Chapter 11 - LIFE GOES ON

-Jaune Arc-

"W-What just...Pyrrha!?"

My mouth worked, hand outstretched even though the target of my worry had long since cleared the room's threshold going by the minor twinges echoing through the marks on my hand. My mind reeling, quite unable to process what had just happened, the impossible.

Pyrrha Nikos, a woman who had been nothing but smiles, support, and boundless unremitting strength since the start of all this craziness...had fled, in the face of Neptune Vasilias at that.

"Jaune? H-hey dude, are you...!?"

It didn't make sense, it defied all logic.

I swayed dangerously forward, my startled roommate barely managing to get a hold of me before I hit the ground, stomach still rebelling from the aftershock of emotions barraging me through our shared...bond, is what she'd called it.

Sadness, anger, and so much fear. Flashes of memories not my own rippling from the glowing Command Seals... "To the Empire, and to you, my love..."

Oh gods, I was gonna be sick.

"Jaune, who...who exactly was that?"

I was suddenly very aware of the concern etched on my friend's usually grinning face, concern and some sly undercurrent of guilt as his eyes darted towards the direction she had run. People were muttering now, whispering behind hands and glancing at the two of us warily.

"You said her name was...?"

"Pyrrha." The name spilled from my lips before I could help myself, all thoughts of secrecy and decorum forgotten in the overwhelming desire to figure out what exactly was happening. A familiar feeling for me these days as one could imagine. Neptune flinched back at the name, biting his lip and grimacing at the floor awkwardly. "I don't know what happened, she was just fine..."

"Oh, so she's named after...ah. Right, that...that would awkward." I rounded on him so fast he barely had time to yelp, "I-I'm sorry, man. Wish you'd have mentioned you met a sweet Mistrali girl, could've warned you." ...Warned me?

"About what?" I asked, narrowing my eyes at the embarrassment and...and shame marring his expression, his face unusually serious, far more so than it had ever been in the months since I'd met him. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, have you ever wondered why I...why I don't really make an effort to hang around other people from Mistral? Try to avoid it actually."

"I asked. You said they weren't exciting enough, that they reminded you too much of home." It was actually the reason he'd decided to room with a lower class first generation Magus like me actually, I hadn't known him or his family, hadn't cared. I never put much stock in it, only all to happy to split the cost of a room with one of the few wealthy Magi that hadn't been spitting on me as I passed them in the halls. "What's that got to do with Pyrrha? It looked like she'd seen a ghost or something." Those images, that man...a man who'd looked so curiously like an older mirror image of my roommate...

"Uh..." He'd flinched, and even though I wasn't exactly fond of or involved in the subtle politics and power plays of Beacon Academy, I'd learned enough in a few months to tell when someone was trying to deflect, had done it more than a few times myself. Neptune tried to grin then, but failed utterly, if anything appearing genuinely apologetic. "It's just, well, my isn't exactly welcome in the Kingdom of Mistral in the moment. Kind of ironic really, especially seeing as we sort of used to run the place."

"That doesn't...HUH!?" I gaped open mouthed, unsure I'd heard him properly. "Wait a sec, you're...?"

"Royalty, yeah. In a way at least, descending from the line of the cursed Emperor Aureus Vasilias I." The blue haired playboy shrugged dismissively, as if what he'd said had been something matter-a-fact. That name, just the sound of it curdled my blood, the emotions behind it not my own. "C'mon Jaune don't gawk like that. It's not like its that uncommon, plenty of the more well known families can boast something similar. Schnee, Adel, Winchester...all of them have some connection to some pretty old names, its part of what makes them such a big deal. Mine is just more...infamous in certain circles."

"I still don't see what that has to do with Pyrrha?"

Neptune groaned, smacking his forehead and sighing in a way that had my fingers curling into fists. "Dude, bad form to not even know the story behind your girlfriend's name. Geez, you're hopeless." Girlfriend, no! Pyrrha wasn't my...wait he was still talking, focus! "Pyrrha Nikos, the legend? You have to know something about it, right?"

"I-I do!" I stammered weakly, nodding my head with more confidence than I felt. "She was this famous warrior, the um...Goddess of War, yeah. She's a hero."

"More like the Hero." Neptune corrected, putting an arm around my shoulder and motioning to the Hunter's Fountain behind us. "There isn't a kid in Mistral that doesn't grow up knowing the name Pyrrha Nikos from a dozen bedtime stories. All of them basically play by play of her fighting off armies of Grimm, defending the innocent, saving the ancient Empire of Mistral a hundred times over. Basic hero stuff." 'Basic', yeah going by the last few days, fighting off armies actually seemed par for the course. "I mean she's practically worshipped in Sanctum where she was born, even have this whole temple, priestesses, the whole deal. All of it devoted to maintaining her tomb and relics."

"O-oh...wow." I certainly hadn't known that, not having bothered to learn either what with the whole getting stabbed, blown up, and pursued business I had going on. "So she's pretty popular then."

The dumbstruck look Neptune shot me then could've likely split stone with its icy intensity. Strange how only a few hours with the supportive Servant had managed to make me forget my usual status as 'idiot in the room'.

"Yeah, as one of the most well-known Tragic Heroines on the face of Remnant. Murdered by a jealous lover whom she was sworn to serve above all others, all because she was more respected by her people than he was." My roomate grimaced, perhaps in response to the look crossing my own face. "My ancestor, the man who proved the invincible goddess of war...guh...wasn't so invincible after all.

'...Pyrrha?'

Before I could react, a knock on the door sounded, drawing both our attentions as the brands across the back of my hand burned hot...


-Glynda Goodwitch (Caster)-

"I would like it known that I do not approve of this action, Master."

My voice sounded clipped despite my attempts at holding my humors in check, tapping my crop in a carefully cadenced rhythm against my shoulder as I peered out across Vale, taking in the lights and sounds that so pervaded this modern world. Comparing the small burgeoning settlement of my memory to the smelly waste clogged cesspit below.

So unlike the ages passed, where one could simply enjoy the flows of Mana uninterrupted in a manner akin to breathing, when the hold of Dust was stronger, more abundant in the lives of both human and Faunus.

In comparison this...this shell of a world, felt oh so hollow. So devoid of the magical yet undeniably natural flows of energy that had once infused the very air itself in a cavalcade of color and effect. Where miracles had been reduced to simpliciy, and the impossible was rendered anything but.

A sign of ending times perhaps and an eventual calamity? Or maybe an effect of the Grimm's disappearance into the shadows between the realms of man?

It was an interesting hypothesis, one to explore when devoted to less...arduous tasks. I ticked my head to the side, letting the wind caress my hair, a spark of purple Aura building at the tip of my crop in a long ribbon of crackling energy.

"Even you must admit time would be much better spent seeking out your lost ward ourselves, or perhaps even assaulting the barriers surrounding that Fall woman's retreat." The woman's monster was weak, her pawns set about desperately trying to stymie its hunger to little avail and plentiful bloodshed amidst the mundane populous despite our best efforts to waylay them. "Yet we busy ourselves with the movements of children,

"As you've made perfectly clear many times, Caster." The measured baritone of my Master's will rippled through me, my eyes narrowing to slits despite myself at the intrusion into my mind, my private thoughts, however necessary it was to the task at hand. Such a thing would have been anathema in my earlier life, but the Grail was undeniable, yet to have it bind me like this... "But you and I know with Saber about, we cannot move too hastily. Not yet. Our time will come, with allies."

"So you say, Master."


-Weiss Schnee-

"Weiss? Weiss, c'mon just talk to me! Please, don't be like this!"

A nerve twitched above my brow, blood pulsing as the blithering headache that was Ruby Rose trailed along after me, anger and irritation bleeding off me in in waves. It was so bad, even the mundanes passing us by were picking up on it, giving us both a wide berth along the side walk as I stomped more than walked passed, shooting my back with furtive glances. As if I cared at all what some magic lacking fools thought of me, I was above all that. No, I had the right to be angry, I had the right to...

"Weiss, stop it with this silent treatment already, you have to understand...!?"

"No, I don't." My voice laden with malice and command was like a whip crack, silencing the girl and setting her back a pace as if I'd actually struck her, which under the circumstances I likely would have had I believed it might actually have any effect at all. "There is absolutely nothing to discuss, let alone understand. Focus on the objective at hand, find the girl."

"But we need to talk..."

"Oh, truly? Well then, perhaps we should speak of how you left me. Alone, and undefended."

"Weiss, I didn't mean...!" She began again, only to bite her lip as another glare from my scarred eye and a subtle pulse of Aura dispelled whatever paltry argument she'd been about to utter. "Weiss?"

"Master." I said simply, with an air of finality that stunned even me with its lack of emotion and the guilty pride warring across the Servant's pale youthful features. Just like father whenever he scolded me to such effect, the worst days, and yet somehow the comparison did little to put me at ease. "You will address me as either 'Master' or 'Mistress', perhaps 'My Lady' at the absolute minimum, and only when given leave to speak as such."

"W-Wei..." The hand that bore my remaining Command Seals twitched visibly, fingers curling with wisps of Aura crackling in my grasp, as clear a sign as the young Huntress had ever needed. Whatever pride shone in those silver eyes vanished, replaced by nothing short of remorse and...and defeat. She looked like me then, back before... "Master, I'm...I'm sorry."

"Sorry!?" I suppressed the flicker of empathy with a cruel efficiency learned through years of ruthless trial and circumstance, killing the merciful impulse before it could take root. I was the Master here, and I was through being treated like...like...like a friend. "You're 'sorry'!? For what, Archer?" The title tasted bitter in my mouth, poisonous, and I hurled it against the small girl in kind, all bystanders that might've intervened sent away with a flicker of subtle hypnotic suggestion. I didn't need an audience. "Sorry that you continually disobey me even though I'm the very Magus who summoned you? That you left me alone and in terrible danger, vulnerable? Sorry that you embarrassed me utterly before an enemy, a man I could ill afford to show even the slightest hint of weakness towards now of all times? Or sorry that you got caught!?"

"Uh...I guess all, maybe, sort've..." The red headed tapped her index fingers together, silver eyes refusing to meet my own as she withdrew further into her tattered cloak, steeling herself. "But...But Master, you have to understand! Berserker, I can't fight her, can't..." Ruby refused to say the word, refused to even acknowledge it as a possibility. "She's my...!"

"I know who she is. Its one of the few advantages that remain to us in this War." I waved her off, waggling a weary finger and feeling as though a weight was dragging me down by the hand. "That doesn't matter. The Grail takes priority in all things."

"How can you say that!?" Silvery eyes blazed and I was almost certain were we not in a crowded place then her weapon might have manifested. Thankfully it appeared the ancient Huntress had some measure more control than that, but even so... "You have an older sister too, don't you!?" A dagger knifed through my heart, poisoning my resolve. "If anyone could understand why I can't allow that woman, that...Witch, to get away with what she's done...to have to see your big sister like...that."

Her voice was wavering, tears carving trails down her cheeks despite her efforts to hide them beneath her hood.

Unbidden, unwanted, memories began to leech and drip their way through our shared connection.

Memories of a laughing golden haired beauty reaching out a hand to hall her younger sibling to the top of cliff they'd spent much of the night racing to creast, her smile like the sun as together they gazed out at the dawning horizon towards a world filled to the brim with danger and adventure in equal measure. Violet eyes brimming with warmth, confidence, love...and then it was Winter, holding me close and telling me what a good girl I was as Father raged, saying how talented I was, comforting me even though we both knew...

"S-Stop it." I pushed the hooded girl away with a sharp hiss, letting the last vestiges of that warmth fade away along with the emotional connection. "I said stop!"

"WEISS!"

My eyes bulged, rounding on the impudent little Familiar already preparing another Command Seal, sense and reason be damned if it meant some obedience and respect for once.

"I told you, you are to call me..." I froze in the face of the Servant's pointing finger, following her line of sight until my eyes fell upon a young woman sporting old fashioned clothes that seemed as if they'd come out of a museum of Atlas fashion, her hair almost a flamboyantly orange mess of rigid curls...Penny Polendina, the ward of Atlas' General.

The young woman currently smiling an impossibly large smile, eyes bright as she consorted with a pair of rather shady untoward individuals clumsily and quite obviously attempting to lead her down an alleyway. Their intentions clearly anything but noble.

"Found her."

By the gods and the Grail, I could hear her smug smile without even needing to look.


-Pyrrha Nikos (Lancer)-

I could still remember it so clearly, the day I died.

Beautiful, the sun's light breaking through the clouds, shining down on a Empire resplendent at the peaks of its glory. One that I'd helped build in my own small way, defending its people and its lands from the ravenous hordes of Grimm and the Bandits scratching and mewling hopelessly against our borders.

The former eliminated with a contempt born of reighteous fury, the latter with a hint more hesitation, many merely fools and those who'd lost all and cast their lot in with lawlessness, their souls given to cruelty and selfish desire. Serving the ends of corrupt officials, and those who would seek to destabilize the vision my patron had set out before Mistral and it's citizens. A future worth fighting for.

In the end their efforts had lead them to stand against me, and I'd swept them aside as I had any other. I was the Goddess of War, there could be no quarter, no doubt to the final conclusion.

"Regrettable, but nessescary."

That was what my Emperor...what Aureus had said to me when I'd confided in him my doubts, secreted away in the privacy of his decadent chambers. I couldn't dare express my views openly, the souls of the Empire looking to me for strength and purpose, and I could not be found wanting. Still, with him I wasn't merely the Goddess of War that all saw, but Pyrrha Nikos, the girl behind the legend.

Alone with him, I was no longer a bodyguard seeking guidance from her her Lord, but a woman searching for comfort with a man she loved and respected, who she'd believed had returned such feelings in kind as our lips met.

"To the Empire, and to you, my love..."

Such honeyed words he crooned as I lay in forced repose atop scattered sheets, the chalice he'd given me slipping from fingers that had spent a lifetime gripping the haft of a spear yet suddenly unwilling to respond to my will. How such words had grown fevered, my last recollections accusations of treason, of subterfuge, grand tales of a dozen imagined betrayals...all madness.

And in the end I hadn't been able to utter a single word. Not even a curse on the man who had betrayed me, and in the end had seen our great Empire, our shared vision, fall to the machinations of simple jealousy.

'Still, mankind has continued on, it seems.'

I breathed in a deep sigh, gazing about at the bustling students moving about the corridors. Most giving me a wide berth, though wheter because of the tears or some ingrained reaction to a being greater than themselves, I couldn't be sure. All of them, so carefree but for the imagined stresses of schoolwork and popularity.

None, I dared say, had ever been called to pick up a weapon in defense of their homeland and all they loved. Forced to choose between their safety and happiness and that of men and woman they would never meet. No, this was a simpler time, without the Grimm, without war...at least, any war they would be called to fight in.

Her death hadn't been the end of everything, but merely an end to a chapter in the ever expanding story that was Remnant. The fall of an Empire nothing more than the precursor to the birth of a Kingdom, the loss of one hero going on to inspire a hundred...a thousand others to similar feats of greatness. Most would never reach those heights, perhaps even none, for who could match the accomplisments people acribed to their own legends?

But they would try, souls like Jaune...and that was all that mattered in the end.

"Quite the revelation, isn't it?"

I was on my feet before the first syllable had even passed the newcomer's lips, stance instantly molded to the ancient forms of Mistrali pankration, eyes focused on the young dark haired woman currently seated beside me who simply hadn't been there moments before. Amber eyes flashing dispassionately as they picked out the more boistrous displays of school life at Beacon, the childish bow atop her head twitching every so often, her expression one of contemplation and...regret?

"We spent our lives fighting for causes that we believed with all our hearts to be righteous and true. Committed acts in the hope that through our efforts, our blood and sacrifice, the world might just change for the better. And then we fall short, we fail at the final hurdle."

I tensed, but lowered my arms as the girl...the Servant, got to her feet and brushed off her uniform skirt, smiling now in a manner that didn't quite reach those feline eyes of hers. Eyes I could see now held a clinical distance I had seen before, on the faces of those who had seen far too much, yet remained unbroken. Though hers at least showed something of regret, a weakness?

"But life goes on. Our exploits the reading material of a new world, fiction at that. Puts things in perspective."

"Servant Assassin, I presume."

The declaration didn't faze her, nor was it a question. As if it weren't obvious in the very fact she'd come so close, hiding her presence so completely that even I hadn't been aware of her, even with my senses honed by a life on the hectic fields of a hundred battles, further augmented by the magic of the Grail. An impossibility, to all but one.

The Silent Killer, the Servant of subterfuge and murder. A Heroic Spirit whose legend is steeped covertly in the shadows of greater events, their actions felt by the world at large yet unseen, without glory or note. This girl, barely of an age with myself, perhaps even younger, who should be smiling and enjoying the flower of her youth, bearing the countenace of one much older. In that at least, we were very much the same

"You are...not what I was expecting."

"Neither are you, Goddess of War."

So she knew who I was, then? No matter, she had chosen not to strike at me when she had unfair opportunity, even revealing herself despite the risks. Assassin was not a class well-suited for open conflict, by in large greater than any motral foe, yet as Lancer I would be remiss if I could not crush the young warrior where she stood in a handful of blows if that.

Thus, she must've had a reason.

"My Master, they wish to meet with you, to discuss events moving forward. Here, on neutral ground."

Now that did earn a reaction, a stunned look of wary disbelief coupled with a relief I did my best to put down quickly. A meeting, so perhaps Assassin and her Master were more reasonable, at least compared to that fould Red Witch Cinder. Though still, this was quite the risk, the laws of neutrality on Beacon's grounds only as ironclad as the honor of those that held to them. And for Assassin...

"Your own Master is already being informed as we speak, he will be sure to join u...ugh!?" I had her before she could even think to react, what abilities she might've held would serve her little at such close range.

The sound of her back slamming against the stone wall, my hand clasped about her thin neck, drew attention from some of the students. Some even moving to intervene at the sight of cracks spreading across the wall. Brave, though most only had to catch a glimpse at the furious cast to my features for their resolve to crumble to nothingness, those not immediately rendered unconscious under the weight of my Aura.

That certainly got the others moving to flee.

"Coward." I decreed, voice low and menacing, causing even this Heroic Spirit to squrim in my grasp under its sheer malice. "To use the excuse of neutral ground, even as you threathen my Master!" Assassins, crude, cowardly creatures the world could do better without! "Disgraceful."

"Would you have come any other way?" Perhaps, though certainly I would've been far more guided. Still, this was my fault for leaving Jaune alone, for falling to my own demons. Closing my eyes and muttering a steep self-recrimination, I dropped the killer to her knees, the Servant shaken yet unable to hide the thin smile building across her lips. "Now...ah, that was what I'd been expecting."

"Well, what are you waiting for?" I said, standing tall, adopting the mask I'd learned to wear in my time commanding armies. My voice pitched so that none could dare broke argument. "Take me to your Master, Servant. I would hear what they felt was worth threathening my charge, my liege, to convey."

And then...then things would proceed as they would.

For better of worse.


- END


-Servant of the 6th Holy Grail War-

Heroic Spirit (Saber) - Adam Taurus the Sword of Rebellion, High Leader of the White Fang

Alignment - Lawful Evil/Chaotic Neutral

:Statistics:

Strength - B

Endurance - B

Agility - B-

Noble Phantasm - A

Mana/Aura - B-

Luck - C+

:Personal Skills:

Leadership - B+

Mana Burst - B

Faunus Instinct - C+

Magic Resistance - A

Soul of Equality - Ex

Given to the Flame - B-

:Noble Phantasms:

Blood Soaked Blade: Wilt - (Anti-Unit: B)

Facade of Monsters - (Personal: C+)

Glory to the White Fang - (Anti-Army: Ex)


Heroic Spirit (Berserker) - Yang Xiao Long the Golden Dragon, Maiden of Summer

Alignment - Neutral Good

:Statistics:

Strength - A+

Endurance - Ex

Agility - B+

Noble Phantasm - B

Mana/Aura - A

Luck - B

:Personal Skills:

Mad Enhancement - A-

Mane of Burnished Gold - B

Vanity of the Maiden - B+

Adventurous Soul - B

Guardian Sister - C+

:Noble Phantasms:

Unyielding Fury: Battle Cry of the Wounded Maiden - (Personal: A)

Gauntlets of the Dragon: Ember Celica - (Anti-Unit B+) (Anti-Army A)


A/N: Man, I've had this in the queue for such a long time, working on it sporadically, but never really getting anywhere with it. Then I finally just sat down just so I could say I'd put it down to writing. Now one year later amost exactly, I realize completely by accident as I'm writing this note, man.

New season of Fate/Apocrypha must've gotten me a bit inspired. Or I missed writing something other than my usual AMBR. Haha! - Mojo