somebody else?
It's something for me to think about, I guess. If I managed to stick around. If I was still me stuck in Sangria Grey's body.
I hate this. My head's growing foggy and my thoughts really are starting to loop around. The very pinnacle of sanity, everyone; Sangria Grey, formerly a young man from New Zealand.
A giggle escaped me as a phrase surfaced briefly in my mind. It was far too appropriate for what I was feeling.
I feel sick.
Remnant.
The word tasted like ash in my mouth, now.
I'd known from looking at Sangria's memories, of course, but it did little to lessen the impact on me when it finally sank in. Of course, it's been three weeks since I first 'woke up' in the hospital, so the effect had more or less subsided, but there was still that underlying terror that gripped me every now and then when I looked outside the hospital's windows.
Even now, I could feel myself freeze up while I looked up at the ceiling and let my thoughts stray.
Maybe I should be thrilled. Most fans would jump at the chance to enter their favorite universe. I've just entered one of my favorite pieces of fiction, after all.
But really; beyond the main cast and their (inefficient but cool) weapons, it still painted a world in the shadow of extinction cast by beasts that lurked outside the walls, and this wasn't getting into the issues of the White Fang and the one pulling the strings behind the Grimm. Not exactly a place where sane people from Earth would want to live, even if they were the most rabid fans of the show.
Not that any of my other favorite media are any better. I wouldn't want to stick around in Mitakihara knowing Walpurgisnacht was coming, be on Earth when the Angels descended on Tokyo-3, nor would I want to end up in the middle of the Third Tiberium War between the Global Defense Initiative and the Brotherhood of Nod.
There was no Fourth Tiberium War, by the way. Change my mind.
There was an all to drastic difference between watching Remnant from behind a screen and being there and almost getting killed by Grimm in a forest. Though technically, I wasn't the one who had suffered that, but Sangria's memories of her attempted suicide was too real, too raw for me to just wave off and deem it irrelevant to what was happening right now.
It only reinforces the fact that no sane person from Earth would want to live here. With the only line of defense being the Hunters, whose numbers were simply too small to complete drive away the Grimm from the edges of the frontier - society, even - all it would take was one mishap and bam! There goes a few hundred people.
I clenched my fists under the covers of my bed.
The Grimm.
An existential threat that lurked just outside the borders and walls of the four Kingdoms of Remnant. While the house stood divided over the issue of the Faunus and other civil issues, the Grimm were always watching, always looking for a way to breach the walls in the midst of Remnant drawing lines in the sand to feast on both man and Faunus.
Attracted to negative emotion, too. Fear, hate, anger; all those emotions were like a beacon for the Grimm. For the big cities, the walls and Hunter patrols kept them out. In the frontier, where bandit raids on villages were not unheard of, it was more or less a death knell.
It's saying something that people on Remnant don't really bat an eye whenever a village or town in the frontier disappears overnight. On Earth, it would've been a tragedy, but here, it's just another Tuesday.
I shifted slightly under the cover again, feeling a scowl tug on my features.
There was probably a happy ending in sight, though. For all this, there was still the events of the show to think about. Dark as it was since Volume 3, there was probably a chance, a shot at being able to break the chains that bound Remnant if Salem was defeated. After that… well, only the future would tell.
I wouldn't have any part in the main plot, though. I don't even know if my soul was able to generate an Aura, or if I had a Semblance waiting in the wings. My soul might be too weird or something, considering that I was shunted from another world into this one. How Remnant's, uh, magic, would interact with my foreign soul was something for be to think about.
A sigh. I was doing that too much.
What could I do here? If I tried to play hero next to RWBY and JNPR, I might just end up actually dead. No martial skills, no engineering knowledge to make those weapons...
But I had foreknowledge. I knew the players and the pieces and where they'd move. What would happen- no, what could happen if I performed an intervention. Cinder and her team. Amber. Qrow. Roman and Neo. Adam. Pyrrha.
Oh, God. Pyrrha.
Poor girl. Her death was just a punch to the gut, no matter what side of the fence you were on. Get used to her being part of the main cast for volumes 1 and 2 and then Cinder arrives in volume 3 and-
-I'm pretty sure I tore something when I gripped the side of my bed a bit too hard. Damn it. I got myself worked up again over this place. The nurses will start to circle around me a lot more than usual. The fallout from the original Sangria's death hadn't completely subsided for now, even three weeks later.
I had to force myself to smile.
Just three weeks in this world, looking around and seeing how people lived without having to look through the proverbial lens of, well, their world being fictional, and I was already growing attached enough to care about Remnant and its' people. I'm getting invested in the people and their struggles in a world quite literally out to eat them.
And people say I wasn't sentimental or caring back on Earth…
Still, though. I find it weird that I grew so attached to Remnant quickly to the point where I was genuinely concerned about their future so quickly. Is this what all those SIs feel when they're dropped in one of their settings? Magical Messiah complex that hits them in the face when they realise they have the power to change things?
If that was the case, I could tell why they'd develop something like that. Settings and universes like Madoka Magica definitely needed a push in the right direction.
I tried to lean back into my bed again, shooting a quick glance outside my door's glass and watching the staff go about their daily business. This whole intervention thing was hinging on me even able to become a Hunter (Huntress, I reminded myself), keeping in with the earlier point of my soul not actually being from Remnant and the Aura Question.
And even then it still raised a point - how was I supposed to help when I didn't have the ability or the skill to do anything? I was, after all, not exactly one you would call Hunter material in my old body. I was a writer first and foremost; more suited for desk jobs than out and out field work.
It wasn't even counting when I'd been shunted into Remnant, either. For all I know, this could be already in the midst of Volumes 4 and 5, or far back in the past before Roman's robbery in Vale. Maybe it was too late to make a difference in the timeline, or maybe things had already changed enough with Sangria Grey's survival that all of my knowledge wouldn't matter in the first place.
Butterfly effect was a bitch. Or Chaos Theory. I forgot which one would've been appropriate in this case. Might be a side effect of the merger, or me just being an idiot. Both were equally likely.
I curled up into the fetal position, hugging my knees to my chest and trying not to scream out of frustration.
So many questions and so little answers.
The hours before the Hunter that'd saved me - Sangria - from the Grimm visited me in the hospital, it came to me.
How I'd save Remnant.
It was like divine inspiration, really. Maybe it might've actually been divine inspiration. The entire situation of being transplanted from Earth to this damn place was too crazy to not discount some bastard deity doing this all for kicks. Oh, it's a cliche thing to blame but still - what else could you pin it on?
Like… a switch, I guess, being flipped in my mind. Where it was just filled with thoughts on just what I'd do when I left the hospital, it was filled with other things; things that could change Remnant as I - and the rest of humanity and the Faunus - knew it. Designs for ships, weapons, tools and so much more flooded my mind to the point where I almost started doubling over in my bed while my nurse was doing a checkup.
Where it came from? I didn't know. Maybe it might've been the Man Upstairs smiling down on me, or maybe it was a gift for kicks from whatever higher power shunted my recently freed soul into Sangria's body. Either case didn't really matter; it was the gift that did.
I let myself smile when I shifted back into a more comfortable position. A genuine one, mind you. Nothing like the other smiles I'd forced onto my face the past few weeks. My eyes looked outside the windows in a practiced gesture, staring at the bright blue sky that hung above me, a vision of a future where mankind and the Faunus plied the void above and beyond without fear of the Grimm, where they were no longer bound by the limitations of Dust.
Goodbye, New Era.
Hello, Universal Century.