Yesterday's News
"For it is in passing that we achieve immortality. Through this, we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all. Infinite in distance and unbound by death, I release your soul, and by my shoulder, protect thee."
-Pyrrha Nikos
That definitely doesn't sound foreshadow-y at all, no, sir.
Rated hard T for non-explicit nudity.
Mistral
It's another beautiful day in Mistral, and Pyrrha Nikos, The Invincible *cough*Ironic*cough* Girl, just won yet another tournament. She is currently walking around a festival held in her honor. There are banners, balloons, collectible tchotchkes (whatever those are) all emblazoned with Pyrrha Nikos: 4th Time Winner of Mistral's Vaguely Established Championship. That's exactly what they all say. Millions of Lien spent on collectibles; just imagine how embarrassing that would have been if she had lost.
Pyrrha is walking around the plaza serving as the festival grounds, looking at her many fans, and also the people who enjoy her matches.
"Long Live Pyrrha!" her fans shout.
"Thank you, Thank you," she says
"Long Live Pyrrha!" they shout again, just in case it wasn't abundantly clear the first time that this is a reference to her impending death.
Pyrrha was cursed, you see. Everywhere she went, things predicted her death. Every fortune teller with a crystal ball told her it would be slow and painful. Novelty machines alleged to measure ones predicted lifespan mysteriously sparked and exploded when she walked near them. Ghosts mistook her for their older relatives. She once made a paper fortune teller for herself and wrote "You will live a long, happy life" on all of the inside sections, and still managed to get something about dying when she tried it. It was beginning to wear on her nerves.
She had tossed and turned in the night, and woke belly up. While dressing for the day, she found the only overcoat she had was wooden. Then she accidentally kicked a bucket as she was departing.
When she arrived at the arena for the tournament that day, she found that the number assignment machine was on the blink. Her ticket said her number was "up". Curiously enough, it worked fine for everyone else.
When the tournament ended for the day, and the participants were bowing, Pyrrha took the last one. As she was signing things for people, she accidentally bought a farm.
The only things that didn't try to tell her she was going to die were her fans. Not people, the mechanical fans that blow air. She has a collection of them, and she takes them everywhere she goes. The fans are completely loyal to Pyrrha; they will never betray her.
"Pyrrha, stop talking to those fans, and get over here," said her mother, Unnamed Mother.
No, seriously, that's her name. It's on every form of identification she owns: "Mother, Unnamed". "Mother" was actually Pyrrha's father's surname, which Pyrrha's mother took when she married Pyrrha's Father.
"Coming, mother," responded Pyrrha.
She passed a table full of gamblers, all of whom immediately moved to cash in their chips, and she eventually stumbled upon a box of conveniently placed fortune cookies. Deciding to see what they held for her, she opened the first one.
You have good health insurance, right? "Nothing foreboding about that; just an innocent question." She opened another.
They're watching you… "Who is?" She thought. At this point she was completely drawn-in. She opened another, hoping for an answer.
Whatever you do, avoid all highways. "Okay, I can do that," she thought, and reached for another.
This is important! Life or death! Make sure you c- the rest of the fortune was faded."What? What do I need to do?" Pyrrha frantically reached for yet another fortune.
Without going into graphic detail, let's just say you better learn to write with your other hand real soon. "Oh, God, what's going to happen to me?" Pyrrha frantically threw that fortune into the wind and reached for the last fortune cookie in the box.
39 days 18 hours 6 minutes and 23 seconds. At this point, she was sufficiently spooked, and threw the fortunes down before walking off to find her mother.
One of the fortunes that she threw got caught in the wind and traveled on a series of air currents and incredibly unlikely incidental events, such as getting pushed in a particular direction by a flock of birds, all the way to Atlas, and all in montage format. There was even a translucent map superimposed over the montage, showing the path it took, I'm not sure how you missed it.
While searching for her mother, Pyrrha's scroll began to ring.
"Hello?"
"Seven days..." a voice on the other end whispered.
"What?" Pyrrha asked, but there was no response. She sat there for a few seconds, then ended the call and carried on.
It was dark, now. That traveling fortune montage took a bit longer than I thought it would. Pyrrha elected to phone her mother instead of searching for her.
One quick conversation later, Pyrrha was headed home. She asked several people about transportation in order to get home; the first option was to hop on the last rattler, the second offered to send her off on a boat, and the third had a pale horse she could ride home. She decided to walk.
A mist was starting to build up, and Pyrrha could have sworn that she saw large, humanoid figures with giant blades, and awful looking pyramid helmets, so she decided to cut through the park. Because, you know, that never ends badly.
As it happens, Pyrrha did actually have to cut through the park; the grass was terribly overgrown. On the bright side though, it did sometimes dispense Lien notes when she cut it. There were also some daisies that she had to push... I mean pull up because she couldn't seem to cut them. The park was eerily silent until, as Pyrrha was working her way through the grass, her scroll rang again, once again causing her to jump.
"...Hello?" she said, expecting the voice again.
"Hello, I am a Menageriean prince, my relatives have been squandering my money for some time now, and I am looking to transfer it to a-" Pyrrha almost entertained what was obviously a scam simply because it wasn't about her dying, but knew it would most likely somehow circle around to that and ended the call anyway.
As she was doing so, she received a notification on her scroll about a sale on crematory services.
Pyrrha was now quite tense, between the regular warnings of her impending death and this creepy park, her nerves were frayed. If one more thing went wrong, she was apt to just go to a better place. That is to say, move to another country.
She arrived home without further incident, but her nervousness persisted. It was quiet in her house because it was late at night, and her mother was in bed, but that didn't register to Pyrrha, who was only on the lookout for the next thing to go wrong. Slowly, carefully, she crept to her room and opened the door-
"G. Reaper wants to be your friend," said the text-to-speech feature on her scroll. She grabbed the scroll and threw it at the wall, destroying it, then began stomping on the remains.
"NO!" yelled the now incensed Pyrrha.
Unnamed heard the commotion, and walked to her daughter's room.
"Pyrrha, what's wrong?" she asked. Pyrrha, meanwhile, was yelling at her scroll.
"I'm done!" she bellowed, then moved to her closet to put on a pair of concrete shoes, and returned to stomping on the broken remains of her scroll.
Several minutes later, she appeared to have calmed down. She turned around to meet her maker, cleared her throat, and spoke.
"Mother, I have decided that I will be moving to Vale, and attending Beacon Academy."
A Fancy Restaurant Somewhere In Vale
Adam was beginning to lose patience with the servers in this place. He was proud of his heritage, and was not afraid to show his Faunus traits. The servers, however were clearly mocking him, and they probably thought he was too stupid to understand that. When they were waiting to be seated, the servers asked him to stand outside, on a patch of grass, because "there wasn't enough space in the lobby for everyone waiting to be seated", and they were snickering about it the whole time.
"Adam, calm down." said Blake, his voice of reason for the time being.
When it finally came time to seat them, the servers took them to a section where everyone was ordering steak. Filet Mignon, Rib-Eye, T-Bone, Porterhouse. It disgusted him that he even knew so many.
"Steak is a popular dish, what do you want them to do?" she asked.
"They didn't have to put us here," Adam responded
If that wasn't a enough of blatant slap in the face, all of the servers, all of them, were wiping the tables with red washcloths.
"You see that, don't you?" he asked
"That's just a coincidence, Adam," she replied.
"Everyone knows that is just a myth, bulls don't actually get angry when you wave a red cloth at them" he insisted.
"Then why are you so upset right now?" she responded.
"Because they're waving that red cloth at me!" Adam hissed. Blake just cocked an eyebrow.
"That's not what I meant, and you know it. I mean that they're only waving them like that because we're here."
"You're just being paranoid."
"Look, over there, there's a china shop, for God's sake. Why would they do that if not to mock me?"
"Adam."
"Fine, but how do you explain this?" he asked, using a scroll to access the server containing the tracks that were scheduled to play over the speakers.
Cows of Gladness
Calling All Cows
Gonna Love Ya (Till the Cows Come Home)
Brown Chicken Brown Cow
I Am Cow
Mossy Cow
Sacred Cow
For All the Cows
Cow Bells and Coffee Beans
Can't You Hear the Cows
Poor Cow
Black Cow
Milk Cow Boogie
Mad Cow
Greet the Sacred Cow
Mrs. O'Leary's Cow
Cow Town
Milk Cow Blues
Countin' Cows
Holy Cow
Saddled the Cow
I'm an Old Cow Hand
When the Cows Come Home
Walking the Cow
A Purple Cow
It's like this entire situation was set up just to antagonise him.
"Adam, the waiter is here."
"Hello, my name is Allan, I will be your server today, and I swear, if you ask me for details about the lobster dinner, I will stab you in the eye with this pencil."
This was the deciding factor, Adam determined. It was time to step up operations in the White Fang, and put these Human idiots in their place. And he would start…with leaving a terrible Yap review of this restaurant for no reason. No, he couldn't do that, it was just too cruel. But sometimes extreme measures had to be taken.
After finishing the meal and paying for it, they left. He was torn about the bad review he was planning but told himself that he had to stay strong if he wanted to make this world a better place. On the way out they saw a piece of paper blow past them. Blake attempted to catch it, but missed. It must not have been meant for her. As they were walking, Adam spied a cargo train being loaded with Dust.
"Perfect," he thought.
A Petrol Station Somewhere In Atlas.
In a nondescript fuel station, somewhere in Atlas, in a space between two Air Buses the air begins to heat up. A humming noise can be heard, and arcs of blue electricity are starting to jump around in the air, and between the vehicles. The arcs continue to increase in size and intensity, until, suddenly, a black sphere manifests in the air, just above the ground. Everything flashes white, and the sphere dissipates leaving a strange looking girl with short, orange hair. She was kneeling in the crater the mysterious sphere had created, totally naked. The girl rises, surveys her surroundings, and walks toward the petrol station. In the parking lot outside the station, she sees several motorcycles all parked. A red filter overlays her vision, and alphanumerical strings begin popping up on it. She scans one of the motorcycles, and, deeming it fit for use, walks inside the station to acquire the keys.
Once inside, she walks mechanically through the crowd, briefly glancing at everyone she walks past, until she reaches a blonde girl in a tan jacket.
"Hello," she says to the blonde girl, "will you be my friend?"
"Sure," the girl replies, "as long as you put on some clothes."
"Sen-sational," replied the strangely behaving, and still very naked girl, "Now, since friends are quite happy to share with one another-"
A whirring sound and a high-pitched whine emanated from the girl, then her voice switched from squeaky and friendly, to masculine with a strange accent.
"-I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle."
*Apparently, That Was A Flashback*
"So, what happened next?" asked the bartender
"Well, I gave her a spare suit of clothes I had in the bike, then gave her the keys."
"You just let someone take your precious Bumblebee?"
"Nah, it was one of Junior's."
Just then, someone else walked into the pub, sat down, and ordered a drink.
"What happened, B?" asks the bartender.
The rest of the conversation is lost on the girl, who spies a pamphlet for Beacon Academy and gets up to go to the local skyport. As she was walking out of the bar a piece of paper flew into her hair. She grabbed it and looked at it.
Without going into graphic detail, let's just say you better learn to write with your other hand real soon.
"Huh, I wonder what that means," and she set off.
Skyport
A nearby television was broadcasting a news report on a chain of explosions that devastated all nine of Vale's injured, orphan puppy hospitals. A reporter was standing outside of the smoldering wreckage, speaking.
"…Headmaster of Beacon Academy issued a press release stating that the incident is believed to have originated at a terminal in the reception area, where one employee was attempting to divide by 0. Police attempted to recreate the incident in a controlled environment. As of yet, there are no reports of survivors."
Yang tuned out the television to focus on the arrival and departure schedules for the airships. There was one leaving in a few minutes, departing to Vale, and she intended to be on it.
When Jaune was a baby he dropped himself on his head.
When he was 3, a flock of pigeons attacked him leaving bald spots on his head that took almost 3 months to regrow. Since that day that very same flock of pigeons would return every year to attack Jaune. Nothing else; they wouldn't steal bags of tortilla chips from grocers, they wouldn't fly over people's houses, and aim their waste with laser-guided precision, they wouldn't attack small animals for getting too close to their bread. They lived and breathed to attack Jaune, and Jaune alone. They were like tiny Nevermores, so basically, pigeons.
When he was 5 he fell into a tiger enclosure at the local zoo. Fortunately, it was time for his annual pigeon attack that day and those devil birds scared the tigers off. When it was over the tigers actually pitied him and let him hobble out of their enclosure.
When he was 6 he stepped on a Lego, then pigeons attacked him.
When he was 7 he licked an electrical outlet, then pigeons attacked him.
His parents knew that he would need very good health insurance, if they wanted him to live to see his teens. After extensive searching they finally settled on an "Everything except a Zombie Apocalypse" policy. You might think that was an unnecessary purchase. If you do, then you don't know Jaune. Jaune was a very careful boy (the electrical outlet thing was the exception), but somehow trouble always seemed to find him.
He had just turned 17 recently, and was anxiously awaiting the annual pigeon attack. Unbeknownst to him, said pigeons were sidetracked by a paper fortune that had somehow made its way into their formation. They would be late, but if there was anything that Jaune had learned in his 17 years it was that they would come; they would find him.
While the insurance policy was almost entirely sufficient for covering him, it also cost his entire college fund. As a result, instead of going to the law school that he wanted to attend, he now had to go to Beacon. It's incredibly ironic, if you think about it. They spent his entire college fund on keeping him alive, and now they have to send him somewhere that he's sure to die. Before he left on the airship to Beacon, the entire town held a betting pool on whether he could make it to the airship without hurting himself. I won't tell you which one he bet on, but Jaune's father won. Jaune's family saw him off with smiles, and once he was gone, Unnamed Mother (no relation to Pyrrha's mother) turned to Unnamed Father,
"He's doomed."
"Yep."
"There's no way he'll last."
"Nope."
"There's certainly no way he'll outlive that Pyrrha Nikos girl." Wow. That was oddly specific.
CHAPTER END
No, Pyrrha is not going to die by being sucked up into one of her fans. I already told you, they will never betray her. They are the only ones who actually love her.
I searched "songs with cow in the title" and Google did not disappoint.
The fortunes on those cookies were actual fortunes that I found on the internet.
In case it wasn't quite clear, I was trying to make Penny into The T-800, but it's been a while since I've seen Judgement Day.
Yang had a voucher for a free course in Car Jacking from Generic Thug Academy. It applies to motorcycles, too.
Jaune's Unnamed Mother and Unnamed Father both have different surnames because they elected to keep their individual surnames for legal purposes, after their marriage.