The Games We Play

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryugii. This has been pulled from his Spacebattle publishment. Anyway on with the show...errr read.

Spying

Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one!

By raising Aureola to level 99, you have gained the skill 'Aurora.'

By raising Gungnir to level 99, you have gained the skill 'Longinus.'

By raising Karna to level 99, you have gained the skill 'Surya.'

Approximately seventeen minutes later, I was panting and out of breath. My form dimmed, flesh quickly growing into place over it as I fell to a knee for the eighth time. The exhaustion was a side effect of Sahasrara, one of what I considered to be 'hidden' costs. While the use of the skill technically required nothing more than a shift of HP to MP, I couldn't hold it for more than a short period of time without collapsing. Besides my HP and MP bars, I'd always known I had an invisible stamina bar, which I could refill in various ways; I'd figured that Sahasrara simply drew from that so extensively that I'd collapsed the moment I first opened my Chakras.

But…if that was the case, now that I'd improved enough to maintain it for more than a moment, there should have been no problem maintaining it indefinitely. Saying it that way sounded a bit weird, admittedly, but I could restore my Stamina by healing myself, so unless the cost was truly ludicrous, I should have been fine.

Yet here I was, on my knees again, despite healing myself constantly. Was the cost just that enormous? Or was it drawing from something else? Given the nature of the skill, it wouldn't surprise me if it was drawing from my Soul in some fashion, but I couldn't be sure.

"It's rare to see you looking worn out, Jaune," Adam noted casually, as if he wasn't standing guard over me as I tried to catch my breath. I'd pretty thoroughly cleared the area around us of Grimm, but I appreciated it anyway; as the Humbaba had proven, one of the more powerful creatures of Grimm could drop in on us at any time. My HP and MP returned as quickly as ever, but…well, I'd just as soon not be caught defenseless.

"You try being an angel," I replied. "It's not as easy as I make it look."

"Is that so?" Adam asked skeptically. "Because it looked to me like you were just shooting things in the face, same as you always do."

Beneath the words, I could hear a touch of honest concern. Because our levels were close to one another, he had been able to see what had happened to my HP—and he was right, I was just massacring Grimm, if on a somewhat larger scale than normal. I made a point of not exhausting myself during our normal training, so seeing me like this must have been rather odd.

I gave him a tired smile, doing my best to make it look reassuring.

"I suppose it would look that way to you," I told him, a bit too tired to both making my voice smug. "But in case the million eyes and mouths didn't give it away, I'm trying something new."

Adam snorted.

"Whatever you say," He answered. "I was going to offer to let you be my wingman the next time we went to a bar, but since you can't keep it up for more than a minute or two, you'd just embarrass me."

"Puns and sex jokes?" I asked. "Really? Adam, you're a bull Faunus who uses a style specializing in quick draws and who's Semblance involves gathering energy to release in a sudden burst or to wrap around your sword in a protective coating. Do you really want to get into this kind of fight with me? Think about it."

He winced and laughed, raising a hand.

"Not too tired to be a smarmy dick, I see," He noted. "You should be fine then."

This time, I snorted, rolling my eyes at him.

"Like I said, I'm working on something new," I replied. "It's harder to maintain then I would have liked, but I'm making progress."

"Anything I should know about?" He asked.

"It's soul-based metaphysics again," I answered.

"Ah," He said. "Boring shit. Never mind, then."

I smiled at that, glancing up at him as I took another breath and straightened. Breathing itself didn't actually help me recover, but since I could use it to meditate, it seemed to smooth things along when I tired myself out. I was just glad the wait wasn't too bad.

"There's some stuff I'm hoping will serve as a trump card," I continued. "I'll tell you if anything comes of it, but we've got work to do now. Raven?"

"Oh, are you two done?" She asked, casting us an amused glance. Impressively, she didn't seem to have too much difficulty fighting while her mind was elsewhere, which had allowed her to keep watch over Cinder even as we continued to grind.

More interesting, however, were the words that had appeared above her head.

Memories of the World Tree

LV 174

Raven Branwen

Now that our levels were close enough to one another, I was able to see her title—and, more usefully, Observe her status. I trusted Raven enough that I can't say I was too concerned, especially as I'd been seeing her so much lately had hadn't pinged to anything, but I checked her overnonetheless, making sure she didn't have any unfortunate status effects or anything like that. I skimmed the rest of her profile in the process and her stats and skills were as impressive as I'd figured they would be. I politely turned a blind eye to the background section of her profile, giving her privacy. I was pretty sure I knew or could piece together most of it, but she was a friend and it was her story to tell.

"My apologies for keeping you waiting," I replied politely, moving to her side. "I simply wanted to make the most of what time we had together."

She huffed out a very slight laugh at that before raising a hand.

"Shall we withdraw for now, then?" She asked. "If you wish to keep an eye on Cinder, it might be better to be a bit closer, no?"

I paused for a moment to consider that—but no, this was something that demanded my full attention. If something went wrong, which had begun to seem like more of an inevitability than a possibility, I'd like to be close enough to do something about it, even if it cut into my training time. Besides, now that I was getting a slightly better handle on Sahasrara, there wasn't much of an issue in focusing on other forms of training for a little while.

"Please," I asked, inclining my head. A moment later, a portal whirled to life before us and Raven walked in, leaving the rest of us to follow. I peered through it, scanning the area around the exit portal just to be safe, before doing so and emerging on one of the snow-covered cliffs surrounding Atlas.

"Good fuck its cold," Adam swore as he crossed through behind me before turning his Aura inwards and using it to warm himself. "God, I hate this place."

"Hm?" Gou asked, heavy paws crushing plate-sized paw prints into the snow as he followed. Naturally, he was unbothered. "Ah, so this is Atlas?"

"Yup," I answered, waving a hand to release a small wave of fire to give Suryasta form again. Levant took form beside him and between the two of them, the air around us quickly warmed for the sake of those of us that couldn't just ignore the fact that it was about forty below and bound to get colder as the sun finished falling. Raven seemed to mostly brush it off, probably just used to it, but I could tell both she and Adam were cold.

Gou looked around, being the only one among us who hadn't seen the place before despite being an Atlesian breed. As he did, he hummed, considering the snow around him.

"I may have to disagree with you, Adam," Gou mused at last. "I find our surroundings quite beautiful. The snowfalls here are nothing like those around Mistral."

He was certainly right about that much and it occurred to me that this was his first time seeing normal snow. Because of weird geography around Mistral, it was perhaps the only place where you could get monochrome snow—that is, a mixture of snow and volcanic ash that seemed to paint the tundra's near the Kingdom black and white. While it was beautiful in its own way, it had a tendency to stick around and recently there'd been some volcanic activity recently that had darkened the icy fields north of Mistral, drawing out the Tyrant Scales in the process. Atlas, however, was home to nothing but plains of pure and flawless white, as far as the eye could see.

"Snows fine for the first ten minutes or so," Adam answered bitterly. "Then it's just annoying to walk in."

"Adam," Raven said with no particular infliction, making him fall silent.

"If you don't like walking in the snow, I do not mind if you wish to ride on my back," Gou offered in a whisper.

Adam grunted quietly in acknowledgement but didn't answer.

As they spoke, I calmly looked around us, scanning for anything of note. As I was getting into the habit of doing, I open Ajna and took things in with my third eye. The fields of snow lit up as if glowing from within, illuminated by both its own frigid power and what lied in the ground far beneath it. Beside me, Raven's soul took shape before my eyes, revealing what I briefly though was a humanoid raven, but which a closer look revealed to be something else entirely. Below the nose, her face was that of a human, while above it she wore a black avian mask that seemed to have merged with her flesh. Her clothes were similarly dark, with a black dress and feathers that seemed to blur the lines between flesh, armor, and cloth, leading back to a pair of black wings that seemed somehow tied to her arms. She had one of the more human-seeming souls I'd seen, but for her eyes, which were like a kaleidoscope of shifting landscapes and images.

I contemplated that for a moment before shifting way gaze towards Atlas in the distance, filled with the lights of so many lives. I found Cinder's ship easily enough, which seemed to have joined the evening air traffic, but someone else stood out as well.

In the air above Mistral, heading in approximately the same direction as Cinder, I saw an old friend.

"Ah…" I said with a slight sigh. "It seems we have a problem."

No one looked particularly surprised.

"What is it, Jian?" Raven asked, following my gaze to the sky and seeing nothing. Naturally, she couldn't see what I was looking at from this distance—and while she was able to use her portals to spy on people, that didn't make her automatically aware of everything.

"It seems we'll be entertaining guests," I replied, nodding my head and creating an illusion to highlight the target for her. She frowned for a moment, eyes going distant again, before sighing herself.

"Ah," She agreed, sounding tired. "So it would seem."

"And for those of us who can't see shit on the other side of the city?" Adam asked, giving both of us an annoyed look.

I replied by making another illusion, filling the space between us with an image. The back of a small airship appeared, with three of the four seats filled by a pair of older men and a young girl. I knew who all of them were, even if I'd only actually met two of them before, but Adam glanced at them once and shot me another look.

"James Ironwood," Raven answered, pointing to the younger looking man. "General and Headmaster of Atlas. He's an associate of my brother and Ozpin."

I'd known all that already, but nodded anyway, because there was an undercurrent to her tone. I'd already checked him over, so I simply gestured that he was clean.

The Heart of the Machine

LV 148

James Ironwood

As expected from a colleague of Raven's, he was built like a fucking battleship and I was imminently glad that we hadn't fought back when I stole the White Whale. Even beyond the values of his physical stats, his Intelligence was extremely high, approaching two hundred—and I could see how he'd put it to use. I'd been limited to using Observe the last time me met, but now I could see the machinery he'd incorporated into his body, especially on the right side of his body. I had to wonder what had happened to remove his arm, leg, and eye, but while injuries like that would have ended most Hunter's careers, he seemed adept at putting himself back together.

"The other man is Professor Polendina," Raven continued, relaxing a touch. "He's perhaps the most brilliant scientist in Atlas. He and James have worked together on a lot of projects over the years—ever since James graduated and moved to Atlas in fact."

The Toymaker

LV 31

Joseph Polendina

Low stats, I noted—but he wasn't a Hunter and his skill in a fight wasn't the point. His Intelligence exceeded Ironwoods by thirty points, taking it into the lower two hundreds, and judging by his skills, he knew his shit. And from the looks of things, 'his shit' was 'everything he could get his hands on.' There was a reason Atlas valued him so much.

Besides, even if he couldn't kick much ass personally, he could always just build things to do it for him.

Raven hesitated when she came to the last occupant and I look over for her, to make things simple.

"Her name's Penny," I said. "She's an android with a soul."

A few eyebrows went up at that and I rolled my eyes at my friends. Granted, it was only a few raised eyebrows, but still—you'd figure hanging out with me would inure them to stuff like this.

"Is she like you?" Raven murmured, raising an eyebrow.

I nodded my head. Then I shook my head. Then I shrugged.

Raven blinked at me mildly.

"She was created, if that's what you're asking," I explained. "But I don't think she was made the same way I was—or else someone in Atlas has got some serious explaining to do. But I'm pretty she wasn't. I'd need to look into it to be sure, but she doesn't act like I'd expect someone made from the distilled essence of countless souls to behave. She stuck me primarily as a young and lonely girl."

"Ah," Raven said again, frowning as she considered that. "She was normal then?"

"Normal might be pushing it," I replied. "But she's a Huntress. You don't get into fighting monsters to protect the world by being normal."

Raven bobbed her head once in concession.

"You met her during the White Whale incident?" She guessed, to which I nodded. "I take it you didn't part on good terms, then."

"You'd be surprised," I answered. "Penny is remarkably good at taking things in stride. I ripped her arms and legs off though, yes."

Raven blinked at me again, turning to look at the image and then back at me.

"I put them back, of course," I said defensively. "I wasn't going to leave a little girl quadriplegic in the wilderness."

"You go on adventures that are odd even by my standards," Raven told me, shaking her head slightly.

"Fascinating as the fucked-up shit Jaune gets up to when he doesn't have adult supervision is," Adam cut in. "Am I the only one who thinks that a pair of military scientists and a super robot probably only have so many places they might be going at this hour? And that it might fuck with our shit?"

"Don't be silly, Adam," I replied, not at all miffed by his words. "You really think you'd be the first person in our group to notice something? You're literally the only person here who doesn't have superhuman senses."

"Rub it in, you smug piece of shit," Adam scoffed, rolling his eyes.

"Oh, I am," I said, holding out a finger. "This is me playing the world's smallest violin. You just can't see it because your eyes suck."

"Yeah, yeah," Adam muttered, rolling his eyes again. He stopped, however, when I made an illusion in front of my finger, showing the same space but quickly zooming in to show a tiny, tiny, tiny violin, with a bow drawing slowly across it. "…Did you actually make a tiny violin?"

I shot him a flat look and stored it back in my Inventory.

"What do you think?" I asked him seriously.

Adam shook his head, trying and failing to hide his smile.

"How long have you been waiting to make that joke?" He asked.

"Three weeks," I admitted. "I've been saving it."

"Boys," Raven interrupted, giving us both a look. "The airship?"

I shrugged a shoulder.

"I think we all know where this is probably going," I answered. "It seems Cinder's not the only one headed to that base. Given that it's only the three of them, Cinder probably hasn't tripped any alarms yet, so there's that. At this hour…if I had to guess, I'd say it has something to do with upgrading Penny."

"At the same base that they make the Paladins at?" Adam asked.

"It's probably the other way around," I told him. "The Paladins are more like Penny's backup dancers—and she's gotten stronger since the last time I saw her."

A Real Girl

LV 113

Penny Polendina

Adam considered that for a moment.

"How strong is she?" He asked and I thought about it for a moment.

"You might be able to win against her in a fight," I said at last. "Your Semblance is a pretty good match for her, so long as you keep your distance. Her physical stats are fairly ridiculous."

He whistled, impressed. For all the shit I gave him, we both knew how skilled he was.

The Blood Prince

LV 119

Adam Taurus

"Assuming you're correct," Raven mused, bringing us back on track. "It's likely that they will notice Cinder's presence. There's quite a bit ofdifference between robbing an empty building and stealing something out from under the nose of the owner. If nothing else, it's likely they will respond very quickly to the theft."

I nodded and Adam sighed.

"A part of me really wants to just hang her out to dry," He muttered. "But I'm guessing that's not possible."

"It's possible," I answered. "We'd just regret it. If possible, I don't want to see how Cinder reacts when she's forced into a corner. She probably won't kill Ironwood, given how central he seems to be to her plans, but it's hard to say what she'll do to the other two. Best case scenario, she sees them before they see her and chooses to withdraw and then makes me do it for her. Worst case…the Professor might die and Penny might get kidnapped. Either way, I'd rather we just avoided it entirely."

"How do you propose we do that?" Raven asked.

This time, I sighed, looking up at the sky for a long moment before shrugging.

"I guess it can't be helped," I said. "I suppose I'll go distract them."

"What?" Raven wondered, blinking and turning my way—but I was already shifting into Naraka. In the city, the shells of airships began to fall from the air, but I Lunged forward heedless of them, angling my leap precisely. As I reached the apex of my climb, I halted myself abruptly in midair and waited for a beat, timing myself before exiting Naraka.

I reappeared inside of the airship, claimed the fourth seat as my own, and waited.