The Games We Play

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryuugi. This has been pulled from his Spacebattles publishment at threads/rwby-the-gamer-the-games-we-play-disk-five.341621/. Anyway on with the show...err read.

Plead

"So it's like that," I mused, closing my eyes and nodding slowly to show I'd understood.

And I had, probably more than Porfyro knew. After letting him into my room, I'd asked him several pointed questions and began putting together any missing pieces from the way he answered. Truthfully, however, I had been pretty sure that I knew what he had to say even before he started talking. Thinking about it logically, it was probably Pericognition putting together bits and pieces from my memories; due to my high INT, I passively memorized everything I sensed, even if I dismissed most of it as useless and didn't give it any though, so it was highly probable that I'd heard people talking about stuff like this and just ignored it as unimportant at the time.

From what I'd gathered, it seemed to go like this. He and his sister had been enrolled in Sanctum when they came of age as a not so subtle way of getting them out of the house and when they'd passed, they'd been just as quickly cycled into Haven. From the beginning, the name of Alexandria, combined with their nature as bastard children, had been a cause of difficulties. While early on, people had moved to curry favor, it quickly became apparent that neither of them were considered 'true' members of Alexandria and that the Family was split on what to do with them. That is, bullying them would anger certain people in power…but so would assisting them. As they were viewed as a potential threat to the true heir, Kyanos, various people in the Alexandria group regarded them—and anyone who seemed to be supporting them—with a great deal of suspicion.

When people began to figure that out, they reacted in a fairly logical way—they avoided them like the plague. While, of course, supporting them if they seemed like they might steal Kyanos' position as the heir of Alexandria had the potential of great rewards, supporting them in an unsuccessful attempted promised nothing but horrific pain followed hopefully by death. Those weren't the only options, of course, but until Porfyro and Asimi were considered 'safe' by their family, they and any of their followers would be treated with caution. Seeing that, the other children at Sanctum largely decided that the best way to deal with a hornets nest was not to poke it and see what came out, and so they weren't approached. Well, things might have been different if Porfyro and Asimi had proven to be exceptionally skilled, I suppose, but though they stood out some, it was nothing to the extent that people would change their minds. Their time at Sanctum had been a fairly lonely one.

Not so much at Haven, for better or worse. Whether it was fair or not, a team of Hunters was considered to be a single unit in a number of ways—that is, close allies who would die for one another at a moment's notice. It wasn't entirely unfair to think in such a way, because a big part of the training at the Academies was to that end; on the battlefield, Hunters were to work together. To Hunters, age was something that didn't matter, nor did religion, race, beliefs, gender, ambitions, or anything else. That was true of Hunters as a group and even more so of Hunters on the same team.

After all, we were the warriors that had decided to risk our lives for the sake of mankind and the Grimm would happily kill us no matter what we believed in. At the end of the day, we were expected to find common ground and work together—and if no such common ground immediately presented itself, then we could always start with 'I don't want the Grimm to eat me' and 'I'd rather they didn't overrun and slaughter all of Humanity.' Everything else can be put to the side and after four years of school and however many life-or-death missions, bonds tended to form. So really, it wasn't hard to believe that if you fucked with one member of a team, you fucked with all of them; that was how Hunters were all but required to work.

On the other hand, you had guys like me who could kill half their own team if the need presented itself. There were special circumstances involved—their loyalty to a terrorist that may be planning to fuck up my shit, for instance—but still, it showed that things could be more complicated than some guy had decided they were 'supposed' to be.

Porfyro's team had gotten off to a rocky start as the result of various things, of which Porfyro's origins were only a part. Helen, for instance, was the daughter of a branch family of Alexandria—which is to say that Cynosarges' father had had sex with the wife of Helen's grandfather or great-grandfather and she'd ended up pregnant. Stuff like that hadn't been particularly uncommon in the days when the Families ruled as kings so, if anything, it had improved the families position, but it should go without saying that a man may not be overly appreciative of another man having sex with his wife. Even beyond the general suspicion aimed at bastard lines, the Laconic family had fought against the Alexandria in the Civil War several decades later, which had resulted in a fair amount of bad blood between them. That was a long time ago, of course, but that didn't mean it had been forgotten, especially when the Families had finally risen to power once more. Seeing her partner up with the bastards of the Alexandria family…well, to should go without saying that it gave the wrong impression, even if they were on a team mostly due to chance.

Even beyond that, there were other things at play. While Helen was far from the most powerful person in her year, she was undeniably beautiful—made even more so by the unconscious use of her Semblance. People were naturally drawn to her so of course there was some jealousy involved. More than that, while Helen may never kill a Goliath on her own, sometimes the subtle powers were the most dangerous and being able to influence people's minds in even minor ways was the type of power with the potential to be very dangerous. Even now, with her team ostracized and her own background, Helen had a lot of admirers and 'friends;' in another ten or twenty years, she'd be a scary member of somebody's group, rallying people to this cause or that. There'd been a lot of efforts made to separate her from her current team in the hopes of cementing her loyalty to various groups and it wasn't hard to image that it had been tempting.

After all, thinking about it from her perspective, signing up with the right people might remove the mark on her family name and see her welcomed into a high-ranking position. Remaining with her team might have been personally admirable, but there was no reward for going down with a sinking ship and that's what they probably seemed like—especially when her prospects if she stayed loyal to them probably weren't great. Having a woman on your team who can weave subtle influence over entire crowds of people was great; having an enemy who could do it was somewhat less so. Even after two years, she hadn't made an official choice which was already showing a pretty significant amount of loyalty under the circumstances, but she couldn't put it off forever, especially with everything at risk.

Aspro only made matters worse, because he had made a name for himself. Another distant relative of Porfyro's—of which there seemed to be many, given the way certain members seemed to get around, not that I could really talk; I'd seen my family tree and even without the mess that was the current generation, it was pretty wild—he'd stood out from the beginning as a three-time winner of the Mistral Regional Tournament, which had been a record until Pyrrha came along and broke it. He was pretty skilled in his own write and he backed it up with a power that was somewhere between unconscious fine telekinesis and probability manipulation to get an advantage in battle. While not the flashiest of powers, it was the type of thing that allowed him to run through a hail of bullets unscathed and land what would be lucky strikes if he didn't do them ten times in a row. One of the most gifted fighters in his year, he'd managed the occasional victory against Erythro and had once tied with Roland White. Needless to say, he was also being scouted.

Skoyro's group, then, was a way of exerting pressure upon them—I'd have to check their sponsors to be sure but I was almost certain they were backed by the Alexandria Family. They weren't really a threat Porfyro and his team in a 'corner and beat the crap out of you' sense, but they served as a constant example of the future that awaited them if they followed Porfyro. Skoyro and his team had slowly taken control of their year, risen to the top, and made things difficult for them in any number of ways while also leaving ways out for certain members of the team.

From that, I could roughly guess what they were planning. As the strongest group in the junior year, Skoyro and his team had been scouted by the Alexandria family with the intention of drawing them firmly into the fold. If I were to guess, I'd say that the general 'plan' was that Skoyro would marry Asimi while his brother Foteino would probably marry Helen. I couldn't be sure, but that seemed about right; while Asimi was a bastard child, she was still a member of the Alexandria family and Skoyro would marry into it through her—once her potential as a threat was removed and Kyanos had risen to his position, of course. Meanwhile, the stigma against Helen's family would be removed by marrying Foteino, who would be the brother of a loyal member of the Alexandria family. In all likelihood, Skoyro and his group would be protecting and supporting Kyanos during this year and the next, training him and making connections while leaving it to him to assume control in his junior year. Aspro would probably be married to a branch member of the family and Porfyro…

Well, I doubted there was a lot of room for Porfyro in any of their plans. While murdering the son of the clan head was unlikely, he would probably be shuffled as firmly out of things as possible without kicking him out entirely. Asimi alone would be enough of a risk, but at least any claims she potentially made to the throne of Alexandria could be complicated by the right marriage. Porfyro would need to be watched to make sure he didn't do anything that put Kyanos' power at right.

It was a bit complex, but I suppose this was how matters of inheritance were dealt with in Mistral. It had the potential to be a great issue, so it needed to be handled seriously. In all honesty, I thought it was kind of sad, but the fact remained that it was a relatively minor issue from my perspective; I had neither desire nor intention in getting involved in a war of succession on top of all the other problems I had to deal with and I considered myself to be on fairly good terms with Kyanos regardless. Porfyro's team had a number of useful powers and they seemed nice enough, but that would be tedious on an epic scale, to say nothing of the number of people that risked getting hurt.

But then, Porfyro wasn't after the crown, was he?

"I get it," I said, opening my eyes. "What do you want from me? Protection, right?"

Porfyro blinked at me, a bit taken aback. I might have been slightly exaggerating how much he'd told me.

"Um," He replied, trying to catch up. "Yes?"

I hummed, nodding at him.

"It's good that you aren't entertaining plans to take over the Alexandria family," I told him. "That would be a mess to deal with so I would have had to refuse. But if it's just protection, that's easy enough to handle. You and your team could sit near me at lunch and stuff and that should make it obvious that you aren't to be screwed with needlessly. Nonetheless, I'd like to avoid any misunderstandings, so it'd probably be best to sort things out with Kyanos and Skoyro as soon as possible. Well, Kyanos and I are friends so it shouldn't be an issue. Just to make sure, you're fine with being my subordinate, right?"

"Um," He said again.

I tilted my head to the side, musing.

"Mm, really, if it not just your problems here at Haven you're looking to deal with, it would be best to call my grandmother as well," I mused. "Being seen as a member of the Roma would be ideal for you, too, right? It should clear things up and then you could approach the mess with your family from a different angle. Well, but calling Cynosarges would probably help make things simpler. You're fine with that, aren't you?"

Porfyro began to look more and more helpless as I went on until he turned to Adam as if seeking help. He didn't really know the guy, so it was an easy mistake to make.

"Yeah, he's always like that," Adam said, looking bored. His scroll was out again and he was sitting next to the invisible Autumn, holding it such that she could see the game he was playing. As Autumn probably didn't understand anything Porfyro and I were—or were not, as the case may be—saying, she was watching it with distant interest. Which reminded me, I should reward Autumn for her training; maybe getting her some games of her own would be nice.

"Let's go," I said, standing and ignoring Adam.

"Go?" Porfyro asked, head snapping back to me. "Go where?"

"I just said we needed to talk to a few people, didn't I?" I replied. "No point in wasting time."

"Um," Porfyro answered.

"Jaune?" Kyanos asked as he opened the door, surprised to see me—which I suppose was fair. I'd been busy the last few weeks and human interaction tends to fall to the wayside a bit when you were preparing for the Apocalypse; as a result, I hadn't spent much time hanging out with my friends. The simple fact of the matter was that the time I spent with them was time I could instead spend ensuring the survival of the human race, so I prioritized.

"Kyanos," I greeted anyway. "Got a minute?"

He blinked once and tilted his head to the side before nodding.

"Sure," He replied. "What do you need?"

I gave him a preemptively apologetic smile before answering.

"Family business," I said.

Kyanos frowned at that.

"Ah," He replied. He looked over my shoulder and then both ways down the hall, his eyes lingering for several seconds when he saw his half-brother leaning against a wall a ways away. After a moment of observation, he sighed and nodded again. "I see. Alexandria and Roma only?"

"Mm," I confirmed.

Kyanos glanced over his shoulder at the rest of his team, who had stopped eating, reading, and playing videogames to watch the two of us with unconcealed interest, before glancing back at me with a raised eyebrow. I stepped out of the way to let him past and he closed the door behind him.

"I see you met my half-brother," He said after an awkward moment, unsure of how to begin the conversation. Given that this was probably an uncomfortable topic to begin with, I decided to try and make this easy for him.

"He came to me asked for protection," I stated, dismissing his unspoken worries.

Kyanos blinked at that, probably surprised that a junior would be asking a freshman for such a thing—but then he nodded again, remembering who he was talking to.

"I guess that makes sense," He mused, eyebrows furrowing as he tried to piece together what that truly meant. "You gave it to him, I'm guessing?"

"I want to sort out a few things beforehand," I replied. "But yeah."

"Getting an early start on the rest of us again, I see," Kyanos said with another sigh—before giving me a half-smile and nodding in acknowledgement. "What type of arrangement is it?"

"A fairly standard one," I told him. "They work for me, I protect them. Well, given what I've already done, that mainly just means I'll let them hang around me publicly at lunch and stuff; anyone with a survival instinct should be able to take a hint and everyone without one is better off learning why they need one now than in the field."

Kyanos laughed at that, leaning back against the doorframe of his room.

"Fair enough," He agreed. "For a minute, I thought you wanted me to call everyone off them, but I doubt you need my help for stuff like that."

"And it's more complicated than that," I stated matter-of-factly.

"Always is," He replied, before glancing towards Porfyro again. "I don't hate him, you know."

I did know, so I nodded.

"Mom, though…" Kyanos continued, shaking his head. "Well, you can probably imagine how it looked to her when Dad brought home two older kids shortly after marrying her. You probably know what our families can be like. I'm not really worried about it, but Mom's side of the family can't not react; Dad all but slapped them all in the face and stopped over their arrangements and deals. Whatever their personal feelings, a lack of response wouldn't look good. I can't stop that. I'm not even sure gramps could—or, at least, that he'd be willing to, given the hell it would raise. So far, he's sort of been leaving it to Dad to clean up his own mess, though I don't think he minds having more grandkids."

"I know," I replied. "I try to keep an ear to the ground—"

And in the ground. And pretty much everywhere else I can manage to put one, honestly.

"So I have a fairly good idea of what's happening. Honestly, I don't want to step on your toes or butt into Alexandria business, but it's a good opportunity for me, so I'd like to make arrangements."

"My brother's team does have some pretty neat powers on it, doesn't it?" Kyanos noted, getting right to the heart of the matter. "In all honesty, if not for the message it would send, I wouldn't mind them having my back—but I can't have it looking like I'm depending on my older siblings and I especially can't have it look like I'm showing weakness to a potential threat to my position. It's sad, but I guess it can't be helped."

He was pretty frank on that front, but I suppose I was the same way. Truthfully, their powers were a big part of why I was going through with this. Not that I didn't empathize with their circumstances or didn't want to help them, of course, but again, I kind of had bigger things to worry about; their current situation might cause them problems when they graduate in two years or so, but that was rather beyond the time frame I was working under. If we were all still alive in two years and Family issues were still something worth mentioning, who knows? But here and now, I felt justified putting stuff like that off.

But Porfyro's team was different. Sure, they weren't the strongest students in school, but that wasn't what I wanted them for—quite frankly, I didn't need that kind of help. Instead, they brought to the table an array of powers that could be useful in a variety of circumstances. If used right, Asimi's limited precognition, Helen's mental influence, Aspro's luck, and even Porfyro's opacity manipulation could all be helpful; I didn't need help punching Goliaths in the face right now, so that happened to be precisely the type of thing I was after.

I knew from experience with my own skills that sometimes the best skills were the auxiliary and support ones. Things like my various senses and Naraka, as well as things which were useful in and out of battle like Acceleration, had long since proven their worth to me and so I would be happy to gain support from people with those kinds of skill sets. Similarly, if I could find, say, a few mass-teleporters and such, I'd be fairly ecstatic. Someone who could read minds or something would be pretty nice to, though I'd need to be completely sure of their loyalty. Stuff like that was more useful to me than, say, a pyrokinetic, by and large.

So I hummed a sound of agreement and nodded at his words.

"Given that they're presence in the Alexandria family is causing so much trouble, I was thinking about asking Grandmother to accept them into the Roma," I continued, surprising Kyanos again. "Our families have done exchanges like that before and it would be convenient for you to, right? That should take care of their potential claim to your position and remove any reason for them to be targeted at the same time. No, more than that, if another faction were to target members of the Roma needlessly and beyond what is expected, I'd have to object. That should solve most of the problems, I believe."

"It would solve a lot of problems," Kyanos said after a moment, regaining himself. "I mean, anyone with a brain would know what was happening and why, but screw them—it would take care of most of the major issues and that's what really matters. But…"

I smiled wryly.

"They don't want them to leave, but they don't want them to stay," I mused, shaking my head. "Our families are a bit weird, aren't they?"

"Just a bit," Kyanos replied, holding up two fingers with several centimeters of space between them. "But it can't be helped—I don't mind if they're okay with it, but a lot of my family members would take it was a pretty big loss. Even if they're pretty unwanted…well, the Families try to squeeze as much use as they possibly can out of people before throwing them away. You get what I mean, right?"

"Marriages," I replied, voicing my previous thoughts. "Skoyro is probably set to marry Asimi and become a member of the Alexandria family, while his brother will likely marry Helen."

"Probably," Kyanos agreed. "If not exactly that, then something close to it—that stuff has been in the works for a long while now and people would get annoyed if it got ruined all of a sudden. Not that gramps is likely to care too much about that, much less your grandmother, but it'll be a pain in the ass in various ways. They'll see it as losing an opportunity to strengthen Alexandria and will make things inconvenient, if nothing else. If instead of breaking things off entirely, it was a replacement, that might work, but I'll assume you don't want to marry my sister or Helen."

"I'll have to decline," I answered. "Not that they aren't attractive or anything, but I'd feel really bad for them if they got stuck being married to me."

I wasn't kidding. For anything close to a normal person, being married to me would be a death sentence—and I wouldn't want to marry anyone who didn't know what they were getting into, besides. And from a more pragmatic standpoint, I wasn't any more opposed to the concept of an arranged marriage then I was to using my body to gain an advantage in any other way, but if I did it, I'd prefer to get a greater asset out of it. That was a rather cold way of looking at things, but hey, there were not-insignificant odds that anyone who married me wouldn't have to put up with me for all that long, so…

"In regards to marriages, however," I continued. "I don't want to force anyone into such a thing, but I'm sure our grandparents will start haggling moments after we tell them. If the members of Porfyro's teams agree to it, I have no objections either, so tell them to sort it out."

"I'm all for passing the buck," Kyanos agreed. "So it sounds good to me. When do you want to do this?"

"You got your scroll?"

"Of course."

"Then let's call them up now and get this over with."