aiko's otter den

black cat's curses - Blake Belladonna is not a faunus.

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9. As If From Far Away

Pyrrha Nikos was famous in her world. Famous, pressured and loved. None of these were things Meiko really worried for nor wanted. But she had a duty and the power to complete that duty. It wasn’t like being with Meicoomon. Meicoomon broke because of her. Or had been. It was over.

The memory of Meicoomon hurt more when she was a child, in a way. Because it was just a reminder of her own helplessness.

It was different now. She had trained herself away from that helplessness, more and more experienced and brilliant.

Alphamon was an easy fight in comparison. He’s bigger, more solid. He’s made of metal. Digimon metal.

She is very good with digimon metal.

It compresses, dents, cracks, and Alphamon screams in agony as something exploded in the flesh underneath the armor.

She lowered her sword, but did not tense.

Daisuke shouts something and -she knows him from files and research and data and someone else’s feelings but she doesn’t know him. It isn’t the same— Pyrrha rolls away from bursts of green light and swinging searing metal.

The others are retreating thankfully into the remains of trees. Their digimon aren’t. Which is peak danger. They’re some of the only digimon left. If they lose before the world ends, then maybe the worlds would finally properly collapse.

She -they— cannot let that happen.

“How did you do that?”

Miyako’s question fills Pyrrha’s chest with pain and warmth and voices. “It’s a side effect,” she said instead of ‘it’s my semblance’, which would be difficult to translate. “Let’s get you guys to safety.”

“We can’t,” Iori said and there’s a warmth in her stomach that’s not hers at all.

There’s a horrific screeching sound. The bloodied, puppy shrapnel mess of a digimon still hasn’t disappeared. Instead, it pulses outward, twisting and groaning and healing.

“That looks so painful every time,” Daisuke said.

“It hasn’t stopped regenerating?”

“We don’t think it can.” They scoot back into the trees. “We weren’t there when it happened, but—”

“The others were!” Miyako supplies. “But they saved us. Held off it and Ordinemon. So we could get here. Alphamon chased us and then the world was supposed to reboot, but it didn’t. Ordinemon broke it first. We think?”

“Yagami-san would know,” Iori added. His voice isn’t accusing. He’s too old for that. But it’s hard and brittle.

Pyrrha winces, the lack of Meicoomon a raw ache. “Ah.”

Then she swallows and steels herself. “Tell me what you’re trying to do.”

She desperately hoped Jaune doesn’t come here and see her.

---

Ruby remembered.

Then again, because she had caused it all, of course she did.

She remembered Ordinemon, remembered the rush of creating her. Like it had drained her own life away, everything had hurt afterwards.

And even that had gone away.

She shuddered. Thinking about it made her eyes burn, and not with tears.

A world without my brother shouldn’t exist.

And yet it still did. So. She’d still messed that one up. In fact, this one was almost worse. Everything around her had warped and twisted into something out of a dark fairy tale and she had no clue how to fix it.

And, honestly, maybe she shouldn’t. Hadn’t she messed up enough? Maybe it was better that she fall and give in now. There had to be others who could save the world. Yagami Hikari wasn’t a savior. She wasn’t a hero.

As she thought, as Hikari existed, something swam at the edge of her world. Dark wings and a white body, faceless but for a large, gaping mouth loomed over her, worse than any Grimm.

How? She thought madly. If the world reset, if the digimon were gone, how was this one still here?

“Ruby!”

She turned to see Blake running towards her. Blake, Tailmon, her friend, her partner. Longing rushed through Ruby like an ache, but it felt supremely undeserved. Before she could think on that, the world shook underneath her feet and the wind blew in awful gusts. Light, not silver, but beautiful and a plague all the same, wraps around her.

“Ruby!” Yang shouted and there’s Takeru, protecting her as only a brother could. Where’s Weiss? Her partner now? Her life now? Maybe she’s gone because Ruby is stuck and will never leave. Maybe she’d be stuck in the past forever.

The very thought of that makes her chest clench up and the world feel like it’s ending and she doesn’t know why.

Ordinemon spreads its wings and flaps once. Black feathers and a sound like a song fall like rain. Ruby claps her hands over her ears and her nails nearly dig into her earlobes

Then Weiss darts into the air, Dust at her sword and eyes unforgiving. As she dodges and dances through the air, Ruby warms with guilt and joy.

Blake and Yang reached her. “You need to do something,” Blake insisted before Yang could get a word in. “You did this. You can’t give up.”

Ruby — Hikari — balked, but smiled before she could cry. “I’ll try,” she said, like it was that simple.

Hikari was a simple girl. There was no future for her, no way for her to right the wrongs she had created. Ruby was a huntress. She had to be had to save them all.

She had no choice.

Crescent Rose thrummed in her hands and suddenly, rawly, she missed —

Being Hikari —

Normalcy.

She dismisses the thought offhand. She is a Huntress, after all. What would normal even look like?

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