Pyrrha's body tensed as the boy drew the massive mace slung to his back, yet for some reason he didn't charge her. This wasn't right at all, coming back must be shocking and all but to draw his weapon on her, and stare at her with such unbridled hate? Something was definitely not right here, and she had a sickening feeling it might be her.
Soon the other two boys of Winchester's team were standing behind him, their faces were a menagerie of emotions, all contorted into strange mixes of fear, shock, anger, and hate. Not a single one of them was happy to see her again. Well that hurt. No, it more than hurt, they had no idea what she's been through this past, however long it had been, she'd been tortured endlessly, it felt like years, every year they'd set fire to her very soul and push deeper, spreading their evil in her body, in her mind! How dare they look at her like that! They knew nothing about true pain, about the suffering she'd been forced to endure for so long, with nothing but that wretched taunting voice for company! She clenched her fists unconsciously as the anger inside boiled over, her eyes narrowed as her pupils dilated in rage, her whole body stiffened and she breathed heavily, each one almost coming out as a growl. That only seemed to make the boys angrier, the more hostile she appeared the more hate welled in their eyes at the sight of her, which only fed her own, creating an endless cycle. It was remarkable that neither side had charged before Doctor Oobleck crested the top landing and appeared behind Winchester's team. He stood in apparent shock, for once at a loss for words before breaking the ominous silence with a single stunned sentence:
"Oh my, this is interesting."
With that he extended his thermos into what resembled a flamethrower staff, a fire flickering at the end. And just like that all her anger dissipated, she respected this Oobleck immensely, she knew that, she also knew that there was no way he could've forgotten her...was there?
"Capture it, do not kill it." Is all Oobleck said before he sent a fireball screaming towards her face.
Pyrrha's eyes dilated in fear, but her body reacted before she knew it, twisting to the side behind the cover of the doorway as the fireball blew apart the wall opposite her, showering her with splinters and shrapnel which somehow, despite all logic, left her unharmed. No time for the why's now though she thought, she could already hear the crashing of feet against the floor as they raced towards her room, luckily however, the fireball had opened a new escape route, one right onto the roof of a warehouse next to them. With all the strength she, and her adrenaline, could muster she raced towards the hole in the wall, leaping across to the warehouse roof.
"Is it running?! Why's it doing that?!" Winchester shouted, presumably at Oobleck, from behind her.
It, she thought as her feet carried her ever closer towards the edge of the rooftop, why do they keep calling me that? She was pretty clearly Pyrrha Nikos, she could see that, why couldn't they?
FWOOM, another fireball rocketed towards her back, she tucked and rolled, hoping for it to whizz over her, but instead it grazed her feet as she rolled, causing a fresh wave of pain to roll through her right ankle, with a sharp gasp of pain she exploded out of the roll and got back to her feet, desperately glancing behind her. Winchester and his team were farther behind than she expected, they should be faster than that. Oobleck however was right on her tail, she got the briefest glimpse of his eyes as she looked and found them full of a curiosity so intense that it almost scared her, that and the anger.
She couldn't take them, not all at once and injured like this, and especially not with Oobleck backing them up and her with no weapons, aura, or semblance. She needed them to stop, desperately so. She was nearing the edge of the warehouse roof now, before her spread a labyrinth of cargo containers filled with goods that never reached their destination; the closest one was just high enough for her to land without injury, most likely. The alternative however were the five huntsmen on her tail, that racked up the likelihood of getting injured to a definitely. Cargo containers sounds good.
With a deep breath she leapt off the roof of the warehouse, her momentum from her sprint carrying her extra far, farther than it should in fact, she realized as she passed the container she was aiming for and careened towards one too high for her to land on top of, but high enough for her to maybe grip. Bracing her body for the impact she collided with the container with an echoing thud as it knocked the wind from her lungs. For a second she thought her hands might've missed the edge and she panicked, but then her fingers found purchase and she managed to pull herself up just before another fireball roasted the spot where'd she'd been. She turned to face the source and found Doctor Oobleck on the container she had intended to land on, thirty or so feet behind her, the two containers they were on separated by twenty feet of air. Behind him she could make out Winchester and his group just leaping off the warehouse roof now.
She called out desperately to Oobleck, frantically shaking her head and begging him to stop this. She didn't know what he, or the gathering Winchester and his team heard, but it clearly wasn't her voice or her words. Despite, or perhaps because of, the lack of verbal understanding their faces were a study in shock as she continued to shake her head and hold out her arms in front of her in a universal 'stop' gesture. She didn't want to fight them, as much as her emotions towards Winchester were of the anger and annoyance variety. She may not like the boy, but she definitely would not attack him unless she had to. Oobleck was especially painful, she knew she respected that man immensely; what memories caused that exactly she didn't know, but she did know that him attacking her on sight caused her a tremendous amount of emotional, and in the case of the fireball colliding with her ankle, physical pain.
Winchester recovered the quickest from his shock, and with a roar leapt towards her, despite his weight, the weight of his armor, and the weight of his mace he just managed to clear the jump, bringing his mace down in powerful overhead strike supplemented by gravity. Without her shield her first instinct was to roll left or right, however the narrow confines of the container forced her to leap backwards as the mace caved in the space where she'd been before. Winchester and his mace were big, they would hit hard, but that also meant they were slow, as long as she kept dodging she would be fine, and if she managed to get inside the reach of his mace there's not much he could do. Unfortunately, she was running out of room to dodge. She ducked gracefully as the mace careened horizontally above her head, coming down to one knee, her right leg stretched fully to the side before she pressed off and swiped it in an arc before her, separating the boy's feet from the ground in a rather forceful way. It wasn't until she finished the move though and attempted to stand over the boy that she inhaled sharply in pain and fell to the floor. Stupid! Her right ankle was nowhere near fully healed and here she'd just used it to swipe the boy's feet out from a under him, a boy who just happened to be wearing steel greaves.
Seeing her vulnerability, his teammate with the short Mohawk and dual daggers leapt across the gap between the containers, followed in short order by the two other boys and Oobleck. Gritting her teeth in pain, she rolled on her back, avoiding the twin daggers that came down in a vicious arc on where she'd been, unfortunately that roll led her straight off the edge of the cargo container and sent her flying towards one ten feet below. She braced her forearms together in front of her, colliding with the surface of the next container to the tune of resonating metal and a gasp as she got the wind knocked from her lungs for the second time in a minute. Her momentum kept her rolling to the side as she fell off another container, repeating the same process for two more before she landed with tremendous pain on the solid concrete of the dockyard area.
After a second of dazed gasping she managed to catch her breath and with tremendous protests from her arms, which she was shocked weren't broken, managed to push herself to her feet as a moan of pain escaped her lips. She managed to look up to where she'd fallen from just in time to see the five huntsmen leaping down from container to container towards her. It suddenly hit her just what an unfair advantage Aura was. Her head swiveled from side to side, searching for any route of escape she could find. On her left and before her was nothing but empty docking yards for what must've been several hundred meters, with her renewed limp she'd get run down in that territory, and even without there was precious little cover from their ranged attacks that way. That left only her right, a winding maze of corridors formed by stacks of cargo containers, some fallen and others cracked open. Her right it was. She limped as fast as she could towards the maze and just as she passed into its protection another fireball collided with the ground directly behind her.
This wasn't automatic safety however, it provided the means to safety, but she needed to find that sanctuary on her own. She hobbled down the maze, taking lefts and rights or continuing on straight haphazardly, all the while breathing heavily and glancing over her shoulder to see if she'd lost them. She heard them shouting, communicating to each other over the tops of the containers. They were like hunting hounds on a scent, braying to each other as they split up to confuse and corner their prey.
Dust, why wouldn't they stop?! Couldn't they see who she was? Maybe they can, a voice whispered in the back of her mind, maybe you're the one who can't see things for what they are. Icy fear gripped her heart. No, that-that couldn't be true. She stared at her hands for confirmation, willing them to be her hands, she looked at her legs, her feet, they all looked like her, but what if the voice was right? What if she couldn't see? Everything else, the Grimm, Winchester and his team, Doctor Oobleck, all saw something else when they looked at her. But what?! What do they see?! She stared at her trembling hands in panic, they couldn't even understand her when she talked to them.
"Hello there." She started at the proximity of the voice, head shooting upwards and body leaping backwards, careful of her right foot this time. How could she have been so stupid twice in one day?! Being lost in her own mind and allowing people to sneak up on her was not something Pyrrha Nikos the Champion should've allowed to happen. The voice came from the end of the "hallway" the containers formed, there it formed a "T", the Doctor before her must've come from one of the twin branches, while she was lost in her own little world. She glanced quickly behind her and found the hall continued on for at least another fifteen feet before another corridor offered sanctuary on the left. Would she be fast enough to dodge any fireballs he shot at her? Even if she was could she outrun him with her limp?
"Can you understand me?" That question jarred her mind out of the, admittedly pessimistic, calculations about her escape chances. She looked at the man with the unkempt shock of green hair before her, she couldn't see his eyes behind his glasses, he held his hunting hat in his right hand, his flamethrower staff in a relaxed position towards the ground in his left. She nodded vehemently in answer to his question. This was leagues better than him chasing her, or blowing her apart with his fireballs, but it still wasn't good enough. Somehow none of them could understand her or see her for who she… She glanced down at her hands. What she thought she was.
"Fascinating," Oobleck muttered under his breath. Her head snapped back up at that. His eyebrows shot up in return, apparently he hadn't expected her to hear that. He coughed somewhat awkwardly before he continued.
"Can you speak?" Without thinking she immediately responded with an excited yes as she nodded her head in unison. This...confounded the Doctor. He clearly understood her nodding, that much had to be true, how could he not? But his brows furrowed in surprised concentration at whatever she had said. Either she hadn't said yes, or he had heard something else.
He took a hesitant two steps towards her, "Well, I'm afraid you can't speak, or...at least I can't understand you." She sighed in frustration at that, another thing that seemed to surprise the Doctor.
"Doctor! We're on our way!" Winchester's voice was close, too close. And even worse it sounded like it was coming from somewhere behind her. Her body tensed up and she checked quickly over her shoulder. The pounding of four feet seemed to be coming from somewhere further down the hallway, not from the nearest exit on her left. She turned back to face Oobleck, desperately trying to think of a way out.
"I'm afraid you won't make it there in time," he said with a weary sigh as he replaced his hat. "You're already wounded."
He was right of course, she'd allowed herself to be trapped due to stupidity. But, that didn't mean she wouldn't try. That she wouldn't give up without a fight. She leapt backwards, away from Oobleck again, turning to the right to dodge the fireball that sailed past her, she backed up more. She didn't want to turn her back on Oobleck, but if she didn't then Winchester and his team would be on her, she either had to turn and dash for the hallway or continue to do this dodging dance until Winchester and his team cornered her. With her mind screaming that she was making a fatal mistake she turned her back on Oobleck, but instead of hearing the familiar screeching that indicated a fireball had launched she heard the impossible speed of his footsteps closing in on her, she poured everything she could into her feet, but her damn ankle couldn't carry any weight. She desperately attempted to dive away from the strike she knew was coming, but it was lower than she expected, catching her ribs mid dive, and effortlessly sending her crashing into the container on the left, denting it as she did. Her body fell to concrete with a crack, yet nothing was broken. Dust, everything hurt, she desperately clawed at the ground in front of her, trying to crawl away, but she could already hear the final blow on its way, she looked towards her right, and immediately the thermos slammed into her face, shockingly she wasn't knocked out by the blow. By all logic she should be, but it merely stunned her.
The immense force of the blow, however, caused her head to snap back, the back of it colliding with the container behind her. She could feel something hot and wet dribbling down her neck. Darkness began to cloud her vision, contesting with the stars that danced before her, and a terrifying thought crept into her mind as she threatened to blackout. What if the Darkness claimed her again? What if she had to endure more torture? She didn't want that, couldn't take it, she would never go back there, not willingly, not without a fight.
Her hands scrabbled desperately against the concrete, she could hear another crushing blow from the thermos on its way. She brought her forearms before her in an X, catching the flaming weapon squarely across her arms, but the momentum continued. Her back slammed against the thin steel of the metal container, and, surprisingly, her back won. With a deafening screech the metal was rent apart as she went careening through the gap. Another screech and once more her back punctured through metal, sending her through the wall of a warehouse and sprawling across the floor.
Her vision swam, the lights suspended on the ceiling shifting and circling with their twins as her blinks struggled to sort out her vision. The steady clacking of feet on metal forced her body into action. Her vision still swam, her ankle still screamed, and her arms were sore from protest, but she groggily rose to meet her attacker. Three Ooblecks swam in and out of focus before her, approaching with weary sighs as they hefted the weaponized thermos. Three flaming staffs solidified into one just moments before they collided with her left side. Instinctively her arm swept downward, locking down the device against her side as her right fist went careening towards one of the three Oobleck's cheek for a counterattack. She wasn't sure if he dodged or she missed, but either way the only thing her fist connected with was air. Oobleck followed up by ramming his shoulder into her chest, bodily checking her into a wall of shelves lined with boxes. The rack shook as her body collided with it, boxes full of unused goods cracking underneath her. A small part of her brain told her that shouldn't happen, that she didn't weigh that much. That part went ignored as she brought her forehead down in a vicious headbutt towards the good doctor. He brought his hat down just in time to absorb the worst of the blow, but he still stumbled backwards and away from her. Suddenly though, without the weight of the Doctor keeping her up, her body began to teeter ominously; her mind was sluggish and slow, and she couldn't raise her arms in front of her face as it rushed to meet the ground. With a resounding crack the two met, but the pain was unusually dulled, impossibly so. Her fingers scratched feebly against the concrete, leaving shallow scratches on the usually unyielding surface. Huh, was her last thought.
In her dream she was chasing someone, the blond boy. His shoulders were hunched as he walked away from her, down a path covered in snow and dead trees. She poured everything she could into the movement of her legs, she wanted to shout his name to get him to stop, she opened her mouth, but no words came. She couldn't remember who he was, only that he was incredibly important to her. Catch him, I have to catch him. She took off towards him, but a familiar sharp pain in her heel caused her to trip and fall, she looked down in shock and terror to see an arrow sticking out from her foot. She couldn't tell where it had come from, it seemed to appear out of the darkness.
Emerald eyes wide with fear scanned the black behind her, but it was fruitless. The black was impenetrable and unknowable. Slowly it began to stretch towards her, she desperately tried to crawl away back towards the blond boy and the snow, but it only seemed to adjust its speed to be slightly faster than her own. It was toying with her, she realized. It could catch her whenever it wanted, but it wanted to cause her fear, force her to see the inevitability of her plight before it crushed her. A chilling laugh echoed from the dark behind her, growing in volume until it seemed to be coming from all around her. It was the same laugh that had mocked her so during her torture. She wanted to get up and fight it, to scream and shout and rage at it, she wanted to kill it, but the pain in her ankle and the all consuming fear that gripped her heart forced her body to stay petrified where she lay.
"The others know what you are, child, yet you still cling to your soul's desperate illusion. A fool's errand. It would've have been kinder had he not freed you, but this way has proven much more entertaining." Another hollow, scraping laugh. She flinched as the laugh overwhelmed her ears, seemed to pierce into her brain. She opened her mouth to beg for help, but the laugh was in her head now, splitting it like a spike, every breath seeming to only drive it deeper. Involuntarily she screamed, a desperate, terrible, and animalistic display of jeopardy. The laugh overwhelmed her, and she couldn't hear herself screaming anymore, though her mouth still hung open and her vocal chords still trembled, all she could hear was the laugh.
Her body woke before her mind did, eyes wide and limbs writhing and scratching before her brain was willing or able to process what it saw. She was faintly aware of her mouth still open, still emitting that horrible scream, but for a second she was incapable of quieting it. In separate effort it clamped her hands over her mouth, the scream continued, but it was muffled now. As her mind became aware of her surroundings she began to choke on her scream, stopping it dead as she gasped for breath.
She was in a cell, a literal actual jail cell. There were no bars before her though, only a massive steel door with slots for food. On her right was what appeared to be a window of some kind, and through it she could see four figures. The first her mind told her was Doctor Oobleck, minus his glasses and hat, but still with his thermos. His eyes were wide, but whether in astonishment or fear she couldn't tell. A faint bruise colored his forehead. I did that to him, she realized, and before she could stop it a desperate "I'm sorry" escaped her mouth. His eyes flinched at that, his concentrated frown growing deeper. Of course, he couldn't understand her, none of them could.
The big portly man dressed in a crimson coat to Ooblecks left, her right, leaned over and whispered something in the Doctor's ear. It was then that she remembered the three other figures that stood with Oobleck. She recognized them all, but only two had names. On Oobleck's left was the portly man with an incredibly bushy gray mustache masking his mouth, and equally bushy eyebrows hiding his eyes. She respected this man, not as much as Oobleck, but there was still a hearty amount there, and along with it came an incredible sense of boredom. Then there was the woman on Oobleck's right, she was tall, with somewhat disheveled golden curls framing both sides of her face, the rest of her hair was pulled back in a hasty but organized bun nestled atop the back of her head. Her face was beautiful, but stern and unyielding, with piercing, analytical, green eyes that scanned her, finding all her weaknesses and the quickest way to exploit them. Her arms were crossed in front of her and in her right hand she held a black riding crop. With her face came emotions, as with all the others. She had respect for this woman, more than she did for Oobleck, but with it came a healthy amount of fear as well, that, combined with her dismantling green eyes, caused her to inadvertently flinch backwards, half raising one arm defensively in front of her. This roused a snort from the back of the group opposite the glass in front of her, away from all the people she respected and on Oobleck's far right was Winchester. His back was resting solidly against the wall behind, arms crossed in front of him, his face locked in a sneer and his eyes flaring with hate.
She snorted in anger at the sight of him and his idiotic eyes. Leaning heavily against the wall for support she managed to force herself to her feet, or foot as it were, seeing how much she was favoring her left side. She wouldn't appear weak in front of that fool, despite her ankle's protests that weak didn't matter as long as it healed. Purple eyes glared back at hers and, while her left arm was busy supporting her weight on the wall, her right tensed at her side.
The sound of someone clearing their throat tore her eyes away from Winchester and towards the source. Oobleck had one hand raised to his chin, the other resting on his flamethrower staff at his side, using it as a cane. He seemed intensely interested in her, his eyes memorizing every detail of her face and body.
"Do you know where you are?" He asked in a consciously slow manner. Well, yes she knew vaguely where she was, in Vale, somewhere near the West Commercial and Industrial Districts if what she had seen of bullhead activity held true. But that really was quite a large area wasn't it? And she didn't know where she was immediately either except that it was somewhere in a cell, in some building. Frustratedly she nodded, followed by a quick shake of her head: yes and no.
"Yes and no?" The answer seemed to intrigue Oobleck, intensifying the curiosity with which he looked at her. This...wasn't going to work. She needed some way to communicate in depth with the man and the rest of the group before her. She looked over them and only then noticed the electronic devices clipped to their waists. Scrolls! She could still type couldn't she? Hobbling forward towards the glass she pointed towards the dormant device attached to the man's belt, before carefully pointing at herself and making typing gestures and pointing back at him.
Oobleck, and indeed everyone else on the other side of the glass was in a state of shock. Even Winchester's sneer had faded to a quizzical look.
"You want me to give you my scroll?" He asked hesitantly, she frantically nodded her head in return. "Why?" Damn. She needed a better way of explaining, her typing gestures must've just looked like nonsense. Quickly she pointed towards her mouth and opened and closed it in various shapes, and pointed back towards Oobleck.
"To eat him?" The portly man beside Oobleck almost chuckled. No! Not to eat him! Why would she want to eat him?! She frantically shook her head, this time hobbling closer to the glass so she was leaning against it before pointing towards her mouth and making the same miming talking motions, before pointing to her her ear and then at Oobleck.
"You want my scroll to talk to me?" The green haired man's face was alight with excitement and curiosity. The relief that she was understood and the Doctor's infectious excitement caused her to break out into a wide smile and nod her head vigorously. With barely contained excitement Oobleck looked at the blond woman for permission, before she hesitantly nodded her head.
"Brilliant! I shall give it to you through the slot in the door!" He shouted, his words a jumbled mess now that his conscious effort to slow them down was replaced with unbridled excitement. He vanished from the room in a streak of green as she hobbled back over towards the giant steel door. Just as she got there, the bottom most slot flipped open and an open scroll slid across the ground and against her foot. Leaning on the door for support she picked up the device with a triumphant smile on her face. Progress at last! The Scroll was open to the notes section with a blinking cursor displayed and a keyboard at the bottom of the screen.
"Very well then, if you would type out your answers to my questions and and hold them up to the glass when you are finished that would be capital!" Oobleck was already back in the room with the others, barely able to contain his jitteriness. As she made her way back over to the glass she couldn't help but grin, something that seemed to unnerve the rest of the group, making the blond woman's eyebrows furrow together and the round man in the crimson jacket's mustache rustle and frown. However the best part was Winchester, who had stopped leaning against the wall and tapped his foot nervously against the ground. That fact only made her smile wider.
"Excellent, now I suppose we should start from the beginning again: do you know where you are?" Oobleck asked. Her fingers moved quickly across the keyboard, face a mute frown of concentration. It was good things like typing weren't included in her amnesia. Eventually, after reading over her response she thought she had come up with something satisfactory: Yes and no, I know I am in Vale, somewhere in the Western Commercial and Industrial District as we should be near your base. Though where exactly this cell and building I'm located in are I do not know.
She pressed the screen of the scroll flat against the glass, exactly at eye level for Oobleck, and while it was intended for the green haired Doctor, she couldn't help but notice the way everyone in the room leaned in to read her screen.
"Fascinating, absolutely fascinating." Oobleck muttered to himself in quiet astonishment, the portly man beside him could only grunt in response.
"Who knew it would be smart enough to talk." Winchester grunted as he read the screen pressed against the glass. She fixed him with her coldest stare. What did he mean by that? Of course she could talk, she knew it must be strange to see her back from the dead, it felt strange. But that didn't mean she couldn't-well apparently she could only type coherently not speak, but still. Her eyes snapped away from Winchester and to the blond woman beside Oobleck as she heard her speak for the first time.
"Yes well-" she was interrupted abruptly by Doctor Oobleck, the man seemed to have tuned out all of existence save for himself, his scroll, and the subject before him.
"How long have you been able to understand us?" He asked excitedly. The question gave her pause, she couldn't give a specific date because her memories were so jumbled and fuzzy, but nothing in her mind told her that there was ever a point where she couldn't understand people, save for the voice in the darkness. She wasn't sure to count that among people however. And she definitely couldn't remember a time after the darkness where she hadn't been able to understand them. This answer took her longer, but she could tell the group before her would wait as long as it took, they were enthralled by this. As far back as I can remember, I have always been able to understand people. She pressed the Scroll against the glass and awaited their response.
It was not what she expected.
Oobleck's complexion paled but his excitement did not waver, the man in crimson stiffened and his mustache twitched in agitation, the woman straightened her riding crop and her face was broken by a furious frown. Winchester stormed forward, his nostrils flaring and his eyes burning.
"Can the rest of you understand us?!" He shouted at her, arms trembling with fury at his side. Rest of you? What did he mean? She glanced at her hands, but they still showed her pale skin and human hands. You know what he means, a voice whispered in her head. No, no, no. She refused. They had to be wrong. She had to human. Please-
"When you slaughter us, when you hear them sob and beg can the rest of you understand?!" Winchester had slammed one palm against the glass now, but she hadn't noticed the noise over the volume of his shout. She could only stare at him and his words in mind numbing fear of what they implied.
"When you slaughtered the family of whoever that child's doll belonged to, could you understand them?! How old were they?!" There were tears in his eyes now, a strange sight, the eyes that looked at her with such absolute hate, were brimming with unshed tears. His hand on the glass had gone white and rigid with rage, the one by his side was the opposite, trembling and raging and wishing for nothing more than to choke the life out of her. She glanced at the doll tucked in her sash, still covered in blood, and trembling along with her whole body. She had to tell them. Had to tell them that it wasn't her, it couldn't have been her, it was the Grimm and she was human, she had to be. Oh Dust she had to be. With a manic desperation she shook her head as she typed, she couldn't look into those scalding eyes. It wasn't me, I didn't kill the girl, it was the Grimm.
She slammed the Scroll against the glass, desperately willing for them to believe her, they had to. Her hand was shaking in panic, her eyes shot from face to face in the group as they read her message. The three she respected knitted their brows in confusion, and stared at her reprehensibly, trying to make sense of her words, but they only filled Winchester with even more fury.
"Are you mocking me?! You know what you are!" He spat the words at her as if there was no greater insult. She knew what she was didn't she? She had to. She knew who she was. She was Pyrrha Nikos, wasn't she? She stared at her hands, they seemed worn now, extra calloused and scarred but they were still her hands, human hands. What was happening?! Was something wrong with her or them? Her whole body shook as she typed the words on the scroll, shaking her head and murmuring incoherently. I'm human, like you. I'm Pyrrha Nikos.
She pressed the screen against the glass, desperately scanning their faces as they read, shook their heads in shock, and read again. The silence seemed to stretch on forever, broken only by her murmurings of what she hoped sounded like "please" again and again. Their eyes kept going from the screen to her face, faint sparks of recognition registering ever so slightly. But instead of relieved grins and smiles their frowns only deepened, their faces growing ever more world weary. Oobleck spoke first.
"Miss...Nikos," he struggled with that, but he had said her name, called her by her name! The tiniest spark of hope registered within her heart. The faint sound of a camera shutter coming from her right tore her, and everyone else's attention towards Winchester. He held his scroll in hand before his face and as she stared at it she heard the camera go off again. He lowered it and glared at her with eyes still full of hate.
"You may think you're Pyrrha Nikos, you may even look like her." No, no, please. "But you are not her and you are not human." She let out a small whimper and held her hand out as if begging him to stop, to not deliver the news she knew now was inevitable.
"You are a Grimm."
He stared at her with utter disgust as he slammed his scroll against the glass, the picture he just took staring back at her. The woman, if it could be called that, staring back at her had a spiked ivory headdress, no chains dangling gently, just plasters of spikes and bone thrust towards the sky, with a flowing red trim. Her hair was deathly white instead of red, not a beautiful platinum like the girl in her memories, but a sick, dead white. Dry and brittle, it hung. Her ponytail was one long braided length, but the color and texture of the hair, along with how it was braided, suggested that rather than hair it was a link of small human femurs, dangling down to the small of her back. Where her headdress met her forehead a sharp vertical edge began to form as boney plates met with the crown, the same edge continued down just past where she felt her nose ended, and there it stopped in a sharp point. The same boney plates formed around her eyes, following her cheekbones diagonally downward, meeting the vertical blade just before it ended in its point. Where the plates around her eyes met the blade they swooped outwards, reinforcing the sharp edge. The same plates, as they passed the outside corners of her eyes, went up, meeting the headdress that had become fused with her body and made of her own bone. The sides of her mask that swooped up towards it were coated in small spikes, increasing in size until they met her headdress, where they reached the maximum length of about an inch and a half. The skin that could be seen, that of her her cheeks and around her mouth was deathly pale, if it was anymore more white it would be transparent. Black veins pulsed beneath her skin and could be seen just underneath the surface; outwards from her mouth wisps of black coloration crept in every direction across her skin, some vanishing up behind her mask, others stretching out to the very edge of her cheeks, grasping for something they couldn't find. Her lips themselves were pitch black, like the wisps they emitted across her face. Her neck guard was still where it was, but like her headdress it had been fused to skin and made of the same boney plate. Articulated spikes erupted from it and stretched upwards towards her jaw, bending and moving with with her skin like joints. Where they met her jaw they formed a line following it, tracing it along her face but not past the lower jaw. From there more small spikes of bone crept up her pallid skin, but no more than two inches. All of her boney plates, from headdress, to mask, to neck guard were covered in the intricate blood-red trim of Grimm. Her eyes though, her eyes were what really shocked her. Where before there had been the white, followed by the brilliant green iris, to the black pupil, there now was nothing but blood red, all the way up to her pupil, the one bastion of humanity left in her face. Her pupil was where a dot of pure green resided, nestled in the burning red, like a forest surrounded on all sides by a wildfire.
She screamed and sobbed all at once, a terrible, guttural, fearful thing forcing its way from her throat. Somehow she had ended up on the floor, knees pressed against her chin as she stared at her trembling hands. The skin on her palms was the same pitch black as her lips, punctuated by small flecks of white scattered like paint. But the back of her hands and all of her forearms were covered in more thickened bone plate, forming a gauntlet upon her hand with vicious red colored spikes protruding from her knuckles, and sharpened red points perched on the edges of her fingers. The redness of the spikes stretched up her forearms, past the flared curve of her gauntlets, and in four red lines met four equal length and equally vicious spines protruding from the back of her elbows.
Her hands shook as she screamed. She wasn't sure how the group on the other side was reacting, but did it really matter? Here she was, after all that torture, and she couldn't even call herself human anymore. And with the limited memories barely making a comeback in her mind, could she even call herself Pyrrha? Did it matter who she was, when inherently what she was now was monstrous? She didn't know.
A/N: Confirmation! Pyrrha is Grimm-ish. "Ish" being the key phrase there. She's not human, but nor is she fully Grimm as she does have a, admittedly pathetically small, aura.
Now people may be wondering how she never saw the change in her body before, and the answer to that, as some probably saw coming, is Aura. Pyrrha doesn't have enough Aura to form a basic shield around her body from blows, only to passively heal over time. Pyrrha is also the type of person, I believe, to lie to someone if it prevents them from being hurt in some way, even if it might be better for them to know the truth. Bearing that in mind what her aura did was essentially trick her eyes into seeing what they wanted to see, a pleasant lie that served to "protect" her somewhat from her fate since it couldn't protect her physically from harm.
Of course, whether it was kinder to reveal it to her from the start or reveal it here is debatable, yet also a moot point. Now that her soul's illusion has been shattered she can never fall back into it again, she's stuck with reality now, for better or worse.
Sorry I put this one up so late, had a busy day and didn't get around to editing until late, debated posting it tomorrow, but I promised a weekly schedule so I'll stick to it, even if it's posted at a wonky time.
That's all for today, do tell me what you think of this chapter, I'll probably update the summary sometime tomorrow to be more spoilery, but now I'm gonna go to bed. Goodnight, friends! By the way sorry if this is more error-filled than normal, my mind is pretty hazy from sleepiness at the moment.