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.

Initiative

In the end, we did go to orientation, if only to watch it from a distance. I did a headcount of all the prospective students and noted what details I could, looking for signs of anything important. I'd told Adam that Cinder might have other allies at the school if she was using it as her base—both among the students and the faculty. I Observed the teachers and students one by one, which, though it didn't give me all the details, at least provided me with context for who they were as people. It gave me a rough idea of their skills, the basics of what motivated them, and often at least a word or two about who they were associated with, if only the companies sponsoring them.

From those details and what I saw and overhead, I began piecing together the puzzle. I didn't have enough information to guess how the teams as a whole would turn out, but knowing how partners were decided, it was simple enough to guess what most of the pairs would be. Comparing how their powers worked together gave me a rough idea of who were likely to work most effectively together—leaving out the human element, of course, though given time, the teams would likely come together anyway. I noted a few that I thought had potential, but for the most part I just watched.

Adam and I stayed apart from things, even when headmistress Turchina finished her speech and the students began making beds for themselves on the floor of the hall. Tomorrow, we'd be students, but it wasn't technically official yet and I therefore felt no need to sleep on the ground. Adam and I withdrew to the roof instead and I let him rest while I stood watch over everything. While Mercury and Emerald slept beneath us, Cinder was already a student and went to her own room, but I made sure to keep track of her even so. The night was boring with nothing to do, but I wasted time watching the signals that filled the sky and toying with my new powers.

And soon enough the sun rose.

"Adam," I said and he woke at once to the sound of his name. Sitting up, he held out a hand and I gave him his sunglasses back wordlessly—which were actual sunglasses, as his mask was in my Inventory. There was no point in carrying around something so easily recognized.

"Is it time?" He asked.

"Soon," I answered. "You can take a shower and get breakfast before we get to work, if you want."

He did and soon we were sitting side by side in the cafeteria. I was mainly just picking at my food since I didn't get hungry, but it was a visible enough place to draw attention.

"So you decided to stick around after all?" Kyanos asked, taking the seat beside us. "What made you decide to stay?"

I was tempted to tell the truth and say something about hot older women, but there was sadly the possibility that someone might make a connection down the line, so I kept it to myself and shrugged instead.

"Family stuff," I said, making a face. "Duty, honor, etc. It's been awhile since a Roma was at Mistral, so I'm doing my time."

"You make it sound like a prison," He replied. "Which parts of it have been over the years, so fair enough. You all set to go?"

"Not quite," I shook my head. "Since it was a little last minute, Adam and I are still waiting on some stuff from home. School supplies, backups, and a few things that are important."

Like Autumn. Since Adam was going to be hiding his real Semblance anyway, he'd agreed to pretend that he had a plant-related Semblance—in this case, one tied to a particular rose. We'd either keep her close or in our room and explain any of Autumn's…oddities as a result of his supposed power. There were weirder Semblances, after all. Such as mine, which had sort of created Autumn anyway, so…yeah.

Making arrangements for Gou would take a bit longer, at least officially. Unofficially, he would come if I called and there wasn't much anyone here could do about it.

"Nothing that'll get in the way during initiation, I hope?"

"I'm not worried about it," I answered with a shrug. "Adam and I will deal with it no problem."

"So you two are officially partners, then?" He asked, to which I nodded. "That's cool."

"And I take it you and Melania are, too?" I asked back, as if I wasn't already sure.

"Thankfully," He said, sighing as if relieved before jolting slightly. "Wait, sorry; that probably came off as rude. You know about the team thing our families have going on, right?"

"Yeah," I confirmed. "My mom sort of broke it. There was a little talk of me fixing it, but I had other plans, sorry."

"No problem," He dismissed. "I was about to say I wasn't talking about you. It's just, with the Roma gone, there was an empty spot, you know? So there was a lot of talk about who was going to fill it and for a long time, the answer looked like it was going to be Pyrrha. Who's a badass and all, but, well, hates me. Which would have been a little awkward."

"I can imagine," I nodded. "But Melania's filling in instead?"

"Yup," He nodded. "Did anyone tell you that Pyrrha left? Well she did and it was kind of last minute. A lot of people wanted to take her place—have their kids take it, I mean—but there wasn't a lot of time, there were issues of trust, and Melania had proven herself repeatedly. Gramps agreed and she tagged in."

"Then I take it Itri and Ulaan are a pair, too?" I asked. "And you're going to team up?"

"That's the plan," He nodded. "No idea how that's gonna work out or what the hell they're gonna call us, but I guess you know how it is. What about you? You've got Adam there—anyone else?"

"Not yet," I answered with a smile and a shrug. "Figured I'd use initiation to see what everyone was made of and choose whoever's best able to keep up."

"Oh?" He wondered, raising an eyebrow. "And how are you going to do that?"

"By finishing in first place, of course," I stated frankly. "How else?"

"Mm," He hummed, peering at me. "I suppose that's one way to pick a team. And if it's you, I don't doubt you can do it. You already know about the Labyrinth?"

"Scouted it out a while ago," I confirmed.

"Attaboy," He chuckled. "You better get ready then; we'll be starting soon."

I nodded once, listening to the faculty finish their preparations. I waited a few more minutes for Adam to finish his food and then rose. My friend followed me without a word, staying reserved in public. Once we turned our dishes in, however, I took us on a route through Haven that kept us away from most prying eyes.

We were about to begin, so…it was time for a few finishing touches. With a word, I drew up my status screen and looked it over contemplatively, considering my stats, my points, my options. I still had around thirty remaining from my last six levels which I'd been slow to spend, primarily because I had several choices to make regarding their placement. Thanks to my training, my physical stats—my Strength, Dexterity, and Vitality—were all over ninety. Which meant that with the thirty points I had left, I could raise all three over a hundred and reap the free skills they'd grant me, gaining a total of nine skills in the process—something I'd need twenty more points to do with either Intelligence or Wisdom, my other options.

I knew full well how powerful any of the skills I got from raising my stats could be—how much they could change the game especially after synergizing with each other. If I could, for example, double the strength of my attacks and double my attack speed, the end result was a fourfold increase to my damage output. If I was twice as good at dodging and took only half the damage from any attack that landed, I would be far harder to kill. Nine skills could yield amazing results regardless of which stat they were in, and if my physical abilities synergized like my mental ones and played into the skills I already possessed…

In a number of ways, it was tempting. For thirty points instead of fifty, I could get what appeared to be the same results as raising my Intelligence or Wisdom.

But appearances could be deceiving and the fact that I'd get nine skills from either choice didn't necessarily them equal. There were other factors to consider, such as how improvement in my stats slowed as their values rose. That was as true of my physical stats as my mental ones, but at least in their case, I had ways to compensate. Even beyond the experience increase I received from Understanding of the Enlightened, I had things like Acceleration, which could multiply the effective time I had to train myself. If Understanding of the Enlightened gave me what amounted to three times the experience I might normally get—effectively making a day's work worth three—then Acceleration could easily turn that into effective weeks of training, especially if bolstered by things like Temple, and in just the short time since I fought Conquest and been able to focus on such things, I'd made major improvements.

The knowledge that I was facing an unknown but probably horrific threat made me want to react, to spend all my points on something immediately tangible, but I held back, knowing it would be a waste. In at most a week or two, my training would take my physical stats high enough to receive those skills naturally—and though having nine skills right now would be nice, I wasn't in danger right this moment and could afford to wait on my physical abilities a bit longer.

Better then to improve something not so easily raised. With it already over two hundred, making even marginal gains towards improving my Intelligence would be difficult. I'd spend time in the library when I could and hopefully shave some time off by reading multiple books at once, but getting meaningful results would likely be the matter of weeks. My Wisdom, however…well, I probably couldn't improve that at all, at least not the normal way.

So that's what I put my points into. Not only because of the difficulty of improving it through other means, but because of the benefits of doing so. By raising my Wisdom, I improved both the amount of experience I received and my MP regen, which itself allowed me to train even better. With this I would regenerate a little over five hundred MP a second—three times that, so long as I kept my total MP low. With the cost reductions from my various skills, especially my new ones, as well as the improvements I could get from barriers like Temple and Sanctum Sanctorum…thirty points in Wisdom would go a long way.

Even now, I had time to prepare. I needed to use that time wisely, but that didn't mean rushing. In time, I'd get nine skills from Wisdom and three from each of my physical stats, and that was worth waiting for. Patience, after all, was a virtue.

Taking a deep breath, I quirked an eyebrow at my friend.

"Do you have any points left to spend?" I asked. "I just put thirty into Wisdom."

He shook his head.

"I'm all set," He answered. "We ready?"

"Almost," I said, reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder. At once, I laid an array of buffs over Adam. "Just in case."

He lifted a hand and flexed his fingers once before nodding sharply.

"That arm of yours okay?" He asked, nodding towards the infection hidden beneath the sleeve of my shirt and an illusion beneath it.

"Of course," I nodded. "It's nothing worth worrying about—I can keep it in check. One of my new skills improves my healing skills, as well as my buffs and stuff."

Benevolentia (Passive) LV1 EXP: 0.00%

The loving-kindness that soothes the flames of Wrath and mends that which it would destroy. This skill characterizes a natural tendency of one's Aura that allows it to more easily mend wounds and reinforce the body, that those one loves will not perish.

Double the effectiveness of all Healing and Support skills.

"Then let's get this over with," He said with a sigh.

Despite all my preparations and the fact that I knew it would be important in the months to come, Initiation was kind of a letdown. In fairness, I was a bit over-leveled, was bringing along my similarly over-leveled friend, had completely mapped out the Labyrinth beforehand, and had stacked an entire deck of cards in my favor, but still. When the time came, Adam and I each received notifications in our scrolls directing us towards a specific entrance to the tunnels below, found our places at the starting line, and waited until we were told to go.

And then we went. Moving as fast as I could without losing Adam, I took us along my decided pathway. I guided us around what few traps we couldn't simply run through and we moved with the speed of certainty. Periodically, we crossed paths with the creatures of Grimm that called this place their home and said creatures proceeded to die, but other than that, there was little we couldn't simply move through.

I suspected, backed by my awareness of the maze, that the entire test was probably designed so that it would get more difficult later on, once the initiates were all deep in the Labyrinth and vulnerable to manipulations of the maze itself—at that point, those controlling the structure could use it to forcibly guide groups towards one another, as well as towards appropriate challenges that they'd be forced to work together to overcome. At this point in the exercise, however, they couldn't very well risk some pair of newbies running into a den of monsters and getting themselves killed, so the paths were more forgiving and more dangerous routes were locked off. So were the routes straight to the finish line, of course, but there were ways around that.

End result? We reached our destination in less than a minute. When you already know exactly how to get where you're going, there's not much challenge to be had in getting through the maze.

Several of the faculty were waiting for us there, looking at their scrolls as they monitored the progress of the students above. Most of the maze was monitored and not just because of the test. As the Labyrinth had once been home to the first people of Mistral, there were a fair number of places for, say, criminals to hide and, Mistral being Mistral, there had always been quite a few of those running around. When the maze came under Haven's rule shortly after the Families seized power, the Labyrinth had been thoroughly purged of all within it—that is to say, everyone who had tried to oppose the Families rise to power through what were deemed criminal means and who'd fled the streets above, thinking they'd be safe beneath.

They'd been wrong. In order to survive the harshness of Remnant, the people who'd built the Labyrinth had made sure that it was as dangerous to their enemies as it was safe for their allies. If you knew how, it was easy to turn the place into a deathtrap for the unwary and unprepared. The Families descended from Mistral's ancient rulers knew their way around the place and…well, the Civil War, especially so soon after the Great War, had caused tremendous damage, both through the fighting itself and through the general despair that war was wont to cause. The constant onslaught of the Grimm was something no one wanted to see repeated, and therefore anything likely to repeat it—such as conflict and murder and so on—had been dealt with quickly and decisively.

Which is to say, everyone who considered trying to start a fight either died here where their screams wouldn't be heard by anyone who mattered, or else had been forced outside the walls and left to feed the Grimm instead. Given the size of this room, a fair number of people had probably died right here, in fact—and now it was being used to promote the power of the people who'd done said killing. I'm sure the irony of that had tickled somebody.

"Hello?" One of the teachers—an elderly man with startlingly bright blue eyes named Mr. Himmel—asked us as we walked in, looking confused. "Is something wrong?"

He probably thought that we were upperclassmen, sent down to help with something or to deliver a message.

"Nope," I answered with a smile. "We just finished. Has anything interesting happened yet?"

"Um," The teacher paused, blinking. He glanced down at the screen of his scroll for a moment, furrowed his eyebrows with a touch of disbelief, and then lifted his eyes back to us. "Uh…who are you again?"

"Jaune Arc," I supplied before nodding my head towards my friend. "And Adam Knossos."

"Arc and…Knossos," He repeated, frowning lightly as he flipped through his scroll and brought up our files. "Hm."

They were full of lies, especially Adam's, but as always, there was enough truth to it that it should have been convincing. The Knossos had been a branch family of the Alexandria and Roma Families for over a thousand years, which was a nice way to say that it had been used to smuggle or marry promising personnel into Mistral back when such a thing mattered—in Mistral's Imperial days, mostly. Ever since Chrysander Knossos had awakened with a Semblance capable of transmuting gold, it had been used to bring in valuable talents quickly. Anyone who did enough digging would find, to their complete lack of surprise, that he wasn't actually a Knossos, and even more digging would probably reveal a fair amount of well-hidden, scandalous information that was complete balderdash. From what Grandmother had told me, he was the bastard son of someone or other and a bull Faunus, had a record of some kind, and various other things.

The idea wasn't to keep him from looking suspicious, because anyone even vaguely associated with the Families was suspicious by default. Instead, his background was to make him look convincingly suspicious, like the type of person who had something to hide and enough skill to make it worth someone else's while. It should serve as another layer of protection to keep anyone from connecting him to Adam Taurus.

Though as for his first name, well, he'd asked and I'd allowed it. Adam was a common enough name and I'd rather he keep it then mess up when I called him by a fake name. Details like that can be tricky.

"Wow," Mr. Himmel said again, staring at his screen. "You boys hauled ass."

"Why even bother if you're not going to go for first place?" I asked. "How do we pick our teammates?"

Himmel pursed his lips, still staring at the screen. It seemed to take him a moment to remember to answer.

"Uh," He said. "Well, usually teams get formed in the maze. Groups form to deal with larger threats."

Knew it, I thought.

"Maybe you should have used a harder maze then," Adam answered with a snort, crossing his arms.

"Maybe so," Himmel replied, sounding bemused.

"Do you want us to go back for someone?" I asked, focusing on the issue at hand. "I noticed a few teams we could meet up with."

"No need," He answered, shaking his head. "I said usually, not always—pairs making it here alone isn't uncommon, it's just…"

"They usually take a little longer to get here?" I supplied.

"Just a bit," He agreed, shaking his head as he closed his scroll. He lifted a hand to his chin to look us both over, musing. "Besides, I get the feeling that sending you back for someone would be like giving them a free pass. So you're Isabelle's boy, eh?"

"I'm her son, yeah," I replied. "You knew her?"

"A long time ago," He muttered, squinting at me. "Saw your sisters a few times. Guess I should just be glad you didn't blow a path right through the Labyrinth."

"I thought about it, not gonna lie," I answered, smiling widely. "But I didn't want to damage the antiques."

He snorted out a quick laugh, but lifted a finger.

"You've got your Grandmother's mouth, I see," He said. "Be careful with it, though—not everyone's as tolerant of sass as I am, boy. A lot of your seniors are little princesses on the inside and you might hurt their delicate sensibilities."

"I'll manage, sir," I answered. "I'll try to be polite, too, but there's no helping Adam here. Whereas I was raised by wolves, he was brought up by more savage creatures and is rather lacking in the social graces."

"Why do you look so old, Mister?" Adam supplied helpfully, just to prove my point.

Himmel squinted at him.

"Because I'm old as balls, kid," He answered with a gravelly voice before jerking his head at one of the long tables set in the hall. "Go take a seat."

"What about our team?" I asked. "I was hoping to meet whoever got second place."

"It'll be awhile before anyone else arrives." He snorted. "We'll need to pick somebody suitable to be on your team, too. I hope you understand this is going to be a pain in my ass, boys."

"Sorry," I answered with a smile and a shrug.

He snorted again and jerked a head at the various screens positioned around the room.

"Feel free to watch your fellow classmates run in circles," He said. "Think of it as a reward for getting here early, because there's nothing I can do to keep you from looking and I don't actually give a fuck anyway."

Even before he spoke, I was letting my senses flow up through the stone around us. I could feel all the others, moving through the darkness and the danger with caution instead of certainty and moving slowly because of it. The tunnels beneath Mistral were elaborate, but not so much that someone with the right training couldn't get through it quickly, if they knew the way.

But they didn't, nor were they entirely sure what to expect from a place that filled Mistral's horror stories. It would take them time to find the right paths, to say nothing of the dangers they'd face doing so. The examiners, who were already whispering about Adam and I, would monitor how they performed and keep track of the skills they displayed, so as to better train them down the line. They were watching every move they made and adjusting their plans accordingly.

And so was I.

"Thanks," I answered, already wondering how much I could do from here without being noticed—and how much I actually would. "It'll be nice to see my fellow students in action."