The Form Of Her Soul
Chapter 1
"A Grimm Rebirth"
Beacon Academy, Vale, Sanus
Air Dock
In the ruins of the once-illustrious Beacon Academy, a giant Wyvern sits frozen in stone, stuck to the side of the former Beacon CCT Tower. A single crack forms on the tip of its tail, the hundreds of Grimm wandering around not noticing due to keeping a respectful distance from the strongest being among them. The crack grows, a small piece breaking off. From the crack, a black viscous substance begins to drip onto the ground a long way below. The crack grows wider, more of the black tar splattering to the ground, the surrounding Grimm still unaware. Another chunk of stone falls from the tail, the tar now coming out in a small fountain.
As the tar hits the ground, it begins to melt a small hole in the cobblestone of Beacon's courtyard. The tar keeps filling the hole as it grows, and soon the tar stop falling. The tar begins to bubble and hiss quietly, churning as it begins to form into something. One might expect red eyes to appear before spawning a Grimm as the tar did during the siege weeks ago, only this time it keeps churning and the level of the tar begins to drop lower and lower. Suddenly, two glowing emerald lights open like eyes in the pit, a small dragon-like Grimm crawling out clumsily. A brief crimson sheen of energy surrounds its form before vanishing into its skin.
This Grimm is roughly two meters long from snout to tail, having thin bone plating covering most of its body and fur coating the uncovered skin on its body and limbs. The dragon, or more correctly a newborn Wyvern, blinks a few times, brilliant emerald lights showing boundless curiosity and a bit of fear as it recognizes the location of its birth. The sound of whirring turbines sounds from far down the courtyard, dozens of Grimm snarling and charing off in its direction, the newborn Wyvern flinching and dashing through the nearby open doors of the CCT Tower.
From inside the flying machine, a Bullhead, a blonde haired woman wielding a riding crop notices the small Wyvern with the odd eye color running away in what appears to be fear, but diverts her attention back to the Grimm down below, stowing away the strange sighting for later.
Beacon Academy, Vale, Sanus
Academy Hallways
"I have to hide! I don't know what happened to me but I can't let Professor Goodwitch see me like this!" the newborn Wyvern thinks to itself.
The small Wyvern ducks and weaves its way through the hallways, finding itself oddly at ease with controlling its body. Seeing a large Beowolf down the hallway, the Wyvern jumps on instinct, its small wings spreading as it flies overhead, avoiding detection by the other Grimm. The Wyvern touches down in an adjacent hallway, clear of Grimm, and ducks into an open lecture hall, gently closing the door behind itself.
"Okay. Okay, I'm safe now. Think, Pyrrha Nikos, what happened?" the Wyvern, Pyrrha Nikos, encourages herself.
Pyrrha curls up behind the desk at the front of the lecture hall, briefly glancing up at the Beowolf head mounted on the wall and depictions of mighty Grimm on the blackboard. She chuckles briefly at the thought of how she came across Professor Port's classroom to hide from the Grimm he so proudly told stories of fighting against.
"So, apparently I'm dead. Cinder turned me to ashes with the power of Fall, everyone thinks I'm dead although that is technically true, I somehow turned into a Grimm, its been at least a week since the attack since nobody is here, and I have no clue what is going on." Pyrrha mentally reiterates.
She lies there, her new draconic form curled under the desk unmoving as she processes the thoughts she just layed out before herself.
"Holy shit I'm dead! What happened to Jaune?! Is everyone okay?! What about Nora and Ren?! Team RWBY?! Did anyone else die?! Ozpin's dead! Cinder probably got away, fuck! Okay, calm down! Calm down, Pyrrha you're going to draw Grimm! Breathe, if I even have to anymore. Just relax..." she cried mentally.
Pyrrha stayed, shivering from her emotional breakdown all the way until the sun started to dip below the horizon. Suddenly, a thud hits the closed door as a small Beowolf rolls into the classroom. Pyrrha jumps in fear at having been found and jumps to the other side of the room. The young Beowolf and the green eyed Wyvern stare each other down, glaring fiercely into each others' eyes, one with hate and the other with determination.
"This isn't good, I've been found and I doubt I'm gonna be let go. I have to fight, its sink or swim now." she resolves herself.
The Beowolf's growling reaches a fever pitch before it lunges at Pyrrha, swiping down in the hopes of crushing her head. Pyrrha ducks to one side, aiming to get behind the Beowolf. She spin around quickly as she comes to a stop behind the Grimm, leaping at its neck and biting down with fury, the Beowolf growling in anger and attempting to swipe off the Wyvern. One of its swings lands and Pyrrha is sent tumbling off the Beowolf a gash on her back repairing itself.
"Interesting that it didn't hurt, but I know how damaged I am. Do all Grimm know this? And I can feel by strength being drained a tiny bit to fix that." she muses as she stumbles to an upright position.
As she thinks this, the Beowolf growls once more in anger before collapsing, fading away into mist. Pyrrha stares intently at the mist before crawling towards it, taking a deep breath in and absorbing the mist into her body, feeling her strength returning and growing a bit beyond what it started as.
"Huh, so I get stronger by absorbing other Grimm from the looks of things. This could be very useful." she concludes, not noticing her changing body.
She blinks, looking around the classroom and noticing her new vantage point. She holds up a wing and notices a distinct lack of wing surface, but rather a furry black arm tipped with claws. She quickly raises her other arm to find the same before looking in the window to see her emerald eyes on a Beowolf like the one she just absorbed.
"Huh. So I turned into a Beowolf? Can I change back?" she muses.
Pyrrha closes her eyes and focuses inwards, on her body itself, flexing her willpower to turn back into a Wyvern. She feels herself shrink, her arms flatten and her claws retract. She feels her body lean down and shorten, a tail sprouting again and waving back and forth. She feels her head shrink and a snout grow outwards, powerful teeth filling out a vice-like jaw.
"Okay, so I can change my body to any Grimm I've absorbed. That's very helpful to know. Can I combine them?" she thinks.
Focusing on her arm, she wills it to become that of a Beowolf, watching this time as it grows a bit and fills out, claws tipping the fingers of the arm.
"So I can add limbs like my tail or turn existing limbs into other limbs. That could be interesting, like a flying Beowolf." she muses, before shivering at that mental image. "Whole lot of nope there." she thinks.
Pyrrha then wanders out from the ruined classroom's doorway, prowling the hallways for more Grimm she could ambush. She notes that her jaw was especially helpful in killing that Beowolf when she snapped it closed around its neck, briefly shivering at the thought of how it might feel but ultimately pushing the thought from her mind.
In her aimless wandering of the halls over a couple days, she manages to ambush a half dozen more Beowolves and kills and absorbs each of them, one at a time. She learns she can flare her emotions and intent at her target to quietly draw them away from a group, effectively weaponizing her earlier emotional breakdown. She concludes that this must be something like killing intent, the feeling someone can give off to induce fear in a target, something that Grimm have been known to do to their targets to root them in place.
Beacon Academy, Vale, Sanus
Academy Grounds
Wandering outside, she finds a lone Ursa Minor between two buildings and attempts to sneak attack it the same way. Upon clamping down around its neck, the thicker hide and armor plating is enough to keep her from finishing the job, the Ursa rolling to one side to slam Pyrrha into the wall. She groans before yelping and lunging away to avoid a large paw crashing down on her earlier location. She feels a small amount of her strength drawn away to repair her somewhat crushed torso.
"Okay, that strategy worked on the Beowolves, but Ursa have more armor. Come on Pyrrha, don't forget what little you managed to learn from Professor Port's lessons." Pyrrha chastised herself.
The two Grimm stared each other down in a standoff, emerald burning into crimson, before Pyrrha lunged forward. The Ursa made to swipe her to the side, but she ducked under the blow and came up underneath to bite into the Ursa's neck again, once again failing to pierce deep enough. The Ursa stood upright and made to slam down onto the ground, but Pyrrha let go as they rose, leaping backwards to gain some distance as the Ursa slammed back down, rumbling the whole area.
"Okay, its that its hide is too tough for this form. I have to become a Beowolf then." she confirmed.
Her body quickly began to grow, claws forming from newly formed hands, a powerful torso growing upwards as she stood on two legs, combining her strength into the form of a well developed Beowolf, though not an Alpha yet. The Ursa was not idle however, and made to charge at the odd Grimm in front of it. Pyrrha barely got her armored forearms in front of her in time to absorb the hit, sliding back and throwing cobblestones into the air as her feet dug grooves into the ground.
Pushing back with all her might, the Ursa reared back in anger to attempt to crush the Beowolf below itself. Pyrrha took this chance to wind up a slash before twisting with all her power behind her arm, slashing straight through the Ursa's neck and causing it to fall backwards. The Ursa let out a gurgling roar before falling limp and fading away. Pyrrha breathed in the ashes in one long pull, feeling a good amount of strength return to her and then some. She focused on her body and turned back into a Wyvern, though finding herself a bit larger and more armored than she started.
"So the armor plating I can make better as I kill stronger Grimm, good to know." she thought.
Pyrrha took off silently, prowling around the Academy to find more Ursa to fight. She managed to take down a couple more over the next day as a Beowolf before taking a surprise hit in the back from a Boarbatusk. She swung around, already repairing the damage to her back, and tried to swipe the porcine Grimm with her claws. She missed and lunged backwards, dodging a second Boarbatusk coming in from the side.
"Okay, remember how Weiss did it on day one. Either stagger it mid-roll or ramp it into the air." she determined.
Dodging the first Boarbatusk on its return path, she restructured her body and legs into that of an Ursa for the extra mass and stopping power. She armored her arms more and sprouted a Wyvern tail from her backside in preparation for the battle. The second Boarbatusk returned and tried to slam into her side, but Pyrrha turned towards it, dug in her feet, stabbed her tail into the ground and crossed her armored arms in front of herself. The Boarbatusk slammed into her and she slid back a couple inches, but the Boarbatusk unravelled, stunned on its back. She quickly stabbed downwards with one of her arms, her claws digging deep but her sheer strength more crushing the porcine Grimm's insides.
She took a breath in, absorbing the dead Grimm and using that new data to lengthen her claws like the tusks of a Boarbatusk. Swivelling away from the first Boarbatusk, she leaned down and armored up her tail, bending backwards to nearly form a quarter-pipe with her body. The Boarbatusk rolled into her, cracking her tail but otherwise rolling up and into the air, the small Grimm panicking and unravelling as gravity dragged it to the ground. Pyrrha stabbed upwards, her longer claws digging all the way through the Grimm's guts and killing it in one blow, soon dissolving into ash and being absorbed by Pyrrha to add to her strength.
"Wow. I can see why Yang loves brawling so much, and a Semblance like hers allowing for a one hit finisher is really cathartic." she thought in satisfaction.
Pyrrha huffed to herself repeatedly, the action supposed to be a giggle at the feeling of having won a brawl, despite her outmatching her opponents anyways. She shrunk herself into a baby Wyvern again, though she had four fur-covered feet this time instead of two, her wings folded over her back. With barely a sound, she padded off to another area of the Academy in the aims of finding other Grimm to take down.
Beacon Academy, Vale, Sanus
Air Dock
Glynda Goodwitch thought she should be surprised upon witnessing a Beowolf killing an Ursa even from afar, but ever since Beacon fell to the combined assault of the White Fang and the Grimm at the end of the Vytal Festival not much seems to be capable of surprising her anymore. She thought she should be surprised to see the strange Beowolf with emerald eyes, bringing that small Wyvern to mind, change its body into a smaller form. She thought seeing a Grimm with eyes a color other than a murderous and hateful crimson would surprise her, but alas life has a way of proving her wrong.
She decided to simply write notes on this rather than telling anyone, because these sightings may turn out to be nothing more than stress-induced hallucinations and the subject material could be humerous to read in the future if it all turns out to be hogwash.
"Brothers above, I should probably rest. Helping to rebuild Vale is really taking its toll, or so it seems." Glynda thought to herself.
Beacon Academy, Vale, Sanus
Academy Grounds
Having found some Creeps after a few days hunting Beowolves and Ursai, Pyrrha decided to try to take the pack of five down as quickly as possible. Searching through her abilities, she came up with a form that would suit the job based on how she killed Creeps as a human. Forming a long bone spike through her right wrist, she lengthens and sharpens it almost like a rapier blade. On her left forearm she creates a bone dish, bent inwards like a shield. She directs her killing intent at the Creeps, the Alpha of the small group turning towards her and growling out their battle cry.
Pyrrha crouches down, readying her smaller and more nimble version of an Alpha Beowolf to lunge into a stab. She guards against the first Creep with her shield, bashing it off to her left as she piledrives the second Creep with her spike. The third Creep launches itself at her and snaps its jaws around the shield, twisting her to the left to help the fourth Creep. She raises her powerful right leg for a kick and drives it up into the Creep, causing it to tumble backwards as she twists to piledrive the third Creep with her spike, making it fall from her shield as it disintegrates.
She absorbs the ash from both dead Creeps as she blocks the first Creep with her shield, twisting to her right and kicking the first Creep away with her left leg as she charges up for a hit on the fourth Creep as it approaches. She lunges forward, spearing through the fourth Creep and twists left just in time to have the first Creep bite her shield as she absorbs the ash from the fourth Creep. She piledrives the spike into the first Creep and absorbs it ash as well.
She turns to glare at the Alpha Creep as they both walk in a circle around each other. The Alpha takes the initiative as Pyrrha brings up her shield to defend. Being unused to this body she raises it too high and the Alpha notices, darting to her right side to bite her arm. Pyrrha growls in frustration and slams her shield into its side, tearing the spike and her forearm off. Pyrrha darts after the Alpha and sharpens her shield's edge, slamming it into the side of the Alpha.
The Alpha's hide proves tough, but not impenetrable as the shield slices a gash in the side of its neck. The Alpha growls and leaps recklessly at Pyrrha, who swings her shield back around and blocks the strike, lancing forward with the spike which stabs right into the Alpha's left eye, killing it. Pyrrha inhales the ashes and absorbs the more significant power from the Alpha, before staring in shock at her right arm. Her eyes dart towards the disintegrating arm a short distance away and walks in shock towards it, absorbing the ash from it as well.
"Ah. So if I lose something I can regenerate it. That's good to know." Pyrrha thinks.
Beacon Academy, Vale, Sanus
Courtyard
Suddenly, she hears a caw from above, turning around to look up before rolling to the side, dodging a swooping Nevermore that tried to snap her up. Thinking fast, Pyrrha shifts her body into that of a small but well armored Wyvern with additional long clawed Beowolf arms, running for a short distance after the Nevermore before taking to the skies.
A bit clumsy at first, Pyrrha slowly gets the hang of flying by listening to her instincts. The Nevermore she was chasing managed to come around for another pass, calling another Nevermore into battle against her. The first Nevermore dove quickly towards her, only her instincts and powerful senses saving her as she performs a barrel roll out of the way. The second Nevermore rushes up behind her so she instead pull upwards rapidly, flapping backwards to slow down before diving down atop the second Nevermore as it passes beneath her.
She stabs her claws into its back, causing the Nevermore to shriek in pain as she climbs to its neck. The Nevermore rolls upside down in the hopes of throwing her off, but she angles her wings to keep herself glued to the Nevermore as she climbs. She reaches its neck and clamps her jaws down around it, causing it to shriek again and start spinning to throw her off. Pyrrha then stabs her arms into the Nevermore's neck on the other side from her jaw, stabbing over and over in the hopes of cutting the head off. The Nevermore's shrieks weaken before it falls limp, Pyrrha absorbing its ashes as it tumbles to the ground.
She sticks the hard landing with the help of her wings and her arms, finally inhaling the rest of the Nevermore as she searches for the first Nevermore in the sky. She hears a screech, before spotting two Griffons flanking the first Nevermore, all three en route to her location. The Nevermore swings its wings forward, dozens of feathers being hurled downwards and slamming into the courtyard and throwing cobblestones into the air. Pyrrha dodges by leaping to the skies to engage the Griffons, growing out her Wyvern wings into her new Nevermore wings and adding some feathers to her tail for better control.
She lengthens her Beowolf arms and grows her body in size, trading some of her agility for power. The first Griffon screeches before it dives at her from above, ready to snap its jaws around her. Pyrrha dodges, but not before allowing her claws to slice across the side of the Grimm, taking advantage of her longer reach. She charges the second Griffon, aiming to stab it through the eye but it dodges her stab, tackling her and causing the two to dive in a mess of limbs. Pyrrha uses her longer arms to push away from it once she becomes the one on top, slashing her wings forward on instinct to let her feathers fly.
Her feathers pierce the second Griffon, killing it instantly. The first Griffon screeches and she dodges its bite, swinging herself around using both wings and her tail to straddle its upper back, digging her claws into its neck and killing it quickly. She lands quickly to absorb the ashes from both Griffons, getting stronger once more. She notes that she reabsorbed her feathers, but this lull was enough for the Nevermore up above to release its second salvo of feathers, one piercing her side and sticking there. She drew the feather out with her long arms, but decided to hurl the feather at the offending Nevermore as it flew down to snap her up, quickly doding to the side immediately after.
The feather lodged itself into the Nevermore's throat, making it gurgle in pain and crash into the ground. Pyrrha took this chance to sharpen her claws and sliced as hard as she could manage downwards, beheading the Nevermore and cracking the ground underneath. She then inhaled the ashes from the Nevermore to recover her strength and then some, allowing the hole in her body to repair itself.
"Huh? What's that black stuff?" she asked herself.
The black stuff was a tar like substance that appeared to have leaked from the wound in her side. Pyrrha thought about where a Wyvern might have organs, but came up empty, deciding to meditate on that thought. Turning towards the center of the courtyard, she noticed Professor Goodwitch with her Scroll out, in shock at what she saw. Deciding that running while she still could was her best bet, she shrunk down to her more unassuming and stealthy baby Wyvern form, deciding to hide away in what was left of the student dorms.
Beacon Academy, Vale, Sanus
Air Dock
Life couldn't be more confusing for Glynda Goodwitch, finding herself returning to Beacon Academy to attempt to spot the strange emerald eyed Grimm-killing Grimm. The sight of the Grimm was baffling enough she decided it would be worth it to capture some digital proof of it, her Scroll at the ready in video mode to capture footage of it.
As she approached the courtyard, she heard the caw of a Nevermore and instinctively began recording, only to record one diving towards a very strange Beowolf with a large bone pike in its right arm and a large bone buckler shield on its left forearm. The Beowolf rolled to the side before it changed shape into a Wyvern with Beowolf arms below its wings, taking off after the Nevermore but stumbling through its flight.
The first Nevermore called another into battle and Glynda witnessed the young Wyvern roll out of the way of the first Nevermore, only to fly up and dive down atop the second. She watched as the Nevermore tried in vain to toss off the smaller emerald eyed Grimm, seeing it work its way forward before clamping onto its neck and hacking through it.
She witnessed it spot the other Nevermore flanked by two Griffons and dodge the feather barrage, growing larger and shifting its wings into those of a Nevermore before taking flight itself. She watches it slice into one Griffon before being tackled by the other, rolling over to pincushion it with feathers before straddling the first Griffon to nearly behead it.
The small Wyvern then was struck in the side by a feather from the Nevermore, but Glynda gasped at seeing the Wyvern hurl the feather that stabbed it into the diving Nevermore's throat and in one swift, all-too-human move, behead it with its claws. It saw her, then shrunk and scampered off, evading her sight and Scroll camera and vanishing into the nighttime hours.
"Wha-how-who-what just happened?" Glynda stuttered in shock.
Lazily pressing the stop recording button, Glynda opened the footage in a daze on her Scroll, rewatching the battle with wide eyes. Upon the realization that she wasn't hallucinating from sleep deprivation, her jaw dropped open. She just as quickly regained her composure and shook herself into focus.
"Okay. A Grimm that kills Grimm. It saw me and did nothing despite me being indisposed due to shock. A friendly Grimm with human intellect that doesn't obey Salem. This changes many things." Glynda recollected.
Deciding to write this down, she heads back to the Bullhead on the landing pad, finally having an answer to why the Grimm population was rather scarce around the dock area.
Beacon Academy, Vale, Sanus
Team JNPR Dorm
Pyrrha found herself curled up on Jaune's bed in their old dorm room, just as everything was before the Fall of Beacon. From what she noticed by the sunlight, its been roughly two weeks since she woke up as a Grimm. All that time she hasn't slept once, and she is feeling the burden in her soul.
"Before I sleep I should meditate on my body though. I should know how this form works." she affirmed to herself.
She closed her eyes and began to feel with her Aura where everything goes inside her. In her mind, a mental image began to form, showing the channels and the organs within her current body.
A large organ was very dark and dense with the black tar substance. Remembering old stories of deities from home, she decided calling the substance Grimm Ichor would be appropriate given that it flows through her body at its core.
Two smaller organs could be seen with channels running to her skin. She decided the pink tinted tar within them would be called Skin Ichor due to its connection to the skin. Another organ could be found twisting about below a large cavity in her belly, this organ having red tinted tar within it and connecting throughout her body, so she thought calling this tar Core Ichor would be good. Between the Core Ichor and the cavity, belatedly realizing it was her stomach, there was one more organ filled with orange tinted tar and connecting to her bones, so the term Bone Ichor was fitting.
Her lungs have channels connecting to an organ where her heart would go, thankfully the organ beating like a heart normally would. The organ seems to pump Ichor from her organs that store it to the areas where it is needed, but also seeming to convert the ashes that enter her lungs into Grimm Ichor. A very small organ connects to what really seems to be her liver, what stores the Grimm Ichor, with three channels going to the three other organs, her kidneys with the Skin Ichor, intestines with the Core Ichor and her pancreas with the Bone Ichor.
"Huh. That's actually quite cool how that works. No wonder Grimm bleed if you cut them in the right spots." Pyrrha muses.
She then realized that any Ichor that leaks out from wounds, her feathers or a lost limb can simply be reabsorbed as it decays into ashes, exactly like she did with her feathers and when she lost her arm to the Alpha Creep.
Pyrrha then shifted around, sprawling across the bed instead to let her weary mind and soul rest.
Beacon Academy, Vale, Sanus
Multiple Locations
The moon was shining up above, another day gone by, and a lone Apathy Grimm thought it a good idea to infiltrate and multiply. It quickly found itself sliced in twain by an emerald eyed Beowolf with sharpened claws. This trend continued for a while. Some Grimm would try to invade the school building, but would quickly think no longer as they get cut down by an emerald eyed Grimm made up of several species of their kind.
A Beringel found itself facing off against a large Beowolf-Ursa-Nevermore-Boarbatusk thing, the fight being rather quick as it gets speared by four arms before a tail spears through its neck from behind. The Beringel's last thought, if it could think about anything other than its blind rage against humanity, would've been "How is that beast so fast?"
In the forest below the Academy, a Deathstalker finds itself engaged against a very powerful foe, an emerald eyed Beringel with long claws on its forearms and bone plating covering its entire body like a knight from fairy tales of old. Within a minute, it found itself crippled and unable to move, its stinger getting caught and then cut off as it tried to spear this abomination. The Beringel then stabbed the stinger into its back and hammered down with its free hand, seeming to smile nostalgically as the Deathstalker died just as one of its bretheren did nearly a year ago.
A young Goliath, having wandered from the pack due to the enticing emotions at Beacon Academy, found its life cut short in an intense battle against an emerald eyed armored Beringel wielding a Deathstalker's tail with long sharpened claws on its arms. After suffering many cuts and slices all across its body, the young Goliath could stand no longer. The Beringel then lunged upwards as it fell, its claws slicing a hole into the bottom of its neck, pulling them out before its stinger pierced into the hole. The young Goliath began to decay shortly afterwards.
A King Taijitu found one of its heads punctured quickly by a falling Beringel, the ground cracking apart underneath its weight. The other head quickly darted towards the offender before it found its jaw pierced shut from below by another claw. The Beringel shook off the second head and climbed off the first, watching it decay into ashes.
A humanoid shaped Grimm with emerald eyes sits down and crosses its legs atop Beacon Tower. It shuts its eyes and focuses inside itself, a crimson Aura crackling to life around its body. Days pass as it meditates, seemingly getting used to the energy.
After several months of defending Beacon and hunting larger Grimm in the Emerald Forest, honing her skills along the way as well as getting used to her Aura with her new body, Pyrrha recalled Team RWBY talking about their mission to Mountain Glen before the Vale Breach occured.
"I should probably head over there if I want to get stronger." she thought.
Forming large Wyvern wings, Pyrrha took off from Beacon Cliff and rounded back towards the failed Vale District of Mountain Glen to the south. Looking to her right, she noticed the city of Vale getting a bit more in order, the walls mostly repaired and Beacon itself having less in the way of Grimm crawling all around it.
"Huh. The Wyvern is almost gone now." Pyrrha noted, looking back across the Academy.
After briefly watching a few parts of the old Wyvern crumbling, she continued south. The journey took a couple days as she wanted to rest her mind between random Grimm attacks along the way.
Mountain Glen, Vale, Sanus
Underground City
Upon approaching Mountain Glen, she noticed the destroyed mountaintop where the Wyvern originally bursted out from. Flying down into holes to the underground that opened up thanks to the Wyvern, she searches for new types of Grimm to fight.
She notices a ball shaped Grimm and gets a sinking feeling, quickly ducking behind a rocky outcropping. She notices a stalactite hanging above the ball shaped Grimm and decides to fire a single feather at the rock rather than attacking head-on. Forming a single Nevermore wing, she throws it forward and cracks the rock formation before hiding again and making herself as small as possible, becoming no longer than two feet in length as a tiny Beowolf pup. The cracks spread slowly and silently, the feather decaying soon afterwards and the ash wafting away out of her range. The cracks get louder and suddenly the rock drops atop the ball shaped Grimm, puncturing its glass-like head and releasing a black fog around it.
"WHO DESTROYED MY SEER?" a loud female voice called out.
Pyrrha shivered in numb shock at the voice and the sudden oppressive aura in the air, refusing to feel any emotion by instinct alone and pulling her Aura inwards as much as she could manage in a desperate attempt to hide herself.
"HM? NOTHING? AH, MOUNTAIN GLEN. A STALACTITE, I SEE. UNFORTUNATE, BUT I HAD NO USE FOR THE PLACE ANYWAYS." the loud voice continued.
The oppressive aura faded into nothing and the black fog vanished, the so-called Seer beginning to decay into ashes. Now free to move, Pyrrha dashed down there and absorbed as much of the ashes as she could. Upon integrating the new data, she found she could create an orb that allows for sight in a sphere around it as well as the ability to use wiry bladed tentacles. Shivering to herself as she recalled both animated Scroll-vision programs from Mistral as well as the oppressive aura from a minute ago, she decided against using these new abilties.
Crawling around the settlement, and being unsettled herself from before, Pyrrha headed east according to the senses she gained from the Nevermore to find a tunnel to the outside, having lost sight of the holes that led her down here to begin with. Finding webs in one tunnel, she tries to sneak her way around them in her tiny form, but touches one by accident. A scuttling sound is heard from up the tunnel and Pyrrha freezes, recognizing the sound as that of a spider.
A Spider Grimm, called an Arachne, scuttles through the tunnel before Pyrrha yelps in fear and jabs a rapidly extending spear of bone in its direction. Anticlimactically, it stabs right through the Arachne and kills it instantly, though the bone spear also slammed into the wall of the cavern. Pyrrha gently pulled her shellshocked self along towards the remains of the Arachne and absorbed its ashes, retracting her spear afterwards.
"Glad nobody saw that." she sighed.
Pyrrha mentally acknowledges its misty illusion abilities as well as its web weaving ability as she calms herself down. After a little while of navigating the tunnels, having given herself Arache eyes for better low light vision, she breached the surface with the sun well below the horizon. Sniffing the surroundings, she could sense the lingering, old fear like a cloak covering the entire area. Taking a few more whiffs to tune her new senses to the emotion, she sighed.
"So that's what thirty year old emotions smell like. Kinda depressing." Pyrrha mused.
Turning back into a small Wyvern, she took off towards east by south-east to find whatever Grimm might be on Menagerie.
Open Oceans, South of Anima
After a week of slow and calming flight, Pyrrha comes across a lone Sea Feilong swimming near the surface. She focuses her killing intent at it, causing it to snap its gaze up at her and deploy its wings, lancing up into the air at an alarming rate. She flies upwards and the Sea Feilong soon reaches its maximum altitude, instead resorting to charging up lightning in its mouth.
Her instincts tell her to dodge so she dodges, but being unused to dodging lightning in the sky she gets struck and finds her body burned badly. She heals quickly as she loses quite a bit of altitude, barely dodging a bite from the Feilong as she activates her Aura shielding to protect her from the lightning should it strike again. She switches her wings to Nevermore wings for the extra lift.
Pyrrha and the Feilong play a game of cat and mouse as she tries to fly fast enough to get behind it for several minutes. On one turn, when the Feilong begins to charge its lightning breath, Pyrrha creates a small Seer Orb on the top of her head to watch the Feilong and makes note of the thin membranes creating its wing surfaces. She pulls upwards and twists herself downwards, swinging her wings forward to slice apart its wings. Most of the feathers are dodges, but a couple manage to catch near the wing joins and begin to tear holes in the wings with each flap.
The Feilong fires its lighting at Pyrrha, but this time she manages to dodge it thanks to her wings and she flies closer to the slowly falling Sea Feilong. Now within a couple dozen meters, Pyrrha throws another volley of feathers at the Sea Feilong, tearing its wings up more now that more feathers hit their targets. The Feilong roars in protest as gravity drags it further towards the ocean, Pyrrha streaking above in the aim of hitting it from behind.
As the Feilong lost sight of her due to its panic, Pyrrha swoops back around before forming a long tusk-like spike from her forehead in place of the Seer Orb and switching to Griffon wings, the fastest in her arsenal of abilties. She dives towards the back of its head as the Feilong looks below itself to search for its attacker, unaware of Pyrrha descending rapidly towards its weak spot like a spear from the heavens.
Pyrrha makes contact with the back of the Sea Feilong's head, the tusk driving deep into the back of its head and killing it instantly. As it falls, Pyrrha quickly absorbs its ashes and converts her wings to that of the Sea Feilong, finding herself able to relax completely on the rest of her flight eastwards to Menagerie due to the way the wings work.
"So I can shoot lightning now? Sweet." Pyrrha cheers.
Desert Wastes, Menagerie
Upon arriving above the wasteland deserts of Menagerie, as well as studiously ignoring the possible sighting of moving seabed that looked suspiciously like a giant snake, Pyrrha found herself both sorely dissappointed and very thankful for the lack of Grimm variety on the majority-Faunus populated island. All she found in the way of Grimm over the few weeks were Deathstalkers and Creeps inhabiting the sands alongside giant non-Grimm animals near the center of the desert, such as Chitanoboa which are giant snakes that Pyrrha read about in her time at Sanctum.
In those weeks she fought a few Deathstalkers and Creeps to determine any differences in biology. She was unsurprised to note that their experiences and instincts were different but otherwise their biology was the same as their Sanusian cousins. She also noted that the Sea Feilong's wings don't function the same over anything but salt water due to their lightning aspect. Instead of hanging around, Pyrrha headed northwest to Anima instead in the hopes of hunting stronger Grimm.
Southern Badlands, Anima
After a few days of lazily drifting over the ocean, Pyrrha had to change her wings over to Wyvern wings as she approached land. She formed a Seer Orb within her chest and warped its shape to serve the purpose of a low magnification telescope lens instead, allowing her to increase her altitude to avoid being targetted by any tribes or villages below.
Spotting a giant equine Grimm called a Nightmare, Pyrrha swooped down to take it on in battle. Practicing her aerial combat abilities, she divebombs it from on high to launch Nevermore feathers at it, moving the Seer Orb out and returning its shape to normal to give her a better view from below. The feathers impact the Nightmare's hide just as she pulls up, piercing it but not killing it. It belts out a disorienting neigh in its anger, causing Pyrrha to lose some altitude before it rears up and tries to bite her. She dodges, but the teeth catch her tail and slam her into the ground.
She forms the mist sac of the Arachne to create an illusion of herself diving under the Nightmare as she wriggles her tail free the same way before darting forwards. The Nightmare is only briefly tricked before it begins to charge at her. She manages to take off, switching to Griffon wings for the extra speed, barely avoiding the Nightmare's jaw. She flies up into the sky again, forming the long tusk on her forehead that she used against the Sea Feilong a dozen or so days ago as the Nightmare neighs in anger at her fleeing form.
Pyrrha corkscrews backwards into a dive, aiming to move behind the Nightmare for a stab, but the giant horse manages to turn around quick enough for Pyrrha to abort that plan. She flies back up into the air before shifting her throat into that of the Sea Feilong, opening her mouth to charge up lightning to use on the Nightmare. She swoops down low, her throat glowing orange on the outside, baiting the Nightmare into a charge as her lightning reaches full power. Right as she releases the full blast, she pitches upwards violently to avoid the now-paralyzed horse Grimm as it collapses and digs a trench in the soil.
Pyrrha banks upwards and twists to dive spike first into the Nightmare's unarmored forehead as it attempts to stand up, coming in from the side a bit as the spike drives through its head, killing it at last. Pyrrha flips and tumbles out of control, slamming into a tree in her path and cracking it before falling to the ground.
"Ow, that was disorienting. But holy crap, that was a good fight." she cheers.
The Nightmare decays into ashes and once again Pyrrha absorbs them to take its strength and the data on its form. She takes flight once more, reaching high altitude with her Wyvern wings once more to search for more Grimm species. Upon her ascent however, she runs into a frail looking ghostly Grimm, aptly named a Geist, and promptly kills it with the spike on her forehead. She absorbs the ashes into her lungs as it dissolves, still impaled on the spike.
"Huh. Maybe I should keep that spike there. A Geist though, that could be interesting to fight with." Pyrrha muses.
Central Forested Grasslands, Anima
Continuing her flight over a few more days, near midnight Pyrrha notes a bipedal Grimm with a tribal-looking mask on its face far below her. Going in guns blazing, she outfits herself with Nevermore wings, Sea Feilong throat already being charged up, Seer Orb atop her head, spike at the ready and the Arachne's mist sac ready to create an illusion.
Tucking her wings inwards, Pyrrha falls like a meteor with her glowing throat giving off light, monitoring the Imp down below with her Seer Orb acting like a telescope. She launches her lightning breath at the Imp once she comes in range, but the Imp's superior senses on its own hear the crackling and it lunges out of the way, the lightning blowing apart the ground where it just was.
The Imp throws its arms towards her, stretching rapidly in a shot to grab her. Pyrrha throws her wings forward, a salvo of feathers spearing into its limbs but otherwise only weighing it down. She pulls out of her drop as fast as possible, creating a new pair of Sea Feilong wings to take advantage of the lightning residue below her. She pulls out of the dive with a few feet to spare, taking a glancing blow from one of the Imp's arms. As she shoots into the skies again, the Imp screeches which disorients Pyrrha and causes her to drop.
The Imp smacks Pyrrha to the ground. By instinct she creates an illusion of herself running towards the Imp, which throws its arms where it thinks she is as she instead hides behind a tree to form a Geist mask. She raises the stone from beneath the Imp and causes it to fall into the hole, before the slams her new rock fist into the ground, crushing the Imp in one go. She tosses the rock fist away and slumps to the ground.
She returns to her Wyvern form, mentally exhausted from all the switching of abilities, and finally absorbs the Imp's ashes. She rests on the ground for a little while, allowing herself to rest.
"Okay. That Imp was smarter than I gave it credit for." Pyrrha admitted.
She shook off the dirt that had accumulated over her sleep and takes to the skies again, flying northward again and aiming to pass far west of the city of Mistral. In her flight she spotted a Geist mask down below, specifically a Petra Gigas due to the mask's position on some stone.
She swooped down, directing killing intent at the Geist. The Petra Gigas stirred awake, roaring in challenge. She swooped down with the spike on her forehead, zooming in on the mask with her Seer Orb. The Petra Gigas attempted to throw a rock fist as her, but Pyrrha dodged the slow punch and managed to hit the side of the mask, cracking it before tumbling through the air and past the Geist.
The Petra Gigas roared in pain and swung itself around, missing a swipe at Pyrrha as she climbed into the air again. Figuring that she would have to try something else other than spearing it, she built up a charge of lightning in her throat and twisted back down towards it, shifting her wings to those of a Nevermore and throwing feathers down from one wing, straightening herself quickly.
The Petra Gigas threw an arm forward to block the feather storm, before swinging the other forward to block a second feather storm from her other wing. Once it dropped the second arm to rear back for a punch, Pyrrha unleashed her lightning breath at the Geist mask, shattering it. Flapping forward to arrest her momentum, Pyrrha came in to land on the mound of stone that used to be the body of the Petra Gigas, inhaling its ashes and adding its instincts to memory.
"That wasn't too difficult. My Aura barely took a hit this time." she mused.
She curled up on the mound of stone for some more rest, waking up with the sun on the opposite horizon to when she fell asleep. Taking back to the skies, she flew slowly and gently as a small Nevermore instead, making herself as inconspicuous as possible with Mistral to her right. Gazing upon Haven Academy, she noticed from her long distance the damage to the structure itself.
"What happened to Haven? Was it attacked as well?" Pyrrha asked herself.
Believing time to be of the essence, she shifted her wings to Griffon wings and sped up her flight, adding a second set of wings to her Wyvern body for extra speed.
Kuroyuri, Anima
Instinct alone told Pyrrha to slow down and land in a ruined town surrounded by forests. This town she remembers from stories in her time at Sanctum, a place called Kuroyuri that was attacked by a legendary Grimm that was part Nightmare and part Imp, called the Nuckelavee. The aftermath of a battle can be seen in the central plaza, two heavy impact craters with blade holes in them several meters apart as well as Dust residue and large sniper bullet casings.
"Ruby must've been here, she's the only one I know of who uses rounds like these. That must mean the rest of them came through here, although there isn't enough Dust residue to suggest Weiss was here. Did everyone split up after I died?" Pyrrha thought.
More recent lingering emotions of fear, hopelessness and desperation mixed with determination and love tell her that it was under a year ago, considering the older emotions match the destruction of Kuroyuri from ten years back. Recalling who she knew was defined by each, she deduced that Ruby and the rest of her team were here, alongside one more person of an older age.
"So my team was with Ruby for this. Where was the rest of Team RWBY though?" Pyrrha questioned.
Walking through the settlement in a human-like form, smaller than the one she used to fight the Creeps at Beacon months ago, she observed the destruction, offering silent prayers to all the souls lost to the Grimm so many years ago. Reaching a house where her instincts were guiding her the strongest, she found a few old, dusty and cracked images on a rotting shelf, showing a magenta eyed young boy beside two black haired parents who he bares resemblance to. In another image she can see that boy beside a ginger haired girl with turquoise eyes.
"Ren and Nora. This is their birthplace, isn't it? I never knew, but I'm glad I do now. You both turned out splendidly for what happened here." Pyrrha says, the sound coming out more like a growl due to her form.
Sitting down in the house, she focused inwards to reshape her form. Days passed quickly for her, observing her biology as she molded it into something approaching human.
"I need to use the Apathy as a base. Its has the most human skeletal structure."
"Arms from the Geist, those have the most human hands."
"Beowolf muscles, those are the among the densest of the Grimm I have."
"Goliath skin, that is the densest of all of them."
"Combine the Imp, the Geist and the Apathy to make a face. Spongey bone plating to make it feel like skin, able to bend like skin should do."
"Use the Imp's mouth and combine the teeth of the Beowolf, Imp, Apathy and Creep to make teeth that are passable for a human."
"Color the body using the Arachne's mist sac, taint the skin a pale tan, the hair a crimson red, shorten the claws into nails that look human."
"The eyes, make two small Seer Orbs and bend them into lenses at the front, surround that with white tainted bone to appear like human sclera."
"Color the irises an emerald green, allow the lenses to hide the green glow inside the Seer Orbs."
"Armor the liver as dense as possible, that stores my Grimm Ichor and must be able to survive whatever may damage me."
"Double up the diaphram, add a valve to the trachea to allow a constant movement of air."
"Bend vocal cords, tune them to sound like I used to."
"Add Griffon wings, tuck them away and color them like those of a Falcon."
"A spear and shield, make them from very dense bone and sharpen both the blade and the shield edge. Recreate Milo and Akouo as closely as possible. Connect them to my back as the originals used to be, practice transferring and drawing them for combat."
"Clothe the body, mimic my old Huntress outfit but extend the armor to cover my upper chest. Tie up the hair into a bun that can't be grabbed in combat."
"Armor the feet, prevent the ankles from being disabled by way of a precise arrow shot. Armor the knees and elbows to prevent the same there."
After many weeks passed, Pyrrha finally opened her new eyes, searching for a mirror to look upon her new form. Upon finding a mirror, she found herself to look close enough to what she used to look like.
Long crimson hair tied up into a bun instead of a long flowing ponytail. Bronze armor over her torso, new armor reaching up to cover her chest where an arrow pierced her heart many months ago. Bronze greaves connecting to new bronze armored boots, shielding her ankles from any arrows that might disable her legs like one did many months ago. Segmented bronze armor shielding her knees and elbows, shielding the joints from being disabled by any piercing weapons. Crimson sash flowing from her waist, tied a few extra times to shorten its length.
Long crimson and bronze spear diagonally across her back, covered by a round bronze shield with two cuts on opposite sides, both ready to be drawn. Eyes colored a bright emerald, a barely noticable emerald glow inside the pupils. Soft looking pale skin that appears human enough at anything other than a close inspection. Large crimson feathered falcon wings tucked up over the spear and shield, ready to carry her into flight.
Overall, looks quite human and can be considered human by any passerby. Sadly, gives off a slightly uncanny feeling as if not everything is as it seems.
"I'm giving off a feeling like Penny did. Nobody would bat an eye, but they would give it thought later on because something doesn't feel right. At least I got my voice right." Pyrrha mused.
Taking flight, she circles the birthplace of two of her dear friends, getting herself used to flying like a bird Faunus. She takes to the skies further, heading north over a large lake.
Lake Matsu, Anima
After a couple days of slow flight, getting used to the aerodynamics of a humanoid body, Pyrrha came across some islands that she remembered from classes in Sanctum, islands floating hundreds of meters above the lake due to Gravity Dust. Drifting between them, she focused on her senses now that her vision is restricted to a human field of view.
Deciding to be daring, Pyrrha flared her Aura around her, filling it with killing intent. Distant crashes of stone and buzzing sounds across the area, Lancers swarming in her direction. She spots two Queen Lancers and dozens of warrior drones. The battle rages on for many minutes, spear and shield transferring to her hand and forearm as she hones her senses to hear and react to each incoming drone as the Queens stay back.
The entire time as the Queens directed their drones, Pyrrha dove, climbed and spun through the swarm, spear lancing out and slicing off stingers and heads, shield guarding against stingers in their attempts to spear her through. Part way through, she absorbed the data from ashes of the drones to add a grappling stinger to her left forearm under the shield, latching on to drones and using them to turn harder and pull them into the crossfire.
As the swarm died out, just Pyrrha and the two Queen Lancers were left. They hovered on opposite sides of her as she formed Lancer wings to hover in place, moving her Griffon wings lower. The first Queen dove forward as the second flew upwards. Pyrrha blocked the stinger that shot at her with her shield, slicing the tether off and diving towards the first Queen. She stabbed forward with her spear, the Queen deflecting it with its bladed limbs, its other limbs hitting only shield as they deflected to the side. Pyrrha sliced upwards with her shield, creating a crack in its mask but not killing it.
With her extended shield arm, she looked behind her quickly and shot her grappling stinger at the second Queen that was diving towards her from above at that moment. The stinger was deflected by the second Queen, but still struck in its side rather than its core, Pyrrha reeling it in rapidly and swinging away from the first Queen. She zipped by the second Queen, keeping the stinger in place and reversed her momentum, coming in for a high speed stab into its back. The second Queen hissed in fury at Pyrrha mounting its back, stabbing her spear in to its shoulder and retracting her stinger to stab into the Queen's other shoulder.
Replacing her wings with Nevermore wings, she pulls on the shoulders of the second Queen to turn it towards the first Queen. Reeling back her wings, she looses a barrage of feathers, one piercing the first Queen's side and the other ripping a few arms off. Forcing her unwilling mount forward, she dove towards the first Queen and forced them to crash into each other, the damage to the first Queen's mask being too much and killing it from the impact.
The second Queen lost altitude, falling away from Pyrrha as she absorbed the first Queen's ashes. Integrating the new data, she converted the spear's tip into a spike and launched it down at the falling second Queen, impacting its mask and spinning it backwards before a second shot pierced its eye, killing it at last. Pyrrha dove after it and absorbed its ashes as well, reverting her wings to Griffon wings.
Coming in to land on an island, Pyrrha curled up under a tree and decided rest would be nice to relieve some of the stress of the past few days and the recent battle. After a few days, she dove from the island and unfurled her wings, using the speed to continue northwest, aiming for Argus.
Argus, Mistral, Anima
Coming across the port city under the jurisdiction of Mistral, Pyrrha landed near the outer wall and changed her form into something else, figuring that coming in looking like her old self would raise many suspicions. The sun was high in the sky, just past noon as she ducked behind a tree.
Meditating on her form once more, she changed her hair to be short and dark red, her eyes hazel in color and broadened her shoulders. She removed the sash and her weapons, removing her armor and going for a simple leather armor appearance. On her arms, she formed two Lancer stingers with bone plate to hide claws and on her face she made flight goggles using the translucent membrane from the Sea Feilong's wings. Opening her eyes again, the time is now a couple hours past noon as she pushes away from the tree.
Moving the connected goggles atop her hair, she looked herself over and hummed in approval, shifting her voice into something more mature than her old voice but changing the tone to something closer to Ruby's. Using her wings and her Arachne illusion, she made herself vanish as she flew over the wall, coming to land very quickly in an alleyway and dropping the illusion.
Wandering around the city, passively avoiding high population areas, Pyrrha noticed damage from a large battle that seemed to be nearly finished repairs. Picking up a newspaper, she found a large battle had happened between some Hunters in a stolen Manta and the Colossus, a battle which was interrupted by a Leviathan that surfaced from the negativity. The Colossus then went on to battle the Leviathan, which somehow got coated in stone, the Colossus winning the battle with its drill hand as the Manta escaped to Solitas up north.
"Huh. Team RWBY was a part of that, which means the rest of my team was there. So they're likely in Atlas by now. And that stone reminds me of the Wyvern at Beacon." Pyrrha recalls.
Wandering a bit more around the city, subtly moving out of sight of military patrols, she comes across a very special park a little while before evening. The park is in the center of the city, with a large bronze statue of a very familiar figure. She came to a stop before the statue, keeping a respectful distance and standing off to the side.
"The Pyrrha Nikos Memorial Park. So they built this after I died then. I'm honestly touched. If I could cry I probably would right now." Pyrrha whispered.
A couple nearby gave her an odd look at her whispering, but shrugged it off and walked elsewhere. A woman with crimson hair and emerald eyes slowly walked into the park with a bouquet of red lilies, giving Pyrrha a passing glance before kneeling in front of the statue to place the lilies there. After a couple minutes, she stands up and turns around before stopping beside Pyrrha.
"Did you know her, dear?" the woman kindly asks.
"Y-yeah, I did." Pyrrha stutters.
"She achieved her dream at Beacon. A young man helped me understand that a little while ago. She always wanted to be a Huntress, but on that day, when she made the choice she believed was the best, she truly became one, a true Huntress." the woman speaks.
"Yeah... That she did. Everyone said she was the best of us, I only wish she could've continued on with her friends." Pyrrha sighs.
The woman turns to look at Pyrrha, still in her disguise, and stares into her eyes. She must have seen something in them, because she turned to give her a gentle hug with a witty smile.
"I think she is, dear. Or at least she's on her way." the woman chuckles, a minor shiver going through her.
Pyrrha returns the hug and buries her face into the woman's shoulder, allowing her emotions to run their course despite her inability to cry. The sun began to set, the two having comforted each other the whole time.
"Her friends would be proud of what she's doing, dear. Don't ever forget that." the woman reassures.
"I think she knows." Pyrrha laughs.
"What's your name, dear?" the woman asks with a wink and a sly smile.
"Uh, my name is Neomi Peridot, Miss..." Pyrrha offers with a small smirk.
"That's Mrs Nikos to you, Miss Peridot." her mother replies jokingly.
"Sorry!" Pyrrha apologizes, the two laughing at the familiar response.
"Its fine. You better get going, though. I'd imagine you want to find her friends, then?" her mother asks.
"Yeah. It was nice, uh, meeting you, Mrs Nikos." Pyrrha answers.
"Well, good luck, dear. Give her my regards?" her mother asks.
"Heh, I will. See you?" Pyrrha says.
"See you. Don't have too much fun out there, yes?" her mother answers, walking away with a chuckle.
Pyrrha watched her mother walk away, silently marvelling at the ability of a parent to just simply know who their child is. In her heart, she knew her mother could sense her true self and she kept the conversation going in code to protect her precious daughter's current identity.
"Mother always knows best." she mumbled with a nostalgic smile.
Looking down at herself, Pyrrha notes that her mother shivered when she hugged her. She makes a mental note to find a way to generate body heat to blend in better, since no living human is that cold. Closing her eyes, Pyrrha shifted something inside her core, charging lightly a bit of lightning to generate heat. Under her clothing, her hide glows dimly orange as she begins to generate some heat. Putting that on the backburner, Pyrrha opens her eyes again and allows her new body to handle it on its own.
"Well, at least if I'm generating heat I always have some lightning charged up. Maybe I could channel that into my claws or my stingers?" Pyrrha muses.
Walking back to the alleyway she landed in, now that the sun has set and the night is in full effect, Pyrrha cloaks herself using the abilities of the Arachne once more, spreading her wings and soaring over the wall to land a little ways out from the wall. Keeping up the illusion, Pyrrha makes her way a good distance from the wall, walking westwards to reach the cliffside on the west side of Argus. Reaching the edge of the cliff, a bit west and out of view of the city, she places her goggles over her eyes and leaps from the cliff to dive into the frigid waters, aiming to test her ability to maintain body temperature.
Open Oceans, South of Solitas
Diving deep into the icy waters, Pyrrha gets used to ramping up the lightning in her core, the glow becoming visible from under her bone armor as her body manages to maintain a stable core body temperature. As she takes to the depths, her other senses pick up on moving Grimm deep underneath the surface.
Extending a Seer Orb from her forehead on a long tusk, she displaces the lightning into the orb, casting a bright yellow light from it as she ignores the bombardment of light in her senses from that one orb. She also extends claws from the plates on her forearms, sharpening their edge and points to stab and slash. Now able to pick up on some sight, she notices a couple Leviathan Minors on a rocky shelf, appearing to be asleep from the lack of eyes.
Shaping her wings into Wyvern wings to assist in water movement, as well as growing a pair out from her legs like fins, Pyrrha flares her Aura with killing intent towards the two Leviathan Minors. They both jolt awake, small beady eyes opening as they fire off towards her position as great speed for a sea creature.
Pyrrha swings to one side with all her wing power, managing to dodge a claw swipe from the first Minor as she stabs her claws forward towards the second Minor. Her claws glance off the bone faceplate, but she was prepared for this eventuality as her other arm fires its stinger back into the first Minor, piercing its back and reeling her in towards it.
Twisting herself to gain inertia despite the water slowing her down, she turns enough to fire a stab into the first Minor's back, a dull shriek sounding from its maw as it tries to take her down to slam into the rock shelf. She fires her other stinger at the second Minor, reeling herself towards its chest and bringing her armored forearms and shins to bear to defend against its bite.
The first Minor slams into the rock shelf, cracking its faceplate in its attempt, not having expected Pyrrha to jump into the maw of the second Minor. Holding its maw open like Yang did with the Nevermore during the Beacon Initiation, Pyrrha extends her claws and stabs upwards into the roof of its mouth, piercing its brain and killing it.
Despite being underwater, Pyrrha inhaled both water and Grimm ashes, finding the water no issue as she generated a constant force to absorb all the ashes and thus the data from it, putting her independant lungs to good use. She quickly formed webs on her hands and feet, finding her agility to have raised a good margin, dodging the bite from the first Minor.
Pyrrha twisted around to aim herself at the Minor's back, firing her stingers into it to catch up, still being slower than it due to her current form. The Minor ducked itself down and used its tail to smack her aside, yanking her stingers free in the process. Pyrrha reeled them in, instead turning them into bone spike launchers from the Queen Lancers.
Swimming at top speed to dodge a spinning swipe from the Minor, Pyrrha swam downwards and twisted up towards the Minor's neck, firing off the spikes at it and piercing the skin. The Minor roared and got angry, swinging wildly and managing to hit Pyrrha off to one side and above it. From her position higher up, Pyrrha launched more spikes in rapid succession, piercing out its eyes on the one side.
The Minor shrieked in anger and twisted about to try to spot her, but Pyrrha swam underneath it, staying to its blind side, and used her claws to cut a long slice out of its neck, killing it finally. She began to absorb the ashes, adding its instincts and data to memory.
"Wow that was difficult. No wonder it took the entire defense grid of Argus to take an adult one down. Just me against two Minors, I had the element of surprise against the second one, sure, but one on one was tough." Pyrrha thought.
Checking her Aura, she noted she was down roughly by half after all that. She notes that the larger Leviathans that attack Argus are only able to be repelled due to the fact they have to focus on many targets instead of one. Swimming rapidly up to the surface, Pyrrha takes flight and returns to her form as Neomi Peridot once more, using the Leviathan's fire breath instead of the Sea Feilong's lightning breath to generate body heat.
Snowy Wastes, Solitas
Far East of Atlas
Arriving at the snowy continent of the north after a few days of slow flight, Pyrrha noted first a few snowy forms of Grimm. Finding a lone younger Megoliath, she dove down in front of it, hiding herself behind an illusion of herself coming in from above. Extending her claws, she goes in for a swooping uppercut, stabbing deep into its head for a one hit kill. She landed on its falling corpse and began to absorb its ashes.
Right as she finished, her Aura took a hit from a Manticore's fireball behind her. She swung around and took off into the skies, the Manticore following her into the air. She retracted her claws to a regular length and got her arms ready with stingers instead of spikes. Twisting her arms towards the charging Manticore, Pyrrha fired her stingers into its back near its wings and pulled, reeling herself in as she pulled up into a high speed loop, stabbing her claws deep into its wing joints.
The Manticore cried in protest as Pyrrha formed a tusk on her forehead, stabbing it deep between bone plates on the back of its head, killing it. She braced for the landing, crashing with the dead Manticore into the snowy ground and rolling off after snapping off her tusk and retracting the remains of it, returning her stingers to her forearms. She walked back to the Manticore to absorb its ashes.
"The Grimm here really don't hold anything back. They may be a bit dumber but they sure push hard." Pyrrha commented.
Flying her way westward using her new Manticore wings to handle the snow better, Pyrrha found herself entering a denser swatch of forest, evergreen trees all around covered in over a foot of snow. Still glowing slightly from producing the fire in her core to maintain her body heat, Pyrrha was ambushed by a pair of Teryxes, the flying raptor Grimm both aiming to clip her wings.
Pyrrha dove below the canopy, darting between trees and changing course often in an attempt to seperate the two large raptor Grimm. Pulling up into a climb, she spotted behind her a single Teryx. Twisting her body around, she fired her stingers at it to grab it. Having gotten much better at controlling the stingers, they speared ahead faster than the Teryx could react and pierced its wing joints, Pyrrha reeling herself in rapidly. Tilting herself downwards, she swooped below and pulled up into an uppercut with her claws, releasing her stingers from the Teryx and aiming to spear the sides of its head.
Pyrrha slammed into the bottom of the neck of the Teryx, her claws hurtling towards the sides of its neck and digging deep. The Teryx panicked and flapped hard, pushing her away with its front legs, but in doing so causing Pyrrha's claws to rip through its neck, killing it. Pyrrha absorbed its ashes quickly, her flaring Aura weakening its structure and allowing her to absorb it quickly.
The other Teryx chose this moment to divebomb her position, aiming to bite into her from behind. Pyrrha caught its jaws as they began to snap shut, holding it open like she had to with the Minor Leviathan several days ago. Deciding that taking advantage of her biology would be the better course of action given the Teryx has stronger jaws than the Minor Leviathan, Pyrrha quickly grew out a tail with a sharp spike on the end, driving it into the roof of the Grimm's maw. The Teryx screeched and spat her out, pulling upwards and away from her.
Pyrrha retracted her tail and spread her wings, pushing herself to climb as quickly as possible to catch up. Swooping up above the climbing Teryx, she drove her claws down into the sides of its neck, causing it to cry in protest. The Teryx dove to the canopy below as fast as it could, twisting around in the aims of crushing Pyrrha beneath its weight. Pyrrha held on, grew another set of wings and dove off at the last moment, slowing down quickly as the Teryx slammed into the ground below.
Pyrrha landed on the ground softly and spun to face the grounded Teryx, its wings torn by the branches. The Teryx lunged at her, Pyrrha quickly growing a shield and a tail, digging the tail in and blocking the lunge with the bone plate. The Teryx leaned back for a bite, but Pyrrha cracked off the shield and kicked it forward, staggering the Grimm as the shield began to decay. Pyrrha grew out her claws and lunged forward using the tail to generate extra force, stabbing her claws into the top of the open maw of the Teryx.
She stood still, calming herself from the heated and rapid battle, taking a moment to absorb the ashes from her shield and the Teryx both. She retracted the second pair of wings and the tail both and shrunk her claws again. Flopping to the ground, Pyrrha closed her eyes and shut off her body heating to rest for a moment.
Pyrrha was shaken awake a day later by a rumbling in the ground, leaping upwards according to her instincts as a giant centipede Grimm burst through the surface of the forest.
"A Centinel? What's it doing out of the caves?" Pyrrha asked herself.
The Centinel screeched in anger at Pyrrha, coiling itself downwards quickly before lunging at impressive speed, too fast for Pyrrha to react to with the snowfall around her. The Centinel smashed right into Pyrrha's torso, undeterred, launching her upwards into the air and a good distance away. Groaning from the shock, Pyrrha flips herself around for a good landing. She hits the ground, coming out into a roll for the extra speed and pops a Seer Orb out of the back of her head.
She spots the Centinel burrowing once more behind her, digging through the ground in the aims of bursting out below her for a sneak attack. She slides to a stop in the snow, growing out a bare tail and digging it into the soil, focusing on the senses granted from the hide. She senses the rumbling in the ground reach a fever pitch, retracting the tail and leaping with all her strength, cracking the ground a second before the Centinel bursts from the soil.
Turning herself downwards, Pyrrha spots the jaws of the Centinel and determines it to be the ideal location to stab with an uppercut. She flaps her wings, dodging the still climbing Centinel as it nearly extracts itself completely, and slices her claws down the body of the Grimm. It screeches in pain, her claws cutting a somewhat shallow furrow in its frozen hide, although its twisting segments do smack her away from it.
Pyrrha lands and dashes away from the direction the Centinel began to fall, using her wings for extra speed as she uses her footsteps to bait it into lunging at her. The Centinel falls for the uncommon baiting tactic, coiling itself up immediately and launching rapidly in her direction. Pyrrha's plan works and the Centinel slips due to nearly being out of the ground, the softer soil giving way as the Centinel loses some of its intended speed.
Pyrrha whirls around and ducks down as the Centinel's vice-like jaws approach, growing her claws a bit before she plants one into the ground and lunges into a vicious uppercut reminiscent of the one she used against the airborne Boarbatusk several months ago at Beacon Academy. Her claws dig deep, the Centinel's jaws snapping shut and slicing her hand off, but the job was done, the Centinel letting out a death cry as it fell limp to the snowy ground.
Pyrrha's arm began regenerating as she flared her Aura to make the Centinel decay faster, inhaling the ashes from both her arm and the Centinel. She sighed at having been nearly ambushed by a giant centipede Grimm.
"They are rather formidable creatures, I'll give them that." Pyrrha admitted.
Taking back to the skies, Pyrrha flew high above the canopy and allowed her mind to rest a bit. She spent a day or so lazily watching the snowy canopy below her, thinking back on her times in Beacon.
Recalling first seeing Jaune, saving Jaune, unlocking Jaune's Aura, fighting alongside her future team as Jaune led them to defeat the Deathstalker, hanging out with her team and Team RWBY, secretly helping Jaune at Forever Fall against the Ursa, reading in the library with her team and taking Jaune's comic book, defending Vale alongside her team during the Breach, fighting alongside Jaune and her team in the Vytal Tournament, kissing Jaune goodbye for the first time before saving him from certain death.
Pyrrha then remembered the tougher times and the bad times. Jaune refusing to ask for help with the bullying, Jaune rejecting her training at first until the Forever Fall Incident happened, the Breach happening at all, being offerred the Fall Maiden's power by Ozpin and his Inner Circle, Cinder hijacking the Vytal Festival, being tricked by Cinder to kill Penny, Vale being besieged by Grimm, Cinder killing Amber before she can take on the burden, Ozpin dying to give her and Jaune a chance to survive, kissing Jaune goodbye for the last time a bit before being crippled, humiliated and then incinerated by Cinder.
She notes to herself that ever since she became a Grimm, a lot of her emotions have been somewhat muted. Perhaps by Aura control of something else, she doesn't know, but she has perhaps come to terms with her choices and decided to cherish what time she had with her friends, even knowing that as a Grimm she can never go back to them as Pyrrha Nikos.
Shaking herself from her musing, Pyrrha barely noticed a fireball coming in from behind her, diving in a panic and noticing a Sphinx behind her, both heads growling at the trespasser to its snowy domain. Pyrrha tucked upwards into a climb, charging up a lightning shot in her throat and extending her claws as she completed the loop. The Sphinx looked up at her just as she let out the blast of lightning, the beam of lightning impacting the Sphinx in the back as it dove, injuring its superior ability to fly.
Pyrrha twisted upright again and flew over the Sphinx as it passed below her, twisting around to pull in behind it. The snake tail turned and released several smaller fireballs that Pyrrha sliced through or dodged. She pushed herself to fly faster, coming up behind and firing a stinger into the back of the Sphinx, using that to reel herself in faster for a slice at the snake tail.
The Sphinx roared in protest and climbed upwards, the snake tail snapping at Pyrrha on her approach. She released the stinger and abandoned her attack, diving to the side to avoid the snake tail. Forming another set of wings, Pyrrha pulled back hard to gain altitude again, the Sphinx twisting to line up a larger fireball. The Sphinx managed to release the fireball, but Pyrrha matched it with one of her own mixed with lightning, the forces cancelling out and creating a smoke cloud between them.
Using her superior senses through the ways of Aura and Arachne senses, Pyrrha dove out of the way of the Sphinx's blind dive, coming out below it and slicing her claws along its underside, injuring the legs on one side. Twisting behind it with the help of all four of her wings, Pyrrha swapped her stingers for spikes and shot the pair of them twice, two for each wing joint. The Sphinx roared in anger but found itself unable to stay airborne, falling to the snowy ground in a heap, unable to stand properly. She swapped back to stingers by instinct.
Pyrrha divebombed the Sphinx, aiming for the unarmored back of its head, but the Sphinx proved its feline nature and dodged the diving strike. It instead snapped forward and headbutted Pyrrha out of the air, causing her to slam into a tree. As Pyrrha recovered her bearings, the Sphinx, tail and feline both, charged up powerful fireballs, launching them at her position. Pyrrha spotted this however and used her stingers to spear into a nearby tree, yanking herself out of the way and to the side of the Sphinx as the snow and smoke formed a cloud of thick mist.
Rolling to her feet, Pyrrha grew out her claws again and aimed for the snake tail, being as silent as possible. She quickly speared a tree across from her with one stinger and pulled herself with a flap of her wings towards the snake tail. The Sphinx just barely caught sight of her before her claws split the snake tail from the main body, the Aura infused in the strike disintegrating the tail in short order as Pyrrha absorbed the ashes.
The Sphinx roared in fury, spinning around to kick up more snow to hinder her vision before turning to her location and lunging, using as much of its wings as possible. The Sphinx slammed into her and sent her through a tree, staggering both opponents at the same time. Pyrrha recovered first, leaping up and stabbing her already lengthened claws down into the back of its head, killing it before she began absorbing its ashes.
"That was the toughest yet. Sphinxes are not to be taken lightly, at all. And my Aura is low, too." Pyrrha noted.
Pyrrha hopped up into a tree and allowed herself to rest her mind and recover her Aura. After a day or so, the weather cleared up and allowed her to see Atlas in the distance, about a two day trip away. She flies as fast as possible towards there, instinct informing her of the presence of her friends there.
Mantle, Solitas
As she approaches the floating city of the winter kingdom, the weather gets worse and the sky darkens, red lightning rumbling through the sky as dark purple, nearly black clouds form in the air.
"What the hell is that?" Pyrrha gasps.
In the distance, within the cloud, is a giant dim orange light that reminds her of the Seer Orb from Mountain Glen a few months ago. As the light approaches Atlas, she is able to make out hundreds, perhaps thousands of Nevermore and Manticores surrounding a behemoth Grimm whale with dark purple rocks and gemstones sticking out of its back. Forcing her Seer Orb eyes to zoom in, she can barely spot a figure atop the whale. Clothed in black with skin the color of bone, white hair sticking up and back in several large spikes, is a woman who incites a repulsive feeling in her soul and a simultaneous attraction from her Grimm biology.
"That's the woman that appeared from the Seer. I didn't have to see her to know, but its her. Its definitely her." Pyrrha mused.
Somewhere vaguely near her position, a Manta is retreating at full throttle, instinct driving her to follow it rather than heading to Atlas. Turning to intercept it, Pyrrha shifts her wings to two sets of Griffon wings, gaining altitude and growing out a Seer Orb from her chest to follow the Manta from far above and behind, staying out of its range. She pulls her body inwards in an attempt to lower her wind resistance, gaining speed and just barely keeping up with the Manta.
"Wherever they are going, I'm going to follow. In the shadows or not, I'll be there guys, I swear it. Don't you worry." Pyrrha vowed.
Snowy Tundra, Solitas
"We've got multiple hostiles on radar. Is anyone else seeing this?" the male pilot asks.
"These readings can't be right." the female pilot comments.
In the silent cabin with Team RWBY and the remainder of Team JNPR, the newly minted Winter Maiden, the combat gynoid Penny Polendina notices on her own sensors one more signature flying above and behind them, hidden from conventional radar. She scans the signature for Aura out of interest and gives a very tiny, unnoticable smile at her findings, finding it to match the late four time champion of the Mistral Regional Tournaments from between six and two years ago, one Pyrrha Nikos.
"So Friend Pyrrha is alive? Sensational!" Penny cheered in her mind. "But how is she alive? I've since learned a lot about the world, perhaps because Friend Pyrrha appears to be staying hidden from radar, this is a situation where it would be best I keep quiet? That seems likely, whatever method that allowed her to live again must mean something bad if anyone finds out. No matter, Friend Pyrrha, your secret is safe with me!" Penny amended.
END OF CHAPTER
A/N: So how was the premise? Pyrrha's soul was shunted into the Wyvern by a combination of the Maiden Magic having incinerated her body, holding her soul in place for but a moment, just long enough for Ruby's Silver Eyes to partially petrify the Wyvern and yeet Pyrrha's soul into bonding with the Wyvern. So she eventually just overcomes the Wyvern's power and becomes one with it, becoming a natural-born Grimm with the core of a human soul and the malleability that brings.
She stores and compresses Grimm Ichor, also converting it also into more useful, faster to transform states, because hot damn, if Beowolves can constantly be produced from those Pools of Darkness in Salem's Domain, why not have very dense Grimm Ichor that allows Pyrrha to add or take from her own mass and form? The big old Wyvern didn't get smaller as it carpet bombed Beowolves and whatnot on Beacon and Vale.
And her malleability only really goes so far. Variances between Grimm, existing materials, only those she can work with. Some Grimm have straight tusks, some have curved ones. The Queen Lancer can launch stingers with tethers attached, gosh why not remove the tether and fire the stinger as a spike instead. Wings? Some Grimm are faster than others, but those tiny wings that Sea Feilong's have are way to small for it to fly, let along fly with one wing remaining... unless those wings work on some principle of repulsion force between salt water and the lightning charge within the Grimm itself, that makes sense.
How does a Seer float though? Its not a mechanism in the Grimm itself I'm guessing, though I'm leaving the possibility of Pyrrha losing that data open since she did lose some of the ashes after Salem stopped viewing the last of the Seer that remained in Mountain Glen. She also won't be capable of using the Geist's ability to float unless she goes full Geist. Those are spirit bodied Grimm that possess things so I can say with confidence that they float by virtue of being lighter than air. Oh, and of course, once the Seer breaks, its ability to communicate with other Seer types also breaks, like Salem has to add one to the network or something.
Anywho, thanks to "Reading Week" I was able to type this up. Hope you enjoyed and I hope I can continue this once Volume Eight of RWBY comes out. Cheers!