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.

Nighttime

A little less than an hour later, the last bits of initiation were concluded. Our scrolls were registered, we were given a room number and some vague directions, and then we were sent on our way. Supposedly, all further information would be sent to our scrolls on a need to know basis, including our class schedule, but we were allowed the night to do as we wished. With my senses, I noticed a number of the new teams celebrating, with the teachers turning a blind eye—pretty much the moment we were allowed to leave, team SSSN was off to make noise and have fun, all but dragging everyone around them along for the ride.

The festivities weren't limited to just the new students though. Seeing an excuse to have fun before classes officially began, a bunch of the upperclassmen had come down to congratulate the new teams by drinking, eating, dancing, and generally ignoring them to have fun in their own ways. A few team games started, suckering in freshmen to face off with the older students, but by and large, everyone just took the chance to do their own thing.

Except for us, of course. It probably went without saying given that literally everyone on our team had ulterior motives for being here, but team JAME wasn't really the party type. A part of me thought about trying to have fun and maybe challenge a few off those upperclassmen just for fun, but I made a point of not dancing, singing, or gaming unless I could put my heart and soul into it and right now…well, I was busy worrying about doomsday scenarios and the various ways some greater power may be attempting to manipulate me into starting the Apocalypse. Sadly, my buzz died before it even had a chance to live.

For their part, my team failed to display any meaningful signs of enthusiasm, though Emerald at least tried to look cheerful. Adam took one look at the meager and already dwindling supplies of snuck in six-packs and promptly turned his face away, as if dismissing it from reality. Emerald and Mercury subtly—at least, subtly for anyone who wasn't trying to get something passed me—scanned the crowd, presumably for Cinder or some other contact, and lost all interest after their failure to find it.

In the end, we lingered for a few minutes and then, in my first real act as team leader, I lead us back to our room. I found it a little amusing that collectively skulking off had been our first real act of unity, but I supposed it couldn't be helped; though not all of us were aware of it, we all agreed that business came first.

Besides, what kind of father would I be if I kept my daughter waiting?

"What the hell is that?" Mercury demanded the moment we opened the door, drawing back even as I entered without a moment's hesitation. I claimed a bed, hopped onto it, and looked up at Autumn with a smile. She looked like a tree again, if one small enough to fit comfortably in our room, but it was obvious that she's been experimenting again because it was upside down. That is, her roots grew into the air while her branches covered the ground around her in a thin carpet of white leaves. Having apparently realized that this exchange wouldn't work for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being a lack of soil for her to dig her roots or branches into, she'd then taken to remodeling.

Now, her roots grew out like a head of hair, each an almost serpentine structure that ended with an open, eyeless mouth. Instead, she'd opened a few dozen around the width of her trunk, seemingly taking my advice to the next level by having an eye stare in every direction. Then, she'd manipulated her branches into a rough approximation of spider legs, which she used to remain upright—and as she saw me lay down on my bed, she silently hobbled over to me on her own power.

"Hey," I greeted, closing one eye as my smile widened at my little girl's first steps. "Looking good."

Adam looked over Mercury's head, one hand on the doorframe, and grunted at the sight.

"Your grandmother works fast," He told me. "How did she even get it here so quickly?"

"It must have been a special delivery," I answered with a shrug, feeling Gou at edge of the school's property.

He snorted, probably knowing me well enough to get the general idea.

"Ahem," Mercury pretended to clear his throat, making Adam look over his shoulder and wrinkle his nose.

"She's mine," He lied. "A result of my Semblance. I asked Mrs. Roma to make arrangements for her."

"Your Semblance?" Mercury repeated, a flash of interest going through him as he took a closer look at Autumn. "How's that work?"

Adam snorted again.

"It would be a pain in the ass to explain," He answered, claiming the bed to the left of my own, next to the wall. At my direction, Autumn lumbered around my bed as if following him and took up a place between our beds, roots spreading out above our heads. "It works and that's all that matters."

"And she…what?" Mercury wondered, finally taking a step into the room now that Autumn was out of the way. He threw a small bag under the bed to the right of mine while Emerald came in to claim the one against the other wall. "Fights for you? Is that why you don't have a weapon?"

"I have a weapon," Adam replied, sounding annoyed. As the weapons of Hunters were often as identifying as finger prints, Wilt and Blush were currently within my Inventory. I could have easily disguised their visual appearance with my illusions, but given the nature of Adam's fighting style and their distinctive nature as a sword and shotgun-sheath, there'd been a fairly significant chance of them being recognized. As such, it seemed I was going to be brushing off my rather rusty crafting to help him build a new weapon, which he could hopefully use in a different way. "I'm just waiting for it to arrive. She's…something special and a work-in-progress. She started as an attempt to try something new and now…"

He shrugged.

"We'll see what happens when she finishes growing," He finished.

Emerald squinted at him and then at Autumn—specifically the tangled knots of hungry roots that were trying to figure out how to taste the air.

"Uh…that's great and all, but it's…she's not going to eat us, is she?" Emerald asked, staring at it hesitantly.

"Let's try to avoid that for as long as possible," Adam answered, making her frown sharply.

I chuckled, drawing their attention.

"Ignore him," I said. "She's very well behaved and she'll do as she told."

Which was true. That may not preclude the two of them getting eaten at some point, but who knows what the future brings, really?

Emerald didn't stop frowning, probably mulling over the idea of sleeping in the same room as Autumn for at least a few months. After a moment, however, she shook her head and took a breath.

"Does she have a name?" She asked, making me raise an eyebrow briefly before smiling.

"Autumn," I answered, nodding towards my daughter and my friend.

"Adam and Autumn," Emerald repeated before nodding. "Easy to remember, at least."

That having been said, she dropped her bag and slid it under her bed, as Mercury had before her. I'd already scanned both bags and neither contained anything out of the ordinary, which was so unsurprising I could even feel disappointed. With Adam and I keeping our supplies in my Inventory and the two of them having a suitcase each, the room was left feeling almost barren—but at least that meant more room for Autumn to grow.

Speaking of, as we lapsed into silence I closed my eyes and reached out towards Autumn with my senses. With an effort of will, I activated Green Thumb and began channeling my excess MP into her, as I tended to do when she was around. The difference was, I'd gotten a fair number of new skills recently—between Humilitas and Benevolentia alone, we were talking a fourfold increase per point of MP and her Animasynthesis increased that even more. As things were now, I was pretty sure I could give her at least a hundred thousand experience per minute, which equated to one hundred forty-four million experience per day. At that rate, she should level up fairly quickly—especially if I set up a Temple in the room, which I promptly did. I even set up a Sanctum Sanctorum around our side of the room, just to help things along that much further.

As far as I was concerned, this was as good a time as any to start moving things along. The investments she'd made in Wisdom last time had allowed her to grow far beyond the limits she'd previously been restricted too, but she'd likely benefit even more from the synergy between Intelligence and Wisdom. I'd spoken to her about it several time and I'd seen her mulling over her status screen frequently, occasionally even making minor adjustments—which, until recently, had been one of the few things she could see. I wondered sometimes if, in a way, she thought of that status screen as proof of something; of her existence or mine or something else entirely.

But I'd asked and she'd agreed to invest in Intelligence next, at least enough to see if it showed meaningful results. We'd made plans and goals, some of which she'd already reached in forming eyes and moving on her own power. It was just a matter of time until she shattered he rest of the limits holding her back and was able to experience the world entirely on her own. And once that happened…

Someday, perhaps even someday soon, she'd probably join the family business. We'd talked about what that was exactly and I wasn't certain she understood, but I was pretty damn good at reading people and I knew that fluctuation in her Aura. She was interested, in much the same way I'd been when I first learned my parents were superheroes. I wasn't sure how to feel about that exactly, but once she was capable of fighting, I knew I could get her up to level eighty in no time, so there was that at least. If or when the time came, I'd train her and then…who knows? I had a rough idea of what my daughter was capable of with her shapeshifting and ability to bind and network with other forms of plant life. One day, my little girl might be pretty terrifying.

I looked up at her gnarled, root-branches which snapped blindly at one another, finally picking something up, and felt my smile soften.

Oh well.

A sudden wave of signals interrupted my thoughts as they brushed against my senses, flashing past me and causing Mercury's scroll to ring—and yet even from that tiny sound, the change in the two of them was immediate. A focused intensity streaked through their emotions and I could tell that in that moment, they both wanted nothing more than to snap that scroll open and see what they'd received. I was pretty sure they already knew what it was, but that fact merely made them want to react faster—it was a summons from Cinder and they wanted nothing more than to heed it.

Even so, they held back, taking care not to act suspicious. Emerald didn't so much as look at Mercury, draping an arm over her eyes and she lay on top of her covers, seeming nothing more than bored and tired. For his part, Mercury checked his scroll immediately—he had, after all, received something—but drew it from his belt almost absentmindedly, as if it were any other text. It was only after taking a few moments to fiddle with his scroll and then skim the message that his bored expression changed into a slight smile.

"Hey, Emerald, look who sent me a message," He said, leaning back to lay across the width of his bed with his feet dangling over one side. He stretched an arm out towards his partner, who took the school and lazily shifted an arm so that she could see it.

"Huh," She replied, sitting up. She made a show of pondering the message for a while before handing back the scroll. "Do you think we should…?"

"Why not?" He answered with a shrug. "It's not like we've got anything better to do."

"True," She admitted. "And it's only just starting to get dark outside. I don't really want to go to bed yet."

I waited for the two of them to rise from their beds before turning my head their way.

"Going out?" I asked, having no intention of stopping them but needing to play the part of team leader.

"Just for a while," Emerald answered. "A friend of ours wanted to congratulate us for making it in. She's an older student here now, but she used to help us back when we were in Signal. It's been a while since we've seen her and she invited us over, so…"

She shrugged and I nodded as if I believed her.

"Just remember that we'll probably get or class schedule sometime tonight," I said. "We don't want to miss class, right?"

The funny part was that literally everyone in the room wanted to miss class. Even so, Emerald gave me a smile and a nod.

"We'll be back before too long," She assured me. "It shouldn't be an issue."

I hands behind me head, crossed my ankles, and closed my eyes.

"Later, then," I called after them lazily as they left the room.

The room was silent for about half a minute before Adam spoke up.

"We clear?" He asked and I hummed in response. There was no one around and the sound wouldn't have carried outside the room even if there were. I was careful in that regard, just as I was careful to screen the room for any other methods of observation. The room was secure. "Then are they…?"

"Yup," I drawled, not bothering to open my eyes since I didn't need to. Instead, I kept careful track of my teammates, sensing as they made their way through the school. If the message and common sense weren't enough, they were making their way right for Cinder. "They're on their way to her now."

"Have you got it cover?"

"I won't dignify that with an answer," I replied with a snort.

Adam rolled his eyes but leaned back against his bedrest.

"I'll just stay quiet and wonder why I'm ever here, then," He stated.

"Aw, don't be like that," I raised my voice slightly as I spoke, as if talking to a small, angry child. "I'll be sure to find you some grunt work, Adam."

Adam took out his scroll, snapped a picture of his middle finger, and sent it to me.

"You've got mail," He stated helpfully as my scroll received the message.

"I doubt it's anything important," I answered with a fake yawn. "I'll check it later."

With that, I proceeded to focus most of my attention on Emerald and Mercury. I analyzed them as they walked, abruptly seeming them as pieces of a puzzle—pieces I hadn't realized I'd even been missing until I'd seen them. Abruptly, I couldn't help but wonder about them. The way they'd reacted to Cinder's call stood out and made me reevaluate them. For the first time, I wondered about Cinder's henchmen, instead of the woman they served.

In truth, until now, they'd been more obstacles than people, as far as I was concerned. There was a major—possibly world ending threat on the horizon—and who they were or what motivated them just…didn't matter. If they got in the way, then they were in the way, simple as that. And for the most part, that was still true, but now that I'd caught a glimpse of it, I realized they might be more important than I'd initially thought, because who they were said a lot about the woman they served.

As a ruling—and possibly excluding my daughter—Hunters didn't grow on trees. They were made, trained, and honed over years. That wasn't something I'd ever forgotten, but also wasn't something I thought about much, partially because I was such an extreme outlier that such things didn't mean as much to me, and partially because it was fairly easy to take for granted. Yes, any Hunter or trainee must have put years upon years of effort, but because that was true of just about every Hunter, well…so what? If they were here, they'd obviously done the training. That was as true of Emerald and Mercury as it was of everyone else, but there was something that set them apart.

They were also loyal members of an international criminal organization that dealt on equal terms with the White Fang. I mean, obviously; that was why I was watching them—but the thing is…why? I didn't really have a lot of room to throw stones on the criminal front, but they were obviously elite members of Cinder's organization and she just as obviously trusted them enough to involve them in a mission she'd spent a great deal of time working on. Even from their reaction to a simple message, I could tell they were devoted to Cinder and her cause.

Stuff like that wasn't easy to do, especially amongst people like Hunters. The simple fact of the matter was that any Hunter—or even any Hunter trainee—could make it just about anywhere. As a whole, Hunters were considered the greatest warriors on the face of the planet and even a weak Academy student had been officially recognized as worthy of that legacy. Making money wasn't a big concern for anyone who could make it this far; whether as a bodyguard, an enforcer, or whatever else, it was pretty easy to land a cushy life just about anywhere. As a result, earning the loyalty of even a small group of Hunter-level combatants was an impressive feat, because they could go anywhere, do anything, and not have to worry about monetary concerns. Add to that the power to slain hordes of normal men and…well, inspiring loyalty and obedience in them was fairly difficult.

And then you have the secondary, but just as impressive, feat of inspiring loyalty and obedience in teenagers, which made that even harder. Whether because of immaturity or a simple lack of reasons to care, it was hard to make people who had no idea what they were doing with their lives believe—truly and wholeheartedly, even if it meant facing agony and death—in someone else's cause. I could say from experience that it took quite a bit of doing to get someone to decide and dedicate their life to something.

Hell, when you got right down to it, you could probably argue that that was the entire point of the Hunter system—that it was all a way to create loyal warriors. People generally began their training at a very young age, often trained by other Hunters, and then moved on to at least four years at a combat school and another four years at a place like Haven or Beacon, but by the time someone walked through the doors of a Hunter Academy, they'd probably spent at least half their life training for it. The combat schools and Academy's helped further refine that into the finished works that were Hunters, but…

It wasn't hard to see that things could very easily be different. If the Kingdoms really wanted to, Awakening the Auras of hundreds or thousands of people would be pretty trivial and while training them would be a little tricky at first, it would be doable. More could be done on that front easily enough; there were only four major Academies in the world dedicated to training Hunters, when there could easily be more. If the Kingdom's really wished to do so, they could produce Hunters in far greater quantities then they did now and raise enormous armies of the powerful warrior. It would take decades to do, certainly, but it'd be possible to obtain power like that if they really wanted to.

But it wasn't about power, it was about loyalty. What's the point of soldiers that turn upon you or upon each other? That's always been the biggest issue with Hunters—the fact that if they decided, as a group, to do so, they could easily take over the world. In fact, knowing what I did now, I'd say there were a number of different factions that could each make a fair play at taking over the world, though would likely lead to them clashing with other major factions. That was the other historic truth about Hunters; leaving them to their own devices in a world where they're effectively in charge tends to result in someone deciding that they should be the most in charge.

That was why the system worked the way it did. While producing enough Hunters to actually overcome the Grimm, especially before they noticed and put a stop to it, was nothing but a pipedream, it would be possible to produce enough Hunters to give some leeway and allow people to relax within the isolated corners of the world we called the Kingdoms—which is something nobody wants, because the moment there are enough Hunters for some of them to pull away from the constant task of defending Humanity, it'll become readily apparent that a bunch of people with superpowers have no real reason to listen to people, like, the Council.

Or even people with lesser superpowers, which could get awkward given the effectively random way Semblances were handed out; 'all men are created equal' was great from a moral perspective, but tended to fray around the edges when one guy is created with the ability to turn into a werewolf and the other with the ability to control time. And because of that, whoever was in power could never be certain they would remain in power, because all it took was someone awakening the right Semblance to unseat them. There were a number of examples of it in history; of powers that had grown enough to actually thrive and then collapsed upon themselves in fits of internal strife.

The system produced enough Hunters to protect itself and nothing more. It's also, more cynically, why children were favored for it and adults—while not eschewed—were at a major disadvantage. Better to have someone trained all their life for a cause an utterly devoted to it then someone who might start questioning it. Even then, the system failed sometimes, with results like, well, Raven.

But how did Emerald and Mercury play into that? Had they been disillusioned somehow, as Raven had been? And if so, how? Or had they simply been taken in early and indoctrinated in a different way? Like most of the trainees here, they must have been training since they were very young—had Cinder taken them in? That was a possibility; the loyalty a child felt for a parent, as with Adam and Raven.

Whatever the case, knowing more about the two of them would tell me more about Cinder and how she acted. I knew how they felt about her, if in a broad sense, but knowing how she felt in return could shed some light on things.

So as they opened the door to their mistress's room, I watched closely and waited, uncertain of what to expect but eager to find out.