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.

Second

The effects of the 'bomb' were obvious in hindsight. It was a multipurpose weapon. The first effect was, of course, the humongous explosion. As Adam had said, a blast of that size could easily level a city—or at least destroy enough of it that it made no real difference. Even if people managed to survive being anywhere near that blast, they could probably kiss any kind of meaningful infrastructure goodbye in the wake of that thing. What Raven had seen with that blackout would look like a cakewalk in comparison to the fallout from an explosion like that as mounting fear was fueled by growing darkness and a collapse of civilization. The Grimm would swarm in the wake of such a thing, drawn by the terror and pain of the survivors, and if that wasn't enough to finish them off…well, the radiation from the bomb wouldn't do them any favors.

In a way, the sheer destructive potential was terrifying, not so much for the power as for the implications of it. Certainly, I had the power to level a city with ease. Given a reason, any of the Kingdoms could do the same, though the methods may have varied. But we all had something in common—we wouldn't. Even in the Great War, arguably the largest conflict in recorded history with the invention of the Astra, no one had ever actually fired one at a city. Entire battlefields had been reduced to elemental chaos and the power displayed had been a threat unto itself, but it hadn't ever been aimed towards the heart of human civilization. Even when a battle for freedom and identity was being waged, no one had even considered striking at Mistral or Vale.

Humanity didn't exactly have enough cities to afford that level of destruction. Supposedly, on the few occasions that the idea had been suggested among the enemy encampment, it had been shouted down in short order for one simple reason.

In the end, the Grimm were our true enemy. And the enemy of our enemy was our friend.

So long as we shared that common enemy, at least. When the Grimm weren't an immediate threat, the Kingdom had fought with some frequency, because as soon as they left we went right back to hating each other—but as long as they were around to put Humanity at risk, the was no choice but to prioritize them. If a single Kingdom fell, the panic and fear that resulted may well have been enough to bring down the rest. Everyone would wonder if they were really safe or if they were next, and by wondering, would have answered both questions. It was a logical threat that was hard to avoid, because it wasn't something you could very well not think about, faced with such devastation.

One of the biggest fears during the war had been that the fall of a single nation might cause a domino effect and topple the others, and in the end, that alone had tied the hands of everyone involved. It had still been the greatest conflict in history, but—though it had occasionally come close—it had never quite become a war of extinction. No one knew when they might cross that line on accident and so no one had truly pushed. If they had…well, it was possible the war might have gone very differently, assuming Humanity survived it at all. Even the very people who had championed against culture and identity hadn't been willing to cross that line.

So in the end, while the Kingdoms had the power to destroy each other, they wouldn't—because they truly would destroy each other. Even the Great War had had its rules and they had been followed to the point that major battles would come to a halt so as to deal with incursions of the Grimm.

This was a reminder of why—and a painful one, at that. If it came down to it, the Grimm could destroy us and they could do it easily. It wouldn't just be because of their vastly greater numbers and it wouldn't be some grand war of attrition and valiant death. They owned this planet and if they wanted, they could wipe away the last Remnants of our species with ease. An explosion of this magnitude, large enough to carve a scar across what remained of the Human Race…on anyone else, it would have been a sign of madness and desperation. A final act of outrageous spite.

Not so to the Grimm. For them, this destruction was nothing more than an invitation for growth.

That was the other purpose of the bomb, naturally—to strengthen the Hydra. Despite being at ground zero, its innermost core had weathered the blast unscathed, protected by the very blast that it had fueled. Everything else had been scoured away, of course, leaving the Hydra barely clinging to its life, which was all the better for recovering from. Lacking anything resembling a heart, brain, or even soul, even damage on this scale wasn't enough to kill it while its center remained, and in but a short time, it would recover fully. No, more than that, it had already surpassed its existence as a Hydra and reached up to a higher level, joining the no longer nearly mythical enough ranks of the Ananta.

When it recovered from the damage fully—something that would take minutes at most, even accounting to its steadily lengthening HP bar—it would be a monster. Though it was presently headless, I'd be surprised if it had less than fifty by the time it recovered, giving it more heads then I'd ever seen on one of its lesser brethren. Once those heads grew into place and added their auxiliary cores to its current one…I could only imagine how fast it would be able to heal, how resistant it would be to damage, and how powerful it would become. All I knew was that it would, in all likelihood, be far beyond me.

And for that same reason, I couldn't run. As I was now, I could only see one chance to beat this creature, and that was to do it here and now, before it recovered fully. I couldn't very well run away, knowing that, especially when I knew I was partially responsible for the creation of this creature. Whether it had been some natural trap or if Malkuth was being an enormous dick again, it didn't matter; all that mattered was that I didn't dare risk letting this thing go when there was even a chance of it following me back to Mistral. Because if it did…

It didn't matter. I wouldn't let it matter.

"Kill it," I snarled, dropping my Psychokinetic Shield. "Don't worry about anything else—we can't let it leave here alive!"

Choosing the lead by example, I opened the assault, digging into my Inventory for four Dust Crystals that I immediately used to return myself to full power. Not daring to hold back, I gathered power in each of my four hands, holding onto it even as I felt Bai Hu's form waver as it was devoured. Thrusting my hands forward the moment I felt the pieces click, I unleashed a full quartet of Lux Aeternas.

The light seemed to devour everything. Though I'd gotten used to the darkness that came with the light attack, this was something different—something cold and hungry. It consumed everything it could to fuel its own power, sucking away every trace of heat and light until I felt frost forming on my skin and in my eyelashes. But it went beyond even that, pulling at my soul to devour spare MP, and it was only through careful control that I kept it from emptying my reserves and leaving my vulnerable. The darkness felt thick, too, if that made any sense; I was pretty sure it was drawing away energy even from my movements, if only just a little. It certainly seemed to swallow its own noise, because I didn't hear the usual sounds of devastation.

When the lighting returned the normal, the world before me was a study in contrasts. As I'd thought, frost had crept over everything near our battle, turning the now-blasted wasteland silver-white, except for the area immediately in front of me. Everything that had been caught in my blast had been erased, cut cleanly away as if by a surgeon's knife. I could saw with a fair bit of confidence that that had been the strongest attack I'd ever used.

And it still wasn't enough. In the distance, where it had been thrown by Lux Aeterna's power, I could see a single red sphere, a bit larger than I was in size. The Hydra's so-called core.

But the core wasn't what I was after; it was just the shell that protected the portal through which Malkuth fed his creation—a portal that was now wide open. Though I'd badly cracked several dozen layers of the sphere, matter was already pouring out of its center, not only repairing the damage but spurting from the sphere's surface like blood. Except blood didn't twist and take shape, didn't immediately harden and solidify. Even now, with my Acceleration pushed to the limit, I could see it healing, faster than ever.

Then I'd just have to move faster if I was going to keep up.

Without a moment's hesitation, I swept up and devoured half a dozen Dust crystals to fuel my advance. The first I used to bolster my own speed, Accelerating beyond my normal limits until the healing seemed to still. I knew I'd need to devour more Dust with every second to maintain this massive boost, but I didn't much care. Instead, I called out to my Elementals.

Ereb who stood frozen like a statue in the process of forming a new body. Crocea Mors, hidden by the incandescence of my gauntlets. Vulturnus, the only one visibly moving to my present sight, flying formlessly through the heavens.

All at once, they shifted. Not visibly, except in Vulturnus' case, but they did. I felt them wane in my thoughts and something new took hold—and I brought out the big guns.

Between one instant and the next, someone appeared beside me—or perhaps not. Even while I was looking at him, it was hard to say if he was really there. He seemed to exist between moments and places, there and gone again. I couldn't say why, for all that he was my Elemental; my sense of him was strange. Perhaps he sometimes stalled and existed a moment behind me or maybe he waited patiently for me to catch up. Maybe he was only here when I observed him or when I looked away. I honestly didn't know.

What I could say was that his appearance was the most normal of the advanced Elementals I'd summon, if not precisely stable. He looked somewhere between about fifteen and thirty depending on when you looked, with black hair and even darker eyes, the orbs lacking any whites—or any other color, really. He wore a suit of black armor that was alternately smooth and sharp, with angles that varied as you tried to measure them.

It was rare that I chose to use my more advanced Elementals in battle, simply because they weren't the most efficient uses of my power. At high levels, they might be a better option, but here and now, the draw on my power was too severe. But…this wasn't the time to worry about that. If I had to burn through my entire store of Dust to win this fight, I'd call it a fair trade.

And since it was time I needed, there was nobody better to ask.

A moment after he appeared, pitch-black orbs shifted to look at me and through me at the same time.

"Yes," He agreed a moment before I thought to say anything. Though I actually wasn't sure he was speaking to me, as such; I never actually saw him speak to me, I just remembered him saying the words. Before I could react—and this was me we were talking about—he put a hand on my shoulder and I felt myself…

Saying I moved was quite accurate. It was more like I found myself elsewhere, standing directly in front of the Ananta's core and peering at the portal within it. I had no recollection of crossing the intervening space, but then, I didn't remember withdrawing any Dust crystals either, even though I had several in my hands. Seeing that my MP was almost empty, I consumed the lot of them and, when I absently checked my Inventory for more, realized that I must have used three or four more in the time I either hadn't experienced or didn't remember. Bringing my power back up to full, I began to gather it, mentally plotting out the best course of attack—

Abruptly, I had a hand outstretched, a wall of attacks circling the unmoving sphere. Catching up to my body, I realized the nature of the attacks—Gungnirs intermixed with Magic Missiles, along with the occasional Agneyastra. Each of the created weapons, floating in the air with my Psychokinesis, had been charged to their fullest extent, a process that would have taken at least a few seconds and several times more power than I could provide. My Pericognition quickly informed me of what I needed to know and I felt more than saw the absence of thirty-seven Dust crystals from my Inventory. Nonetheless, the bombardment had been fully charged and all that was left was too unleash it.

So I did. The attacks collided with a burst of power so massive that I briefly thought the world was breaking. Seeing it up close, it was easy for me to determine that it's power was several times the four-fold Lux Aeterna if taken all together—and each attack was designed to penetrate an opponent's defenses with as much force as possible. In the midst of all that power, I saw layers of the Ananta's defensive core shatter by the dozens and burn away, even through the light of an explosion that could have dwarfed mountains. It occurred to me belatedly that I wasn't sure I could survive proximity to such a thing and I realized I had no idea what I'd been planning.

But then my Elemental was standing idly beside me and I felt myself twisting. I was stretched and unraveled so as to better squeeze through nonexistent gaps in the oncoming rush of power. I felt myself come apart as if into a cloud of smoke, but even that ascribed more presence than I experienced in that moment; if I was a cloud of anything, it was a cloud of probability. What were the odds of me existing here or there or being dead or alive? Somewhat less than a hundred percent. The explosion passed through me—through the space I occupied, or didn't occupy, or perhaps just maybe occupied—and then I was there again in its wake, collapsing to my knees. My HP had been badly reduced, if far less than probably should have been, but there wasn't much time to think about it.

I was back on my feet and approaching the cracked sphere literally before I could think about it. Dust crystals, the most recent of now well over a hundred, shattered and faded in my hands. The next moment, Lux Aeterna had fully gathered in my hands and I was unleashing it on the sphere—but instead of the usual colossal beam of destructive power, it came out differently. As if meeting something in midair, the light twisted until it was a narrow beam, no wider across than the palm of my hand yet glowing with the full power of the attack. It had been focused, as if through an invisible lens, and all of its concentrated power was sent straight at the heart of the sphere.

Adam was beside me, I realized then. Just as Gou was looming over me, already fully grown. A blade of red-white light, the brightest attack I'd ever seen from Adam, came down on the sphere, but he wielded it through the edge of Wilt, sinking it into the sphere. The red core was already half buried in the ground, pressed down in the center of a massive crater, but while it was less than half the size it had been when I'd last seen it—which was God only knows when, objectively or even subjectively—it was still active. Even so, I could see something shifting within it, a reaction that seemed startled, confused, and maybe even worried.

"More," I said, standing beside my Elemental again. At my command, he held out a hand and a column of darkness reached out, piercing right through the sphere and the earth beneath it. Of course, it wasn't actually darkness; that was merely how its strange interaction with light made it appear. Similarly, it didn't actually pierce the earth or sphere—it merely overlapped them.

And then the ground began to twist, flowing towards and into the black beam with a fluidity that should have been impossible for something that I confirmed to still be solid. I saw things tear and released energy at the strain, matter being torn apart as it was twisted into impossible shapes, my own MP dropping in massive chunks with each passing moment.

This was the power of my trump card. Of all my possible Elementals—except, perhaps, Keter, who's energy consumption render utterly unusable at present—he was the most powerful…and the hardest to use. I'd tried to find ways around that, but in the end, the same two problems always stopped me.

The first, of course, was the sheer power consumption. The last…whatever period of time had consumed an enormous amount of power and what was soon to be two hundred Dust crystals. Even after all the cost reducers I had for MP and Elemental skills, the use of his power drained me in seconds, and this was with him trying to hold back. No matter what I did, using his power was exhausting.

I had a potential solution in mind for that. I'd long suspected that there were at least three levels above Lesser Elemental, similar to how status effects worked. If it was currently at Low then there'd be an Intermediate state, then High, and finally a Maxed form. Supporting that were the actual status effects I got from my Elementals; when I'd gotten my Basic Elementals, my associated Affinities had been at ten. But when they'd upgraded to Lesser Elementals, said Affinities rose to twenty-five. I couldn't be certain without actually experiencing it, but I suspected that the next level would improve it to fifty, then seventy-five, and at last the maximum of a hundred. And as their power improved, stuff like this should become easier.

The second problem was more difficult and closely tied to his nature as an Elemental. When I'd first created him, I'd assumed I was making a Time Elemental, which was partially correct. But it would be more accurate to call him a 'Dimension' Elemental, which was why I'd taken to thinking of him my Dimensional. To clarify, that was dimensions in the spatial sense, accounting for the influence of time as the fourth dimension, rather than referring to stuff like Naraka…which I supposed was still a matter of defined, if segregated, space, but regardless. That nature was simultaneously what made him powerful and hard to work with. I wasn't certain if he simply didn't need instructions or if he simply received them before I had a chance to give them, but regardless, he had a rather disorienting tendency to do his own thing. I'd find myself in different locations or even performing actions with no idea how I got there, what I was doing, or why. Presumably, this was a matter of adjusting my position in space and time, but it was pretty damn weird to be on the receiving end of it.

For instance, if it should ever actually come to a fight with Ozpin, he would be my best chance at victory despite his ludicrous cost—and yet, I had no confidence in my own ability to fight alongside him. Generally, with my Elementals, I fed them power and gave them instructions, specific or broad. But with him, I was moved around like a piece on a board. Perhaps as a result of my future self's will, but the fact remained that I didn't know what was happening between one moment and the next.

Can you imagine fighting like that? His power was tremendous, but I lagged behind in the moments between such that even if I was put in position, it might not be enough to accomplish anything. If I had to fight an experienced time manipulator like Ozpin without being in control—or even aware—of my own actions, I was confident I'd be butchered. Then again, if he were to slow down to let my talk or think against such an opponent, I'd probably be butchered anyway. The Gamer's Mind and my sensory skills gave me a massive advantage over pretty much anyone else in those cases, but there would still be a delay as I continually played catch up, and given the cost tied to it…

Generally speaking, it wasn't something I could afford to use.

But I had to admit as my power was steadily devoured and space continued to warp—impractical though it may have been, it looked pretty goddamn cool.