Gamer4 in. Not really certain I have much to say this time around- padding out these opening notes will only serve to delay the chapter itself anyways. Let's dive in.
Disclaimer: Prepare for your greatest moments, prepare for your darkest hour- the dream that you've always dreamed is suddenly about to flower.
Chapter III
Pyrrha Nikos Gets a Drink
Hei Xiong Jr. had learned many lessons over his decade so far tending the bar at the edge of his family's dance club. Probably his earliest lesson had been never to let his patrons know that he so often went by the name 'Junior' in the first place. One of his former customers, a blond woman with a penchant for blowing up things she didn't like, would insist she had taught him a much more valuable lesson- though, at the time, he'd been too busy tearing his hair out to be certain he'd actually learned anything.
But if one were to ask him what he thought his most valuable lesson was, it was to know his patrons almost as well as he knew himself.
And know his patrons he did- he knew which seat most of them would take, knew how to tell by sight of their face exactly what mood they were in, and, more often than not, based on that, was able to provide them with the drink they needed before they themselves had asked for it.
However, when it came to special relationships with his customers, things didn't get much better- or odder- than his personal favorite, Pyrrha Nikos.
He had first met Pyrrha Nikos in person five years ago, one Friday night when she had sauntered into the club and made straight for the bar, saying she'd heard that he provided the best drinks in town. He was hardly one to deny her- especially as the bar had so recently been rebuilt after the aforementioned blond had torn it apart- and had even invited two of his employees, the Malachite Twins, to keep her company as she drank.
Correlation to his fears of the club being virtually ransacked again do not necessarily amount to causation.
However, Pyrrha was a far cry from that other customer- she remained almost unnaturally polite throughout her visit, especially given her profession- and the fame it brought her.
When most people in the world heard the name 'Pyrrha Nikos', it conjured up images of the great Amazon, a fighter in world-class tournaments who had appeared almost from nowhere to rapidly gain a reputation as 'The Invincible Girl.' Anybody who was anybody followed the many fighting tournaments held across the world of Remnant, and everybody who followed those knew full well of the Rising Star of Mistral.
Once more, correlation between his knowledge of her background and fear of what she might do do not necessarily amount to causation.
Junior didn't know what he'd expected that first night when Pyrrha had appeared- for her to be stuck-up and snooty, perhaps, as many famous people were, perhaps to be bold, brazen, and destructive as... she... had been, but she defied all expectations, quietly asking for whatever the house recommended, barely ever raising her voice above the bare minimum of what was necessary as she provided a pleasant amount of small talk over her drink, before leaving a surprisingly generous tip on the way out.
"A surprisingly relaxing place, for a dance club," she'd commented as she prepared to make her exit. "I think I'll be back again."
And so she had been, the next week... and the next week... and the next week... and the week after that. Reliably, at least once a week every week for the past five years, Pyrrha would stop by the Dance Club, silently make her way over to Junior's bar, order a drink seemingly at random, and proceed to make polite conversation with him or the Malachite Twins as they were available before leaving a generous tip on the way out.
It almost bordered on eccentricity, in Junior's eyes- even when she was fighting in tournaments halfway across the globe, she always seemed to find her way back at least once a week in visits that the Malachite Twins, for one, seemed to gradually come to look forward to, and he would be lying if he said he didn't throw a glance or two at the door as Friday- her favorite day to come in- rolled around, expecting or perhaps even hoping to see a vivid head of red hair making its way towards the bar.
Had he not known it was the same person, he'd hardly believe it himself- in person, she was far, far removed from her persona on the battlefield. The Pyrrha Nikos known to most of the world was an unstoppable titan, at least six feet tall, dressed in Spartan armor, topped off with a wild mane stained red with the blood of her opponents- and then she appeared in his bar, quiet, reserved, and impeccably polite, always accepting a drink with a small smile on her face, ready to listen to any problems her bartender or accompanying twins had, and always ready to share her own frustrations with them, should the need arise.
For someone who seemed so many worlds apart from the one he lived in, Junior had truly come to consider her a friend, knowing her better than any other patron who ever sat at his bar and asked for a drink- and because of all that, when he saw her enter the dance club with her head hanging, hair seeming to droop about her face, and especially when her usually-steady hands shook as she placed them on the counter... it raised quite a few alarms in the back of his mind.
"Hello, again." She made a valiant effort at her usual chirpy greeting, but he could hear the strain in her voice.
"Glad to see ya, Wondergirl," Junior greeted her back. Exactly when 'Wondergirl' had become Pyrrha's nickname, he himself couldn't remember. As he recalled, one of the Malachites had jokingly referred to her as such somewhere along the line- Miltia, if he recalled correctly- and the name had simply stuck. "What can I do you for?"
"The strongest drink you have, in the largest glass you have." As she spoke, Pyrrha raised her head, shocking Junior deeply- her skin had always been pale, but now she was shockingly white. "I'll be... hitting the road again as soon as I leave."
Junior cast his eyes along the counter until he spied the Malachite Twins- he could see they had already noticed her arrival. He nodded, motioning with his head, and they eagerly descended upon their visitor as he turned to forage for glass and drink alike.
"Is something wrong, Wondergirl? You look like you've seen a ghost!" he heard one of the twins exclaim behind his back.
"That's not... too far from the truth..." Pyrrha muttered, more quietly than ever he'd heard her speak.
Junior was growing more and more concerned- for her weekly visits, Pyrrha had never been a huge drinker. There was that one time, around Christmas, that she'd gotten into a drinking contest with another customer that had ended with him passed out on the ground and her vomiting into the toilet, but that was about all he could think of. For her to suddenly be demanding a drink like this, looking as she did... he could only imagine what had brought about this change.
"So, where ya headed to next?" he asked as he finally finished mixing her drink into a glass practically the size of a barrel. "Vacuo? Atlas? Back to Mistral?"
"None of the above," Pyrrha shook her head listlessly. "I'm going to Vale."
Pyrrha's audience blinked in confusion. "Vale?" Melanie Malachite wondered aloud. "I can't say I've heard of that kingdom..."
"Not a kingdom," Pyrrha corrected halfheartedly. "A town- too large to be a town, not large enough to be a city, but the people call it a town, so there you go."
"An exhibition match of some sort?" Junior guessed, slamming the tank of alcohol on the counter in front of her.
"No, no, nothing like that," Pyrrha shook her head again. "I just got a call from... from a friend who lives out there." She then grasped onto the flagon in front of her and, to the surprise of her audience, downed a third of it in one gulp. She then allowed it to drop back to the counter before leaning back in the chair, looking briefly as though she'd been punched in the face. "Thanks, I needed that..."
"So, what's in Vale that's so important?" Miltia asked, taking the offensive.
Pyrrha straightened up and gazed around for a moment before asking, "Do any of you... remember your childhoods?"
A collective blink of confusion went off around the group. "Childhood?" Melanie asked.
"If you were to ask some people, they'd say Junior's still in his," Miltia put in, likely in a half-hearted attempt to raise the mood a bit.
Pyrrha hardly seemed to notice, throwing a glassy stare out at the dance floor for a moment before turning back to them. "For a long time, if you'd asked me that question, I'd have said yes, no thought about it. Of course- how could I forget? But now... now I'm not so certain..."
"Nostalgia, is it?" Junior asked, trying to bring the conversation to grounds he understood, though his instincts told him whatever was plaguing the Great Amazon went far, far deeper than that.
"No, not nostalgia," Pyrrha disagreed, staring into the remaining alcohol. "This call... everything changed once I heard it... I remembered so much... so much I'd forgotten without even realizing it..."
"Pyrrha," Melanie spoke up, a look of concern etched into her face, mirrored on the faces of her twin and her employer, "you're scaring us..."
Without warning, Pyrrha reached for the flagon, downing half of what was left right in front of their eyes. Another reel back, as though someone had just delivered a vicious uppercut. "I may need another, Junior."
"I hope you're not driving yourself back home," Junior raised an eyebrow.
"I'm not going home," Pyrrha shook her head, her movements becoming more... floppy under the influence of the liquor. "I'll be heading out and grabbing a taxi to the airport, and from there... well, I suppose I am going home, in a way..."
An awkward silence descended on the bar, the twins and Junior exchanging looks of confusion and nerves as they waited for what their regular guest would say next.
Seemingly realizing what they were waiting for, Pyrrha blinked a couple times before righting herself and beginning to speak. "I was born and raised in Mistral most of my life, but there was one year- dust, it was a long time ago, but there was one year I spent elsewhere. My parents' work was bumping us around Mistral all the time anyways, I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised when it eventually took us to a different kingdom- to an old, sleepy town called Vale. They were a couple months into the school year already, but I went in anyways, stayed the rest of the year, and that summer... that summer, it was the best and the worst of my life..."
The confusion intensified- sure, they knew Pyrrha was willing to unload a frustration here or a gripe there, but she'd never opened up to this extent before, emptying out her entire life story. Nonetheless, she continued.
"Things were different back then- nobody wanted to be my friend. Probably something to do with being the new kid- and being so fat."
This, above anything, seemed to break the tension- the Malachite Twins broke down laughing, and even Junior couldn't hide a smirk. "Pull the other one, it's got bells on," he chuckled lightly.
This, at last, elicited a weak smile from Pyrrha. "Something funny?"
"You? Fat?" Miltia chortled.
"The Great Amazon?" Melanie couldn't help putting in.
Pyrrha's laugh was as weak as her smile, but it was a laugh nonetheless. "You have no idea," she forced out between her light chuckle. "Sometimes I had problems fitting through doors."
This elicited some more laughter from the group, that slowly died as Pyrrha gave up on her smile, and returned to gazing into her flagon. "You're- you're serious, aren't you?" Junior asked.
"Oh, yeah," Pyrrha nodded. "In fact- to give you an idea..."
She leaned backwards, reached down, and began to lift her shirt. The Malachites gasped, and Junior briefly made to look away- but she only barely lifted the shirt above her navel, before pointing a little to its left. "See that?"
The three bartenders looked closely, and sure enough, right near her belly button, curving around it, was a thin white C.
"What happened there?" Junior wondered.
"The school bully," Pyrrha explained, eyes slipping in and out of focus as she lowered her shirt again. "Just dumb luck I don't have his whole name across my stomach..."
"My God..." the Malachite Twins stared at her for a moment, dumbstruck.
"But it wasn't all bad, either," Pyrrha recalled. "I had a group of friends- we met over the summer, and that's what made it the best. We would meet every day... run around town... explore the woods... play in the river... I would always fall behind, and they'd always wait up for me... I loved them like they were my own family..."
With that, she drained the rest of the tank. Junior's eyes practically bugged out when he realized she'd drained the whole thing in three fell gulps.
"And then, today, one of them calls me up out of the blue, and I realize I hadn't even thought about them in almost thirty years," Pyrrha began again, as if she hadn't just paused to continue her campaign to pickle her internal organs. "Good old Ren... he was an outsider, too, you know... that group took him in where no one else would... just like me... but when I heard his voice on the phone, it took me a few seconds to realize who 'Lie Ren' even was!"
"Well, you say it's been thirty years..." Junior pointed out, prompting Pyrrha to wave her head from side to side, now looking more like a dog than anything else.
"Not like that... not like that! There weren't half-remembered faces, vague memories of what happened... I remembered nothing at all! Then he explained who he was, and like a wave hit me, it all came rushing back! Everything! And I remembered... I remembered what I have to do..."
She looked up at them all, her eyes glassy, but surprisingly clear for all the alcohol she'd just consumed. "I made a promise back then- a promise! And now... it's time to fulfill it..."
A long, long silence fell, until at long last, Pyrrha began foraging around in her pockets. "Here... these are for you."
All three of them gaped as she produced three large, round coins made of what seemed to be solid silver. "You've all been such good friends to me over the past few years... I can't go without... without acknowledging that. Take these... and remember the days that silver could kill monsters."
Very carefully, very deliberately, she handed one coin to Melanie, one to Miltia, and finally, one to Junior. "So... what do I owe you for the drink?"
In a surreal, almost dreamlike state, Junior found himself shaking his own head. "That one was on the house."
Pyrrha gave one last weak smile. "Well, how about that? Well, my taxi ought to be here by now..."
She stood up uneasily, but held remarkably steady for the feat she'd just accomplished.
Junior and the twins exchanged some more uneasy looks. Pyrrha wasn't the first customer to have a night like this, and the results of other such nights was clearly hanging over them like a shadow. It was enough for Melanie to jump to her feet and ask, almost desperately- "You'll be back next week, right, Pyrrha?"
It was a testament to the situation that hardly anyone acknowledged the use of that name when 'Wondergirl' had been used almost exclusively for four years now. Pyrrha sighed as she began making her way back towards the doors. "I'd like to, but I'm afraid I can't promise anything..."
Finally, Junior spoke up, giving voice to the dread lurking in his and the Twins' hearts, not wanting to put it into words, but having to know... "You aren't planning on offing yourself, are you?"
Finally, Pyrrha stopped, turning back to them with the weakest smile they'd ever seen, and momentarily, each of them could swear they were no longer looking at their friend Pyrrha Nikos, but through her. The real Pyrrha Nikos, it seemed, was dead somewhere, perhaps after a particularly violent match, and what stood before them was merely her ghost. "Don't worry- I'm just fulfilling a promise. Killing myself is the furthest thing from my mind."
And then she was gone, disappearing out the doors but leaving her longtime friends with a nagging suspicion that she'd said something else on the way out, something that sounded very much like,
"Though I might be better off if I did."
XXXX
First appearance without The Ice Cream Lady. On that subject, the thought occurs that 'The Ice Cream Lady' is a rather stupid name, albeit one that seemed well and good when I was starting off- what do you want, I was as close as I get to high. Thus, in addition to my usual request for reviews, I ask you, dear readers, if you have a better title? I didn't want to call this story something ridiculous like 'It: RWBY Edition,' but I'm honestly not sure anymore that the title I did pick was much better. Ah, well, whether you have a better idea or not, please R&R, constructive criticism embraced, flames, not so much, Gamer4 out.