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.

Concealed

"A Pandora Shell is just the start of your bad new?" Raven asked, tone of voice a split between vague disbelief and general regret—presumably over the fact that he'd gotten out of bed this morning.

"Surprising, isn't it?" I answered, smiling slightly. "But sadly it's the truth. Mr. Arc's team walked into a situation that turned out to be a great deal more than it first seemed. The Grimm had created a massive series of tunnels beneath the town they'd been sent to protect, allowing an enormous number of the creatures to get right under it with none the wiser. Upon noticing a small tunnel that lead to the surface, which had allowed for the reported attack that drew them there, they realized this and called for reinforcements—but even that turned out to be trap set by the Grimm. The moment their backup arrived, the horde beneath them moved to attack, which eventually culminated in the Grimm intentionally triggering a Pandora Shell in the Hunter's midst."

"That's…" Raven paused, frowning. "That's very intelligent behavior, even for older Grimm. Strategic behavior."

"Indeed it is," I agreed. "Which, more than anything, made me suspicious, especially in regards to precisely how they opened the Shell. It was carried to the surface by a Deathstalker and was then blown open by a long-range energy attack by Crom Cruach, who was most likely responsible for the tunnels in the first place."

Raven opened her mouth with what must have be a reflexive response before hesitating and restraining herself for several breaths.

"Crom Cruach," She repeated at last, with only traces of incredulity in her tone. "You're certain it was Crom Cruach?"

I shrugged a shoulder casually and nodded.

"I saw him," I told her. "And he's rather hard to mistake for anyone else. But…it's worrying, especially after Ziz's awakening several months ago."

"When you awoke Ziz, you mean?" She asked, the jab coming effortlessly to her lips and making me smile—but also shake my head.

"I'm afraid that while that's true, it is also somewhat more concerning then it might first appear," I replied. "For you see, Ziz had been in that location for quite some time—and I'm sure that the fact that it had been positioned so close to Vale was not a coincidence—but it had been sleeping long enough for countless people to come near it without any response. From airships to Hunters heading that way to even just explorers, there is no record of Ziz doing a thing over several hundred years of history, yet the moment I drew near it reacted. Yes, I woke it up, but not by proximity. I'm afraid it recognized me."

"Recognized you?" She repeated again. Had she been a less intimidatingly powerful woman, I'd have made a parrot joke. "You mean…?"

"I have something of a history with the Grimm," I admitted, which was apparently the truth even if I had no idea what said history was. "A long, long history."

"I…see," Raven said slowly. "And did Crom Cruach also recognize you?"

"Almost certainly," I nodded. "In fact, it's even possible that the situation was engineered to ensure my involvement. In truth, the awakening of Ziz was as alarming for me as it was for the rest of the world, if for somewhat different reasons, but after it returned to its slumber, I had hoped that would be the end of things and that I had simply been unlucky enough to stumble across an old acquaintance. When I saw Crom Cruach, however, I had no choice but to believe that it was far more than that. Ziz nearly ruined everything simply by its presence while Crom Cruach engaged in what couldn't be called anything but enemy action—and when the Pandora Shell opened…"

I sighed and looked up at her, making a show of gauging her before speaking.

"Most people are under the impression that the disease within the Shells corrupts all who touch it, driving them mad in the process—but this is not the case," I told her. "The bacterial Grimm within the Pandora Shells have something of a consciousness , especially once they seize control over a living body. The entity refers to itself as Conquest and can assume total control over a person, suppressing their mind completely while wielding their powers as if they were its own. It's an old being and one of the most powerful of the Grimm; one of the Knights of their kind known as a Rider."

"You—" Raven began before cutting herself off again and falling silent for a minute. "How can you be sure?"

I sighed again.

"Because Conquest was one of the beings responsible for the fall of Babel," I said, again going with the truth, if with the intention to distract and mislead. "He helped destroy it at the command of his creator."

"His…" Raven trailed off, expression stunned beneath her mask. "His creator? He…the Grimm have a creator?"

I nodded in quiet confirmation.

"You're one of the few people I've ever told this," I said quietly. "But I don't need to tell you how important it is that such knowledge is used carefully."

She looked down, still blinking, before swallowing slowly.

"I…" She began before shaking her head, apparently still reeling. She took a deep breath and seemed to force herself to recover, closing her eyes for just a moment before continuing. "I don't suppose you have any proof of such claims?"

"I do, in fact," I said, which may or may not have been a complete lie. "There's a set of ruins that are heavily guarded by the Grimm and alongside them exists a city—the last remaining city of Babel, held in a pocket dimension much like this one. It's now devoid of life, thanks to the Grimm, but at the center of the city there is a…lab of sorts and the Grimm guard it fiercely for a reason. There's a Babel computer within it that holds a wealth of information, placed there by someone who fought the Grimm a long, long time ago."

She looked at me for a long moment, eyes still wide enough to see the whites all around them, but she nodded slowly.

"Shall we go then?" She asked. "If what you say is true, then—"

"Neither of us would enjoy the experience, I'm afraid," I shook my head. "Does a place named Jericho Falls mean anything to you?"

Raven paused yet again before nodding hesitantly.

"Jericho Falls…I suppose that explains why so many Grimm would gather there," She murmured, shaking her head. "And could we not use this pocket dimension of yours to avoid them?"

"The Grimm murdered the people who created Naraka," I shook my head right back. "The weaker Grimm cannot get inside, but the Riders have proven themselves quite capable of it in the past. As I am now, I would not wish to fight all the Grimm in that location—so I've no choice but to wait until more of my power returns. Or…at least, that's what I'd hoped to do by buying time, but there's a chance that we may no longer have that luxury with the Grimm moving once more. Even so, I will make myself ready in the coming months and we'll destroy everything that stands between us and that computer."

"So quick to use 'us,'" She shook her head, but I could tell she didn't really mean it. If nothing else, she seemed intrigued. "Who's to say I'd even follow you into such a place? The last hundred or so Hunters who went to Jericho Fall never came back out."

If the place had, as I suspected, been a last ditch effort to survive Babel's fall, it had likely been the grave of far more than that—but I kept such thoughts to myself and instead simply raised a challenging eyebrow.

"If you wish, you may watch from a safe distance," I offered, my tone gentlemanly. "I will gladly fight your share, if you have something better to do that night."

She rolled her eyes beneath mask, but her lips twitched upwards.

"I'll see what my schedule allows once you've finished your preparations," She allowed. "For now, tell me about these Riders and their master."

I considered her for a moment before nodding.

"Conquest is the one I know the most about," I said truthfully. "He's the White Rider and takes the form of a biological weapon—what you know as a Pandora Shell. If you examine him closely, his true form is a bacterial type of Grimm. Though each of these Grimm cells is a separate entity, they are as capable of acting as one as any other group of Grimm and, through a process similar to normal bacteria, may exchange information between themselves. In fact, they work so well together that for all appearances, each cluster can act as a single being, but there's an important difference between what they have and a hive mind; namely, this sharing of information is not immediate and requires physical contact between Conquest's different pieces. This means that those infected may not have access to the same information and may react differently unless given time to properly coordinate, and this can be used against them."

"Assuming you can survive getting close with your mind and body intact," Raven noted.

"Assuming that," I agreed with a sigh. "Truthfully, exploiting this weakness is far more difficult then I make it sound; though Conquest is a horrible creature that doesn't deserve to exist, I can't deny that he's very intelligent and he backs said intelligence up with millennia of experience in destroying lives. Though he doesn't know everything, he likely knows more than anyone currently alive because of the sheer amount of people he's infected—he was personally responsible for a great deal of Babel's fall and infected many brilliant scientists and skilled warriors. Though he can definitely be fooled, he's pretty good at staying out of his own way and refraining from saying anything helpful."

I shook my head and shifted my expression to one of semi-honest regret.

"More than anything, though, he's a problem that needs to be shut down as quickly as possible whenever he appears, simply because if you give him time, he spreads like a…well, a virus. If he doesn't know how to get around an obstacle, which requires no one he's ever infected knowing how to get to you, then all he has to do is find one person knows how to fix that. To make matters worse, he considers it a hobby to seek out those who consider themselves safe from him and proving that they aren't—and he enjoys causing pain on a level above even the other Grimm."

"What do you mean?" Raven asked, making me tilt my head and consider how to explain it—but then, it was as simple and remembering the examples he'd given, wasn't it?

"Pretty much any Grimm will kill you," I began. "They'll tear you to pieces and eat you while you're still alive, whether you're a man or woman, young or old. But Conquest will do it in the body of someone you love, after using their body to eat your children in front of you, simply because of the additional pain it causes you."

"I…see," Raven said slowly, the expression on her face telling me she was imagining it before she shook the image off. "He's a monster among monsters, then? By design or…?"

"I honestly can't be certain," I admitted. "It may simply be that his greater intelligence and his knowledge of human nature makes him better able to inflict the pain that all Grimm seem to desire causing—and just as possible that he was built to act in an especially cruel fashion or grew that way over time. Figuring out why he was a monster wasn't my main concern on the occasions I met him, I'm afraid. He's rather skilled at making people focus on his demise."

Raven tilted her head in concession to that.

"And the infection?" She asked, tone changing slightly as her emotions shifted. "Is there a way to cure it?"

I blew out a breath, feeling a bit tired in response to the memories her words brought up.

"You ask a tough question," I told her. "The answer is both yes and no. First of all, it must be understood that Conquest values causing pain farabove the deaths of one of his hosts and though he won't throw away useful assets, that's not to imply that he isn't willing to sacrifice them. On top of that, whether because a reclaimed asset likely becomes a liability or because he's tremendously spiteful, he will attempt to destroy any hosts that are likely to be cured—and as you might imagine, he has a fair number of ways of doing so. Attacking the host's body from within, forcing it to kill itself…if all else fails, he can event just accelerate the metamorphoses of the host into a Pandora Shell in a process that ignores most attempts at healing. But if you know how and you can get past all of that…in theory, yes, there are ways to cure the disease."

"Only in theory?" She asked. "You've never seen it done?"

I shook my head.

"My efforts to that end have thus far been met with failure," I admitted. "Conquest's pestilence works by infecting the body and using that to seize control of one's Aura and bind the soul. The process can be reversed by entering another's soul to fight Conquest directly and then reverse the process from Soul to Aura to Body—"

Raven lifted a hand to stop me.

"What's this about entering souls?" She asked. "You can do that?"

"I like to consider myself something of an expert when it comes to matters of the soul," I said, which was probably true from a comparative standpoint. "Really, it's simply a matter of leaving one's body fully behind and entering another's. If you wish, I could demonstrate, but you might find the process invasive on a number of levels. At the very least, however, you've seen this before, no?"

I manifested the White Tiger of the West, letting it rise fully from my body again. Raven didn't react visibly, but I sensed a change in her emotions as if I'd just drawn a gun—which was fair, as I'd drawn something far, far greater.

"This is…me, to put things simply," I said, gesturing at myself. "For the sake of convenience, I usually refer to him as Bai Hu, but we are one in every sense that matters, for he's simply my Aura given a more physical form. Notice how we are connected, though; we need to be for this technique, as my aura and Soul reside within my body—but it was relatively simply to go a step further and separate those things from my flesh. From there, it was merely somewhat more difficult to enter another body."

"I…will take your word for it," She decided, shaking her head. "Then I take it you are inhabiting a borrowed body right now?"

"This particular body is quite a bit more complicated than that," I hedged. "If you could consider Bai Hu a form of astral projection and my ability to enter the bodies of others a form of possession, then this particular case is more like reincarnation. If possible, I'd rather not explain the science behind that at this moment, as it's somewhat convoluted."

"The science behind reincarnation?" She asked. "I wouldn't have thought the terms went together?"

"Why not?" I asked in turn. "Science, in the end, is simply the process of asking questions and seeking answers. To that end, it goes together with pretty much everything."

"I suppose," She acknowledged after a moment of silence. "And I assume that you're a scientist, then?"

"I suppose I don't much look the part, do I?" I asked, smiling. "But yes, that would be a fair assessment—I value the power of my mind a great deal, you see. I am simply aware that neglecting other things would be unwise, in a world such as our own."

"From experience?"

"Yes."

"I see," She mused, nodding to herself. "Very well, I will accept that for now. So you enter someone's soul, face Conquest, overcome the infection, and…?"

"Their maker gets involved," I replied. "Unfortunately, the Grimm are…connected in a way to their master and slaying Conquest within a person can apparently draw his attention. I learned that the hard way with Mr. Arc and in the end I was forced to put him down, along with the other infected."

I didn't have to fake the regret in the words and Raven raised an eyebrow slightly, making me send a rueful smile her way.

"Believe it or not, I do not like killing and avoid doing so if at all possible," I informed her. "Where I come from, we could ill afford to waste lives that could be put to better uses, you see. Though they were not wholly our allies, the loss of those Hunters was regrettable for at least some of what they did served the whole world."

"True," She acknowledged, inclining her head. "What were their names?"

"Jacques Arc, Tenne Coup, and Keppel and Carmine Cordelia." I replied.

"I knew them, if only distantly," She nodded slowly. "They were good Hunters and good people from what I knew. It is a shame."

"I thought you might think so," I smiled at her, making her roll her eyes slightly.

"Are there any methods to prevent infection, then?" She asked, getting back on topic. "If it can't be cured…"

"There are several methods that have shown various degrees of success," I nodded. "The simplest but also least desirable is to remove infected parts of the body. Beyond that, I can create airtight defensive shields around people to protect them within infected areas, but combat with the infected remains risky. I'm working on additional methods at the moment, but…"

"How do you resist infection, then?" She asked. "If you fought them directly."

Observant, I thought with a smile.

"I have several advantages, owing to the unique nature of my body and soul," I answered. "Simply put, my body is simply less important to me then it is to you, so if it's damaged or changed, it's simply a matter of restoring it back to its natural state."

"What?" She asked.

"Allow me to give you an example," I offered, extending an arm to the side. Bai Hu gripped it tightly, one hand at the shoulder and one at the elbow—and then he tore it away with the Tiger's Jaws.

"I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to show me," Raven stated after several second when nothing visibly changed.

"That was me losing an arm," I explained. "And restoring it very quickly, of course. If you'd wish to test for yourself, you may use your sword to remove it."

She frowned at me, looking at me both like I was mad and, with slight alarm, the realization that I was serious.

"Go on," I chuckled. "I assure you, even if I did lose an arm, I could easily reattach it."

She was silent for a moment before shaking her head.

"Very well," She said, hand going to her sword—and in a blur of motion, I felt my arm fly off and my HP drop.

Looking down at it, I flexed my fingers once and healed the damage that light blow had caused.

"See?" I said, still smiling under her stare. "Good as new."