The Second Step: Chapter 5
Warrior's Path: Part 2
A/N: this chapter is going to end the Pyrrha's history section of the story. The story's still going to focus on team RWBY for a bit, then swap back to JNPR and CRDL.
Why? Two words:
Mafia extortion.
By the way, though out this story, I've been using 'oh my Lovers' as a variation of 'oh my God.' This little quirk is explained in my other RWBY story "The Gods Are Missing" where two lovers saved the world.
Disclaimer: To all the sexy lesbian's out there, this chapter's coming straight to you from the arms of Lavernius Tucker, Bow Chika Bow Wow! For the dudes, the author doesnt own RWBY. Or is with Rooster Teeth. Or is all that good looking, but I'd still tap that. Bow Chika Bow Wow!
Tuesday
Ren stepped into the room with nary a whisper, and finally let out a long sigh of relief. He stripped out of the welding gear and helmet that had concealed him for the walk back, with almost every girl sending glances his way.
Ren turned, braced himself against the door and let his legs give out below him. Lovers, it was like every woman had some sort of telepathy built into them that told them that if they stripped him, they'd want to tap him. He just wanted to sleep. Alone!
"Help."
Ren furrowed his brow and pulled himself up by the doorknob. Pyrrha's bed appeared to be vomiting. A man suddenly appeared out of the covers, before being dragged down by Pyrrha again. Ren thoughts were rather appropriate; "What the fuck?"
"Help." The man surfaced again, saw Ren and cried "Rape" before vanishing again. Ren honestly didn't know if he should consider this funny or illegal.
The man yelped and cried out again. Ren decided that he needed to take this seriously, and promptly ripped the covers off the bed, and then the mystery man off Pyrrha. "Okay, well now-" and that was as far Ren got before the man ran for the door. 'Holy Crap I actually stopped a real rape.' Ren thought.
The man went for Jaune's sword and brandished it with some actual skill. Pyrrha got off the bed and gestured seductively at him. "Come ere Jauney boy. Come to momma."
Ren's jaw nearly detached itself from his skull. That was Jaune! He couldn't even recognize him! It suddenly occurred to Ren that if Jaune was like this, then he might look like a complete stranger. How Nora and Pyrrha had pulled that off, dressing them up in such a way that he was completely incapable of recognizing a teammate that he had known for four months was shocking.
Then the actual implications of what Pyrrha had said sunk in. "I'm going to leave." Ren turned to the door, only for Pyrrha to grab him from behind and Jaune to block the door.
"You're not going anywhere Ren." Jaune brandished Crocea Mors again.
Ren raised his hands in a peace offering. "Look, I'm not bi, and I don't want to be part of your Rape play."
"It's not play!" Ren stiffened at Jaune's tone. The man sounded like he was on the verge of tears! Ergo, like someone who was almost raped.
"Oh we are playing. And having a lot of fun." Pyrrha curled her hand under Ren's chin. Ren wondered what the hell was happening.
(Three Years Ago)
Pyrrha stared at the advert, and then at the warehouse. The addresses were the same, and the poster did say it was underground, but she seriously didn't think it was this off the main circuit.
Still, people trickled into the building, and most had the frat boy, goth girl appearances of fighting fans. Pyrrha wasn't sure why she had decided to go with something so far in the dark, but she was itching to fight, and the poster said that it was open to all comers, with all weapons and aura powers free for usage. It was a proper free for all, and Pyrrha had wanted one of those for a long time.
And besides, the fight was for three thousand dollars. Oh what she could do with three thousand dollars.
Inside, a ref gave her the rules: no rules save stop when he said stop, and one on one, no help. Pyrrha nodded and drew a card. She was up against a hulk of a man named Allen Ham.
In the ring, well, the fight was short but brutal. Ham had barely any actual style, but relied on copious amounts of aura and a weapon that basically amounted to a sword welded to a shotgun. "I call it Richard." He explained as the ref had her carted out on a stretcher. Pyrrha didn't care. She had gotten into a real fight, and she wanted more.
Two months of intensive training later, Pyrrha enlisted herself in the same underground ring she had before and tore through four men and six women like they were tissue paper. Three months after that, Pyrrha entered herself into the Mistral Regional Tournament and won.
It seemed like she was on top of the world at times, but it was always fun to fight. It was the matching of internal wits and strength with the omnipresent externality of weapons and dust. It was beautiful to her.
Pyrrha was born for war.
Nora opened the door, brushing at some scotch marks on her skirt and on her face cheerily. She was sure to say that she had absolutely won the fight for Ren's ass. Speak of the Grimm, look there's Ren and...
"PYRRHA! LET GO OF MY BOY TOY!"
The assembled team stared at the pink one. Nora looked from a very sexy Jaune to a VERY sexy Ren and finally at fairly normal looking Pyrrha. "What did I miss? I mean, I've only been gone what? Twenty minutes? An hour? I mean, I've only been fighting for a few minutes, or is that a case of time going slower when you're having fun. Or was the saying time goes fast when you're having fun. Hey Ren, what was the saying again?"
Ren looked at the Pyrrha that was caressing his chin like she wanted to marry it and at his friend. "Time flies-"
"When you're having fun! Right! Thanks Ren. So, what did I miss?"
"Pyrrha was trying to rape me." Jaune said.
"Oh Jauney-boy, we were playing. Come on, you know you were having fun." Pyrrha leaned in on Ren. "You know, we could have some fun." She whispered to him.
Ren practically teleported.
"Okay, this has gone on long enough." Ren said.
Jaune groaned and lowered his sword. "Pyrrha, just tell us what's wrong. I mean, this isn't you. You don't wanna sleep with me." Jaune rubbed the back of his head self-consciously. "...I wouldn't...
Nora stepped up. "Come on, where's the serious, friendly Pyrrha. We want that Pyrrha back."
Ren nodded in agreement. "We won't judge you for whatever happened Pyrrha. Just tell us and get it off your chest."
Pyrrha's smile never wavered. "Come on, there's nothing wrong with me. I'm the same old Pyrrha. I just needed a fight to get Sky's words out of my head." Pyrrha's smile seemed to grow and show too much teeth.
Nora, of all people, sighed. "Pyrrha, we want you to help us train, but we also want you to be here because you keep us together. You are the person who's always telling us just one more lap, just keep going. Always supporting me and Ren and Jaune, training Jaune to get him up to speed. You've practically raised us here. We want our mother back."
Pyrrha's smile widened fractionally, only so small because she was already threatening to rip her mouth open. "Come on. I think I'm still the same girl. And besides, who needs all that training. We're just here to make friends right?"
Silence. Jaune blinked in disbelief. He pointed at Pyrrha, going from looking at Ren and Nora and looking at Pyrrha with a look of shock quite unlike what anything else he had ever had on his face. "W,w,why? Why would you say that! We are all here, to learn how to fight! Not make friends! You said you would train me! You said you would help us! Doesn't that mean anything to you!?"
Pyrrha finally dropped the smile for something approaching a motherly grin that was slightly off. "I came here to make friends Jaune. I don't need to learn to fight. Trust me, we don't need to fight. We don't even need to compete in the Vytal festival. We're done."
(Three Years Ago)
Pyrrha sat down on the couch and started flicking through the channels. A news station passed, some cartoons, an ad for cat food. Pyrrha stopped flicking through the channels when déjà vu hit her. Wasn't this the exact scenario that had led to her originally realizes how terrible her life had been. She couldn't help but giggle at the ridiculous implications that she could end up accidentally erasing all of her hard won adaptation.
Pyrrha took the remote from Parry and started flicking through the channels again. She passed a block of reality TV shows before she realized that she was sitting next to her younger sister. Pyrrha turned off the TV and looked at Parry. "Hi."
Parry shrunk in on herself and Pyrrha winced. "I'm sorry that I... hurt you. I didn't mean to."
Parry seemed to sink into the couch. "Why don't you just back to the hospital we found you in."
Pyrrha's jaw dropped. Parry seemed to realize exactly what she had said and flinched away, bringing her hands up to defend herself from the blows of her sister. Pyrrha stared at her. Parry waited for the blow to fall.
Pyrrha grabbed her sister and wrapped her arms around her smaller form. Parry tried to struggle free, but Pyrrha slipped her arms under Parry's and didn't let go. Pyrrha took one final breath and started bawling her eyes out.
Parry stilled in her sisters arms. Pyrrha just held on and had a good cry. She let go of her emotions and just let them run their course.
If you asked Pyrrha what she was feeling, her answer would be, of course, sorrow. However, the reasoning behind her feelings was much more complicated. She was sad she hadn't managed to connect with her little sister after a year of trying. She was scared that she really was just what her sister thought she was: a monster.
But buried deep underneath all of that was a secret anger. Pyrrha was furious at herself and her family. Didn't they know what she had been through for the sake of a lunatic? Why couldn't Parry try to understand how painful and terrible it was to know that someone you were told to love, you knew deep down you were supposed to protect, hated and feared you. It made her feel...
...hideous.
Parry finally untangled herself from her sister, but didn't go anywhere. Her big sister was crying right here, and kept saying she was sorry. Parry was still scared. She was also a little confused. Pyrrha had hit her. Why was she crying?
Pyrrha folded in on herself, the warmth of her sister gone. She'd failed. Her sister hated her. Oh Lovers! Her sister hated her! Pyrrha grabbed her head, her mind growing more closed. It didn't matter, it wasn't important, she could igno-.
Parry hugged Pyrrha. Pyrrha abruptly stopped crying. Parry backed off and said, quite matter of factly; "Don't cry. You're too good for that."
Pyrrha hiccuped and rubbed at her eyes. "I'm sorry." She hugged her sister back. "I'm sorry for hitting you."
Parry hugged her sister tighter. "I'm sorry I was scared." Parry tried to get out of her sisters arms. Pyrrha tightened her grip around her sister. Parry started to struggle.
"Can I just have a little more hug?"
Parry stopped struggling and just fell back into the hug. Pyrrha nearly started crying again.
Team JNPR stared at Pyrrha, happily smiling and nodding as if she had just said the most hilarious joke. "Um, could you repeat that Pyrrha?" Ren asked.
"Well, we're not here to learn how to fight. We're here to make friends and just, you know, be ourselves. Am I right?"
Jaune and Nora shared a glance. Now they were beginning to seriously freak out. Whatever had promoted Pyrrha's little run yesterday had led to her being completely divorced from reality. Ren took a long, deep breath. "Okay guys, let me talk to her." To Pyrrha; "I know that you were scared Pyrrha, but what happened yesterday is in the past. We can help you get over what happened."
"Nothing happened yesterday. I just went out and pulled some really stupid stunts. I'm fine."
"You're not fine. The Pyrrha we know is a soldier-."
"I am not a soldier." Every ounce of cheeriness and aloofness vanished from Pyrrha's tone. Jaune stepped in.
"Pyrrha, we're at a school for soldiers. We carry weapons in the halls. We wear armor-."
"You wear armor."
Jaune ignored Nora. "We have strategy classes. On the first day, we killed a giant freaking scorpion. We. Are. Soldiers."
Pyrrha didn't meet Jaune's gaze. He took it as a sign to continue. "Pyrrha, you are the best fighter here at school. You promised to train me." Jaune looked at Nora and Ren. "Especially when you learned I faked my way into Beacon." Jaune turned back to his teammate. "I want you to know that, here, with your team, you can tell us everything. Right guys?"
Ren and Nora nodded, silent as the grave. Jaune gripped Pyrrha's hands. "We should have done this last night Pyrrha. Tell us what's wrong. Please."
The moment dragged on. Finally, Pyrrha met Jaune's cerulean gaze. "Have you ever heard of Project Argonaut?"
(Two years ago)
Pyrrha opened up the newspaper and flipped to the continuation of the cover story. "...Though Albus Schnee, patriarch of the Schnee family and CEO of the Schnee dust corporation was not in attendance, he was on the scene almost immediately, citing his new communication system his company developed for the speedy, blah blah blah, news bias and filler, here we go. Though the knight robot was active for a total of twenty-four minutes, only ten casualties were reported, along with a single fatality of the six year old Rein Schnee." Pyrrha set the newspaper down, seeing her family arrayed around the dining room table.
Pelum clicked his tongue. "Sad day when decent people decide to kill innocents for their cause."
Thetis shook her head. "I don't care if the Schnee's had their Faunas in bondage. Anyone willing to kill an innocent little girl is a monster to me. The poor Faunas, all be forced to associate with such a group though. Terrible."
Pyrrha didn't look at either of her parents, just going on and reading the story. The whole deal had been terrible. Weiss Schnee was now apparently an only child. How sad that it had to take place during one of the family's rare outings to.
Thetis finished her coffee and took her plate to the sink. "Are you all ready to go Pyrrha? We leave pretty soon."
"I'm ready. Just let me finish reading." Pyrrha skimmed through the rest of the article, including a statement from the pop idol Snow White that had been headlining the concert, and a few other articles, including a now rather out-of-date one about a very large pack of Beowulves outside of Mistral. Pyrrha finished the paper and was out the door and into her mother's cruiser.
She and Thetis were soon off to the forests outside Mistral, stopping only once at the wall that surrounded the city and protected the inner districts from the Grimm. Thetis flashed her badge and was directed to a parking lot just outside the wall where a dozen police cruisers and several vans were situated. The cold air surrounded them and corralled most of the people into their cruisers. However, a huntress regularly flashed between the cars, and a huntsmen was talking with another huntress atop a van.
Pyrrha and Thetis talked about nothing and everything, comparing notes on this or that subject and just passing the time. The cold morning air barely betrayed that, just last night, a slaughter had occurred.
Finally, the convoy got the go ahead and set out for a small, unremarkable field near the ocean. The drive was unremarkable. A snowplow had been chartered to clear the roads and provide some basic frontal defense on the off chance the convoy ran into Grimm. Despite the preparation though, the drive was uneventful and devoid of any form of action. The real fight had occurred last night.
A farmer had seen the carnage first hand after going out to investigate bright flashes late at night. He had told the police that a group of hooligans had been stealing his scarecrows lately, and had left his house with a shotgun. What he had found amounted to a field set aside to plow for the planting season that had been filled with 78 dead Beowulves.
The number still boggled the minds of the policemen sent out to confirm the kills. It boggled Pyrrha's mind. Even the famous Team JGER of Vale hadn't managed that many kills in one night. Ever. It would have taken maybe twelve trained Huntsmen three days to kill the Beowulves, just because after the first third went down, the whole pack would have split.
Not only had the entire pack been completely destroyed, it looked like after killing the first couple dozen, the hunter had seriously accelerated and totally obliterated the pack.
When the police arrived at the scene, the typical response was along the lines of "What the Shade." The entire field was littered with the imprints and bones of dead Beowulves, some still dissolving. Analysis of the prints in the snow confirmed the original assessment, that someone had acted alone and killed almost eighty Beowulves. One woman discovered a set of prints leading to a cliffside memorial.
A memorial dedicated to a Summer Rose.
Jaune stared at Pyrrha. The former child soldier - FORMER CHILD SOLDIER! - self-consciously rubbed the back of her head. Jaune looked at his teammates, both sitting in his bed. "Okay. Is this like, what? Some sort of horrible horrible joke? Because there is no way, no way, that the man, with no training or preparation whatsoever, who had to fake his way into the most prestigious combat academy, just so happened to be paired with the woman, a beautiful woman mind you, who just so happens to not only be in the position to train him essentially indefinitely, but is also a former child soldier."
Ren gave a slow nod. Nora was still hung up on the whole, faked his way into Beacon.
Jaune looked at Pyrrha. "Okay. How do we help?"
Pyrrha tried but failed to meet his gaze. "I wasn't sent here to be trained. My father decided that I needed a place where I could regularly be with people my own age to work in my social skills and make friends, real friends. His idea was that here, I'd do so well that I'd never need to worry about grades or studying. That here I could focus on being with my team. Focus on you guys."
Pyrrha looked at her team. "I can't do that though. I'll just turn back into a soldier here. If I'm here to learn to fight-" Pyrrha fought to keep her gaze on Ren, Nora and Jaune. "- I'll never be able to learn how to be a person. I'm sorry."
Nora suddenly stood up, surprising the group. "Pyrrha, you can be a person and a soldier. We don't want you to be just a fighter. We want you to be Pyrrha." Nora smiled slightly. "And I miss you being your old self. We're here for you, anytime of the day, any day of the week."
Ren got up and continued. "You've done well for months. If you've only now run into problems, well, that's a pretty good track record. We should have been with you last night, when you were in real trouble. We're sorry. I'm sorry."
Jaune nodded. "I'm sorry too." Nora repeated her friend's catchphrase. Pyrrha looked like she was either going to burst into tears or laughs.
"Would you really do that? For me?"
"Absolutely." Jaune wrapped his arms around Pyrrha, using his aura to lift her up. Pyrrha felt confidence, his confidence, run through her like fox after a hare. Nora jumped at the group hug, followed by an only slightly reluctant Ren.
Team JNPR was whole again.
"Hey, everyone!" Nora said in the group hug. "While we're here, me and Ren are in the Mob!"
"...Sure you are." Jaune and Pyrrha said.
They laughed.
A/N: Well, that chapter was sweet. I'm trying my hand at more drama heavy stuff, but hey, tell me if I'm succeeding. As always, thanks to my editors Ttran2323 and H'te Rarpee. And of course, my salutations to Rooster teeth.
Please, review.