"-ink Bart?" Bartholomew Oobleck was shaken from his thoughts by the deep bellowing voice across from him. Peter had asked him something, though exactly what he was unsure.
"I'm sorry Peter," he sighed hastily, "I'm afraid I was lost in my thoughts."
"Ha!" The moustachioed man before him bellowed, his laugh and amused pounding of the table shook the group's bodies, but after so many years together they were used to it. "Don't tell me you've turned back into a student Barty, why I remember when I spoke so many minds used to wander-"
"Yes, Peter I'm afraid we are all familiar with your lectures and their tendency to...drone on." Glynda sighed from Bart's left, raising a finger to press her glasses back up the bridge of her nose as she made eyebrow contact with the man across from him.
"Glynda, you wound me." The man clutched at his chest melodramatically as his moustache shifted in what his colleagues knew to be a smile. His face took on a more serious tone as his eyebrows stared at each grain of wood on the table. "Let's hope the students remember them too."
The table grew silent as each of the teachers slipped into that familiar territory of doubt, each one wondering if they'd truly done enough to prepare the children in their charge. Bart could tell by the slumping of his age old friends' shoulders that they didn't think they had. He could sympathize. The creature in the cell claiming to be Miss Nikos only seemed to further drive that point home to them. Bart sighed for what must've been the tenth time in the past hour. So many questions, so many possibilities related to it. All of them seemed infinitely tragic.
"As I was saying though, what do you think, Barty?" What did he think? That was a very good question.
"Well...I think the creature in there is the first humanoid Grimm we've ever encountered, nay even heard of. The implications of it are staggering to say the least."
"Not to mention it can talk." Winchester spoke up for the first time from the his spot near the door. As the team leader when they had encountered the creature Bart felt his presence here might be needed, so far it hadn't.
"Typing is not talking, Mr. Winchester." The Doctor corrected, turning towards his empty mug that sat before him. "The creature did seem to instinctively try to speak to me several times when it had certain gut reactions, and before that on the cargo containers. Both times however it made only beastial, strangled noises; different from the typical guttural roars and growls of the Grimm we know, but unintelligible all the same. Nothing like proper words. Such an action suggests that it thinks, or thought, it could talk, but cannot." He attempted to straighten his tie as he leaned back in his chair, before giving up and resting a hand contemplatively under his chin.
"But it's, admittedly, deft mastery of our language suggests it knows it rather well. And it's sufficient mastery of the mechanics of the written word suggest an uncomfortable amount of familiarity with our language. Where would it get the chance to read and write?" The whole scenario unnerved and excited the man. As a hunter it was his duty to protect humanity from the forces of the Grimm, and a reading and writing Grimm like the one in the cell suggested an immense increase in threat. The doctor and student in him was dying to know more about the creature, the things they could learn about the Grimm from it were innumerable, interrogation had never before been a possibility with Grimm. That is, if it's claim was false. "What do you think Mr. Winchester?"
The boy huffed in annoyance, though he knew it was in vain. Despite the fact that Beacon had fallen and taken most of Vale with it, the teachers before him still informally quizzed and educated him and his team, as well as those of the others who had remained in Vale. Old habits really did die hard. "Well," he began, mustering his thoughts, "who knows how long the creature could've been in Vale? Surely there are lots of books and papers lying around? It could've read those?" The ex-professors all stared at him, clearly what he had said wasn't satisfactory. Coughing nervously, he thought deeper, having three teachers get their educating kicks from him at once was not enjoyable. "But that wouldn't be enough time to learn a language so intimately, I guess. Could be it had been studying it since Mountain Glenn? Hiding in the caves and tunnels there, picking through the ruins?" Apparently this was satisfactory enough as Oobleck nodded and spoke.
"If we consider it to be nothing more than a Grimm than that may very well be. The written word can be a vessel for human emotion, perhaps over the years some Grimm managed to learn the language, but for such a creature to have the necessary intellect to even begin such a task it would have to be centuries old, not to mention history has proven again and again that translations are impossible without some form of codex or base, and the Grimm language, if such a thing even exists, would bear no similarities at all to ours. It would've needed help. Something virtually impossible."
Peter leaned forward in his chair, making it creak as he did so. He eyed Bart knowingly. "If we consider it a Grimm? I think I know where you're going with this Barty."
Bartholomew Oobleck could only shrug and smirk in return, the man truly knew him too well. "But if we consider the creature's claim that it is, somehow, Miss Nikos. Well, many things start to make sense."
"You can't be serious," Cardin shouted, his face locked in indignation and outrage. "That thing, is a Grimm, how could it possibly be Nikos?!"
Bart glanced again wistfully at the empty mug before him. The true tragedy of the Fall of Beacon had been the interruption of his steady coffee supply. "How indeed," he muttered before looking up to face Cardin. "When we first encountered the creature, Mr. Winchester, what was it doing?"
The boy blinked, thinking back to the encounter on the ninth floor that had led them here. "Nothing, it just stood there. Though," he scratched at some of his stubble in thought, "it didn't exactly seem pleased to see me. Pretty pissed in fact."
"But it didn't attack immediately?" Peter's eyebrows were furrowed together at Cardin's description of the first few seconds. Despite his rambling nature and tendency to boast, Peter had held the position of Grimm Studies Teacher for a reason. The man knew the creatures and their tendencies extremely well.
"No, it just stood there, staring at me and my team. I guess that's weird, isn't it?"
"Extremely so," Peter grunted across from him.
"And when we attacked it, Mr. Winchester, what did it do?" Bart asked the boy, using that same tone that said you already knew the answer, but that he wanted you to realize it.
"It ran." He stated, as if that should've been obvious. "Scurried out the first hole it could, the one you made in the wall."
Bart nodded vehemently in agreement, rising quickly from his chair. "It ran," he said. "Grimm do not run. They never have. They engage any human on sight, right away, the only way they win is if that human ends up dead. They do not retreat, they have almost no sense of self preservation and not a shred of mercy or morality." He was on a roll now, his words inadvertently becoming jumbled together in his excitement. "Their sole purpose is the utter extinction of humanity with unheard of tenacity. As far as we know, it is their only purpose. Their single minded tenacity in pursuit of that goal is the only defining characteristic of Grimm. They pursue it until they are dead. But this creature, when we engaged it, it ran." A breath, breath was important, he needed to breath to speak, and he needed to speak to convince them. "Not only did it run from us, it never once took the offensive either, it exclusively attacked in self-defense, only countering Mr. Winchester's strike when it had to."
Peter's eyebrows were so tightly knit in concentration that they seemed to practically be one. "That is...extraordinary unusual. In fact," he sighed, rubbing his left hand down his face before shaking his head in academic defeat, "I can't say I've ever heard of such behavior from a Grimm before. In any book or tale I can recall."
"Exactly!" Bart shouted, "now one could attempt to rationalize it away by saying that it was injured, which it was, especially after swiping Mr. Winchester. But in all our years have any of you heard of injury stopping a Grimm from engaging?" Cardin shook his head in minor defeat, Peter as well but in minor curiosity, as did Glynda, after she was satisfied that she had perused every memory in that organized, file cabinet of a brain she had. "And when it leaped a container ahead of us it turned, shook its head, and held out its arms as if desperately asking us to stop. Perhaps most damning of all during Mr. Winchester's and my encounter with the creature were the last few seconds of it. When I rounded the corner and laid eyes on it it had no idea I was there. It was completely unaware I existed, it was too busy absorbed in its trembling hands. I can't say for certain what it saw, but if its reaction to its own photo was so dramatic I don't think it saw the truth. It was only when I spoke that it realized I was there, and instead of attacking or running immediately, once I had started communicating with it it made every effort to communicate back to me, to talk with me."
"So you believe it really is Pyrrha Nikos then?" Glynda's question was neither hostile nor thankful, but rather utterly and completely neutral. Her face a mask of impassive indifference.
"That is the million lien question isn't it?" He shook his head, only just now realizing that in his excitement he had ended up on the opposite side of the room from his chair. Quickly he made his way back to it and sat down, taking off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose as he began to speak again. "I cannot say for certain what the creature is; it doesn't behave at all like a Grimm, yet it resembles one in every way physically, save for its eyes. Burning red eyes with green pupils, definitely unheard of in Grimm. But it doesn't behave like one, it behaves like a human, and that...well I think that makes some of its case for being Miss Nikos."
"So," Peter sighed, "It's either a human that looks like a Grimm, or a Grimm that looks like a human. What to do with a thing like that, eh?" All eyes in the room turned to face Glynda, who was staring intently at the gray, concrete wall of the room, a frown of concentration adorning her face. Despite it all Bart could make out the tiniest glimmers of hope in the woman's green eyes.
"Even if it is just a Grimm-" Glynda began, before Bart could butt in.
"A Grimm that can read and write is hardly 'just a Grimm.'"
A glare from Glynda.
"Even if it is a Grimm," she said, with a pointed look towards Oobleck, "it is still a valuable…asset. It hasn't shown any signs of deterioration yet, so perhaps it could make for a suitable source of information at the very least. If its claim proves true and it is Miss Nikos inside there then we have to help her. Though how I'm not sure."
The two other ex-professors nodded in agreement, it seemed they'd reached a verdict. Without realizing Bart glanced over at Cardin, half-expecting the boy to argue, no matter how suicidal a prospect arguing with Glynda would be. However, instead of a stubborn look and an open mouth prepping for a doomed argument, Bart saw the boy with his arms crossed, his eyes taking on a tone he knew only too well: pupils dilated in intense concentration, but distant and separated from his physical surroundings.
"Something on your mind, lad?" Peter asked the boy while giving him thunderous clap on the back, a good thing Cardin wore his cuirass to the meeting, Oobleck thought absentmindedly.
"Just...just wondering what could do that to a person is all, Professor." The boy replied with a small shrug, the distant look still in his eyes, though faded now.
Peter's eyebrows lost their good natured height and descended into seriousness for a quick second before they shot back up. But only half as high as before. "Shouldn't worry yourself with such things lad, I'm sure we can kill it either way. Why, when I was a boy of only twelve-" Peter descended into one of his familiar tales as he escorted the young hunter back to the courtyard, laughing jovially and making terrible jokes all the way. It was an act for the boy, that much was obvious to Glynda and Bart. Something to steer his mind away from darker thoughts. The question still remained on the three ex-professor's minds however: what could do that to a person?
None of them had an answer.
Pyrrha counted the cracks in the concrete ceiling. She supposed it was one big crack really, webbing itself across the gray surface. She sighed, moving her head to the wall that held the giant steel door in front of her. There were few cracks on that wall. That made sense, the wall with the door would probably be the weakest, have the most attention paid to its maintenance and repairs as the most likely escape route. The ceiling would be the least monitored, hardly an escape if the floor collapses on you. Unless you were looking for an escape from life. That wouldn't be such a bad idea, a tiny voice in the back of her mind whispered. She swatted it down immediately, desperately looking along the walls for other cracks to count until she made a looked in the glass and saw her reflection.
She flinched in pain and her head snapped to the other wall. One crack, two, three, you're a monster, can't you see? FIVE-five cracks, six, eight, ten, you'll kill all your friends. She rounded on the glass with a snarl and stared at the reflection balefully, growling at it to shut up, but instead of her voice only a strangled mix of a rasp and growl came out. The reflection smirked at her as she stood and limped towards the wall opposite the glass, sitting down with her back facing it. She resolved to instead count the bumps on the wall, occupy more of her mind, both sight and touch that way.
Eighty-seven, eighty-eight, ninety, ninety-o-your friends think you're a monster, you know? She grit her teeth. Ninety-one, ninety-two, ninety-thre-And the Grimm see you as one of them. A deep breath. She wouldn't let it win. She was Pyrrha Nikos. She had to be. But what if you're not? Ninety-four, ninety-fi-what if you're just another Grimm? That's all they see you as now. Her eyes were glimmering with rage now. Ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-seven, nine-That's all he will see you as now, he might even kill you. Shut up. And you won't even know his name. Shut. Up. The worst part won't be the death though, oh no, the worst part will be when you look into his eyes and see only disgust when he looks at you. The blond who's name I know.
Her left fist shot forward and into the wall from where it was clutched at her side as she let out a shrieking rasp of rage and turned to face the monster in the glass. The monster she'd become. She would've smashed it to pieces, would've lost herself in the glorious relief of shattering that glass and shutting it up. But when she turned her reflection was replaced with a man.
A very real man with green hair and glasses that stared back at her. Doctor Oobleck, her mind told her. The rasp died a gurgling death in her throat and her rage dissipated, replaced only with shame. She met his eyes for a second, long enough for him to raise an eyebrow at her and for her to fully realize her embarrassment as her gaze flicked away to the left. A small glowing rectangle caught her eye and she recognized Oobleck's scroll lying on the ground by the door. As quick as she could she scooped up the scroll and typed out a message. I'm sorry, I didn't know you were there.
Turning back towards the glass and the doctor she walked over somewhat dejectedly before pressing the screen against the glass. His head tilted to the side a little and the edges of his mouth curved slightly upwards in amusement. "Oh? Then who was causing you so much trouble? They must've been quite the pest if they caused you to, ah, vent on the wall so dramatically."
She blinked in confusion at him, not quite catching his meaning. Yes, she had punched the wall in outrage, but it was a concrete wall and she didn't have her aura to back up the blow, only rage, and her extremely effective plates if the lack of pain in her arm was anything to go by. The man before her noticed her confusion and his amusement only seemed to grow, silently he indicated with his finger to turn and take another look. She did so, and let out a small gasp, her hands quickly covering her mouth in embarrassment as she examined the dent she had left in the wall. It was about an inch or so deep at the center, covered in cracks that spider wedded out across the wall until they vanished into nothingness. She wasn't sure if she could blush anymore, but her body was certainly giving it her best go. She turned back to Oobleck as she typed up a storm. I'm so sorry, I didn't know I could do that. I will be more careful.
The doctor chuckled slightly as he read the message, though whether it was the message or the absurdity of the situation of a monster like herself promising to be more careful like a child caught spilling a drink she didn't know. Probably both.
"I came to deliver you that scroll," he said, nodding towards the glowing device against the glass before pulling another one out of his pocket, "I couldn't let you take mine every time we chatted, after all."
Thank you, Doctor Oobleck.
He gave her a kind smile before turning towards the door and vanishing in a green streak, leaving her alone to stare at her wicked reflection where a moment ago a friend had stood.
The armor on her legs remained much the same as it had, save for the bronze coloration and elegant, smooth edges and curves. The coloration and material had been replaced by the white bony plate with red trim. All the elegant curves had been replaced by sharp angles that seemed to almost be intended as blades. The most major difference was that where the bronze greaves had once met black heeled boots, white plate met more sharp white plate boots that ended in a sharpened point at the toe and heel ends of her foot. No heels lifted her elegantly from the ground, and no curves were displayed. It was as if every angle and vertex was made to be something that could both protect and harm.
The plate on her thighs rose higher than the bronze had, and the skirt, which was midnight black instead of red, came lower. Two half skirts of scaled plates hung from hinges on her cuirass. The plates covered her rear and left only a thin line of unprotected fabric in front. A sash of midnight black cloth was tied around her waist, with a strand about two feet long flowing wistfully from her left hip. The doll she had found was nestled tightly inside the knot of her sash. Her cuirass itself was an intimidating, yet somehow beautiful thing. The bone white shell hugged her form as tightly as her corset had, but instead of ending at her breasts it continued up and just barely didn't touch the base of her neck guard, leaving enough room for her to still have full range of motion. Like her old corset, the cuirass had no connection to her arm plates, save for the pauldrons that covered her shoulders.
As far as she could tell, her leg plates, skirt, and cuirass were all not fused to her body, unlike her mask and arm plates. Her biceps and triceps were coated with plates that seemed to erupt from the skin there, not always linked together and not coherent or organized, much like the plates under her eyes. They stood as isolated islands of bone separated by thin white patches of skin. All along her armor was trimmed with red save for one single spot in the center of her sternum. Where the raven haired woman's arrow had pierced her there was a deep black hole in her cuirass that revealed a patch of skin through a tiny, smashed hole, just large enough for an arrow. There the skin was midnight black and rough to the touch. Small cracks spread no more than half an inch out across her cuirass from the hole, disrupting red trim.
She was a monster, a Grimm. The only thing that told her otherwise, that gave her hope, was her eyes.
She turned away from the glass and back towards the wall she had punched, studying the scroll as she did. The thing was blank, wiped, completely fresh, digitally at least. The screen itself was cracked in several places, but not unusable, the metal edges had nicks and dents in them, but nothing that would affect the electronics inside. It made sense that they'd give her one of the more worn scrolls. Though she knew it was blank she spent the next few hours looking through the device, searching for anything that could jog her memories.
Hours passed, and while the steady, harsh artificial light of her cell gave her no indication of the time of day outside, her ever wider yawns forced her to acknowledge the fact that she was tired. She grimaced as she thought of it, rest; it wasn't that she hated it, but the fact that she feared what might come with it. The darkness that covered her dreams was so much like the darkness that had enveloped her and tortured her for an eternity. And that voice, the voice that she could now understand, it had visited her again. How? How could it have come to her? She wasn't in the clutches of that horrid blackness anymore. Subconsciously her fingers traced the hole in her cuirass that the arrow had left, running along the chaotic ridges in the otherwise smooth plate. She yawned again as her mind battled for dominance against her fatigue, an ultimately doomed battle, she'd have to sleep eventually. But she fought nonetheless.
It wasn't until fatigue had overtaken her mind to the point that she could no longer think straight that she gave in. Pushing weakly off the ground she moved towards the back left corner and nestled her back in it, using the black sash that hung from her waist to shield her eyes from the light as she rested the side of her mask against the wall. One good thing about the bones covering her face was that they certainly protected her from the discomfort of resting her skin against a concrete wall.
In her dream she was dying. Kneeling and defenseless atop the tower of Beacon as the woman with raven hair shot her through the chest. As she died she saw faces accompanied by flickering forms appear behind the woman, seven of them in stark detail, the blond boy and her friends she recognized. Behind them stood flickering wisps that stared at her with baleful eyes. She wondered why they glared at her so, what had she done?
"You left them alone, you went and got yourself killed like a fool and left them to suffer." A voice rasped from behind her. The voice sounded faintly familiar, though she wasn't sure from where. Fiery pain burned through her chest as she turned to face the source of the voice. It was a monster, a Grimm, it was her. It was her own voice that had spoken, or rather, her new one. Rasping and broken. She stared up at her own terrible new form from where she kneeled, no wonder the others had attacked her on sight when she looked like that. It smiled at her, a ghastly, empty thing, as if it only found joy in tremendous pain.
"And then you came back, as one of the enemy, as me." Suddenly the scene shifted and changed, the woman with the raven hair melting away into shadow as the world twisted and spun. She was back in the open Tarmac ground of the dockyard, head spinning, before she could figure out what was happening she felt three dull thuds against her stomach, as if someone had hit her with a small hammer. She looked up in shock to see the girl with the black hair and cat ears pointing a gun at her. She barely had time to register this fact before four more "punches" hit her on her right thigh. She rounded desperately to face the source, a boy in green with a pink streak of hair in a nest of black. Her eyes widened in fear and she began to run, but still the shots didn't stop. Again and again they hammered her armor, bruising the skin beneath; she had barely gotten ten feet away when she felt something tremendously cold and sharp slice one of the unprotected cracks of skin on her left arm. She barely had time to glance to her left, see a girl with white hair and a scarred eye casting a glyph before she felt something akin to a tractor collide with her back and launch her ten feet forwards, bouncing and skipping across the pavement.
Her whole body hurt, but it was nothing compared to the pain in her heart as her friends mercilessly beat her. Her eyes opened just quick enough to see a girl with burning crimson eyes and flaming yellow hair descending a single fist towards her face. She rolled to the left and shot up in one fluid movement, just quick enough to dodge the fist that cracked the ground where she had been. Those flaming red eyes rounded on her and she sprinted away. She had to get to the containers, had to get to the shelter. She poured every ounce of energy she could into trying to reach the shelter as bullets slammed into her back and legs. She was so close now, so-CRACK.
She gave a questioning gurgle as she felt a tremendous ache explode across her back. She stumbled and fell to the ground, hands barely coming up in time to slow the impact. She strained to lift her head and look behind her, there stood a girl in a red hood, an equally blood red cloak billowing behind her. In her tiny hands was a tremendous sniper rifle, impossibly large compared to her small form. Pyrrha grunted in fear as the girl pulled back the bolt on the rifle, ejecting a massive shell casing the length of her face. Get away, she had to get away. She was so close to the containers now, so tantalizingly close, she couldn't move her legs, couldn't even feel them, the girl's bullet must've torn through her spine, but she could crawl. She had to crawl.
She could hear the dull and slowing thuds of feet on concrete as they neared her, she could hear them encircling behind her, but it didn't matter, she was almost there. Her hands desperately clung to the concrete as she dragged her broken body ever closer, she was so close. There was only a single pair of feet moving behind her now, and they were getting closer. No, no no no I'm almost there, please! She coughed blood and mumbled incoherent rasping noises as she neared the sanctuary of the containers. Then she felt pain explode across her unprotected back, almost enough to make her black out if she weren't so close. There was the squelching of blood as more pain shot across her back, and she was faintly aware of something metal sliding into the hole in her body the girls' bullet had made, but she couldn't feel it.
She was so close now, but something was preventing her from moving forward, something secured her body to the ground through her back. She had to know what it was, what was preventing her from safety.
It was him, the blond boy. His singing silver sword was stuck through the shattered remnant of her lower spine, out her stomach, and into the Tarmac below. She let out a low, strangled whine of pain, not at the glistening sword run through her back, but at the sight of the complete and utter hatred and disgust in the blond boy's eyes. The fact that he was the one preventing her from reaching safety.
She coughed, and more black blood flew in tiny droplets, decorating the Tarmac below. She watched as the boy removed the shield from his wrist and raised it with both hands above his head, the pointed bottom hanging above the base of her skull. One single, strangled sound emerged from her mouth as she stared into the inferno of hate that tore through the boy's sapphire eyes. "Jaune…" She begged as the shield point connected with the base of her skull and the darkness consumed her. A laugh echoed through it all, the laugh. Inadvertently her body tensed in fear, she wanted to run away, but nothing responded. The pain in her stomach flared, the wound on her sternum began to burn, but she couldn't scream, only listen, mind barely conscious through the pain as the laugh continued on and on.
She woke with a start, her body rigid in fear and her hands gripping the base of her skull protectively. Jaune...the name echoed again and again inside her head, gluing itself to the forefront of her mind with the boy's face. She sobbed, she sobbed in relief and joy, in pain and fear. She had remembered his name, there was hope. But what if when she found him, she only found the same burning hatred for her in his eyes that she had seen in her dream? What if he hated her? But did it matter what he felt? She could never be with him as she was now, she was a monster. But if she could see his face and hear his voice again she would be content, then she could leave him in peace and find the raven haired woman who had taken everything from her.
The tears stopped as another goal was added to her mental list. It was a short one, but twice as long as it had been now. Two items were listed in order of which they should be carried out. 1) Find Jaune. 2) Hurt the raven haired woman. It wasn't anything spectacular, but it was a goal she could work towards. Her eyes hardened with determination and her body went rigid with resolve. It was a goal she would fulfill.
A/N: A more character focused chapter today, and our first non-Pyrrha POV chapter!
Again, another wonky update time, sorry about that. Went to a dinner party with some family friends and my girlfriend tonight. Had some kickass steak and mushrooms and onions, all really really good.
Also had an idea for a new fic focused on Ruby. Vomited up some words and have written the first half of the first draft of chapter one and finished chapter twelve of TIC, so that's very nice.
Sorry that this chapter is also kinda blocky; gonna go back over it again this week if I can and smash some of these walls of texts into slopes instead, but I wanted to get it out tonight and on time.
That's all for me guys, gonna hit the hay because I'm beat and have a headache. Night all!