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.

Accessories

I couldn't see her level, I realized with a touch of surprise. It wasn't a possibility I'd been unprepared for, admittedly, but that didn't stop it from being an alarming confirmation. After everything I'd heard, I'd figured that she—Cinder, as I now knew her—was a powerful and extremely well-connected person. Her level being high had been extremely likely under the circumstances; after all, her potential power was the entire reason I'd cooked up this whole school scheme. But…

At level eighty-six, it should have been within my power to see levels up to one hundred and thirty seven. The fact that I couldn't see her put her on a very exclusive list of extremely dangerous people. Worse, the fact that all I saw were question marks meant I couldn't be certain how high her level was—it only told me the minimum, after all. The list of people I couldn't see still covered a large breadth of power, like Ozpin, Raven, and my Grandmother. Without being able to Observe her or see her level…I couldn't be certain precisely how dangerous she was.

No wonder Raven had been so cautious.

At once, the world began to slow even further around me, buying me time to think, making the movement of the crowd around me sluggish. Moving this fast, I could close the distance between us in an instant, leap from the top of the stairs to the street below and rush full speed through the city—but I entertained that thought for only a moment.

No, as expected, there were no easy solutions to this problem. I couldn't say I had much hope of this being a minor problem, but this confirmed that we couldn't ignore her or allow her to move freely. Someone with power like hers could easily wreck cities if left unchecked and we had no idea what she was plotting. We'd need to continue approaching this matter with caution and handle it—and her—with care.

I couldn't do that acting blindly, however, so I immediately focused the entirety of my senses upon her, revealing her in a multitude of colors and sensations. The first thing I noticed was that her clothes were woven with Dust, primarily red dust, and I made note of the fact that she was likely a skilled fire user. The clothes themselves were well made—handmade, in fact, and all signs pointed to it being her hands that had done it.

It was an interesting choice. Sowing Dust into cloth was an ancient art and one that had largely been cast aside. I could do it with my Dust Weaver, but I usually preferred to use Dust Eater instead. Dust clothing could be used more frequently than either using it in its crystal form or taking it into your body directly, while also being safer to use and easier to control—but as with everything, there were tradeoffs. Though it was easier to control and use, it was hard to match the power of more direct means. It wasn't as versatile as the cartridge or crystal forms, either, depending entirely on what you wove in advance and, once used, it was a timely process to weave new cloth, to say nothing of the skill required to do so. Much as Dust Eater's wild power and physical dangers had eventually seen it shuffled out of popular use, Dust Weaver had been all but forgotten with the rise of simpler means. I could count the number of Dust-woven clothes I'd seen on one hand and have fingers left over.

But then, I'd never seen anything like Cinder's either. Complex patterns were embroidered into her dress, forming arrays I knew would come to life at the touch of her Aura. All the clothes I'd seen had, at best, simple patterns to the cloth, while Cinder's had configurations set into it meant to…I honestly didn't know what they were for. I myself had chosen Dust Eater over Dust Weaver, since I didn't need Dust to manipulate the Elements. Instead, I'd favored bold displays of massive power, even if they weren't long lived. The consequences to my body had never been a major concern of mine and I could heal whatever occurred, so I'd rather spend a moment feeling like I was burning alive and release a conflagration then waste time sowing clothes that let me do stuff I could already do. But the patterns in her clothes, though…they seemed like reactions waiting to happen. It was like opening up some foreign machine to peer at the wiring inside, but…I felt like if her Aura powered and completed the circuit, it would cause something to occur.

It was like a program, I thought as I considered it. She wrote the lines into her dress beforehand and then, when the moment was right, all it took was the press of a button to make the magic happen. It might not unleash the sheer devastation Dust Eater could, but sometimes it was less about how much power you had and more about how you used it. If you took half, or a quarter, or a tenth of the power I could unleash with a red Dust crystal, focused all that power into an area as thick as a pencil or even a thread, and aimed it at the center of somebodies head…it wouldn't be as flashy, but they'd still die. And she had a lot of patterns written into that dress of hers.

Input Aura, output immolation.

I memorized the patterns and made notes to figure out what they could do later. Observe told me a fair bit when targeted at the dress instead of the woman wearing it, but it was vague about the end results, probably because it was dependent on the wearer's power. I'd make drawings of it, hand them to Raven and Grandmother, and see what we could find; if that didn't work, I'd practice my own weaving and try to make my own.

But though she was dressed to kill—or at least commit arson—her clothes were just a weapon, like a gun or a sword. Though power illuminated the fabric as if someone had written upon it in flames, it was the woman who wielded it that was truly dangerous, just like with any other Huntsman or Huntress. Filling away my notes on her dress, I took a closer look at what was beneath it, cycling through my senses. I gave her a complete medical checkup from most of a kilometer away and deemed her fit for just about anything. A startlingly small number of past injuries for someone of her level implied that she had a preference for longer ranges or else was a lot better at hurting people then they were at hurting her. After making sure she had no diseases or noteworthy medical issues, I checked to confirm there were no signs of Conquest or the Red Rider in her body, as I did with everyone I met, cycled on and paused.

In the upper end of the electromagnetic spectrum, her body glowed with markings like the ones that had been on her dress. They were like tattoos, almost, somehow luminous even though they were pitch-black, and set in complex patterns similar to the ones on her dress. My first thought was that perhaps she did a little Dust Eating of her own, but as I cycled lower in the spectrum and checked her over again, I didn't see any traces of that, nor any sign of Dust inside her body. In fact, now that I was looking for it, I noticed a complete lack of Dust in her body, even though she obviously worked in close proximity to the stuff. If nothing else, it should leave traces on her from exposure, inhalation, smears on her fingers and skin that were invisible to the naked eye—but not to mine. But she was clean, at least under visible light.

At higher frequencies, however, I could see the marks, just like the ones on her dress. Maybe even exactly like the ones on her dress—or at least on older dresses, now soaked into her skin like ink.

Well, I thought, that's odd. In fact, though I'd scanned literally thousands of people, I'd never seen anything like it before.

But I had seen my share of weirdness and some of it stood out more than others. It could be her Semblance or something related to it. It could be some advanced use of Dust even I didn't know about. But if it wasn't either of those, then…

Time returned to normal and Kyanos finished blinking beside me.

"Well?" He asked. "What is it?"

I shrugged at him and smiled easily, as if nothing had happened—because to him, nothing perceivable had.

"I was just worried I'd get bored, you know?" I replied. "I mean, school is pretty boring in and of itself, but you add on the rules and stuff…"

I shook my head.

"It just felt like going to school would mean leaving a lot behind."

"God, do I know," Kyanos groaned, shaking his head. "Not to imply that I was anything but an angel during my free time, but I feel like the whole adult supervision thing is going to get old, especially on Friday nights."

Ulaan gave a grunt that carried agreement and Adam looked him over, apparently recognizing a speaker of his native tongue.

"Pretty much," I agreed, though we probably had different priorities on this front. "Nothing against the school itself, but I sometimes feel like there might be better uses of my time. I made some new friends I've been hanging out with lately. Speaking of—"

I smacked Adam's chest with the back of my hand, making him release a grunt of annoyance that caused Ulaan to glance over in turn.

"This is my friend Adam," I introduced. "We pinkie swore that we'd be best friends forever and here we are."

"Pinkie swears are serious business," Kyanos nodded in understanding before inclining his head towards my friend. "Sup, man. You going to Haven?"

"If he goes, I go," Adam answered flatly, tilting his head my way. Kyanos raised an eyebrow slightly and nodded, seeming to catch on.

"Already recruiting, huh?" He asked.

"Something like that," I answered with a chuck. "Let's just say he impressed me and leave it at that."

"Oh?" Kyanos raised an eyebrow. "Are you strong then, Adam?"

"I'm the second strongest person here," He stated without any emphasis whatsoever.

I smiled a bit at the resulting silence, watching as my friends looked him over. Adam stared right through them, the brown eyes I'd given him staring past them through his sunglasses, drawing things out. Itri's brow furrowed in consideration, Kyanos' raised an eyebrow in challenge, Ulaan simply turned his attention towards him more fully, and Melania…was looking at her scroll and ignoring the entire conversation.

"Kyanos," She said after a moment, tilting the device so he could see the screen. Kyanos glanced at the message telling the students where to meet for orientation and snorted.

"Sorry, Jaune," He said. "We've got to go. Hopefully we'll see you around some, yeah?"

"Yeah," I said back, smile still bright. "I hope so, too. See you, man."

He waved back as he went in, while Melania and Ulaan each gave me a nod. Itri watched us both as he followed, expression slightly puzzled, but was gone just as quickly.

The area around us was promptly silenced and surrounded by an illusion.

"I found her," I told Adam.

Adam blinked once before looking my way.

"You mean…?"

"Yeah," I answered. "She's coming this way now. Name's Cinder Fall."

"Well, thank God it's not ominous or anything," Adam muttered as he looked down the stairs.

"Chill," I commanded, nudging him with my elbow. "I'll tell you when she's close enough for you to see her."

He nodded and returned his gaze back to the front.

"Is it bad?" He asked after a moment.

I looked back down the stairs, watching her approach through the side of my face. I saw the black marks on her skin, all but one of them invisible to normal eyes. The only symbol that remained was the one on her back, a pair of black marks split straight down the center, with the shape of a heart in the middle.

At least, that what it looked like to the eyes of everyone else. To me, it was glowing like a dark sun, sending currents of power through the other markings.

"Yeah," I said, absently touching the sleeve of my shirt, beneath which the signs of my infection grew and shrank as my power made it ebb and flow in a cycle of Metamorphosis and Reconstruction. Maybe I was just imagining things or being paranoid, but…"It's pretty bad."

"You think she's a Rider?" Adam asked as we walked through the halls of Haven, keeping his voice a whisper. There was little point to it as I was keeping any sound from escaping the air around us, but I guess I couldn't fault his desire for caution under the circumstances.

"I don't know," I admitted. "To be honest, I still have no idea what the Riders are or what they're up to or anything. Conquest wasn't exactly forthcoming when it came to his secret plans or weaknesses."

"Bastard," My friend snorted. "What about the Grimm thing you've got going on, then? Are you getting any…weird vibes from it?"

I rolled up a sleeve to show him my arm, revealing the asymmetrical spread of black dots. Every now and then, small spikes rose from my skin and quivered briefly before retracting back into it as I fought the infection back down.

"Maybe," I mused. "It's…I'm not sure. I've been training my Metamorphosis a lot lately, along with my healing, and it's…well, it's weird. I've been experimenting, you see, testing how much I can change things, but the in the process I've been getting a lot of weird sensations in my arm. The biology of the Grimm is fucking weird as shit."

"I've noticed," He answered. "I've cut open enough to see how strange they look inside."

I nodded.

"They don't really have blood like we do," I began to elaborate. "There's some liquid in there, but it's not part of any respiratory system because they don't have a respiratory system. Hell, they don't have anything like organs that I can find—not even brains, for all that taking their heads off seems to kill them. Instead of true bones, parts of the red matter inside of them harden to provide structure, while other parts expand and contract to serve as muscles. But it's all made of the same stuff, when you get down to it, and I…I hesitate to call it organic even if it acts lifelike in some ways. I've compared the Grimm to evil magical nanites a few times and I think that might be the closest comparison. They're like machines built to adapt and learn and destroy, except they run on magic."

Adam frowned, considering that as he looked at my constantly shifting flesh.

"Odd," He agreed. "And your arm is like that?"

"Sort of," I hedged. "It is and it isn't. The parts that are infected change to work more like the Grimm and as it does I start getting all sorts of odd feelings. The Grimm don't have a nervous system anything like ours—I haven't seen anything like nerves at all, though they can obviously feel things—and the infected parts aren't really hooked into mine. Technically, I shouldn't be able to feel anything from them until the infection spreads far enough to compensate, but…I do. I'm just not sure how to interpret it. I can make my arm move, control it, and detect some stuff from it, but it's all messed up. I don't know and with the way I've been leveling it up, I keep finding new pieces of the puzzle."

He nodded slowly at me words, accepting them without question even as he pondered the issue.

"But you feel something?" He asked. "When you look at her?"

I nodded to the first part of his question and then shook my head.

"Not really at her," I answered. "But I've been feeling something for a while now. It could be her or it could just be feedback from my messed up body. In my case, I have normal biology meshing with whatever the Grimm have through the lens of the Gamer's Body, so…"

I shrugged. I'd left the infection within my body, wondering if it would provoke a reaction or alert me to anything odd. I knew the Grimm could communicate with one another somehow and probably sense one another. It had been a long shot, but just in case I encountered another Rider, I thought that maybe it might give me something—whether that was a reaction I could understand or one they could. If whoever I was suspicious of reacted with surprise or interest, I'd sense it and that might be the heads-up I needed.

And yet Cinder hadn't so much as twitched, even when I let the infection spread up to my shoulder before reining it in, while I had no context for interpreting what I felt. Conquest's cells had exchanged information via contact, so it was possible it just required me to get closer, but…no.

Not yet.

"But we're going to assume it's something bad, right?" Adam asked.

"Oh, yeah," I nodded empathically "Rider or not, it's definitely bad. I can't see her level which means she must be at least fifty levels above me."

Adam whistled softly under his breath.

"That's bad, alright," He agreed, looking at the halls around us before shaking his head. "Damn, I've asked myself this a bunch of times, but…what the hell is someone like her doing in a place like this?"

"I have no idea and that offends me on a personal level," I answered before reaching out through the winds. Levant's spirit drew itself from the air, forming an invisible shape in a nearby room, and it was through her lips that I continued speaking. "Grandmother."

She put down the glass she'd been twirling idly and rose from her chair in the meeting room with a muted flash of interest and excitement.

"If you'll excuse me gentlemen," She said before leaving the room without an explanation. As she stepped out of the meeting, Adam and I turned the corner and quickly went to her side as she continued walking—and without the slightest change in her posture or tone, she spoke. "You found something, I presume?"

Her voice was steady, almost disinterested, presumably out of habit because I'd have notified her if we were being watched.

"Her name is Cinder Fall," I answered the same way, holding up a hand. A small illusion of her appeared above my hand, rotating above my palm. "Five eleven, black hair, amber eyes. Her main weapon is her dress, which is woven with dust, primarily Red but with trace elements of various others. Here are the designs I saw, but I'm not an expert in this particular field, so I can't be certain of what they mean. If need be, I can practice it myself, but I was hoping you knew a few badass seamstresses."

She glanced at the images as I highlighted the patterns in Cinder's dress, nodding sharply.

"I'll see what I can do," She answered. "And what I can dig up about Ms. Fall. How big of a threat is she?"

I took a slow breath, more to indicate that I was about to be the bearer of bad news than anything else, before changing the image to show the words I'd seen above her head. Or rather, what I hadn't seen.

"I couldn't see her level," I admitted. "She might be as strong as you are, Grandmother. Maybe even stronger."

She took a deep breath and growled slightly.

"And yet she slipped right in without anyone noticing," She said with a slight scowl. "Wonderful. Just…wonderful."

"There's more," I said quietly.

"There always is with you, Jaune," She snorted. "Out with it then."

I altered the image again, revealing what I'd seen with my more in-depth scan—the networked arrays of black markings like invisible brands on her skin.

"I saw this in the high-end of the electromagnetic spectrum," I continued. "And after some consideration, I think there is an above average chance of her being the host of a Rider."

At that, my grandmother stopped walking and closed her eyes for a moment. Her lips twitched into a brief rictus of fury before smoothing as she sighed.

"That…is horrible news," She said without opening her eyes. "Though sadly not unexpected. Is there anything we know, yet?"

"There were no traces of Dust in her body," I answered promptly. "Despite the fact that the dress appears handmade and that she must have extensive experience with Dust, there's no sign of it anywhere in her body. Instead, where I would expect to find it, I see those black markings, so I suspect that it—whether it's caused by a Rider or something else—relates to the usage of Dust. Other than that, however…no. It's too soon for me to say anything, Grandmother."

"Then I take it we'll be putting that plan of yours into motion?" She asked.

"If there's even the chance that she's a Rider, we can't leave her unsupervised," I replied. "And even if she wasn't, she'd still be too dangerous to ignore. She has too many connections, too much power, and with her operating out of a school for Hunters…we need to know more. With that illusionist of hers, she can evade Raven and probably anyone else that we could put to the task."

"Except for you." She stated.

"Except for me," I agreed. "I can keep an eye on her and make sure nothing happens—and if something does, I'm our best chance at containing it long enough to organize a response."

My grandmother sighed slightly, looking out one of the decorated windows as we walked past.

"You're right, of course," She whispered tiredly. "I just…with all the thing you could be doing, going to school seems like such a waste."

"Let's not go crazy here," I said with a smile. "You make it sound like I'll be here forever—I'm just here to keep the world from ending. Once Cinder stops being a threat or once I'm able to deal with her in a better way, Adam and I are getting the fuck out of here even if it means jumping out the first window we see. Am I right, Adam?"

"You are right, Jaune," He confirmed, breaking the silence he'd kept while my grandmother and I conversed.

I chuckled a little and shrugged to my grandmother.

"Just think of this as a brief display of power," I continued confidently. "No one in our family has been to Haven in a long while, so I'll stop by to check on things. I've spoken to Raven and made arrangements so that I can move quickly should anything come up and if you need me for anything, I'll just skip a few days."

She was quiet for a moment longer before nodding.

"Then I'll see to it that you're both enrolled," She replied. "Perhaps the two of you should get to orientation?"

"Why bother when I can hear every word from here?" I asked a touch smugly. "After all, Adam doesn't give a shit about anything they have to say."

"He's not wrong," Adam confirmed, making my grandmother roll her eyes.

"Off with you both," She dismissed with a flick of her wrist. "I've business to attend to."