This is a fanfic that asks the question: What if Jenny was Joan of Arc?
All the harassment Lindsay Ellis has been receiving has worried me: It's times like this we need an immortal champion chosen by god to stand against the forces of tyranny. Please let me know what you think, comment, critique and suggestions all welcome.
Prologue:
Her face was concealed by a helm. Behind the visor her eyes shone a chilling blue, like waters fed from the molten ice of fading glaciers. The spurs of her polished iron greaves twanged a metallic clink with each stride she made across the sand of the coliseum. Soon that sand would be mixed with the putrid gunk that spilled from her slain adversary. She ran without hesitation. The French arming sword in her hand extended at her side like a wave along water. The blade's edge flashed a golden glint across the spectators in the colosseum. Each pace brought her closer to her goal, to her enemy, to that awful gasp, to her deadly blow, to the cheers of thousands!
She charged onward towards the shirtless orange skinned man. She was ready to parry or strike, her mind cleared of any plan but one: victory. The apricot-coloured colossus was mumbling some inaudible words, gesturing spasmodically with the meaty shanks of his hands before the imminent threat of the approaching French knight registered on his leathery face. He took up a spiked club in both hands, winding up for a sweeping horizontal swing, his posture contorted like a baseball batter, his body glistening like a saffron buddha.
The club swung out to meet her in a wide arc. The knight dove into a roll, narrowly evading the mighty swing. She turned a fluid 180 as she rose from the roll (a veritable dervish!) behind the immense hairy back of the orange man, she saw the spot where her blade would pierce the back of his skull. In that moment, the fatal blow seemed to her some innate truth. Complete quiet had fallen across the entire coliseum, so the fierce cry she made echoed back from all the walls of that mighty stone stadium. With a deadly simplicity her sword shot up, her right arm fully extended, the sword tip driving with a force to break through steel and bone...
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Chapter 1
"Jenny! Jenny!"
Her mother’s voice was distant, calling in a rural French accent. It echoed from beyond the boundary of their farm on the outskirts of Domrémy. Jenny had risen before dawn and done all of her chores for the day: and so went, with only a novella for company, into the wooded foothills where the morning air was sweet with spring; where the treetops were alight with birdsong; and where the new leaves of deciduous trees waved happily their little green hands. In long grass she lay on her back, staring up to the sky where the clouds stirred lazily in the breeze. Invisible, inconsequent, warm in the sun: it may have been half dreaming she heard the voice that would change everything.
“Jenny” A voice that seemed somehow distorted, as if she were hearing it submerged in water.
She stood up in the little meadow, the tips of grass bowing and nodding all around her.
No one, nothing but the forest.
“Jenny” The voice said again, much louder, as if it were words spoken directly in her ear now.
“qui est là?” Jenny said, her eyes searching the edge of the treeline and the shaded brush beyond.
“God has chosen you to lead the French people to victory, Jenny” The voice said, dry and parched as a desert wanderer.
“Dieu?” She said to no one, her voice an anxious question.
“No, not God. It’s me, Norman Reedus, and I am come to tell you of your fate.”
Norman Reedus appeared walking casually through the field. He wore an immaculate black riding jacket and black turtleneck. His hair glistened with greasy perfection. Jenny got to her feet and took a step back from the man, who was by all accounts kind of creepy looking.
“Laisse-moi tranquille, Reedus.” Jenny spat, not at all interested in the strange prophecy the minor celebrity had alluded to.
“You will lead the French people to victory, Jenny. It is your fate. You will go to Paris and meet the king, and there you will be given an army to march against the forces of the Orange Man, Donald Trump, leader of the invading English." Reedus said in his characteristically dire tone of voice.
“Pourquoi moi?” Jenny said, a look of incredulity giving way to a hint of fear.
“Because” rasped Reedus.
“Parce que quoi?”
“Just because, alright?”
He took from his hip a sword. The hilt was of plane design, an iron crossguard and a leather wrapped handle. The scabbard was wrought of wood, and along its length warn engravings of My Little Pony iconography. Stars, crescent moons, an apple, a bunch of balloons: these mystic ruins ran the length of the scabbard. Towards Jenny, Reedus handed this sword, and in a weathered, elusive voice he said…
The legend is answered, the path foretold
A girl from Domrémy, cunning and bold
Called by the angels with sword in hand
To drive the English back from our land
Jenny drew the sword from its scabbard, a metallic sound like the fall of a guillotine rang out, and the woods were silent of birdsong and breeze: even the bee’s murmured flight seemed still in that moment. The blade’s worn surface took on that perfect blue of the sky, and somehow Jenny knew, holding this simple weapon, that there was no foe on earth who could stand against her.
Her eyes flicked up from the sword, searching for the worn face of Norman Reedus. But as mysteriously as he had appeared, he had vanished. Jenny stood alone. Faintly, distantly, she heard the call of her mother from the farmhouse that she would never return to. Jenny turned to the west, her hair caught in the breeze which swept across the meadow . She drove the blade back into its scabbard, snatched the novella off the ground and took the first step of many towards the capital; towards the fate that she had been called to; towards war.
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