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.

Shove

I managed to react at the last second, bringing up my arms in defense. His hand crashed against them with enough force that I felt the bones shatter, ground to dust in an instant, and it barely slowed down his claws. They bit into my forehead and dragged down through my eyes, one of them catching my nose on the way. I felt them split my lips, shatter my upper and lower jaw, and nearly tear the latter free of my face entirely. I felt it as the claws continued down, snapping ribs like twigs and shredding my entrails.

On pretty much anyone else, it would have been a fatal wound.

On me, it just hurt like a bitch. Not physically—truth be told, getting stabbed in the brain honestly didn't hurt much and I was so accustomed to pain that I just brushed off everything else—but in the damage it did. Thanks to my recently improved Vitality, I'd limited that greatly, but still, it hurt.

But it bought enough time for my other self to evade the blow, stepping backwards as I took the hit and dancing out of the way. He extended a hand toward me and Gilgamesh both, snapping his fingers at once.

There was a sudden cracking sound, but attack outpaced it—in part because the trap had already been set. Gilgamesh had walked into the bounds of our Vajra, the invisible markings laid upon the ground around us, and it was just a matter of letting them loose. We could set them up to react when they were tripped, but with an opponent like Gilgamesh…no. Even if he couldn't dodge the attack itself, there was a moment before the process completed where he could escape. Better to pin him down, first.

So we did. I took the hit. My other stared at him with Gorgon activated, other hand flinging a quick Bind his way, and for a moment he wasn't free to simply leap out of the way.

In that moment, lightning struck. Not once or twice, but the better part of a dozen times, Vajra altering the conditions to be ideal. I felt it when Gilgamesh was hit, in part because of the transfer of shocks, but mainly because his claws convulsed in my guts. Even so, I was shielded from the worst of it by my natural defenses, and as Gilgamesh flung himself away, I only stumbled slightly.

My other was at my side in an instant, attention focused as mine was as Gilgamesh hit the ground and landed on his feet, armor already rippling again. Insulating himself, perhaps? Reducing the conductivity of his armor, almost certainly. Given such control over his own structure, he'd be able to reduce the damage greatly, mitigating it entirely if it fell into the bounds of his version of Kavacha. Even now, he was more surprised than hurt, and I'd bought myself only moments to act.

Best to use them wisely.

I didn't have to glance at my other self to know we were thinking the same thing, and we shed our Elemental Embodiments as once, unleashing both Metal and Fire. Our Elementals gathered around us as spiritual presences, pressing close as they focused on our enemy before unraveling and coming back together.

Gilgamesh released an odd, almost mechanical sound as he watched us.

"You still have more tricks, I see," He said, though he shouldn't have been able to see my Elementals—or, at least, no one else had ever been able to, when they weren't manifested. His eyes were good, then, no doubt boosted by his new suit. Unfortunately, that probably meant that my plan to confuse and disorient him with Delusions and Fantasies was probably doomed to failure, though it could still have value if I played my cards right.

"I came to play, after all," I told him as I felt my counterpart making his move. He didn't hide himself, as such, so much as project an image of himself over his body—a trick both of us were more than accustomed to, which made it easy to follow his lead. This was a risky move in its own way, especially against an opponent like this, which was why I'd refrained from using it until now, but…we were obviously going to need all the help we could get. Combined with what we were preparing to do next, this move would cost us greatly. It was enough to make me consider just going all out right now, but…

No. I couldn't allow myself to be frightened and break from the plan. I still had my fair share of cards to play, the things I was setting up and keeping hidden. I'd need to use them soon to get the most use out of them, but things like Keter and the Arcana would cost me even worse than what I was planning now. I had to use them wisely and make them count.

Besides. Those tactics had risks of their own, aside from their price tags. I'd be taking chances with them no matter how I used them, which was all the more reason not to let myself be shaken.

If there was anything to be…perhaps not thankful, because time was both my friend and enemy in this battle, but at least aware of in this fight, it was that we all moved fast enough that relatively little time had passed. I still had several minutes before I ran Thaumiel's course.

"Good, good," Gilgamesh replied. "I was worried. What few people I've been forced to show this power to have died shortly thereafter; for a moment, I believed you would be the same."

"I'm a lot of things," I said. "Easily killed is not one of them. That ability of yours is impressive, but…"

I closed my eyes for a moment, shaking my head at him even as I mentally weighed crunched the numbers. The time need, the cost per second, how much we needed to prepare, how much time we'd lose. If it wasn't already, our plan would soon be visible, but ever second counted, both for and against us. We'd have an advantage, but we'd also be giving him an opening. Ironically, the next moments would be critical.

But while time may not strictly be on our side, we had friends who were.

"Is that all?" I asked him. "I can do that."

The words were, at best, half-true, but they were enough to startle and make him wonder, and that gave them value. I took the opportunity to punctuate them as my Dimensional took form.

The next moment, we were right in Gilgamesh's face—no, somewhere between our starting positions, already in the midst of a clash. My body was twisted now, the form of Sahasrara seeming to recede behind growing plates of white armor as it slid over our skin. It covered us fully, drawing the spiritual wings of my soul behind something rooted firmly in the physical.

My counterpart and I were undergoing a Metamorphosis, shifting our forms to match his. I felt strength flow through me in the process, rising quickly to engulf me fully—and I wonder how aware Gilgamesh was of the process. Could he sense me more clearly now that I was closer to one of his kind? Did my shifted form give him any insight into what I planned to do next?

It was unfortunately possible—but that was something I'd accounted for. It wouldn't matter one way or another by the time we reached the next step of our plan.

For now, however, we attacked. At first, the forms we took were similar, in some ways, to Gilgamesh's own—the White Rider form we'd adopted as Jian Bing, with a perfectly smooth mask, unbroken by holes for the eyes, nose, or mouth. Our bodies streamlined as well, built for power and speed, designed with killing in mind. If there was any difference it was, ironically, that our forms were the more animalistic.

But in mere moments, those lines began to blur. Metamorphosis was about more than just taking a single form, after all—it was a process of modifications and adaptations, intended to make the user more lethal. It was, in that sense, very similar to what Gilgamesh was doing, likely because it was something I'd gained from Conquest.

What that meant in a fight could get a little complicated, especially for someone like me. One moment, I felt myself swell, adding mass as I met a blow from Gilgamesh with one of my own, deflecting it away from my other with force that shattered my own arm—the next my counterpart struck, something uncoiling in his grotesquely bulging right arm that unleashed a blindingly quick punch. Gilgamesh swung back, points opening along his arms that began to fire small spikes that bled something corrosive, but I leveled a hand at him, middle finger elongating into a wicked spike that I filled with fluids I produced with Venenum, balancing the dosage carefully as I warped the muscle and bone around my wrist and fired it like an arrow.

Gilgamesh barely flinched as it struck home, brushing it off even as it exploded violently and filled the air around us with a sticking black smoke that he simply stepped through. His right hand came up, finger-blades almost touching, and matter began to flow from the tips, gathering into a tiny orb. Circuitry lit up along his arm, shining brightly—and a hair-thin laser struck me in the eye, burning a hole clean through my head. I flinch away, reflexively adjusting my ribcage and skull to protect the contents and minimize the damage, but I was already growing, appearing shifting towards something both feline and ursine even as my double slipped into my space, hiding himself within me as he transformed. I layered my existence to hide him wholly within me, choosing what to conceal and what to let through as my perspective shifted, and then I attacked.

All the while, my Dimensional stood still, watching and waiting.

I bore down on Gilgamesh, body growing as matter flooded in from above, adding to my mass and providing structure to my assumed form. The hand I swept at Gilgamesh was massive now, easily large enough to grasp a man's head like an apple, and my claws were wickedly sharp—would have been impractically so, in fact, had I been anyone else. While honing a blade to a razor's edge certainly had its advantages, primarily in that it allowed one to put more force behind less area, there was also the issue of fragility. In comics, there was a lot of talk about absurdly thin blades that could cut a hair in two or slip between molecules or whatever, but even with Remnant's most advanced engineering, something like that would crumple like, well, aluminum foil, assuming it didn't simply shatter at the first sign of resistance. Aura could help with that, but even with its reinforcing touch, it would never match to durability of larger weapons. Fighting with such a thing was just asking to be stripped of your weapon at a crucial moment.

But matters changed when you could make them out of unbreakable materials—or, at least, things that acted as though it were unbreakable. Thanks to the Gamer's Body, none of the damage I took actually showed on the surface; whether my flesh was pierced, my bones broken, or even if my head was removed, it wouldn't actually seem to harm me until—presumably—I lost my last hit point. In addition, thanks to my various skills, my biology was…warped, to say the least, and the modifications it was able to support were equally unconventional.

It was something I embraced, here and now.

Gilgamesh lifted his left arm to block my coming strike, the limb bulging slightly and taking on a more armored appearance just before my claws connected. I felt my talons crack and break against his hide, sometimes pulling up the flesh around them in the process—but none of that showed and my claws raked his carving swallow marks into his forearm. I let the products of Venenum spill from the venom sacks in my knuckles as I struck, spraying the wound with something corrosive—my failure to create the alchemical legend that was the Universal Solvent, still potent enough to liquefy organic matter.

The Grimm hardly twitched as the edges of the wounds began to shimmer slightly, welling with dissolved skin that was quickly replaced. Instead, he raised both of his arms, hands flashing out like lightning bolts as he clasped his hands on my arms with a grip that powdered bone. His shoulders bulged then, inflating until it seemed almost as if they'd been replaced with rough spheres—and then several ports opened along its surface, spewing worth what at first seemed like smoke.

I knew better, especially as it flowed over and engulfed me. The 'cloud' was actually just a swarm of tiny, tiny Grimm-things—like the magical nanites I'd mentioned before, only taken more literally. They even looked technological at a glance, tiny machines made of tiny pieces of Grimm-bone. They covered me, gathering to attack cells and bury themselves in my skin as they tried to tear me apart piece by piece.

It didn't work. Even on that scale, my skills were still active, hardening my skin to an absurd degree and pushing back their invasion. Beyond that, Kavacha was still at work, and though it seemed to recognize the swarm as a single attack, it still blunted most of their efforts, providing me ample time to counterattack.

Seeing as imitation was the sincerest way to tell someone to go fuck themselves, I gave Gilgamesh's newest trick my own twist, sending a wave of alteration across my skin. On a level invisible to the normal human eye, cells began to convulse, pulsate, and then warped violently, turned into membranous 'shells' for my creations. The tiny creatures that came forth were repurposed parts of my own body, and they crawled over my skin, surrounding and attacking their Grimm counterparts. On the micro-scale, the difference between technology and biology—especially magical technology and biology—was limited, and our microscopic forces might have seemed evenly matched had someone been able to see them fight.

They weren't. We both had our advantages and limitations that were shifting the battle this way and that. Gilgamesh's main edge was his ability to produce and surround me in a devouring cloud of his creations, thick enough that had someone else wandered into it, there wouldn't have been the slightest trace left behind. I, on the other hand, was more limited, being forced to keep my miniature minions close at hand; they were machines obeying commands or even something I could issue orders to with a thought, just something I created and controlled with my power and limited to my close proximity. While I probably could exceed those limits, it would mean adjusting my connection to them and I wasn't sure how much command I'd retain as they distanced themselves from me and became something truly independent; sadly, I was guessing not much. And seeing as the skill I was using had been something I received from Conquest…

No. Biological warfare was a bitch to control and contain at the best of times. Magical biological warfare stolen from one of my greatest enemies and still touched by his power? Probably wasn't something I should play with in the middle of an already delicate situation.

Besides, I had advantages of my own. Unlike Gilgamesh, I was just as capable of fighting under a microscope as I was on the battlefield and I guided my forces accordingly, aiding them when necessary with careful applications of Psychokinesis when necessary. It was enough to push Gilgamesh's forces back, thanks to my protection from their attacks; he undoubtedly noticed what I was up to and commanded his creations to attack mine, but they didn't fight with the mind of a strategist behind them. Mine did and overcame his forces, if only temporarily. He'd swarm me again in a matter of moments, but not before I had time to act.

It was enough to make Gilgamesh let go of me as my minions turned on his claws, a legion of them swarming to chew at his bladed hands. It only lasted a moment before there was a sudden flash from his claws that slew most of our creations and the smoke from his shoulders changed, becoming a mix of airborne poisons, including nerve gases and worse—gaseous contact poisons, prion infestations, and more.

I advanced into the light mist, trusting my defensive skills to see me through the danger as I followed Gilgamesh back. He lifted a hand, another of those odd spheres forming between the claws of his hand, and I saw power gathering even as he aimed it at me. I didn't so much as hesitate, reaching out to grasp the orb tightly in one hand, a series of Lux Aeterna's gathering around my hand.

We looked at each other, both our masks eyeless and yet still conveying what we wanted to say—and as one, we both fired.

There was a strange crackling sound, as if a lightning bolt were somehow breaking. Colors played across my vision and throughout the spectrum, standing out oddly to my senses and then simply collapsing into the point of intersection, where Lux Aeterna clashed with the matter he'd summoned. Light and darkness played across the sphere, balancing for a moment and then breaking down just as fast. Power collapsed into a tiny point and then burst forth.

As I was flung away, I felt as though my arm had been blown away just beneath the elbow and I was sent careening through the air, before hitting and sliding across the ground while it shattered around me. I regained myself after a brief moment of disorientation, turning my slide into a horizontal flip and turning myself Psychokinetically to land on my feet. A hand came down to grasp the ground, my speed pulling it through fifty more meters of dirt before I managed to stop myself—and I saw an opening.

Abruptly, distance became meaningless and I was beside Gilgamesh in a heartbeat. He'd done much the same thing I had, slowing himself with the claws of his left hand—probably because the claws of his right were simply gone, erased just beneath the knuckle by whatever interaction of forces we'd caused. Somehow, he didn't seem surprised to see me and rose to meet my assault. As my fist collided with his own, it was visibly crushed, collapsing until my wrist was near my elbow and revealing the trick I'd hidden within my forearm. As my flesh fell slack, warped by the use of my power instead of the damage, half a dozen red tendrils burst forth, whipping towards Gilgamesh's head, neck, and chest, sinking lightly into his skin. My other hand came up, held just before him, and then I shifted the arrangement of my existence, parts of my other self rising even as bits of me sank.

Wings spread out from my back, feathers black but marked by red colored eyes reminiscent of the Panoptes. My arm changed, too, eyes opening down its length and something like a mouth appearing at the center of my palm—and as space shifted and warped, Dust crystals fluttered from my Inventory, rotating around the limb in three circles. Power gathered around and inside me, flowing into some hollow segment of my arm that had been set aside for the task, glowing through my skin.

I fired.