Pyra

Pyra
Pyra in Xenoblade Chronicles 2
Chronological information
First game	Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (2017)
Game appearances	Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Personal information
Gender	Female
Homeland	Alrest
Species	Blade
Alterego(s)	Mythra
Behind the scenes
Creator	Monolith Soft
Current English voice actor	Skye Bennett
Current Japanese voice actor	Shino Shimoji

Pyra is one of the main protagonists of Monolith Soft's Xenoblade Chronicles 2, the third entry in the Xenoblade Chronicles series and playable characters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Profile

Pyra is a Blade, which are personifications of weapons used by Drivers. Pyra specifically is the Aegis, a legendary Blade with fire elemental abilities. Rex, the protagonist of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, becomes the Driver to Pyra and their life forces are connected. If either were to die in combat, the other were to die with them. Rex vows to protect Pyra on their shared quest to find the paradise land of Elysium.

Pyra is a split personality of Mythra, who created and transformed into Pyra to cope with the grief of her involvement in the Aegis war and the destruction of Auresco. Addam, her Driver at the time, put Pyra in stasis on the Ancient Ship and sank it under the Cloud Sea to prevent her from reawakening and losing control. 500 years later, Rex, a Leftherian salvager, was involved on a salvaging expedition that found the Ancient Ship and brought it above the water for investigation. Rex accidentally touches the core crystal of Aegis and is promptly killed by Jin, the antagonist of the game. Just before Rex died, his mind is transported to an astral version of Elysium, where he meets Pyra for the first time. Rex agrees to become Pyra's Driver, and their newly shared life force resurrects him. The two managed to escape Jin and go on an adventure to find Elysium. Along the way, they amass a party of other Blades and Drivers that have similar goals.

After both have a near death experience at the hands of Obrona, a secondary antagonist, Mythra is forced to reawaken and save Rex. After a while of reluctantly allowing herself to used in battles, Mythra becomes more open and willing to work with Rex, and the two eventually learn to swap between each other during a battle.

The party learns that Malos, another antagonist, requires Pyra's memories to regain his lost powers. Pyra offers herself in exchange for the safety of her friends. After her memories were taken, Pyra becomes unusable as a Blade, but suffers no physical effects. The party comes to rescue Pyra, with Rex fighting without the Aegis due Malos taking his powers away. Pyra and Mythra urge Rex to flee and leave them to die, but he refuses, saying that he is still their protector and will take them to Elysium. The sheer amount of willpower Rex displays causes Pyra and Mythra to merge together and form Pneuma, the ultimate form of Aegis. The party then confronts Malos and kill him in a final battle. Pneuma sacrifices herself to save the party from the collapsing world tree, dying in an explosion. However, after the rebirth of the world, the core crystal of Aegis glows again. Rex touches it and Pyra and Mythra appear in seperate bodies. It is left ambiguous if the two retained their memories from their previous life.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

During Ultimate's development, Masahiro Sakurai had considered adding characters from ARMS and Xenoblade Chronicles 2, however as their games were announced long after development had started, he passed them over. Years later, Pyra would be announced as the tenth DLC fighter alongside Mythra in the February 17th, 2021 Nintendo Direct. She will be released sometime in March 2021.

Trivia

• Pyra and Mythra are the fourth team of characters to share a character slot via transformation, the first three being Zelda and Sheik in Melee and Brawl, Samus and Zero Suit Samus in Brawl, and Pokémon Trainer with Squirtle, Ivysaur, and Charizard.
  • They are the first DLC characters to be transformations.
• Succeeding Min Min, Pyra and Mythra are the second and third characters that were spirits in the base game.
  • Coincidentally, their games of origin were in consideration to have playable fighters for the base game, but the base game roster had already been finished by then, making the idea infeasible.
    • Both of these games were also released in 2017.
• Pyra and Mythra mark the second time in Ultimate where multiple characters share the same slot in the character selection screen while having different Fighter Numbers, with the first being the Pokémon Trainer's Pokémon.
• Pyra's design has been slightly censored; she wears an additional pair of translucent stockings under her shorts. Unlike Mythra, this change was not present in either her base game spirit or as an alternate costume in her home game.