I don't own RWBY. Rooster Teeth does.
"Hey, so you'll never guess what happened today. Nora blew up the ice cream machine in the cafeteria. It seems that she still has some leftover charge from the mission that she didn't use. Anyway, Goodwitch got really mad at her and banned her from using the ice cream machine for a month. The others still aren't back yet. A complication arose in Team RWBY's mission so it'll take them a few more days before they get back. I know that I have a lot of bad blood between me and most of the members but I'm not one to wish death on them," Jaune said.
Pyrrha said nothing, causing Jaune to take her silence as a cue to continue.
"Anyway, Alice says hi. Nora and Ren too. They really miss you down there. Your siblings have been bothering us more. I… I don't know if I'm reading this right but I think Venus is hitting on me," Jaune said.
He shivered at the thought. The Olympia had made it her mission to try and seduce Jaune. Luckily, his sister had stood steadfast between him and the red-haired girl like an ironclad wall.
"Mister Arc."
He turned around and saw Professor Ozpin standing at the door with two cups in his hand.
"Professor? What are you doing here?" Jaune asked.
"Nothing. I was just passing by and heard you so I decided to come and drop by," Ozpin said, pulling up a chair. He took a seat next to him and held out the second cup.
"Thanks," Jaune said as he accepted it.
"That cup was originally meant for Professor Goodwitch but I can go get another on my way," Ozpin said, sipping his cup.
"Oh," Jaune said, looking down at the cup. He suddenly felt the urge to place the drink down but felt Ozpin's eyes on him. He guessed that it would be rude to just not drink what the headmaster had given him and took a sip. Almost immediately, he felt it burn his throat as he swallowed it quickly. That was not normal coffee.
"What's in this?" Jaune asked.
"Whiskey. I tend to spike Goodwitch's coffee to mellow her out in the mornings or when she's stressed. A tipsy Goodwitch is far more relaxed than a sober Goodwitch I find," Ozpin said.
"Who gave you this idea!?" Jaune said.
"A certain old crow," he answered cryptically.
"I… I don't understand that reference," Jaune replied. Was he making a reference to something?
"Right… sorry, it's an inside joke between me and Team RWBY," Ozpin said.
Jaune nodded and went back to observing Pyrrha's sleeping form. It had become a routine for him for the past few days after he was discharged from the infirmary. Go to class, eat lunch, then visit Pyrrha. He would tell her of what happened during the day and she would just… sleep. The medical staff had assured him that this was normal and she would wake up but…
"It's been three days and she still hasn't woken up yet," he said.
"Well, Mister Arc. A coma is the body's way of defending itself and Miss Nikos here did suffer a significant amount of physical trauma during your mission," Ozpin said.
"That's what the Doctor said too," Jaune said.
"She wouldn't want to see you like this," Ozpin said.
"Yeah, she would probably kick my ass," he replied, chuckling all the while at the thought of Pyrrha berating him during spars about his lack of self-care.
"I should go then. I have classes with Professor Port in a few minutes. He seems to be the one taking over for Doctor Oobleck since he's gone," Jaune said.
"You go do that Mister Arc. Don't be late or the others will hate you for missing out on a good chunk of Peter's stories. A class that suffers together stays together," Ozpin said.
Jaune nearly burst out laughing at the last sentence. What an odd thing to say yet… he noticed that his cohort of prospective hunters was a tight-knit group despite the overall racism and antagonism between certain people. He could honestly say that if they settled their differences before graduation, the entire class could work as a single cohesive unit.
"I'll see you later Professor," Jaune said as he got up. He grabbed his books and walked out the door.
As soon as Jaune left, Ozpin looked back at Pyrrha with a curious expression on his face. From Glynda's reports, her official non-edited reports, Pyrrha Nikos was pronounced dead on the spot after multiple failed attempts to stabilize her on the field. Nora, whose Semblance allowed her to absorb and power herself with electricity, noted that she could no longer feel an electrical current coming from Pyrrha's heart. All and all, she was physiologically and clinically dead yet here she was, full of color and had a heartbeat. What had transpired there?
Another thing that had shown up in Glynda's unedited report were multiple mentions of the word Maiden. A term that had been used to refer to both Alice and Jaune by their opponent, Raven Branwen. Speaking of Raven, that was also a matter he had to attend to but not at the moment. No, for right now, Ozpin was dealing with something far bigger. He feared that he might have stumbled upon something, that if not handled carefully, could end up in her hands and he could not have that happening. In Glynda's reports, Jaune had been referred to as a male Maiden. Glynda's reason for this was that Raven noted the flaming eyes, the telltale signs that a Maiden was using their abilities, and the use of attacks that seemed to go beyond the scope of Semblances. In addition, Glynda had noted in her report that Alice had undergone a similar transformation as well. It appeared that the two were linked in some way.
The biggest thing that he was concerned about was a peculiar mention of the miracle of resurrection. One of the things that bound the Maiden theory and Pyrrha's miraculous recovery. The report had mentioned that Jaune had attempted to use his own Aura in a bastardized version of the Aura unlocking chant to feed Pyrrha some of his own. Of course, what was intended to happen never happened and the same flaming eyes showed up along with a massive burst of light.
"Hmm." He sipped his coffee as he got up. "I wonder what happened to you, Miss Nikos…"
Darkness. That's where she was. A floating, unending void that surrounded her on all sides. In this place, there was no up, no down, no left nor right. She just was. And she heard it all in the waking moments she experienced. Those few seconds of lucidity before she was swallowed by the darkness of the oblivion that surrounded her. It was then that Pyrrha realized that this was a prison of her own creation. A prison that she tried to break but found herself too weak to do so.
Time did not pass where she was. Those unfamiliar voices floated in and out, as she merely floated there. Her friends were all she thought about. Her friends and Jaune. She often found herself wondering why she was worried. It wasn't like they got hurt. After all, they still needed to look for the bandits that they were sent to destroy.
Wait… no, that doesn't sound right, she thought.
"No, it doesn't."
She quickly turned around, hearing a voice that sounded off. This voice wasn't like the other voices. It was… different. Warped. Not malicious but odd. It felt wrong yet right at the same time. The voice gave off a feeling of familiarity like she was supposed to know who it belonged to. Yet at the same time, the voice felt foreign.
"Who are you?" Pyrrha asked, feeling around in the darkness. Feeling wasn't an accurate description of what she was going through. She was aware that she was unconscious. It felt like a lucid dream after all. A lucid dream that she was unable to wake up from. So she dug. Dug deep. Tried to find where in her head it came from. However, in a place where time was based on her perception and space was merely a figment of her imagination, finding an entity that seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once was beginning to drive her insane. Was the voice real even or was it a fabrication of her mind to accelerate the passage of time? Would she even wake up? Why was she even like this? She had so many questions yet she lacked the answers to make sense of any of them.
"It's not time for you to know. You should wake up now…"
Pyrrha suddenly woke up, feeling something in her nose. Her eyes closed immediately, feeling the burn of the white lights in the ceiling. She raised her hand and removed the nasal cannula that had been wrapped around her face. She weakly sat up, removing all the wires attached to her arm. As she was doing so, a nurse walked in and nearly dropped her clipboard.
"Miss! Miss Nikos! What are you-?" she rushed over and grabbed Pyrrha's hands.
"Wh- Where am I?" Pyrrha asked, looking up at the nurse. Her eyes drifted down to her uniform and noticed the Beacon logo.
"You're back at Beacon," the nurse said.
"B- Beacon? What… what about our mission?" Pyrrha asked. She looked around the room, feeling totally lucid for the first time. Now that she thought about it, she hadn't seen Jaune or the others when she woke up. The nurse seemed to pick up and this and began to reassure her.
"Miss, please remain calm. You're back from your mission and your friends are currently in class. They'll come to visit you after we call them up," she said.
She nodded, looking listlessly at her bedsheets. Her mind began to search for memories of what happened to their mission. How it ended, why she was in the infirmary even? But she found nothing. It was as if a massive chunk of time had been deleted from her memory with no explanation. Pyrrha glanced at the digital clock on the wall.
Tuesday
She sighed.
Wait… Tuesday? Today was Saturday? She shook her head. She had most likely been unconscious for a few days.
"Ma'am! You can't-!"
Pyrrha looked up in surprise when the door to her room was blown to smithereens. She chuckled weakly as a pink blur burst from the smoke and wrapped her in a tight hug. A frown made its way to her face when she heard soft sobs and wet spots beginning to form in her hospital robe.
"Nora?" she said in a weak voice.
"PYRRHA! YOU'RE ALIVE! THEY SHAID THAT YOU MIGHT DIE!" Nora wailed.
"Eh?" Now she was confused. Was her injury really so bad that it had landed her here for more than a few days. She looked up and saw the others entering. Alice immediately broke rank and rushed over, grabbing Pyrrha's hand.
"You're okay! You're okay!" the blonde Arc twin said in a sort of mantra. It was as if she stopped saying it, Pyrrha would drop dead. It only added to her worry. What happened to her?
"I'm glad you're safe, Pyrrha. We all are," Ren said, smiling at her.
"Y- Yeah, where's…?"
"Pyrrha? Pyr!"
"Woah!" Nora landed on her butt as she was pushed aside.
Even Alice was knocked over as a pair of arms wrapped around her. Pyrrha smiled as a familiar scent entered her nose. It felt like an eternity since she had taken in his scent. The scent always provided her a measure of comfort.
"Pyrrha," Jaune said as he held her tightly.
"Jaune," Pyrrha answered as she brought her arms up and returned the embrace.
"I'm so glad you're okay. I thought we were going to lose you," Jaune muttered quietly into her shoulder.
"I'm fine. Just a bit weak after waking up," Pyrrha said.
"I'm going to have to cut your reunion short," a voice said from behind. A new doctor had walked in, different from the one before. This doctor was a female goat faunus. Her violet eyes trained on them as Jaune let go of Pyrrha.
"Now that Miss Nikos is awake, we'll need to run some tests on her to make sure that her body is in working condition." She pushed up her glasses as she looked over her clipboard.
"I thought that you guys were done doing tests on her?" Alice asked.
"Not all of them. Some tests need her to be awake," the doctor replied.
"Can we go with her?" Jaune asked.
"I don't suppose why not. Wait here, Miss Nikos. We'll have a wheelchair prepared for you," the doctor said before walking out.
Pyrrha nodded, remaining silent as she gripped her bedsheets. She looked up at her teammates and posed a question that rendered the entire room quieter than it could possibly be.
"What happened?"
They all went stiff, Jaune more so than the others. Their collective memory of their favorite redhead bleeding out in the middle of a crater was still fresh in their mind. The crimson life force that sustained Pyrrha staining the very soil of Remnant a sick red.
Pyrrha noticed their reactions and tilted her head. Now she was really worried. What happened to her? She looked to her loyal boyfriend for answers, but he refused to meet her eyes. She frowned. What was going on? She had a right to know what happened on the mission. Furrowing her brow in slight anger, Pyrrha crossed her arms and fixed an emerald death stare on the male Arc twin.
Jaune shivered underneath the full force of her stare as he looked back.
"Jaune, tell me-"
"Here we are," the doctor said, walking back in with a chair. "One of you help me get Miss Nikos on the chair and we can go perform the tests."
"Come on Pyrrha," Jaune said, holding his hand out towards her.
Pyrrha looked at him blankly before sighing. They were going to have a long talk later after all this was over. Not just her and Jaune. All of them. As a team. All four of them were going to tell her what had happened on that mission. With that in mind, she lowered herself onto the chair with Jaune's help and Team JNPAR followed the doctor out of the room.
The tests went by smoothly. A mere routine check of her aura and her body now that she was conscious. The doctors had told her that everything was fine and that she would make a speedy recovery from whatever it was that happened to her. One thing got to her though. The Faunus doctor had told her that she would feel phantom pains from time to time. A way of her body to remember what had happened to her.
And now, here they sat. Pyrrha sat upright in her bed, her face not looking at any of them. A heavy silence fell across the entire room, blanketing and smothering everyone present. No one dared to speak, neither party knowing how to say it.
"I-"
"We're sorry for not telling you right away," Jaune said.
Pyrrha blinked. She thought this would be far harder. She looked at Jaune curiously as his face rose to meet hers. She saw the visible effects that the past few days had on him. Small black rings around his eyes indicating a lack of sleep, matted and ruffled hair, and a general aura of depression surrounded his entire body.
"What happened to me?" Pyrrha asked once more.
"You-... how should I say this?" Jaune said, thinking of the best way to break the events of the mission to her. Unfortunately, his sister had beaten him to it.
"You got hurt," Alice said.
"What? Got hurt? How badly did I get hurt to have landed in Beacon's Infirmary… no, their ICU for four days?" Pyrrha asked, crossing her arms.
Ren and Nora remained silent as Alice and Jaune gave each other a quick glance. The two really needed to stop doing that twin thing where they looked at each other and immediately find out what the other is thinking.
"You died," Jaune said.
"Huh?" It took a few minutes for Jaune's words to register inside her mind. Did she hear that correctly? Dead? Her? She looked at Jaune in denial, despite knowing deep inside her heart that he was right. However, her mind refused to accept her death so she spoke out in response to it.
"Dead? I died? Then why am I here?" Pyrrha asked.
"We-"
"Wait, before we get to that, how did I die? Did we find the Bandit Camp with Nyx?" Pyrrha asked. A few faint images briefly flashed through her head but were gone as soon as her mind tried to grab one.
"We did find the camp but it wasn't what we expected," Jaune said.
"We did some research on the bandits that we encountered and suspect were behind the raids on the town we were at," Ren said. He pulled his scroll out and tapped a few buttons.
"The Branwen Tribe. They're called the Branwen Tribe," he continued. "They are listed as one of the most dangerous organizations in Remnant and one of its deadliest families."
"Branwen?" Pyrrha searched through her memories. She had heard that name before. Not just now but before. Her eyes lit up.
"I remember my mother mentioning them whenever we went out to visit my Grandparents down in Shion," Pyrrha said.
"That's the tribe we ran into. Apparently, Professor Goodwitch knows their leader," Jaune said.
"Did we fight them?" Pyrrha asked. She knew it was a stupid question but she needed to know everything that happened.
"Yes, we did," Alice said, "And you took a fatal blow."
"Their leader impaled you in the lung," Jaune said. He paused for a second, formulating his next response. How would she react to such news? This was not something you told someone lightly but… Pyrrha deserved to know what happened to her.
"You died."
The words made her feel cold as the entire world around her froze. The abhorrent feeling of that dark void she had floated in before she woke up instantly filled her entire being with anxiety and dread. She what?
No, that's not… I'm here aren't I? She thought as she looked at her teammates. None of them said anything to refute what Jaune had just said. Each passing second of silence had done nothing to soothe her.
"I… died? How?" Pyrrha asked.
"The bandit leader, Raven Branwen, she… she stabbed you in the lung when she was aiming for me. You jumped in front of me to save me," Jaune said, clenching his fist. That… that was not something he liked to remember. Pyrrha's dying form. The way the blade protruded from her chest while mouthing his name. The feeling of her going cold as she bled out in his arms. He never wanted to experience such a thing ever again.
"Where… where is she now?" Pyrrha asked.
"For all intents and purposes, we think she's dead but... there was no trace of her body found anywhere within the bandits' campsite," Ren said.
"She probably got vaporized in the explosion I caused," Jaune said.
"Explosion?" Pyrrha looked at them, wondering what he had meant.
"Jaune… Jaune snapped after what happened to you. His Semblance went out of control and transformed him into some sort of berserk beast," Alice said. "I heard something else too…"
"Yeah, Professor Goodwitch didn't say anything about it but we all heard her call Jaune it. A Maiden," Ren said.
"For the last time, I'm not a Maiden. Maidens are supposed to be girls remember and not real? Besides, shouldn't Alice be the one between the two of us? You guys said that when I went into that berserk state, Alice's semblance also activated and amplified," Jaune said.
"Guys, we're getting off-topic. Catch me up on what happened. We stormed the camp and I got stabbed?" Pyrrha asked.
"Er… no." Jaune went on to explain how he and Ren were supposed to sneak into the camp and lure the bandit chief out by lying about finding a Hunter. In this case, Ren was the Hunter that they found and that he was supposed to "reveal" the location of the others. After that, Raven and a few of her tribe members were to follow her out of the camp where the rest would ambush them. A plan that would've worked had Jaune not messed up in the transfer of scrolls. A mistake that he constantly blamed himself for over the past couple of was this mistake that got Pyrrha fatally injured to the point of death… well, at least she would've died.
"So how am I here?" she asked, looking down at her sheets. An idea came to her head as she extended her collar and looked down at her chest. A scar. There was a scar on her chest.
"So…" her fingers lightly brushed over the scar on her chest. She really did die. But that still left one unanswered question. How did she survive? Or more importantly, how did she come back?
"It was Jaune," Alice said, "He's the one that healed you and brought you back."
"W- What? How? You can't revive the dead!" Pyrrha said.
"It's our Semblance. As you know, my sister and I practically have the same semblance only with a different name and a different color palette. I… must have forced my aura to restart your heart or something," Jaune said.
"But… Jaune. There's no way," Pyrrha said.
"I don't know okay! I… I can't think of a logical explanation for this so this is the closest I can get to until we find our more," he said.
"We've been testing Alice and Jaune every day since Jaune was released. Small things. What they can do. How far they can take their semblances. The usual thing one does when training their semblance but so far, nothing that replicates what happened at the Bandit Camp," Ren said.
"I see," Pyrrha said. So it was Jaune that brought her back. Knowing that made her feel warm on the inside. Her heart started to beat slightly faster at the thought. He really loved her if he was willing to go so far as to break the natural law with his semblance.
"So what now?" Jaune said.
"For now, I need to recover," Pyrrha said.
"But you're better already," Nora said.
"Nora, she might have muscle atrophy and the doctor hasn't cleared her yet," Ren said.
"Hmm, after she gets better, we need to up our training. That Chieftess threw us all around like leaves in a tornado. We need to be able to at least hold our ground against foes like her in the future," Jaune said, "Another matter on the side is… the Maiden thing."
"Brother, are we seriously going to look into that? I thought that we all agreed that what she said was insane," Alice said.
"I know, I know but… I have a hunch that Goodwitch knows something. Remember what you said about Goodwitch?" Jaune said.
"..." Alice had nothing to offer in rebuttal at the moment. Her brother was right. Goodwitch's reaction to Raven's Maiden statement was quite odd. It was almost as if she thought they were real or rather… did their professor know something? If so, just how far did this go?
"Maybe you're right but," Alice looked up at him, "Are you sure now's really the time to be poking into this? We have other things to worry about like how we're supposed to participate in the Vytal Festival."
"You're worried about that?" Nora asked.
"I'm just saying that if we go through with this. We might be going into a situation that we're in way over our heads for," Alice said.
"She's right. Whatever this maiden thing is, we can't just go into it like we go into a class," Ren said.
Jaune placed his hand on his chin and thought about it for a few seconds. The two were right. Going into a situation of which they have no information on or knowledge of was a death wish and he didn't want to risk anyone again.
"How about we drop it for now?" Jaune asked.
"For now?" Pyrrha looked at him oddly. Did that mean that…?
"Look, what I mean is… rather than snooping around our teacher's offices looking for something to implicate them in a mass conspiracy, how about we start off doing some research first? Do we actually know what Maidens are beyond fairy tales? If that woman believes that they do exist, there's bound to be historical accounts of them," Jaune said.
"Is this our way of not getting expelled for breaking into the staff lounge?" Nora asked.
"Yes, and then…"
"We can use what we read to ask people… no, ask the staff during lectures," Ren said.
"And judging from their reactions, we can guess who's in on it and who isn't! That's brilliant, brother!" Alice slapped Jaune's back, causing him to stumble a bit.
"Eh? You guys really took that up to an eleven. I just want to know more about them without having to break school rules," Jaune admitted. Their idea sounded better. Snooping without actually snooping.
"Fine fine… besides what could possibly go wrong? We're just reading books," Jaune said.
Ozpin's Office
Ozpin opened his eyes as he sensed a familiar presence enter his office. The ding of the elevator door alerted him to said presence. He swiveled in his chair to face the visitor. The doctor from the office. These must be those reports he asked for. Normally, he would not take any interest in looking at the medical files of students but… Miss Nikos was a special case.
"You- You were onto something when you asked us to run a full check after she woke up," the doctor said.
"Oh?" Ozpin paused, refraining from opening the folder as he looked up at her.
"You might want to take a look at it," she said.
Ozpin nodded as he opened the folder. Almost immediately, his eyes had gone as wide as saucers. The report had indicated that everything was normal but that wasn't what he was focused on.
"We detected foreign energy inside her body that we couldn't match to any known aura signature on the planet so we tried using dust to see if it matched. It did. We got a ninety-nine percent match that the energy resembled dust. Unfortunately, this makes no sense. Miss Nikos had all traces of dust removed from her body. What's more baffling is that we cross-referenced it with the dust blades used by Raven Branwen from the database and got a zero. Not even a single percent to show that the energy inside Miss Nikos's body belonged to the dust in Miss Branwen's blades. We have no idea what this energy is but… Miss Nikos's body is full of it," the doctor said.
"I see," Ozpin said as he focused on a page in the folder. Pyrrha's imaging. There was a mark on her hip. His own shoulder burned the longer he looked at the mark. It wasn't a painful burn. It was more akin to a sting or a phantom pain. A phantom pain that triggered whenever he was in the presence of something that resonated with them.
That's impossible. I'm the last one. There hasn't been one since… since, his own thoughts trailed off as he contemplated the possible ramifications of what he had just seen. Did that mean what he thought it meant?
"Is this file accessible to everyone?" Ozpin asked. He needed to nip this in the bud right now before others were able to access it. This information would never see the light of day. Ever.
"Huh? Of course, all Beacon Staff is capable of accessing the medical records of students for educational purposes such as making lesson plans and selecting opponents for combat classes," she answered.
"I want you to roll back the update made to Miss Nikos's medical file. After that, add an abridged version of what is on this folder onto her file instead. No one must know what is in this folder," Ozpin said.
"Eh? Why? What about that folder do we have to keep a secret?" she asked.
"All of it."
"All of it?"
"Yes."
"That's illegal! I could lose my job if I'm ever found out!" the doctor cried in distress. The headmaster was insane. He was asking her to go against every tenet of her job and to falsify medical records. Her own boss was asking her to stick her neck out and put her career on the line to keep a secret. What was it about Miss Nikos's examination that needed to be kept under wraps? Was it the energy she detected?
"You'll lose your job right now if you don't do as I say. Are we clear?" Ozpin said. His stare bore down on her like the fury of a herd of a million Goliaths.
Ozpin didn't like threatening his staff. In fact, he had only done it twice. Once when Team STRQ attended the academy and now. But… he needed to keep this under wraps. Not even Ironwood and the others were allowed to know. Mikaela forbid if they were allowed to know. Pyrrha would be turned into a weapon of war and they would all be doomed. Not even she would be able to defeat her if Pyrrha were to fully realize what she had become.
"Tch… fine. Will that be all?" the doctor asked with gritted teeth.
"Yes, that will be all," Ozpin said. The doctor nodded and left his office.
As soon as she left, Ozpin's eyes glowed an eerie emerald green as the entire folder was consumed by bright green flames.
"This… has become far more complicated."
Almost done with Arc 3. Just need to wrap up the Breach and then we're onto Arc 4! Major plot point here at the end! I want you guys to guess what Ozpin is referring to! Hint! I've mentioned it once! After the Breach is Arc 4 onward. I might make the Breach just one chapter since... the Breach is Team RWBY centric and I don't want to make this about Team RWBY. I might have Team JNPAR participate in defending Vale but not put them in the same spotlight as their counterparts. I'm going to put up a poll soon and the poll is...
Should Team JNPAR participate in the Vytal Tournament?
Now, you might be asking... but how? They're a five-man team! Das illegal!
Well, my idea was to bench one of them so they can participate. Otherwise, if no, I have something in store for them.
So... happy super late New Year from me! This is your Solar and Lunar New Year's present because I'm not giving you guys money. Also your Christmas present! Remember to leave a review! I wither without them!