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 Spacebattle publishment. Anyway on with the show...errr read.

Turns

When the light and sound around me faded, I was flying through the air of the Industrial District. My skin felt raw and I could feel steam rising from it, but my clothes seemed more or less fine. I guess the gear I got from slaying the creatures of Grimm was a bit more durable then the average shirt and pants, or else it had been protected by my Aureola. Either way, I was thankful that I hadn't lost any of my items in the blast, and it kept my sisters from ribbed me about running around naked, too. I'd chalk that one up as a win, except…

I was surprised. I'd known an attack was coming the moment Azure had called me, but I'd expected it to come in a different form given the amount of damage I'd caused to her city. I had to wonder how she'd managed to make repairs so swiftly; she must have incorporated redundancies into the design or built replacement parts ahead of time or something. And the blast itself hadn't been anything to sneeze at, either, especially considering that she'd been able to generate such a powerful blast without access to Dust. How had she fueled it then? With her Aura? Something else? The fortifications within the city had seemed to be drawing power from all around themselves, but to generate so much energy.

Maybe she was simply taking it from the battle, I mused as I smashed through a brick wall and came sliding to a halt within some factory and several tons of rubble came piling down on me from above—remnants of this building and the others I'd been hurled through. Beneath the weight, I frowned and considered the idea carefully before shaking my head; it couldn't be as simple as using just any power. While drawing upon, say, Bianca's power would certainly yield enough energy to create such a blast, if Azure was capable of containing and using that destructive power so casually, I wasn't sure Remnant's energy concerns would still be a thing if we could just pop powerful Hunters in like batteries. No, it had to be something specific, though I might have been on the right track.

I considered who Azure was closest too and my thoughts changed track to Sienna. She could halt motion within areas, dropping their temperature to Absolute Zero as a matter of course and freezing everything nearby. Except the heat couldn't flow into those areas, because her power kept any motion from occurring, whether it originated from inside the stopped area or not—while the mechanism seemed to be spacial instead of temporal and that caused a fair number of differences, in a lot of ways the targets might as well have been stopped in time. So how did the whole ice thing work then? I mean, heat normally flowed from the hotter point to the colder point, but it shouldn't have been able to in this case, so how was ice being generated? She'd been able to freeze things for as long as I remembered, but now I had to wonder how.

Perhaps the walls she made weren't inviolable, I thought before furrowing my eyebrows. No, rather, they obviously weren't inviolable; they wore off eventually, which meant there was something involved that changed over time—I'd already thought to myself that she had to maintain the areas with her Aura and that the process was costly, hence why she usually froze things in paper thin sheets. I'd seen Shani break the frozen spaces, too, though I'd always considered that to be because of their opposite powers, but what if…what if energy didn't fail to interact with the frozen spaces, but simply appeared to? She couldn't destroy the energy, so she must have moved or changed it somehow. Did she absorb the energy, then? If she did, I suspected the power would be less exhausting—but perhaps Azure could absorb some of it, the heat being shifted, if not the power that was making it move in the first place.

I imagined the area of the dome. Large enough to fit several houses into easily and surrounded by a frigid dome. If you took all of the heat from the area around it—and all of the heat from the areas she'd frozen trying to stop me on top of that, plus the constant inflow trying to warm the frozen areas—we were talking about a fair bit of power simply because of the area involved. And she wasn't just dropping things to zero; she was pulling them hundreds of degrees below it. Take that much heat, whether on its own or converted into another form of energy, and you'd have a pretty hefty blast. Focus it into a small area, it would be horrifically lethal, but even blown up to massive proportions…

Might be enough to blow someone across a city, I decided. It was conjecture, but it could have worked—and if it did, it was something to consider in the future, when I counter attacked. I'd largely avoided the frozen areas, but if they added to Sienna's strain, they might be a target all their own.

It was something to keep in mind, but I had bigger concerns at the moment. Before the rubble even stopped falling, I sent my senses reaching out to case my surroundings. However she'd done it, her blast had put a fair bit of distance between us, but it had also thrown me in the same direction my sisters had gone—and despite my concerns about a second attack, I could already feel threats lurking nearby. My sisters having retreated further into the city to escape my tidal wave and two of them were closely. Shani was three streets over, more than close enough to be a threat if she became aware of me, but even more concerning was Olivia, who stood less than a block away.

Even without seeing the Aura in the air around me, I knew I was well within her range and in a whole lot of trouble if she knew it. Did she? I'd been tossed this way by a bright massive lightshow, which might have hidden who I was and where I landed—or not. I was confident I'd have seen me in her place, but I couldn't be sure when it came to eyes that weren't as good as mine. If she didn't know…I might have a chance to do this the easy way.

One chance.

I picked a course, taking in the strange patterns that filled the air around me before plotting an escape route. I could feel which way was closest to the edge of Olivia's range, but with her power, that might not be the safest route—though without time to test exactly how the area around me worked, I had no way to be sure of anything. Still, I shifted my route slightly, adding a bit of distance to take a course I thought would keep me out of her line of sight, drawing in my power. I Accelerated first, before shrouding myself with Bai Hu's light and Lunging with all my power towards freedom-

Before smashing face first into the ground hard enough to shattered everything with several dozen meters, a victim of my sister's ability to control direction. Given that the entire area around me was apparently pointed downwards, it seemed safe to assume she knew I was here.

Which was, you know, not great. Olivia's power may not have been as flashy as Bianca's, but if you got caught inside of it, you were very nearly as screwed, because she could decide how things moved around her. I'd seen it before—though nowhere nearly as clear as I could see it now—and I knew what it could do; during the Vytal festival a few years ago, I'd seen her fight in the tournament against some speedster guy.

He'd moved really fast, until Olivia made him move really fast straight down. Then he'd broken both of his legs and that had been the end of that.

Thankfully, I was a bit more durable than that, though crashing full speed into the ground and eating concrete wasn't super fun. I tried raising my arms experimentally, testing against the force, and failed, pretty much as I expected to. I tried reversing the motion and pushing down, which worked fine but unfortunately didn't allow for any reverse control scheme shenanigans. I was pointed down. Attempts to move in other directions were changed to point me down—and trying harder meant going down harder, because this wasn't an issue of magnitude, but one of direction.

Okay, I thought. I can work with that.

I reached into the earth and felt Ereb form far beneath my feet. He didn't create an empty pocket to stand in or anything like that—suddenly an Ereb shaped patch of dirt was Ereb, the earth around him tight against his skin. Yet when he moved, it shifted like water, flowing into the space left behind as he raised his hands.

At the same time her did, I closed my eyes and gathered my own power. I didn't directly call upon Ereb and Xihai's—and even, to an extent, Crocea Mors'—aid as often as my other Elementals, for several reasons, the most simple of which being that it was just more effort than it was usually worth. Unlike Suryasta and Vulturnus, who controlled reactions, and Levant, who ruled over a gas, those three controlled more physical things and…well, they were heavy and I had to spend energy in order to move that weight. Moving, say, a ton of water might sound impressive, but it doesn't take much, volume-wise, to hit that weight. When it came to earth and metal, sometimes that was even more true. Even with Xihai's help and over ten seconds of charge time beyond what Quick Soul granted, that tsunami had taken nearly five thousand MP. When it came to things like fire or lightning, I could get a lot more bang for my buck, while Levant could control a larger volume for the same amount of energy, thanks to air's relative weight.

Worse, earth, water, and metal needed to be kept under control to me truly useful. I could animate a sphere of water to drown someone, for instance, but if I stopped controlling it, it'd just splash onto the ground. Something like fire has the advantage, because…well, its fire. If you light someone up, they'll stay that way until they put it out and it can grow and spread on its own, burning buildings down, forests, more. In theory, you can get a lot out of an initial investment there, which is why fire has been weaponized since forever. You didn't really need to work to make it dangerous, either, and a lot of things get pretty nervous when it comes to getting burned alive.

So things like water and earth were harder, needed more control, and required time to use properly. It was usually easier to lob a fireball at someone's face or strike them with lightning.

But then, I had some time to kill at the moment—and recent advancements, I had MP to spare and time was a bit less of an issue.

So I focused, reaching down deep into the earth and felt myself touch the forces I remembered from my meditation sessions. I grasped that power with my own, making a connection through which to guide that potential, rather than force it to obey me—to give it a route through which to express its own power, not to bury it under my own. Even so, despite using a careful, gentle hand, it was hard work and long work. Even Quick Soul wasn't enough to use it on the fly and fully charging it took nearly fifteen seconds.

But I kept that power flowing and felt myself sink into the ground as if it were water—Ereb's work, not mine. I sank like a stone, down the path Olivia had decided, and kept guiding and gathering my power.

And then it was as simple as knocking over dominos.

Except, you know, with buildings.

A skill has been created through a special action! Continuous manipulation of mana has created a skill of catastrophic elemental power, 'Tremblor.'

The ground beneath the city shifted like a beast in its sleep—but even that was more than enough to cause devastation to the mortal city above. Glass shattered in waves and rained down on the city streets while buildings groaned upon their foundations, shaking and breaking as the power of the assault grew, sending massive structures toppling and casting away the effort of years like a dog shaking water from its fur.

I felt the already ruined city tear itself apart through Ereb's eyes and gained some insight into him in the process. The Earth Elemental watched the city fall with apathy, having seen such things—in a sense wholly different from how he now perceived the world but nonetheless real—happen countless times before. As it all came tumbling down, he merely curled an arm around my chest and pulled me away from where Olivia now moved through the city, pulling me far out of her range before drawing me back up to the streets and standing by my side. For a moment, as light glinted off the gold and jewels set into his skin, I wondered about that and about the many nations history left behind. Looking around at what my sisters and I had quickly made of Vale, it was hard not to consider how easily the things we believed might last forever could fade in moments.

Shaking my head, I filed that thought away and reached out without moving. Olivia was directly in front of me, if a hundred meters away and separated from me by rising walls of dust and smoke. Past her and to the right I could feel Shani, though Indigo was still unaccounted for, making me wonder how long she was going to wait before making her move. Above us, Bianca had turned to focus on Violet as best she could, apparently deciding that Olivia was being dealt with, and the two of them were figures of light and power in the sky.

As Bianca seemed willing enough to ignore me for now, I returned my attention to Olivia. Creating such a massive attack had cost me more than a little energy, so I decided to take things easy for the moment, until my power returned. To that end, I formed a Magic Missile in each of my and Bai Hu's hands and settled into a relaxing cycle by hurling bolt after bolt after bolt. The moment one left my hand, another was already rising to be thrown and another attack was forming in the free hand. Yet one by one, they hit Olivia's range and were flung away without reaching their mark. Some tore trenches in the earth, some blew holes in the clouds above, and some wrecked what little remained standing in the Industrial District. Though I ran a wide circle around her, targeted dozens of points, they were all tossed in seemingly random directions.

The key word being seemingly. As I tested her defenses, I watched her Aura closely and noted the patterns left in the air. Though none of the attacks had come close to her yet, quite a few had reached past the edge of her range and flown deeper before shifting paths. If her power was as simple as it appeared as first glance, why not just set the surface of the entire barrier to away and toss attacks back the way they came? I suppose air might have been an issue, but in a large enough area—such as the one she had now—it was a relatively minor issue and she could easily just buy one of the gas masks with a built in air supply. Was she just holding back for the sake of the game?

It was possible. None of us were really trying to hurt one another and I knew that at least Bianca and I were tailoring our fighting style to make this enjoyable. I still wasn't sure of the full extent of their abilities, but I figured the others were probably doing the same, to one extent or another. So it was a possible explanation, but…

What if it wasn't a matter of choice? What if her power wasn't as simple to use as a normal glance might imply—because it sure didn't look simple to me. There wasn't just some highlighted volume of control or a bunch of arrows that pointed things in the right direction; instead, it looked almost like a puzzle of sorts, with a thousand different shifting flows of Aura coming together to form a massive whole. It looked, if anything, like a work of art—and if so, perhaps altering it wasn't as simple as changing just one specific thing, but a matter of redrawing entire aspects to form a new image. It was conjecture, perhaps, but that's why hypothesis were tested, rather than simply accepted.

So I tested mine. Stopping as I completed my circle, I focused my attack and watched as my Magic Missiles were forced along the paths set out for them—until they collided with other Missiles and were deflected, bouncing into other streams and paths. They slid again and I reacted, sending an attack high so that it'd be drawn into the path of one below, quickening my pace as my power returned to me. In several seconds, a pair of shots crossed and carved trenches on either side of my sister.

She moved at once, dragging her territory along with her, and yet the artistic patterns in the side facing me shifted, a ripple of change spreading over the weak points I'd exploited, but also the areas around them, reorganizing into a new pattern.

I smiled and continued the assault for a little longer, letting my energy spears be guided by her power until I understood the pattern once more. I exploited it immediately, of course, but not to attack Olivia—instead, I allowed a trio of shots to be drawn through her control and sent flying away. Each of the shots came dangerously close to hitting Shani who immediately turned and fired an attack through the dust, disintegrating and combusting everything in its path. Because the attacks had effectively changed direction in midair, turning her power against the apparent source meant another attack for Olivia to deal with, and after hurling a few more attacks for good measure I drew away.

That should keep the two of them busy for the moment, I thought as I went. Shani would keep up the pressure on Olivia for now—if nothing else, she'd be drawn in that direction and realize she had to, with Bianca preoccupied. Given that Olivia had assisted Azure in tossing food at her, I didn't think much effort would be needed to provoke that fight, but I sent out Levant to start shifting the dust clouds to ensure that Shani would see her before moving too far into Olivia's range.

At the same time, Olivia was a good distraction. Because of her defense and the threat of her control, she'd keep the others working hard to wear her down, wearing them down in the process. Given that I was fairly sure I could get around her defense if I had to, there was no reason for me to take her on here and now, was there? I'd find another target—which currently meant hunting down Indigo or going back towards—

Something like fireworks started exploding in the sky, drawing my—and probably everyone else's—attention. Electric blue in color, they burst into dozens of tiny shapes that shifted in midair to form an image.

Namely, Azure and Sienna's faces, both wearing tremendously serious expressions. Beneath their heads were written the words 'Stone Cold Bitches', words joined shortly after by claims like 'Not Magnificent,' 'Unfabulous,' and 'Your Team Name Sucks.' Who said words were directed towards was kindly made obvious by cartoon renditions of all our faces, with exes for eyes and our tongues hanging out in defeat.

Absently, I wondered what was wrong with my team name, but as lasers pierced the sky—both from Bianca above and Azure's weaponry below—I focused on what was dragging its massive bulk from the river. Azure's massive creation crawled out of the water bearing…her other massive creation, the entire city apparently weaponized. Everything from rockets to lasers fired into the air, many exploding without hitting anything for the apparent sake of exploding. Though a part of me wondered what Azure might have been able to make if she hadn't taken the time to craft all this pointless stuff, what was real seemed plenty to wreck whatever parts of the city hadn't already been wrecked, even as the creature kept Bianca busy.

Seeing Violet draw away, presumably to go help Olivia, I sighed and ran towards the enormous thing. Hundreds of orb-like eyes dotted its surface, most of them focused on Bianca past the shielding wall Sienna had likely raised as it pressed on further into the city. With their sphere wrapped almost entirely in its bulk, Sienna and Azure rode their jiggly blob into the city.

I tossed a Magic Missile at it, figuring Sienna couldn't be stilling it while it was mobile. Apparently seeing me coming, Sienna raised a hand in my direction and a shimmering wall of stopped space appeared between us to tank the blast. I Lunged to get on the other side of her and threw another, forcing her to raise yet more walls, but they refused to freeze the sphere and pushed forward. Inside, Azure clenching one hand into a fist and extending the other fully above her.

"Onwards, my noble steed!" She shouted. "To battle!"

I drew back for a moment, just to watch the thing creep with surprising speed over the land, withstanding Bianca's assault. All along its surface, machinery began to glow with power, preparing something even as music—loud, obnoxious music from a pair of massive speakers—began to blare Azure and Sienna's voices. Calling the result a song might have been a bit generous, given that neither seemed to be paying attention to what the other was saying, but whatever made them happy, I suppose. Given it was a victory song, though, I don't think any of us could take this lying down.

Sure enough, a shadow took that chance to appear in the middle of Azure's orb and Indigo began to rise amidst a curtain of black blades so thin that I couldn't tell if they even had width. And then I realized the truth—they didn't. They were animated shadows, two dimension objects being made to exist in a higher dimension world. With her headphones tight over her ears and presumably playing something more pleasant, she stepped forward and drove blades at the backs of both.

Two down, I thought as she swung at both of their backs.