So, long wait. Not as long as a chapter as you really deserve for the wait. A new one will be out soon. I hope you all had a decent holiday.
I woke up from my sleep after a few hours, just in time for the school-wide dinner in the cafeteria. Unlike our usual meals, it was quiet. Ruby did not start conversation like she normally did. JNPR was not even in the cafeteria. We ate the provided tasteless meal in silence until we were about to put our plates away.
"Maybe we should check on JNPR." Ruby said to nobody in particular. Ozpin never did explain why JNPR was at the infirmary, or who was hurt. It did peak my curiosity. When the other three members declared it a good idea, I actively agreed as well. After Ruby grabbed a few plates of food and tied them into a box stack we left for the medical wing.
The wing was like a small hospital in the fact that there was a desk and waiting area that was empty. The nurse behind the desk asked who we were here for. "Team JNPR is supposed to be in here, we're just trying to figure out what went wrong, who's hurt and all." Ruby said to the nurse. She gave us a room key and a number to follow as well as a few directions.
"Enter carefully if you can. Pyrrha's in a bit of a delicate state." She told us. Blake glared into the back of my head as we walked down the halls. Just a corner away from the room I stopped.
"You should probably go on ahead of me. They probably want to kill me if Pyrrha is still being affected this heavily by our fight. I'll wait and come in after you four are done." I told them. They seemed like they wanted to argue, but at the same time knew I was right. So they rounded the corner and I waited until the second they entered the room moved as close to the door as I could to listen in. No sense going in blind, and I wanted to know how this was still a problem.
"What are you four doing here?" Jaune asked with a bit of surprise, and a bit more anger.
"We uh, we brought some food for you. None of us saw you at dinner." Ruby said. The foam boxes squeaked as they were placed on the ground.
"What happened to her?" I heard Blake ask. There was a moment before answering in which it was quiet enough to hear the systems monitoring her vitals. There was a steady heartbeat that seemed a hair too slow, suggesting sedation
"According to the nurse, severe insomnia, atrophy from malnutrition, damage from combat, an aura that almost refuses to regenerate, and minor psychosis." Ren told them.
"It's from Darren, isn't it?" Ruby asked in an apologetic voice. There was another silence in which I could only assume one of them nodded in response.
"But how? She seemed fine for so long, and that was months ago." Weiss said. I heard a sigh. Jaune spoke next with a sadness in his voice that completely drowned his anger.
"I don't think she was ever fine, I just think she got better at hiding it from us." He said. Another brief period of silence. On one hand it made me happy that such closely knit friends were all suffering because of me, but on the other hand it disappointed me. I had gotten info about the Champion of Mistral, and I honestly expected more.
"Is there anything we can do?" Ruby asked. A huff of breath before Jaune spoke next.
"Where's Darren?" Jaune asked. I heard a well-hidden edge in his voice.
"He's outside in the hall, saying you probably wanted to talk to him alone." Yang explained.
"Well he was right. Thanks for the food, but it's time your four left. Send him in on your way out." Jaune ordered. The sound of a couple different excuses started to come out of Ruby's mouth before she resigned herself and started walking. Before they exited the room I heard Jaune tell them something.
"We are sorry we weren't there to help you with the Grimm." Jaune said. They didn't give a response and left to the door.
I jumped back around the corner as the door opened and they walked out. Once they reached me Ruby pushed the keycard into my hand.
"They want to talk to you. Try not to make anything worse, okay?" Ruby asked of me. I nodded silently and they left to go back to the dorms. I walked round the corner once again and knocked on the door, inserting the keycard at the same time. In my mind I was ready for a fist to come flying through the opening as soon as the lock clicked open, but that wasn't the case.
Nobody made a sound as I opened the door and got a good look at Pyrrha. The champion laid in a bed with pale skin with many cuts and bruises lining what skin I could see. Switching quickly back to aura sight made her nearly invisible to me except for her soul. Hooked to her was a bag of liquids with electrolytes and a heart monitor. A second bag was on her other wrist and dripped slowly. Sedatives.
"What happened to her?" I asked with mock concern. Jaune glared at me from his seat next to Pyrrha. From the other side of the room I got the same treatment from Nora and Ren. "You did." Jaune told me.
"I meant how." I explained to him.
"It was sudden." Ren told me. "When she didn't show up for breakfast after telling us she was going to train, we didn't think anything of it. When she didn't show up for classes we got worried. When she missed lunch and didn't return our calls, then we went to find her. Nobody had used the simulation room since the morning, and we found her in there.
"Passed out I'm guessing." I stated. Jaune chuckled coldly.
"Yeah, no. I would have loved for that to be the case, but instead she had locked herself into the room and broke the handle off on the inside, jamming the door with it. We tried for at least half an hour to get her out, but she kept screaming that we wanted to hurt her, just like you hurt her. She's afraid of the dark now, you know?" Jaune said, raising himself up before stopping and sitting back down.
"That was about the time we got the distress signal. We knew you probably needed help, but we made the call to stay. It wasn't an easy one, I hope your team knows that." Ren said. Jaune huffed and the room went silent for a time. They were all acting somewhat genteel to me at the time, but I could easily tell each of them were fighting back the impulse to lunge at me.
I'm usually up for making enemies more than you can understand, but this time it was starting to become a problem. You don't hate like this for a reason, and like it or not, I might have done permanent damage to Pyrrha. Things needed mending, and it was about time I fixed them before my own team started to distrust me. Blake was already halfway there.
"How do I fix this?" I asked, seeding some remorse and apology into my voice. Jaune looked up with a surprised face, apparently the last thing he expected to hear.
"Heal her. Make her better. Get her on her feet enough so that we can all settle this in the training room." Jaune spoke the first two calmly, but the third was dripping with venom. He slumped backwards into his chair. "To be honest, I'd gladly accept the first two." He said.
"I can give you three for three, if you'll let me." I said. Healing was not my strong suit by any means, but I knew enough of the inner workings of a soul to repair her like a machine.
"I'm not sure that's a good idea." Nora spoke quietly but angrily. You could feel the tension in her voice that said if I took a step towards Pyrrha I might not leave with all my limbs attached. Jaune held up his hand at her and looked me dead in the eyes. "Why should we let you? No. Why should we believe you have the ability to help her at all?" Jaune asked.
"Because you've already seen a lot of what I'm capable of. And, aside from killing her, there's not much more I can do to her, is there?" I argued. Jaune continued staring at me before he sighed and stood up, drawing his sword. I cocked my head in question with his two teammates and he gestured to Pyrrha. I calmly walked over to her pale body can placed my hands on her. One on her forehead and the other just below her neck. Right before I started to focus I felt the tip of Jaune's sword against my spinal cord.
"You kill her, you hurt her any more, hell if I even get the feeling something is going wrong, I will kill you in cold blood and feed your body to the Grimm." Jaune whispered to me. There was such an edge and malice to his voice that the human part of my body suppressed a shiver. I respected him a little after that. I truthfully believed that if she had even coughed the wrong way in her sleep that he would have severed my spine with that blade of his.
With the death threat hanging over me and the more slightly realistic threat of the Crocea Mors being able to cut through most things in my mind I focused my power and blended whatever functioned as a soul on my part with that of Pyrrha's. The edges of my vision darkened and all light in the room faded away until I saw Pyrrha's body with the slightest outline of aura. True to the medical statements she had almost none at all.
I pushed deeper and began to hear her heartbeat in my ears while her body faded from my view and I was left in a void. Except this isn't the sort of void where you feel alone. It felt like being in a room where someone was sleeping instead of an empty one. It put me on edge and stood the hair on the back of my neck upwards. Truthfully this was not because I was unnerved, but I was stressed. Meddling with a soul is precise and dangerous work, and even I knew the horror iin breaking one. Take it from me, that is a crime I would personally hunt someone down for if they managed it.
Eventually the heartbeat faded from my ears and other things began to become apparent. The sound of far off clashing metal and female yelping mixed with sobs was present. I also knew that for the first time I was unable to see in the darkness around me for more than a few inches. Wood paneling was under my feet was all that I could tell. If I strained myself I could see sparks and something resembling dull flashes in the direction of the noise.
With no other leads I started a brisk jog towards the noise. It was less far off than I thought as I was in the center of the noise within a dozen steps. I could not see anything still, but the source of heavy breathing fighting against sobs was near me to my right. The sparks also emanated from a select source. By straining myself once again I could tell the soft purple flashes appeared microseconds before the sparks. A flash happened and instead of a spark the barest hints of a red aura flared follow by slicing of flesh and another shriek that strengthened the sobs.
"Pyrrha?" I called out in the direction. A mistake. I now know the inner workings of a fractured mind are dangerous as I felt myself lurch forwards with a purple light embedded deep through my sternum. I tasted blood and fell to my knees. Why didn't my power block it? Why couldn't I feel or hear it coming? I could feel for the first time what it was like for life to be leaving you.
If this were a children's story I would say I never wanted to do that to another being in my existence. It was not a bad feeling though. For me it was not unlike easing into a bed much to cold for yourself and slowly warming while you drifted to sleep. Fortunately I did not accept the embrace and flared my energy around me. The intruding object burned away and I lit the area around me.
For all my effort I had maybe 15 feet of visibility. Inside it I saw Pyrrha next to me with her shield covering the majority of her body and various cuts over the rest of her extremities. She was crying, well and truly sobbing. She didn't seem to see me or notice the fact that there was visibility. Instead a purple flash happened and a metal impacted her shield. She flinched and attempted to crouch deeper into the floor for cover, and failed.
The metal I recognized. It was a more gnarled version of the blades I used on Pyrrha during the bout we had. This was the source of her mental scarring. As dramatic as it might seem, I was vaguely disappointed. Yes I had tried to terrify her, and yes I had managed to scare her into a momentarily catatonic state. But I had not done anything worthy of a full psychological breakdown.
I could have pulled her entrails out and healed her in the darkness, I could have shown her visions of her family and loved ones dying. I could have even revealed myself for the barest moments and filled her with such a fear that she would claw her own eyes out and stabbed her ears in to get away. But no, a simple defeat. A painfully one-sided battle with a little smoke and mirrors. I supposed that her mind was not as strong as a warrior's should be.
She was the champion after all, the prodigy. I don't doubt that true defeat was a stranger to her, let alone being so obviously toyed with in battle. But it still disgusted me. The fact that she had not clawed her way to the top, but had been standing there from the beginning on skill alone. The fact that she dared think she could save anyone in the world at all. The fact that she thought herself worthy of an honorable death.
So yes, I let my anger get away from me. My eyes turned a glowing purple and my skin almost translucent as I unconsciously shed away my first limitation. I was done with this situation. Despite the darkness feeling alien around me, I took hold and would not take 'no' for an answer. Like shattering glass the shadows fell onto the ground and disintegrated. Around the now well-lit classroom were empty chairs and floating blades.
Standing in front of me was another version of myself. A twisted visage of my current outfit merged with shredded robes and black smoke drifting off of his form. He held a version of my blade with feathered serrations sticking out an inch from the body, soaked in blood and bits of flesh. His eyes stood stark white against the shadow that hid his face, and frost creeped on the floor away from him. He was strong, I could feel it. Much stronger than Pyrrha, but still much weaker than me.
Two of the floating swords shot at me with a flick of his wrist. I was faster and held up my hand as my own power encompassed them. They stopped midair and shook violently before falling to pieces as well. Slowly I began walking towards my counterpart, more swords flinging themselves at me at increasingly high speeds. All of them were knocked out of the air by my power and shattered on the floor around me. If Pyrrha gave any indication that something had changed, she didn't show it.
The figure in front of me hissed as i was a few steps away and leapt towards me. His sword was poised at me and I caught the blade with my hand, the jagged serrations digging into my palm and drawing blood. As he tried to wrench the blade free I flexed my hand and cracked the front foot off the sword. It stepped backwards and I was on it before the thing had a chance to react.
"Die." I ordered, pushing enough power out of my hands to melt steel, while they were wrapped around his throat. Purple fire erupted from the figure and turned him to ash while his body struggled against me. The neck in my hands dissipated and I stood up. Pyrrha was no longer crouching with her shield raised and instead was in a meek combat stance pointed at me.
"Why?" She asked weakly. "Why go through all this if you were the one who hurt me in the first place?"
"Thank Ruby for that." I told her. Then I stared at her hard before speaking again. "Leave Beacon." I told her. She gave me a puzzled look and her sword arm faltered before dropping.
"Why would I leave Beacon?" She asked me. I gestured widely around me at the area we were in.
"You've literally become trapped in your own mind, on the brink of insanity, from a single defeat." I told her. "You might be able to fight well, and you might have lost a fight before, but you don't have the mental strength or stability to deal with a situation in which your opponent is beyond your ability in every way."
"I've been defeated before. I can-" Pyrrha tried to defend herself but I interrupted with a slightly raised voice.
"You weren't defeated. You were toyed with, made a mockery of. Hell, even tormented a bit. But you're the Mistrali Champion, yet untrained Jaune Arc held up better. I broke you with more ease than I should have been able to." I explained. She shook her head.
"That only means I should train more. I'm not broken. I'm not-" I interrupted again.
"Stop!" I yelled. "If I killed Jaune in front of you, what would happen?" I asked.
"I... I'd fight you, avenge him." She said, but she was unsure.
"You'd collapse. You're mind simply isn't built to take the stress your body is. You can kill Grimm. You can fight a human. Could you kill them? Could you leave someone to be eaten alive because you know it was for the greater good? Could you look them in the eyes as they begged for help, and then look the other way?" I asked her. She looked baffled by the brutality of my questions.
"I..." Pyrrha tried to form a thought, but we both knew anything she said to defend herself would be a lie.
"No." She finally said. "No, I couldn't."
"The world is cruel. Death is plentiful. Sometimes lives are traded, sometimes they are wasted. Many battles have been won simply by throwing enough bodies at the problem. If you can't make those kinds of calls, move out of the way for someone who can. Otherwise you'll just make it worse as you try to preserve the bedtime story you call life." I told her.
The warrior was silent for a time as she looked at the ground, the room, her weapons, and some things I couldn't see. A decision was made, obvious by a slight shift in her eyes. "I'm not leaving." She said.
"What makes you think you have the choice, no, the right to stay?" I asked, slightly angered and surprised by her defiance. She glowered at me from behind her sweat and blood streaked red heair.
"If I can't make the call, then I'll be a body to throw at the problem." She said. Her voice held shreds of conviction not born of pride, but understanding where she belonged in the world. I clapped ni movkery.
"How noble." I said, and pushed the dream apart with my power. The room blew apart into dust and the last thing left was our eyes glaring at each other.