The Knights of Grimm - Act 3 - Shattered Memory

Chapter 23 - An Admiral's Pain

Ortega

"Shocked?" Ortega asks her, with a scoff in his voice. "Can't say I'm surprised...you never took any notice to her when she was alive." He snarls, Pyrrha looks at the picture with a stunned expression. The girl in the picture, his daughter, it is undoubtedly Penny Polendina. The same hairstyle, the freckles, the green eyes...it all matches the girl that they know today. She even shares the same adorable smile that the synthetic girl has. Ortega keeps his hand pressed upon the glass, then he slowly takes the picture back, looking at his daughter tearfully. Pyrrha is lost for words, because she does not ever remember seeing that girl.

"W-What happened? What did I do?" Pyrrha questions with a stammering tone. "Penny...she's alive, I know what I did, I remember too well..." Pyrrha says to Ortega, as he stands outside her cell. He glares at her with furious eyes. Ortega pushes his picture back into his coat and he walks towards her cell, staring at her as she sits in there. His stern face has not altered one bit, only when he looked at her face did it change from anger to grief.

"You really didn't care about her at all...did you?" He snarls with anger.

"I don't understand...Penny was built." Pyrrha presumes, and he slams his fist against the glass, making her jolt fearfully from him. He slowly fronts on her, glaring directly at her through the thick bullet proof pane.

"Not always..." He says to her, cold voice but one formed from pain unlike Jacques Schnee. "She was my daughter...once...she was real." Ortega tells her, and Pyrrha looks stunned from this information.

"But why?" She asks him, and he sighs, having flashes of memory appearing in his mind.

"Have you ever experienced frontline combat before?" Ortega asks her, looking at her with different eyes now. Eyes that reflect horrors of war and terror.

"N-No..." Pyrrha answers...struggling to see what sense this makes to Penny in any way.

"I have...thirty six years ago...I was a private in the Acolytes of Lien Mercenary Force. We were hired to fight at Fort Castle, to battle against the Faunus all those years ago." Ortega explains, looking out at nothing. He then closes his eyes.

"I don't understand..." Pyrrha stammers.

"I don't expect a Huntress to. You don't risk your lives like real soldiers do...because on the frontline...your life does not matter. You are not expected to survive...you are just a statistic."

Thirty Six years ago...

Explosions rocked the courtyard of Fort Castle, missiles roaring over head and exploding against buildings. Screams seem to endlessly echo throughout the fort where they are fighting, then he rises from behind the burned out military truck that was hit by a missile. He holds a rifle in his hand, multiple empty magazines on the ground, firing his rifle over and over again at the enemies across the road from him. Blood trickles down the side of his head where a piece of shrapnel sliced across the side of his face due to the detonation of a grenade. He ducks down just in time to avoid a bullet from a soldier across the No Man's Land. Fire burns endlessly, skyscrapers of smoke towering over the walls.

The man is young, barely even capable of growing any facial hair. Clean shaven with scratches and grime on his bloodied face. He wears the Acolytes of Lien armour and colour scheme, black and red with accents of golden paint on the plates of metal around his body. He breathes in and out, trying not to freak out from the warfare that surrounds him. The man is Darren Ortega when he was younger, fighting in the Battle of Fort Castle, against the Faunus. "It all started at Fort Castle..." Ortega narrates, his voice echoing as he remembers his own past.