Do You Believe in Fairy Tales?

Chapter 8: Pyrrha Nikos

A RWBY Fanfic

Here is a cute little red haired girl, fighting in the regional fights of Mistral. She is well known for her fighting skills and for the pure gifts she has shown to all she has come in contact with. She is very humble when asked about how she feels about this. She loves her family and is grateful for the support and teaching they have given her that has brought her so far and for the fame that it has cursed her with. She is destined to be one of the greatest warriors or huntresses of all time. She has beaten the record for consecutive championships won, with four; one better than her mother and two better than her father (who lost the third to her mother). Her name is Pyrrha Nikos and the people of Mistral know her and love her. But, she has doubts.

You see she knows that she has few friends, and those that are clamoring to be her friend only do so to have her as a name to drop. Businesses want her to endorse their goods. And all she seeks is to have true friends that she can love and will love her for who she is not for what she can do. Friends that she can hang out with and just be a girl like other girls as she grows. But, knowing the things she does, she finds relief and solace in the comfort of the stories she has always been told. For these stories all have some of what she desires. Friendships, caring for others, good triumphing over evil and characters that have a sense of destiny. Destiny, she feels that it is important to have a destiny, and she is sure that she has a destiny, although she questions what it may be sometimes.

"Mama?" She asks her mother from time to time. "What is destiny? Do I really have a destiny?"

"Yes dear, you do have a destiny." Her mother would reply. Because this is a very common discussion they have. "Everyone has a destiny, whether they know it or not."

"What do you mean by that? How can someone not know that they have a destiny?" She questions this idea because she has an idea of what her destiny has been from a young age. "If everyone has a destiny they would know what it is, or they wouldn't be able to fulfill it."

"But not everyone discovers what that destiny may be. You see even the heroes of your favorite stories didn't always know their destiny. Did they?" Her mother would always go that route on her, and she would have to think.

"No mama, I guess some of them had to discover what they were destined to do. But those are stories and not knowing is what makes a good story. That's not the way it works in real life, is it?"

"Is it? Do you think that everyone is as open to what they are going to do as quickly as others?" Her mother would always turn the question so she would think even more and have a knowledgeable answer. "Look at how you train with the other fighters." She pauses as she looks at other combatants at the tournament. "Did all these fighters learn the same things as quickly as others or figure out that they needed to learn something else?"

"Well I don't suppose they did," she would respond thoughtfully. "I guess it does take time to discover things sometimes."

"So does this mean that only the heroes in the stories can discover what their destiny is?" Her mother would smile when she was getting her point across. "Or can anyone discover what their destiny is?"

"I suppose you are right mama, I never thought of it that way." She would respond with a new found knowledge.

"So Pyrrha, I have a question for you." Her mother would begin. "Do stories imitate real life or does real life imitate the stories?" Her mother would always end it with a playful smirk.

"Come on mama." She would answer exasperatedly. "You know that stories are just that, stories. They have pieces of real life in them so we can relate to them. They are how we can teach lessons, like you have always taught me. But, the characters cannot be real in a lot of the stories, can they?"

"Why not? Don't you think there might be someone who is responsible for the formation of the Grimm? Or that there are four maidens that are in charge of the wellbeing of the seasons?"

"But those are just fun stories of how the world came to be and how we are taken care of through the seasons. They cannot be true, there isn't any magic in the world, can there?"

"I believe there is. And I believe that everyone has a destiny because of the stories we tell."

"But…." Pyrrha would always start.

"How did you learn that there was good and evil in the world?"

"From the stories you and papa told me."

"And what was the outcome of those stories? What did you learn from the stories?"

"I learned that there was good and evil in the world. I also learned that the fate of the world falls to those that would fight against evil to help the world survive in goodness. I also learned that hunters and huntresses were those destined to be the guardians of the good." Pyrrha would answer with pride.

"If all this is so? What is destiny? And is it possible for people to not know what their destiny is?" Her mother would ask to challenge her to state what she really believed.

"Destiny is a journey. A journey with an ultimate goal at the end. We all have a destiny whether we know it right away or not. Some may discover it as they are on the journey while others may believe that they know what their destiny is from the start." She would answer with strong conviction in her voice. Knowing that she was pretty sure that she knew what her destiny was.

As she continued to grow and prepare to leave for Beacon she kept reading all the stories that she loved growing up. And she would always remember the story of the maidens and the seasons for it kept her heart close to her mother. She would marvel at the heroes, the hunters and huntresses as they fought against evil and kept the world safe so that good would be able to thrive. But she still had her doubts about friends, finding caring people to be close to, loving people she could work with. She hoped that destiny would be kind to her and she would find the types of people that would give her what she wanted as friends she would be able to love them and be loved by them for her and not what she was. But, there was one thing that she knew without a shadow of a doubt though, she was going to be a huntress and be a force of good to overcome evil…..she knew she had a destiny!