Pyrrha stared at the prone cleaver-wielder for a long moment, at least until her sheer disbelief finally waned. After a while, she started the conversation she'd long been rehearsing.

"I really am sorry about the bolt," Pyrrha drawled, her slow approach heralded not by the clank of her armor, but by the unfathomable pressure emanating from her sheer presence. She watched with mild amusement as the thickening air became an active labor against Ruby, the prone girl taking hard and fast breaths just to push it from her lungs. "I'd hoped to get a real taste of you."

Ruby, with obvious effort, let out a small chuckle. "Yeah, me too."

Pyrrha quirked an eyebrow, though she doubted the girl would be able to see it; from this angle, only her nose poked past her hood. "I saw the rest of your performance in the tourney," Pyrrha commented, "you're quite talented, for a little girl. How old are you?"

Ruby barked out a laugh, one so poorly faked that it genuinely edged the Knight Captain's nerves. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

Pyrrha blinked at the snark, her steps suddenly halting. She stared at the tiny warrior. "Yon disappointment said you're his niece."

Ruby stiffened a little. "Well… yeah."

"That's all you have to say?"

"What do you want me to say?"

Pyrrha twitched, taking a few more stomps towards the pathetic creature. "Why are you so aloof? I'm going to murder you."

Ruby threw her head back a bit, shifting her hood enough to meet one eye to Pyrrha's glare. "Sorry, should I beg for my life?"

Pyrrha blinked, her lips pursing with frustration. "Actually, yes. I—"

Ruby yawned. Loudly. "Sorry, sorry, continue. Please."

Nearly half of Pyrrha's face began to feverishly twitch. "I think a little respe—"

Ruby started laughing, interrupting her.

"Stop that!" Pyrrha demanded, stomping her foot. "What's so funny!"

"Oh, haha, uh…" Ruby let her mirth fade into the near-solid air, her speech straining as she forced its weight over her vocal cords. "Just, you know, thought of a joke."

Pyrrha grit her teeth and furiously marched to the girl. "A joke? You thought of a joke?"

"W-well, not really a joke," Ruby poorly explained, "just something funny."

"Something funny?" Pyrrha, now looming over the downed smith, extended an arm and opened her hand wide. A loud ringing emanated past the treeline, heralding the arrival of her metal baton, which tore through the dense shrubbery as it flew into her palm. The Knight Captain clenched her weapon tight, anger clear from her furiously shaking grip. She bent down, her free hand ripping the girl's head up by the scruff of her cloak. "And just what is so funny?"

Ruby took a deep breath of heavy air, then curled her lips into a smirk. "You wouldn't like it. It's old."

"Old?" Pyrrha snarled. "It's old?"

"Haha," it was so fake that Pyrrha could tasteit. "Yeah."

"You know, Iam trying to be at least a little respectful."

Ruby cocked her head. "How so?"

"I haven't shown you the hell that I can be."

"Ooh," the smith mockingly cooed, "is that supposed to be scary?"

Pyrrha was grinding her teeth to dust, but the idiot girl had yet more words to impart.

"Sorry, after the whole nailing thing— which was your fault, by the way—" she added, as if the Chasm itself wasn't about to devour her, "nothing really scares me anymore."

Pyrrha's grip tightened on her baton, threatening to crumple the metal. Letting her dissonance slip, she showed Ruby a smile that would make Grimm reel. "Oh, is that so?"

The smith didn't even blink, her silver eyes flashing in the moonlight. "Do you still want to hear that joke?"

"Yeeeesss," Pyrrha hissed, bringing her aberrant visage down to Ruby's. "I would love nothing more."

"Okay, okay," Ruby had to pant through the thick air, but her voice still hitched as if the joke was simply too funny to tell. "What do you call a Knight who always fights on level ground?"

Pyrrha blinked, her irreality faltering in her confusion. "Wh— what?"

"Do you need me to say it again?"

"No!" Pyrrha furiously shook her head, her baton rising in threat. "Just tell me the damn joke!"

Ruby huffed indignantly. "I'll restart."

"Do not fucking—"

Extremely slowly, Ruby repeated, "What do you call a Knight who always fights on level ground?"

Pyrrha's face twisted tightly with rage, her voice straining. "What."

The girl beamed. "Ser Face!"

"That's it?" Pyrrha scowled. "Ser Face?"

Ruby pouted. "You didn't like it?"

Pyrrha twitched. "Are you… stalling?"

"N-no!" Ruby's sly grin belied the truth. "Why would I do that?"

"Because I am about to beat you into a paste so thin that I will drink it like fucking wine."

Ruby gulped. "Wow. That was scary."

Pyrrha gripped her baton even tighter, the metal collapsing slightly in her grasp. "I'm going to kill you now."

"Wait, wait!" Ruby's eyes opened wide with desperation— exactlywhat Pyrrha had been itching to see.

"Yes?" She drawled, dragging the world like a knife across a throat, desperate to feast on this girl's hopelessness. Finally,she'd get to hear Ruby the Red beg for her life.

"I, uh…" Ruby fumbled desperately for something to say before finally landing on, "I have another joke."

"Is it this farce?" Pyrrha asked, her eye regaining its twitch. "Because it's not very funny."

"No! It's good!" Ruby promised. "My soul to the Watcher, it's hilarious! You'll remember it forever!"

Pyrrha let her grip on the rod ease a little. "Fine. Tell me."

Ruby smiled bright. "Okay, are you ready?"

Pyrrha deadpanned. "Yes."

"Are you sure? You're going to be laughing very hard,I wouldn't want to hurt—"

"If you do not tell me the joke I will hollow your sister out and stuff your paralyzed body in her skin."

"My word, that's graphic," Ruby commented with a fake shiver. "Wait, how did you know she's my sister?"

"Tell me the joke, girl."

"Answer my question first!"

Pyrrha's mad twitch pulled at her entire face. "She's the Huntsman's niece, you're the Huntsman's niece," she hissed. "I made an educated guess."

Ruby nodded. "That makes sense, I suppose."

"Tell me the joke."

Ruby blinked. "Oh right! Sorry, I almost—"

"The joke," Pyrrha growled. "Now."

Ruby took a deep, heavy breath. "Okay. Read—"

"Yes I'm fucking ready!"

Ruby closed her eyes. "Fine, fine. Come closer."

Pyrrha, twitching like mad at this point, bent back down to Ruby's eye level.

"Okay, what do you call—"

"Another one of these?"Pyrrha snarled.

"Hey!" Ruby snapped. "I swore to the Watcher for this— my soul is on the line! Do not interrupt me!"

Pyrrha blinked, cutting the instinctual apology that somehow rose to her tongue.

"Okay, one more time," Ruby started again, agonizinglyslow. "What do you call a big, stupid Knight, with nothing better to do than go around and threaten perfectly good people?"

Pyrrha's lips pursed, her face falling. She could guess the punchline, and she found it severely unamusing. "Is it—"

"You need to say 'what', Pyrrha," the way her name mockingly slithered past the girl's lips made her skin bristle. "Otherwise the joke won't work."

The Knight Captain was on the verge of screaming, but she forced herself to remain intact. "What, Ruby. What do you call the Knight."

Ruby's eyes bored into the bottomless pit of her soul. Her lips reclaimed that unbearable smirk. "Gullible."

Pyrrha swung the baton, only to find her vision assailed by a plume of silt from Ruby's lightning-quick hand— the same childish play she'd made at the tourney. Pyrrha blindly flailed the metal rod as she blinked dust from her eyes, and when she opened them again, she found herself holding nothing but a frayed umber cloak.

Ruby, who had deliberately thrown her once-caped body over the resting place of her cleaver's sheath, came from mid air with a crashing overhead swing of the iron slab.

The Knight Captain barely managed to save her head from the falling blade, but her dodge was too belated to leave her unscathed. The cleaver bit down hard into the chainmail at her collar, loudly crunching the fragile bone as the massive sword split links and sunk itself into her raised bevor.

The blow dropped her to a knee, but that was all she would allow. Her arm snapped around with unreasonable flexibility for both human limitations and the allowances of her plate, her wrist flicking out to whip her blunt weapon directly into Ruby's cheekbone. The impossible force instantly shattered Aura and bone alike, unhanding the girl from her cleaver as she was thrown back with immense speed.

Ruby bounced hard off the unforgiving dirt time and time again, each forceful impact punctuated by a sickening crunch before her back slammed into and bent around a thick tree trunk. Her mostly-limp body tumbled down its evergreen canopy, crashing into every branch until she was dumped back to the dirt, barely breathing as she half-leaned, half-laid against the tree.

She'd been left a pincushion of pine needles, her skin weeping blood from the numerous spots where bone splintered out and wood splintered in, but she still cried out to keep herself from sinking into the darkness. Well, she tried to; the only sound that could emerge through her broken jaw was more like a long-suffering burble.

Pyrrha clutched her broken collar and hissed. "You cheeky bastard," she seethed under her breath. "You almost hurt me."

Ruby groaned from her place in the dirt, her consciousness holding on by the slimmest thread. The pain radiated through her entire body, reminding her of every gash, bruise, and tissue-breaching bone. Life itself tried to slip from her form, but she yanked it tight with the memory of the nails; if she'd survived that, she could survive this. Ruby forced her eyes to stay open, even if she could only see through one of them.

The world swirled in her vision, each tree casting a warbling double as her head swam. Darkness crept around the edges, but widening her eyes didn't seem to help.

Pyrrha rose to her feet, her free arm limply dislocated thanks to the cleaver still wedged in her bevor. She freed the sword with a push from her baton, creating a sizable plume as it fell into the dehydrated soil. "Forgive me, Ruby the Red," she didn't even turn towards the girl, doubtful that her words would reach her brain at this point. "I speak so much of honor and respect, yet I have shown you none. For that, I deserve this… humiliation."

Surprising even Ruby, the words did actually reach her brain, so she desperately latched onto them— anything to distract from the pain. Her whole body constantly pounded, the inside of her skull battering its confines like steel on her anvil. Ruby could feel the blood flowing out of her wounds, each passing moment making her grip on consciousness slip a little more. She let out a garbled noise as a response. It was all she could manage.

"Yes, I am deeply sorry," the Knight Captain finally turned towards the fallen girl, her gaze full of pity as she approached. "By holding myself back, I have underestimated you." Pyrrha took a deep, apologetic bow, limp arm swinging down until she gripped it, then slammed it back into the socket.

Ruby groaned, her breaths hard and shallow. The air hadn't gotten any lighter, and having several ribs impaling her lungs didn't make it any more breathable. She drowned in a sea of mercury, talons hooking deep into her chest.

Pyrrha bent down and pushed her hand through the girl's bangs, jerking her empty gaze up as she caught a mat of warm, bloodsoaked hair. "You know where I'm from, yes?"

Ruby hacked blood into her face, but the Knight Captain was completely unfazed. She had to force a deep breath to muster the strength, but Ruby managed to gurgle something vaguely similar to 'Chasm' from the back of her throat.

Pyrrha gave her a wide, toothy grin. "That is correct. Good job, Ruby."

Ruby groaned.

"And do you know what that means?"

Ruby groaned, weaker this time.

Pyrrha loosed her grip and stood straight again, looming like a morbid obelisk over the half-dead girl. "I am the only human to ever survive the abyss—" she suddenly covered her face with a hand and snorted. "Well, that's technically a lie. In every sense. A joke, even."

Ruby couldn't look up and watch her— her neck simply refused to move.

"You see, I didn't really survive," she explained. "Or, well, Pyrrha didn't. The person who inhabited this shell… she was an incrediblecreature, by all standards, but there was one thing of which she had an infinitewell. Could you guess what it is?"

Ruby made no answer. The air was too heavy to—

"Willpower, yes, correct! Drive! Determination!" The Knight Captain began to pace in front of the smith. "All these things in spades and more! All while falling through an abyss of certain, undeniable death! For years she strove to rejectme! Her hope was a spite! A beautiful, wondrous, infinite will to keep hope strangled in her grip!"

Ruby hadn't the capacity for surp—

"She was antithesisto the Chasm— a realm of pure lack, pure disbelief, pure hopelessness. So, upon noticing the beauty of her contradiction, I must admit I took some… liberties."

Ruby's disgust wasn't—

"I fed her, I watered her, I nursed her to health," the voice wasn't Pyrrha's— it hadn't been for a while. "I took her into my being, and carved myself into hers. She became my finery, and I became her material."

Ruby couldn't—

"The marriage of infinite will and infinite despair: a being unfettered, free of body and mind, free even from the shackles of reality. Could you imagine the potential, Ruby the Red?"

Ruby—

"Oh, you're dying."

R—

"Let me help."

Rough lips smashed against Ruby's, one hand pinching her nose shut as Pyrrha forced the heavy air into her lungs. Ruby screamed as the woman's breath forced her body back to life, but her arms were too broken to defensively flail.

Pyrrha pulled back and wiped the girl's blood from her mouth, a wolfish grin on her face. "Apologies, Ruby. I was rambling. What I mean to say is: out of unintentional disrespect, I have failed to show you who I truly am. For that, I deeply apologize," she bowed again.

"And it is a mistake I will now rectify."