The Invincible Girl Return
Disclaimer: RWBY and Fate are the properties of their respective owners. I'm only an unpaid FanFic writer.
"Existence is only one reality: if we look at it from a certain side, we consider it as the existence of created things, and if we look at it from another side, we consider it as the existence of God. Reality is only one thing that has appeared as multiple forms."
Ibn Arabi (Arab philosopher and mystic 1165-1240)
Prologue 1
The sky of Remnant was black with an oily smoke rising from dozens of fires ravaging Vale. Evermores and Atlasesian flying machines were evolving in this apocalypse sky amidst tracer bullets. Far below you could hear gunshots, clashes, cries of terror, and the roar of the creatures of Grimms. Chaos had spread throughout the city. Monsters against humans, humans against White Fangs. The Atlas robots, hacked by Arthur Watts had been neutralized by the intervention of Ruby Rose, but the battle could no longer be won. Ozpin had been killed and Cinder Fall had absorbed the power of the Fall Maiden. Perhaps even worse, the Wyvern of Mountain Glenn had awakened, summoning waves after waves of lesser Grimms.
It was the fall of the Vale Kingdom, the end of one of the last four territories where humans held on in the hope of resisting the hordes of the Grimms. The awakening looked like a nightmare... no one could resist the enemy. The Grimms were simply too numerous, reproducing so quickly that they compensated for all the losses that the Huntsmen could inflict on them. From the beginning, the resistance was doomed to failure.
Rising in the midst of the ruins of Beacon, the Ozpin tower had been as sliced at the height of the Headmaster's office.
This was the final chapter of a legend...
Pyrrha Nikos could hardly breathe. One of her hands pressed the wound on her side. Her Aura was completely exhausted, she struggled simply not to faint. On her knees, she stared at the ground in front of her.
No one could have recognized the four-time Mistral champion, the one known as "the Invincible Girl".
She had fought with all her strength, using her weapons and her Semblance against an enemy who completely outclassed her... After absorbing Amber's power, Cinder Fall demonstrated an incredible mastery of the Maiden's power. Cinder had not only succeeded in melting Miló, the javelin of Pyrrha, but also the gigantic gears that the young apprentice Huntress had projected on her enemy.
Cinder approached without haste. She had plenty of time. It was after all her triumph.
Cinder spoke, but Pyrrha only heard the sound of her voice without understanding, too exhausted to concentrate.
His enemy straightened his face and their eyes crossed, the vegetal green of the Pyrrha iris, the amber glow partially masked by a fringe of black hair veiling the left part of Cinder's face.
The woman in the black and red evening dress pulled out the bronze circlet, partly hidden by Pyrrha's red hair, and then placed her free hand on the forehead of the young woman.
It was all over in an instant. Pyrrha Nikos collapsed into ashes, literally disintegrated by the heatwave that Salem's agent projected into her.
The only comfort that could be derived from this scene was that the death of the young woman had been instantaneous and painless.
The death of Pyrrha Nikos was a tragedy, but Remnant's world did not disappear. In Argus, the town where she trained before attending Beacon, a memorial statue was erected. Flowers were offered to this statue because Pyrrha never had a grave. We remembered her courage, we remembered her beauty and her youth, her dedication...
And time passed by...
Carving her legend into the hearts and souls of humans...
Because heroes never really die.
Pyrrha Nikos felt good.
Her mind was vague, her memory uncertain.
She didn't know where she was or how she got here.
This "here" looked like an infinite space of luminous whiteness. Under her bare feet, she felt a flat ground.
Suddenly a luminous form appeared before Pyrrha. It seemed like a sort of inverted shadow, made of light, the strangely familiar silhouette of a young woman.
The curiosity of the Spartan Girl returned to work despite her hazy mind:
"Who are you?"
"I have no name because I am given too much," replied the luminous figure." Some call me 'life' or 'death', others 'fate' or 'chance'. I am the insect you crushed under your step without seeing it, I am the brightest star in the sky." The luminous shadow reached out to point to the young huntress. "But more importantly, I am you Pyrrha Nikos."
It took a brief moment for the Red-haired girl to understand who was standing before her:
"Are you... God?"
"They call me that too."
Now panicked, Pyrrha looked around her while crossing her hands on her breasts in a reflex of modesty as she realized she was naked:
"Where... where am I?"
"Where the dead go when their hour comes and where they stay until a new life is given to them."
A sob made Pyrrha hick. The Invincible Girl wanted to talk but her tears flowed like a torrent without her being able to hold them back. The luminous shadow nodded:
"I know Pyrrha Nikos, I understand perfectly... I am you, do not forget it."
"Why?" she finally managed to say.
The question was vast, there were actually several "why?" "Why did I die?" "Why did Cinder triumph?" " Why didn't I live long enough to even kiss Jaune?" among many others.
To all these questions, the luminous shadow gave only one answer:
"Because it was necessary."
Happy memories overwhelmed Pyrrha... childhood memories... training with the other members of the JNPR team... the food fight... the ovation that greeted her first victory at the Mistral tournament...
"There is no night without day, no good without evil, no joy without sorrow. It is the two sides of the same coin. They are opposites that contribute to the same necessity."
Pyrrha had not lived long, but her life had meaning. She had loved and had friends. Continuing to wipe away the tears that never stopped flowing, she nodded:
"What... what's gonna happen to me now?"
"You're going to get a new life. Normally, it means reincarnating. But from time to time, I propose something else to some people... look."
The silhouette that looked like the luminous shadow of the champion of Mistral held out a hand and a scene appeared. For a moment, Pyrrha thought he was being shown Vale ravaged by the Grimms. Collapsed houses and buildings were ravaged by the flames. Everywhere it was just rubble and dead... only there were no monsters, no Atlas robots, not even White Fangs in armor... just humans. Or rather, human corpses and dying people sobbing, begging the heavens for a miracle to come to save them.
"This city is called Fuyuki, a city of a world called Earth. A world where there is neither Dust, nor Aura, nor Semblances".
The image was fixed on an eight-year-old child who was progressing among the ruins. He had red hair and amber eyes... empty eyes and exhausted look. The boy seemed ready to collapse. With difficulty, he climbed a heap of bricks from which came up smoldering charcoal telephone poles. The red hair child coughed while inhaling the hot ashes.
Her own grievances instantly forgotten, Pyrrha reached out to the child. Her fingers crossed the three-dimensional image.
"Save him, save him!"
Pyrrha's true strength was not her Aura or Semblance, her armor or her javelin... Pyrrha Nikos had a gentle heart and a generous soul.
"This child is called Shirou. Alone among all those you see in the ruins, he will be given to surviving... for his misfortune! His destiny is to attain a form of immortality... passed over a hill covered with swords, each blade representing a man he killed to protect his world. Pyrrha Nikos, you are not Shirou. Your story and your destiny are different. You can succeed at a lower cost! If I offered to take his place, what would you say?"
The Spartan girl stayed for a few moments to watch Shirou. When the child finally collapsed, she shuddered:
"If you really are me, you know my answer."
"It is true."
The luminous shadow seemed to smile.
Prologue 2
The sky of Japan was black with oily smoke rising from dozens of fires that ravaged Fuyuki. All was chaos. Calls for help and fire sirens were heard. Journalists were filming the huge fire without being able to get close.
In the ruins, a solitary and haggard figure walked at random.
Black hair, he had cheeks covered by a 5:00 O'clock shadow, black eyes seemed dead. Dressed in a crumpled suit, the tie loosened, under a long cloak, the bottom of which was torn and burned, the man's name was Kiritsugu Emiya.
The Master of the Saber-class Servant of the 4th Holy Grail War was an individual broken by a succession of twists of fate.
He had sacrificed his wife to his dream of saving all men, to discover that the Holy Grail was defiled by an unclean spirit. To guarantee peace to the world, he would have had to sacrifice all humans except his wife and daughter.
To destroy the Grail, Kiritsugu used two Command Marks to force Saber... the legendary King Arthur... to unleash all the power of Excalibur.
The flood of golden light had destroyed the desecrate Cup... but not the black mud it contained, the materialization of All the Word Evil. The flood had engulfed the nearby streets, burning and destroying everything in its path; hundreds of people were dead or dying.
So this was the divine grace, the miracle that could save humanity?! Kiritsugu Emiya had killed so many people, sacrificed so many things for a lie, for a chalice filled with all the sins of humanity. And yet, with cruel irony, it was really the Grail that Kiritsugu deserved... After all what life had the Magus Killer lived? A sinner's life built on a lie.
The guilt almost drove Kiritsugu mad. He turned in the streets, sometimes lifting up rubble... only to find dead people, children's toys, everyday objects that reminded him of the extent of his fault.
At one point, the Magus Killer met two of his acquaintances, Kirei Kotomine and his Servant Archer. But he passed them without caring... or really seeing them. In his near-insanity state his mind was filled with only one obsession: "save someone".
Kiritsugu withdrew, ignoring the two men. Archer could have easily killed him, but Kirei held back his Servant... after all, Kiritsugu's suffering and despair was a kind of nectar for the false priest. His enemy, the man who had defeated and spared him, was now wandering at the gates of madness, as ruined as the city itself. Kirei would not kill him. Under these circumstances, it would be like putting him out of his misery. And the only pleasure of Archer's Master came from contemplating the suffering of others.
Suddenly, Kiritsugu stopped...
His eyes stared at a mound of broken bricks from which emerged a telephone pole that the fire had charred. A shape lay under a few planks.
As the rain started to fall harder and harder, extinguishing the last fires, Kiritsugu began to move forward again, faster and faster... he was staring at a strand of red hair... not the cruel red of the flames, no! This strand of hair had the shade typical of the leaves that dance in the autumn wind.
With feverish gestures, Kiritsugu Emiya lifted a board and threw it away, rolled bricks that bothered him, and finally lifted...
—the lightweight body of an eight-year-old girl in burnt clothes.
The eyelids quiver, the head turned... green eyes like the leaves of spring met black eyes where life had returned.
Kiritsugu was crying... the Magus Killer was crying tears of joy...
Pyrrha Nikos watched the man cry, at the verge of unconsciousness... her mind was vague and imprecise... names and faces led a strange dance to the ends of her memory... but she could not turn her eyes away from the face of the exhausted man who was holding her at arm's length. She had never seen such an expression of relief. This unknown man was not happy to find a survivor in the rubble... it was far beyond that! It was the relief of the condemned man who was suddenly enjoying an unexpected grace.
Slowly, the eyes of Pyrrha closed...
Seeing that the little girl was losing consciousness, Kiritsugu panicked for a moment... he had to go for help... no, there were no rescuers nearby... Magecraft? Even before Angra Mainyu's curse ravaged his Magic Circuits, healing techniques were not his specialty.
Suddenly he remembered that he had something that could save the girl. The Magus Killer dipped his fingers into his chest.
A few moments later, golden light illuminated the ruins. As if the sun had risen in the middle of the night.
The Return of the Invincible Girl
"Senpai... senpai wake up."
Pyrrha had a dream.
She saw a plain that seemed to extend to infinity. Under a blue sky crossed by white clouds, the wind caressed the sprigs of herbs of spring green. From the corner of her eye, she saw a figure in sparkling armor and a sort of long blue dress. The knight was leaning on a great sword inlaid with gold, his hands on the pommel.
The scene was bathed in the atmosphere so special to dreams. But especially Pyrrha felt an unbearable nostalgia as if she relived a moment of happiness lost forever.
Yet... yet... this scene, it was not a fragment of her memory. Pyrrha had never come to this plain, had never met the knight.
This did not prevent Pyrrha from dreaming of the knight for years. At first, it was very vague... but it rarely took a month without this dream coming to visit it. Year after year, the dream had become more precise... more and more realist...
The knight suddenly turned around.
And their eyes crossed.
There was an electric shock...
This has never happened before...
The green eyes like the emerald met the green eyes like the leaves of spring...
The knight of silver and azure stepped back, surprised by her presence...
And The Spartan Girl stepped back and realized that the knight had become aware of her presence!
It was impossible, yet...
The image of a scabbard adorned with gold and blue lacquer appeared between them. It floated, radiating a golden light.
Rex quodam rexque futuram, said a strange voice
"Senpai... senpai... wake up! If Fuji-nee finds out you slept in the shed again, she will be furious!"
The dream was shattered like glass... broken by the appearance of a cartoon's tiger. The fragments of the dream whirled and fell into nothingness and Pyrrha awoke.
The red-haired girl sprang up, her heart beating like a drum. Kneeling next to Pyrrha, Sakura Matou laugh softly timidly hiding her mouth behind her hand.
"Taiga?" questioned the Invincible Girl.
"She hasn't arrived yet."
"Phew!"
Pyrrha... Pyrrha Emiya looked around her. She had fallen asleep in the shed. Around it were pieces of armor, several prototypes of shields and spears. Her "cosplay" as she always said to Sakura and Taiga. The two women could not know that it was Mystic Codes that the Invincible Girl was working on. The Aura and Dust did not exist on Earth, but there was Magecraft to replace them. Pyrrha had been trying for months to recreate her weapons and armor thanks to the knowledge she had... begged to Kiritsugu Emiya, the man who had adopted her ten years earlier. She would have been a boy it would probably have gone a lot worse. However, the Magus who had adopted her had been particularly vulnerable when Pyrrha played on her appearance as a little girl... Especially since Pyrrha had been the advertising mascot for a cereal brand for breakfast. Her participation in commercials had taught her the basics of manipulation... which was almost worth being called only "Cereal Girl" by a certain alcoholic Huntsman armed with a scythe.
Pyrrha stood up to watch Sakura. She was a young woman with violet hair, which she styles with a red-pink ribbon on the left side, and violet eyes. Her casual clothing consists of a pink cardigan, a white top, and a long cream-colored skirt.
"I'm going to shower and change my clothes. Thank you for waking me up."
Sakura smiles with enthusiasm:
"Please. When you're ready, the breakfast will be ready too."
Dressed in the standard uniform of the Homurahara Academy, Pyrrha stopped for a moment in front of a small altar on which we saw the picture of a man dressed in a black tuxedo. Despite the effort to make Kiritsugu Emiya appear in his best light, the tie was slightly crooked and the hair was shaggy.
A strip of black fabric cut the corner of the photo.
Pyrrha had been saved from the fire of Fuyuki by this man. Yet... she had long hesitated before accepting that he adopted her.
During her classes at Beacon, she was taught to deal with civilians facing the threat of the Grimms. In particular, she was taught to recognize the posttraumatic stress disorder.
Kiritsugu Emiya was a particularly severe case of traumatic disorder. He wanted to adopt her... as a form of penance that he imposed on himself. As if watching over Pyrrha could erase some kind of crime he committed.
Normally, Pyrrha would have refused... Except that she had come to Earth to replace Shirou and since Kiritsugu had saved him, he must have had a place in the destiny of this child.
When Kiritsugu had revealed to Pyrrha that he was a Magus, she connected the dots... The luminous shadow had not given her much information. But it was obvious that the disaster that had destroyed much of Fuyuki was the result of the Magecraft... And it was certainly this catastrophe that Kiritsugu felt responsible for.
Kiritsugu had been dead for five years.
She never thought of him as her father... and he never really considered her his daughter. His frequent absences, the mysteries that the Magus maintained had not helped. Now Pyrrha regretted a little not to have behaved more like a real child. Especially...
"I'm home!"
The silence was suddenly broken by the arrival of a tornado in human form. A door slammed while a rushed racing noise preceded for a moment the sudden materialization of Taiga Fujimura... the Tiger of Fuyuki.
Having Taiga as guardian was a bit like having Nora Valkyrie as your big sister... without Ren! Every time Pyrrha saw Taiga, she thanked in retrospect Lie Ren's great deal of patience when dealing with the hyperactive and bubbly Nora.
Taiga was a twenty-four-year-old woman with short light brown hair and eyes. She always wears a green dress with a yellow and black stripe shirt that further reinforced her likeness to a tiger. Because she owes this nickname... which she hated... as much to her name since "taiga" pronounced almost like "Tiger" in Japanese, as to her behavior and her choice of clothing.
For the time being, she was devouring greedily the meal prepared by Sakura Matou: Rice, spinach, tamagoyaki. Devouring was the term... she swallowed just like a hungry tiger or as if the food was rationed and the other two people present would steal her share.
Pyrrha smiles at Sakura:
"As always, it's delicious."
The teenager blushed slightly and her smile illuminated the room:
"Thank you, senpai."
Taiga stopped chewing for a moment:
"It's a good thing you came here to cook. You have no idea how bad we ate before you got here."
Pyrrha taking this personally and blushed slightly:
"I was never good at cooking... especially Japanese food. And I didn't have to rely on Kiritsugu to teach me. He would have set water on fire if it had been possible."
The tall redheaded amazons who slaughtered the Grimms and won championships did not make good cooks.
While swallowing a little Miso soup, Taiga began to shake on her pillow, vigorously approving:
"The fact that Pyrrha injured herself last year at Kuydo (1) is the best thing that happened here. Because Sakura arrived and we were finally able to eat properly."
As always Taiga behaved selfishly. Pyrrha's wound was no laughing matter. It had been very painful and she had found herself with an arm in a sling for almost a month.
"Taiga, how old are you?"
As Tiger looked at Pyrrha blankly, the redheaded teenager sighed:
"You've been coming here every day since I was 13 to eat for free."
Taiga Fujimura looked at the young redhead with the look of a child unjustly punished, ready to burst into tears:
"But Pyrrha, it's my home!"
The former huntress wanted to open her mouth, but a warning look from Sakura made her hesitate. After a brief pause, Pyrrha spoke again in a soothing tone:
"Sure... but I mean you're the adult. If you thought I was bad at cooking, you could cook for yourself, right?"
Taiga remained silent for a moment and spoke again with a newfound good mood:
"Ah if Kiritsugu had brought a girl who could cook, I could have eaten good food like Sakura's for years."
Pyrrha looked at heaven. Once again, the Fuyuki's Tiger had understood nothing of what she was trying to make her understand. Wherever the luminous shadow sent Shirou, he could at least thank the former huntress for sparing him slavery behind the furnaces.
As the meal ended Pyrrha picked up the breakfast bowls and began to run the water. Sakura stood beside her to wipe. But suddenly, the girl with the purple hair grabbed Pyrrha's hand to show her some blood flowing:
"Senpai, you hurt yourself."
Pyrrha had a movement of surprise. A wide drizzle appeared on his hand... the shape was regular and looked a little like Miló folded in its sword form.
"Strange, I didn't feel anything. I mean, it's just a scratch."
Yet, while The Invincible Girl was answering, Sakura made an awkward effort to smile. But she hid her worry very badly... Of course, the teenager was almost like a little sister to Pyrrha. And the reciprocal was true. However, there was no reason to worry so much about a small cut.
"Sakura, it's just a scratch. Don't make that face."
The teenager had a slightly more natural smile:
"Yes, senpai... it's really just a scratch."
On this she bowed politely:
"But it's time for me to leave for the dojo, oniisan (2) will certainly get angry if I arrive late."
Pyrrha had a somewhat forced smile:
"You'll tell him you were with me. And if your tardiness bothers him so much, we can talk about it."
This larva of Shinji Matou had committed the error of bullying Sakura before her eyes... he had not started again. Pyrrha didn't even have to shake him. The Huntress in training could be terrifying when she wanted to. Unfortunately, the young redhead suspected that Sakura would never be safe from her brother... After all, she went home every night. No doubt Shinji was now exercising his self-proclaimed "natural right to correct his little sister" discreetly behind the walls of the Matou family home. The worst was that Sakura loved her brother very much despite the fear that she did not hide completely. No matter what he does to her, she will never denounce him.
The victims were often the first accomplices of the bully who abused them.
As for Shinji, he was like Cardin Winchester but ten times worse and more... slimy.
Moreover, Pyrrha's instinct warned her against the adolescent with blue hair. Despite his nice look and beautiful smile that earned him a real harem of pretty high school girls, the Invincible Girl felt something unhealthy in Shinji, something that was not without reminding her of Cinder Fall.
(1) Japanese archery.
(2) big brother, polite form
Author note: This may sound a bit strange, but I not a fan of the RWBY series. The idea of this FanFic came to me during a night of insomnia. My thoughts drifted on various topics and by the "magic" of lack of sleep, I suddenly realized that there was an amazing number of Fate-RWBY crossover (probably the most common Fate crossover) and that the vast majority of them could be summed up as "Shirou is sent to Remnant to save this world".
I said to myself: "Logically if Shirou is sent to Remnant, it must mean that someone from Remnant must have been sent to Earth." A sort of equivalent exchange, like in Full Metal Alchemist.
Who?
Well... Pyrrha Nikos, because she deserved so much better.
As it took me several hours to finally fall asleep, I had plenty of time to develop a synopsis. The next day, I only wanted to write what I had imagined... duly noted.
I will let you judge the irony of the situation... I spent four days writing what you are currently reading and I devoted all this energy for a crossover with a series that I do not particularly like. But I really appreciate the result.
Q: Does Pyrrha have her Aura and Semblance?
A: No, she's sort of been acclimated to her new universe and has access to Magecraft... Kiritsugu taught her a minimum of things (Projection, Reinforcement), but Pyrrha is more able than Shirou to exploit this thanks to her past experience. It should also be noted that Pyrrha obtained that Kiritsugu spent more time teaching her Magecraft. In the original F/SN Timeline, Kiritsugu is very reluctant to teach Magecraft to Shirou... and I understand that. You'd give the magic equivalent of an assault rifle to a high school student who wants to be a superhero?
Q: This FanFic is inspired by which F/SN route?
A: None... all... this is an original route. Anyone who knows F/SN will have noticed that Pyrrha does not behave like Shirou with family members. She calls Taiga by her name and not "Fuji-nee" and Pyrrha is not full of admiration for Kiritsugu. She does not even see him as her "old man". The reciprocal is true. In the original F/SN timeline Sakura was "secretly" in love with Shirou... which was obvious to everyone except for the redhead blockhead. Pyrrha is rather a big sister of substitution for Sakura in this FanFic. It's also hard to imagine the Invincible Girl playing "Fake Janitor" and staying after sunset to wash the dojo of the archery club. That alone is enough to change the whole story.
Q: Will we have the same Servants?
A: No, some Servants will be preserved, others will be replaced. Think of it as a consequence of the butterfly effect. I wouldn't say more to keep the surprise.
Q: Will we have the same Masters?
A: Basically, yes, but there will be an additional Master... and of course Pyrrha replaces Shirou.
Q: Will there be other RWBY characters in F/SN?
A: Certainly not among the Masters and Servants. But I have a (horrible) idea that I would probably exploit...
