He stood back from the cliff looking at the site of the forever fall forest just below them, and the sun setting just behind the city of Vale as the lights of the city itself started to turn on for the night, but out of all that beautiful scenery there was one thing that clearly stood out.
"How long has it been?"
"Well that's a vague question."
"What?"
"I mean that's a vague question coming from a reporter."
The reporter shook his head as he looked down to his left at the older man, "Sorry it's just quite the picturesque view is all."
The old man laughed. "I've been doing this for almost fifty years now, it's rare when someone says that thing sitting there is picturesque. Personally though even with that thing sitting there this is a view I've never gotten tired of seeing."
"We still rolling?" The camera guy behind them nodded, "alright if you don't mind sir lets start over, I'll make sure to be less vague and not get distracted from here on out," he finished with a slight smirk.
The old man laughed again. "Alright fair enough."
"So you said you've been running this show for fifty years now, but would you mind telling us what exactly this show is?"
"You call it a show, but it's not really much of a show all things considered, it's really just a test or a simple fight between man vs creature if you ask me."
"But how do you get people to sign up and pay you to take this thing on? What's their incentive?"
"Well the first reason is that my younger brother over there is most certainly way to good at getting folks riled up," he smiled, "and interested in the idea of trying to fight that grimm. Other than that there's the offer of the money. We charge folks ten lien, five going to us for running and setting this area up the other five going into a pot, which goes to whoever finally manages to defeat it."
"You said grimm there and knowing what we know from all the old texts and books on the subject of grimm being merciless killers surely the death count here must be quite high?"
The old man nodded. "You'd think but in all this time only 5 people have died, and not one of them have been from that grimm killing them itself. They only died from the injuries they got from the fight."
"But that seems quite different from what those same texts have told us about grimm back then."
"Maybe after all this time and those books having to be renewed or what have you things were forgotten or changed up, maybe someone just lied, or maybe whoever wrote them just never ran into a grimm like this. What I can tell you is that grimm has never went out of it's way to kill anyone it's fought."
"That makes for a fairly hard story to believe considering everything we've learned and know about our past history."
"Then watch for yourself." The old man gestured to a roped off area that looked like a ring, as a man was stepping over the ropes to be the next challenger of the evening.
The grimm turned and watched as the man readied himself unleashing his own claws. The grimm stepped off of the rock it was setting on to face the man fully, it even looked like the grimm itself had taken up a ready position for the fight. At that everyone had stilled, all the noise from before dying down almost instantly. The faunus took a few small, slow, and cautious steps toward the grimm, but the grimm never moved choosing to keep that same position it had taken at the start of the fight. At that the faunus found his courage as he decided to charge the grimm, but he never managed to get within striking distance. The grimm had taken one of it's paws and nailed the man in the stomach sending him flying and tumbling through the air until he landed in a safety net a decent distance away from the ring. As soon as he had landed medical personnel rushed over to check and make sure he was alright.
The old man spoke up once again "Now you see? That grimm could've unleashed its own claws, bit him, or struck him in some way that would've easily killed him, it didn't though." The old man shivered a little from the cold breeze. "Let's head to my office though now you've got your shot of a fight, and get out of all this noise. Be easier to talk and think."
At that he headed off, the noise from before had started to pick up after everyone had seen that the previous contestant at least seemed to be okay, though he had still been taken to a medical tent nearby to be checked over more thoroughly it seemed.
The reporter turned to look at the camera man, "Did you get all of that?"
"Yep."
"That'll make for some great footage, we'll have to make sure to get some more b-roll of other fights later possibly, but that should be great for a cutaway. Well let's go finish this interview, this is one interesting fellow to talk to."
"Come on in, much warmer in here I'm sure." The old man had already taken a seat behind his desk and was taking a sip of something.
"Just give us a minute to setup and then we'll continue," the reporter turned to look at the cameraman behind him, "where do you think a good angle would be at?"
"A dead on shot of him would be fine, and work great for our purposes."
After a few minutes of set up and everyone had gotten comfortable in their new positions they continued on.
"So how did everything start? You don't really expect people to believe you just found a grimm just sitting there and built all of this around it do you?"
"Well yea, actually I do, because that's exactly what happened. It was me and my brother that found it first while trekking up through these mountains. When we found it he decided he wanted to be brave and so he walked right up to it. Once he got to where you saw those ropes at out there that thing turned and he froze." The old man started to laugh, "He went as pale as pale could be to. I'd thought he'd died standing right there, but he didn't. Cause once the grimm stepped off that rock and took up that pose you saw it do just out there a moment ago. My brother regained his composure a little and decided to walk closer. That's when it threw up one of it's paws at him, and he just barely dodged it. After that he backed away, and once he got past that certain point, that thing went back to just sitting on that rock. Guess it figured he'd given up on their fight as it were."
"That explains how you meant the grimm, but how did you get to the point of charging people to fight it?"
"Well after that we brought up friends and placed bets on how close they could get or if they'd be able to land a hit. Soon became friends of friends and so on, until it became what you see here now."
"Well that explains your story with the grimm well enough, but tell us about the grimm itself. The last reported grimm was said to have been killed some five thousand years ago. Do you think that thing has really been sitting here for that long?"
"No. Truth be told I don't know how long it's been sitting there for, but I do believe it's much older than that."
"Really?"
"You've seen those old books, that last recorded grimm was said to have been a couple thousand years old right. Compare the one out there to the one in those books, the differences are night and day. I can't tell you how old it actually is, but I'm certain it's much older than a couple thousand or even five thousand years old."
The reporter stopped briefly to jot down a note to remind himself to show a comparison shot. "It's said that the older a grimm gets the more dangerous it becomes. For something so old and dangerous to be this close to the capital one would think Vale would send in some form of military to deal with it and make certain it never becomes an actual threat."
The old man nodded in agreement again. "True enough, but looking at that thing I'd say they'd need to bring in quite the heavy fire power, might even have to call in Atlas for some support possibly. Why go through all that trouble for something that hasn't done anything to threaten anyone yet? On top of that what happens if they bring all that fire power in and they still don't kill the thing hmm?"
"Surely with the Atlas backing them they'd have no trouble dealing with one grimm? It's very doubtful it'd be able to stand up to what we have at our disposal today."
"Hmm maybe, but awful close to the city to be pulling out those big guns like that. But my personal opinion, we haven't had to deal with grimm for thousands of years now. I don't think anything we have is made to stand up to them anymore, especially one that looks like that."
"Says the man who continues to profit as long as that thing stays alive."
The old man burst into laughter, after about a minute he took another sip of his drink before he started again, "You don't pull any punches do you? But true I do make some money as long as that thing lives. At this point though we've made enough lien to live quite comfortably. If that thing died right now today we'd be fine. No there's only one reason why I still do this really."
"And that is?"
"Go out there and you'll see a few folks who don't fight but they show up here every day. They stay here and watch it all, do you know why?" The reporter shook his head at the question. "Because truthfully we want to see that thing get into a fight where it actually has to get serious. Look at that thing out there, how deadly it looks and what we know from those books it should have any number of ways to kill people, but it doesn't. I think it's looking for one last good fight, a fight like it may have had all those millennia ago. So for me and a few others you'll find here that's why we're still here. We want to see that fight, to be a part of that fanciful history being reborn."
The reporter leaned back in his chair, as he noticed the stations chief editor standing behind him. "Oh hey boss, just finishing up some final edits and notes for this story."
"Yea…"
He sighed, "We're not running with it are we."
"No, I'm sorry. That old guy tells a wonderful story, but it's just that a story. He's a conman playing on people's wants to have those old fiction books be real. We could've ran with this if you would've focused on that angle and exposed it as the fake it is."
"But I don't believe that's what it is though, and how would you have me even prove that's the case here?"
"Animatronics, robotics, and things of that nature. Why not take that angle?
"I did, nothing linking either of the brothers back to anything of the sort, plus the way that thing moved..."
"I saw it in the video and you know as well as I do there are companies out there that can easily do stuff that good and better still. Either way covering that story from any other angle would only result in us losing viewer and readership." She smiled, "you are one of the best in this business at what you do, and it still surprises me that you are so gullible when it comes to those old books. But there's a reason why we stopped looking at them as some form of history a long long time ago. Those books and whoever wrote them will go down in history as telling one of the greatest lies ever perhaps, but that's all it will ever be. So instead I want you to look over this." She laid down a file on his desk. "This is a major expose we'll be doing in three weeks with your touch added on to this it will be perfect I'm certain, and besides I know it's something you will absolutely enjoy.
He sighed as he ran his hand through his hair. "Yea, sure."
"Great! Get back to me by the end of this week and let me know what you think."
He gathered up all the papers on the story and placed them in an old drawer that creaked when he opened it, and then saved the video file on the computer, and smiled as he let out another sigh. "Maybe one day."
Authors Note:
Bit of a late one on my part sorry about that. I also forgot to do this for the last chapter here, so doing it now. The last chapter/one shot owes it's title to Sh1f7er who you can find here, u/9669601/ A wonderful writer who you should definitely check out if you never have. With that done on to this piece.
From WPW #83 prompt: A Grimm has wandered the world, seeking a worthy end after 10,000 years of life.
So another one of the early pieces I've written and it does show here. Not quite as well done as some of my later things I feel, but I do still like the idea behind it. (and I am totally unbiased as well)