What Happens Next (Slay The Princess/RWBY)

Something in Pyrrha's question ignites a passionate part of you, you begin to speak from the heart:

"Destiny is a word people use to try and encapsulate the totality of all the external forces at play in their lives." Pyrrha seems a little taken aback by your ardor, but you press on and continue. "At worst it is lazy and reductionist thinking, while at best it is merely an insufficient, misleading summary presented as some profound, static truth." You move your hands out at these words, for some reason, there is a startled breath from Pyrrha.

"As a result of my Nature, I am intimately aware of and susceptible to the intentions and pressures that other exert on my being." You move your vessel's head to point it at your interlocutor's direction. "For the longest time, no matter how drastically I changed, I was trapped in a role intentionally designed for me by my creator, who wanted to engineer the entirety of my existence despite the fact that he died before I was even conscious."

Your voices fill the entire space between you and Pyrrha, every word an undeniable truth delivered with absolute certainty.

"Even once my other half set me free, free to do anything and become anyone, I was still trapped, restricted by my lack of experiences with the wider world and other people." One of your countless hands moves your vessel's right arm in a grand gesture. 'I was so certain of what the two of us would do, of our *destiny*. Yet I couldn't possibly account for everything, all of the other possible aspect of myself that I didn't and still don't understand." You close and open your mouth with one of your hands, mimicking the process of speech. "All of this to say that any claim of destiny is inherently flawed, because the only true thing in the world is Change(Me), and no mortal or god can ever know how much they do not know."

You come back from your semi trance, only now realizing that Pyrrha is trying to be as far away from you as possible. Then you realize you have let a small part of your true self loose, not enough that is could even hurt her, but enough to make it quite clear you are no normal being.

You quickly hide it back, then turn to Pyrrha with an apologetic air:

"I don't suppose we could pretend this never happened?" you helpfully, and in your own opinion, very reasonably, propose.

"Y-y-you, wha, how." Is all Pyrrha can muster, thought you are relieved to see that she is slowly recovering.

"I'll take that as a no." You lower your head in your palms. "Ozpin is not going to be happy. Unless…" You take a quick look at Pyrrha, her breath coming back to a normal rhythm, her posture no longer being one of a cornered animal. "Yeah, no chance she wouldn't like to talk about it." You mutter under your breath. "And I should check how she is anyway." You take a big breath. "Ok, you don't have to worry, I won't hurt you. I know you have questions, and I'll be willing to answer… after you calm down. Take your time."

The next minute is a very awkward moment, where Pyrrha slowly go through some breathing exercise and you monitor the impression of you she has, which, to your great regret, absolutely does take the recent event into account.

You wonder if this is how Sable felt when Glynda told him he should have warned you about your last little fight.

Once Pyrrha seems calm… enough, she begins to ask her questions:

"So, I stray too far from my path and Destiny itself come to put me back on it, is that what it is?"

Ah. This is not the first thing you expected out of her mouth after all of that, you desperately want to ask about that *straying from her path* part, but there is a more important correction needed first.

"I am not Destiny" your brain helpfully remind you that you actually are the process of things interacting with each other, and thus, of consequences, which is how you just described destiny in your little rant. "I am not specifically Destiny." your traitorous mouth continue… and apparently, today is *traitorous body parts day*. You sigh. "Can I ask why you even thought that?" You really wish you could go cuddle Sable right now.

"You mean, besides how you looked like a puppet manipulated by some previously unseen hands?" She manages to snark at you, it looks like something made her shell crack a little, maybe the shock was a positive thing overall? Or this is just wishful thinking on your part.

"I'll admit, I can see where you are coming from. How to explain it?" You massage your temples. "What you see right now is not me exactly." She nods, having probably already been able to sense that when seeing your hands. "It is nerves and fivers to see the world, a vessel. What you see as puppeting is the same as your muscles pulling on your bones to move the rest of your limb with it." She doesn't seems entirely convinced, but at least she is listening. You sigh, again. "Listen, would you be willing to continue coming here to see me? That way, I can explain slowly over time, do the job I was originally trying to if at all possible while I'm at it, which is not convince you to come back to Mistral under the thumb of your family or sponsors or whatever made you flee. I want you to be happy, whatever you do, hell, if you told me you hated fighting altogether and wanted to leave the school I would not only encourage you, but would also ask Ozpin if he has some contacts that could help you." She seems surprised at that, which is good, you would not have said that much normally, but at this point the situation is so far past the norms you may as well throw the guidebook out the window. You need to get her back to thinking about you as someone, instead of something.

From what you can feel, you are not completely there yet, but you are making some progress.

"And what would tell me you would hold your promise?" She asks. On one hand, it is good she is now feeling confident enough to contradict you, on the other, why did it have to be on this?

"Nothing?" You bluntly answer. "Except for my own honor and my desire to actually help. I am sorry, but you will have to trust me on this."

She carefully considers you, and seems to come to a conclusion, probably helped by the fact that the emotional toll of the recent revelation is rearing its head. She was coasting on the adrenalin, but it is crashing, and she appears more and more exhausted.

She slowly nods.

"In that case, Miss Panoply, I would like to be able to come back to my team." She eyes you all the while, probably to see if you are stopping her from potentially telling them. Then, as if the thought of her team made her realize something, her eyes widen and she gasps. "Wait, what does this mean about Penny Polendina? Is she another thing like you?"

"I am not a thing." You grumble without much heat. "And no, she isn't the same kind of being as me, I suggest you ask her yourself about the rest, this is not mine to tell."

She nods again, having grown slightly more pensive, and leaves with a quick goodbye. It seems that even worldview shattering revelations are not enough to reduce her natural inclination to being polite.

You look at the rest of your schedule, compare it to Sable's, and make the executive decision to go and see him right now. You have enough time for a short discussion. You will probably have to talk about him at some point when you explain yourself to Pyrrha, and you would prefer him to have as much time to prepare for it as possible mentally.

---

The rest of the week thankfully pass without incidents. Ruby asks a little about Pyrrha, who seems to have changed attitude, but nothing alarming. You enjoy some time with Penny, officially presenting her to Sable. Velvet and Yatsuhashi's lesson are advancing well, the two of them are ready to go past the basics expand their knowledge.

All in all, a pleasant week after a stormy beginning.

You and Sable are walking towards the room of one of your colleagues to allow you to do your first foray into being a Game Master, when you are accosted by Cardin and Weiss, with their respective teams following behind.

"Hello, what do you two wants?" You ask the students that stopped at almost perfect conversation range, curtesy of Weiss taking the lead and forcing Cardin to stop when he would have gone closer. Judging from the impression they have of you, this is not due to Pyrrha revealing what she saw, as almost nothing has changed.

"Professor Panoply, Professor Vault" Weiss begins, her posture picture perfect. You may have to work on that later, she needs to learn to relax. "Cardin and I were doing research about the case of the Grimm fang when we learned from Professor Port that you were one of the persons present, and probably has some of the information we seek." She takes a deep breath. "Can you tell us what happened to Adam Taurus? He said you were one of the last persons to see him before whatever is responsible for him not being judged happened."

You look at the students in front of you. Weiss is acting very seriously, Cardin is donning a smug grin next to her, behind them, Penny is happily talking with Nora while still keeping an eye on you, Pyrrha is actually looking pensively at Sable and Yang, Ren and Ruby are all watching with interest, waiting for your answer.

You ponder for but a moment, then answer in an absolutely perfect deadpan:

"I used my powers as an eldritch abomination to show his little mind the truth of the universe. He couldn't take it."

Sable facepalm, Weiss begins to get angry, Pyrrha is looking at you as if she only realized how blatant you could be and Cardin is huffing, surprisingly, despite Weiss clearly being one second away from a rant about taking things seriously, he is the first to talk.

"Of course you don't answer. Typical. Even when asking the best source possible, we get nothing. I really shouldn't be surprised."

You raise an eyebrow at that.

"Now now, I may have given an answer that doesn't please you, but I know you are absolutely able to read sarcasm when you hear it." You look at the slowly deflating students in the background and the fuming Weiss in front of you. "Besides, who said I was allowed to answer in the first place? I could be trying to protect a person that doesn't want to be targeted by the remnants of the Grimm fang, or others."

Penny intervenes at that.

"But if it was you, there would be no reasons to hide, wouldn't it?"

Is she proposing what you think she is?

How do you answer about Adam now:

[] Insist it is classified for a reason, don't elaborate.

[] Tell them a partial truth, you used your Semblance in a way that damaged his mind.

[] Fuck it, given how bad your track record on keeping secrets is, you wouldn't be surprised if they all spontaneously learned during the next week. Tell them to meet you tomorrow.
-[] At Ozpin's office.
--[] Maybe, tell him in advance?
--[] Just them, that is already more than enough.
--[] Call Pietro too, this isn't how you intended to show him, but you may as well (will necessitate explaining Penny)
--[] Actually, you may as well call Velvet and Yatsuhashi while you're at it.
---[] Why not make it team CFVY?
-[] In your room.
--[] That doesn't mean you cannot at least tell Ozpin what you're about to do, of course.
(Same sub options as in Ozpin's office.)

[] Write-in

This vote will have consequences, think about it a little.

Or don't, Stella can be incredibly spontaneous at times.

A/N:

So, may as well have a little talk about the last vote:

Part of the reason it was a pure freeform one was to simulate a difficult situation without any clear answer, which it sorta did beautifully. (But is not a thing I am eager to try again, once was enough.)

I want to say, it was basically impossible for you to get a positive impression from Pyrrha in this update, only shades of negative, because she has a distrust of psychologists, and you aren't removing that in just one hour.

Not to say the vote was pointless, it was a set up on how you began.

Now, the most positive reaction you could have gotten originally didn't need a complicated thing… my idea of it is just *I believe Destiny can be beaten*, just that, nothing more, no fancy words, no long talk, just a simple and clear sentence.

But the idea of not being able to get Pyrrha out of her natural distrust was thrown out of the window when I thought more about the vote that won.

See, my first reaction to it was *careful, your Shifting Mound is showing*, the thing is, well, that's definitely one way to remove the normal prejudice. (An advice, though, if your vote is more than a hundred words long, you should probably cut some parts, if it hadn't been for that very specific thought, this vote would have been an absolute disaster.)

Thankfully, it did give me that thought, resulting in the Pyrrha not even listening for most of it due to the little hand shaped problem, instead of not listening to most of it due to it being too long. That allowed you to rebound from a completely different starting point, with some advantages and disadvantages.

By the way, Stella's campaign may or may not be a custom game where the players are voices in the head of a hero that is told he has to Slay a Princess.