The original work which these are based on may be found on Spacebattles. Search for "The Games We Play" by the one and only Ryuugi. His icon is a red-backed Darth Vader looking to choke you. Fittingly, the caption of it is 'Who's your Daddy?'
To clarify - these are my omakes for another story. They can be counted as a mini-series in terms of length, but the original premise behind them is not mine. Credit to Ryuugi for the setting; to me goes simple skill in putting something together that doesn't look too bad.
The latest thread's index may be found here: threads/rwby-the-gamer-the-games-we-play-disk-five.341621/
At the time of writing, it was up to the 160th page.
Thank you for your time. Enjoy.
The Games We Play Omake, or perhaps second author's work
It's Happening
I started on the way to Junior's club. Really, I was more worried about the potential reputation gain - and how I could maximise that - as a by-product of healing over the injuries of the day before. That did twinge a bit; surely those dudes wouldn't have been so deep in criminal activities that they would be arrested as soon as they got out of hospital? Knowing Junior he'd probably only have them do light bouncer work. Although the issue of being understaffed did crop up to mind, I ended the thought process where it was and kept on walking.
It was a while before I realised I wasn't moving anywhere.
Promptly, I stopped. None of my abilities or my extra senses warned of incoming danger, so I was safe for the most part.
Or at least, that's what I think is happening. I might be wrong. Corrections welcome!
It occurred to me that it would be good to have a look around. My trusty Observe, lovingly honed to its level ninety-nine got a decent enough using as I looked around.
It looked as if everything else was stopped, too. I saw a car on the street, stopped as readily as if it had collided with a building, minus the resultant structural damage. In fact, with my Observe as high as it was I could see the smoke coming out of the clunky fuel-burner's exhaust.
The smoke, too, was not moving. That was probably a bad thing.
I was free to look around, at the very least. I took another step forward, looking around some more-
Hold on. I took a step forward?
I very slowly turned around. I came face-to-face with myself. And I would promptly have screamed under normal circumstances, but I honestly didn't feel like it.
Ziz appeared on the roof of the building to my direct north, perching and waiting as peacefully as a pigeon. Never mind the fact that the building, absolutely microscopic by comparison, probably couldn't hold the weight of the thing. Another quick Observe revealed to me that it was indeed not right and proper, as its feet were equal size to a normal bird's feet.
And everything went to mush.
Then, it was as if the universe had hiccuped and I was out like a light.
.-x-.
"Hello?" I heard someone say in my general direction, vague and muffled. It wasn't my voice and I seemed to be lying down. Why was everything so blurry? I shook the cobwebs loose - that is, shook my head from side to side like a brick stonewall of a bear waking up from a hard winter - and opened my eyes.
Turns out I was indeed lying down, and there was someone leaning over me. Someone in a nurse's outfit. From here two thoughts emerged; first, that this is the type of greeting you give to see if someone is awake before attempting cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Second, that if there was a nurse here...
The sound of the alarms and the murmur of voices then hit me. I sat up properly, observing the scene. A red sedan was halfway onto the kerb, heading off the road and bearing a very large dent in where the engine should have been. Looking upwards, I saw that whoever was driving it - a singular, wispy and frail-looking older woman - was unconscious, airbags and seatbelt working fine to protect her.
The police were present, as well as the fire service - men of the latter checking over the car and bringing hand tools to bear to see if they could bring it back to a serviceable condition. Police were questioning and calming the few bystanders, with a few others putting up tape around the area to hold off the slowly-gathering crowd of onlookers. I used Observe on the lot - just general populace, the very greatest of them standing at a proud level 16. The police officers were double that.
Also, shattered fragments and shards of glass were everywhere. It then occurred to me that I had a few pains in my back. I would have reached around to heal it, but the nurse's hand grabbed mine.
"Whoa. Slow down. You were hit and it's not safe for you to move around that much."
"Hit? What?" I oh so eloquently asked.
"Her brakes cut out just as her engine started playing up. She ended up going off the kerb and hitting you. Or that's what those guys say." the nurse jerked her head over towards the focused fire-crewmen who were heading back into their truck. Said contraption then started up and drove off, sans the alarms and lights.
"So... she hit me?" I asked. Still not really grasping the fact that it happened to begin with. What was the chance of that just happening? Was this a sign I needed to improve my Luck?
"Yes." the nurse very patiently explained.
"I think she needed more car."
And the nurse, despite how terrible that statement was, let out a snort. I could feel society getting a tiny bit worse. "Right. You get up and go stand over by there. We-"
"Rybeka, go handle the crash victim. I've got things here." a new, unknown person said, interrupting the now-named nurse. She took one look at the man, then nodded and hurried away from me to the car. It turned out to be a police officer looking more senior than the rest, sitting at level 29 and bearing skills based around improving his Charisma.
"Come on, up on your feet and we'll go to the station." he said, reaching out to help me up. I took the offered hand and got to my feet.
I just got hit by a car, that was the evidence from what I could see and deduce, but to be honest I was kind of freaking out about what I saw before. Ziz back. Time stopped. My own vision stepping out of my body, mid-time-stop. Was that... a hallucination? A ridiculously complex Aura experiment gone wrong? The result of a really, really bad concussion and a WIS skill of over 200?
As I walked and followed the police officer, something of importance happened. The police officer suddenly turned off to the left and left me standing there.
"Hello. How about you come with me?" another man, clad in a scruffy leather coat, asked of me. Not seeing a reason not to, and really still trying to figure out what the hell that vision was from before, I indeed up and went to follow him.
It occurred to me that Observing this new stranger might be a good idea. I promptly used the skill on him.
The Almighty Janitor
Game Moderator
.-x-.
We began walking. It could have been a second, it could have been an eternity. That's the sort of things I'm caught up in, I guess. My abilities and kinda freaky senses were just... not there. Like It was on mute, or like they hadn't been there at all. The sensitivity was all there, though. I could feel my heart roar and thunder in my chest, each muscle-fiber bundle working to pump about my limbs forward and backward. My lungs and each of their cells expanding and deflating, processing away the oxygen from each breath of air.
We ended up walking up a set of stairs of the porch of a log cabin. I looked around to see lush grassland and rolling hills, under a clear blue sky with the sun making the few sparse cumulostratae bright and high in the skies. The porch overlooked a cliff, at the foot of which was a perfect beach. The ocean breeze had a light hint of the highlands - of farmland and forests, rain and rocks.
He pulled on the handle of a cooler, and took out a bottle. Popping the top for himself before reaching back in and offering me one. I realize that testosteriffic bonding-time with someone who is essentially a god to my world was being put on offer, but I elected to ignore it.
Aside from those two text lines which frankly left me on the verge of needing brown pants, my Observe skill could detect nothing about him. No skills, no stats, no emotion, no specialization, no backstory, he didn't even have a heart rate or any soul that I could detect.
"I bet you've got questions." He said casually, overlooking the beautiful vista below. I carefully reined my emotions in and replied with a little courtesy, a little sympathy, and some taste.
"You're right, I do. I get the feeling you won't answer them."
"Not any big ones." He replied. I then got the strong feeling this was going to be a frustrating conversation.
"Alright." I demurred - as if I had a choice - and began asking the Twenty Great Discoveries. Or at least I'll call them that for now. Can't call them 20 Questions with something that amounts to a god.
"Why is my life a video game?" Best to start with the nice and simple.
"Unaskable. Question refunded." He said, drinking down his beer and taking out another.
What? Can't even ask the simple questions? Alright, have to be creative...
"What's up with you not having any stats?"
"Because if I have stats, then you can kill me. And I don't want that." He gestured to himself, a sort of a shrug with both hands in the air. "However near impossible I would make it, it still would be possible. Besides, I like this body. Just got done fixing it. Go wreck someone else's."
Seems like the 'Almighty Janitor' was a self-centered one. Oh well, you get that type. Can't do much about that. Looking over the man properly, he seemed like a proud and crass if honest sort. The grease-on-fist kind of rough integrity you could find from a mechanic working late at night to feed his wife and kids. Broad where I was kind of tall, and generally dirty. On his face were lines, on his hands was grime, on his skin were tiny marks and cuts.
"What was that weird-"
"I know exactly what you mean." He said, interrupting me. Rude, but I listened anyway.
"That there was a glitch. You're in a video game, glitches happen. I fix them. Kapishe?"
I didn't like it much, but it was understandable. There was just too much this guy wasn't telling me.
Next question. "What are the limits of what I can do in this game?"
"Anything which does not cause a glitch. Therefore, with the right amount of time and resources, and with some kind of intelligent design, you probably could do just about anything." He said. Another bottle empty.
Sensible. I had to wonder on two patterns of thought now - what do I absolutely want answering, and whether or not that question would be too much to ask.
Wait.
"Why can't I ask you certain questions?"
"Because I'm not going to hand over everything on a silver platter. What are you, a welfare baby?"
That wasn't enough... "Knowledge of the outcomes of possible events will alter my actions, and thus the future will be altered?"
"Close." He gave me a grudging look of approval. Probably the most I'll ever get out of him. "Knowledge of a given quest-related factor will cause more glitches, as bearing said knowledge ties in to the acquisition of quests. I'm trying to keep everything running here!"
Okay, that got a smile. I'll play his game. Literally. But the time dragged on. Eventually, the mood - mine, anyway - turned somber.
"Why?" I asked.
He turned to me. "Why what?"
"Why all of this?" I gestured around. "Why are we here? What is our purpose?"
He lit a cigarette with a hinged-top lighter. Drawing breath, he looked me in the eye. I'll tell you here and now, I swear I can't tell the difference between him and a regular person. Makes sense as he literally made everything, so of course he would know the rules and happenings of the world, but hey. I wonder what his Disguise will be if he applied a stat to it.
"There are two answers I can give to that question. One will be for you and your world, the other will be for me. Which one do you pick?"
God. Worst offer ever. I can't help but pick both. My healthy levels of paranoia told me he'd only be generous this one time.
I solved it in the best of ways. I took out a coin and flipped it.
Heads. "Me."
He looked down at the one-Lien coin before sighing, and sitting down on a chair that hadn't been there before. Impossible as that was, I sat down too on my own.
"This world is the latest. The leading point of the shield against which the acid strikes, so to speak. Those things." the Almighty Janitor pointed, and suddenly the lush grasslands were stuffed to the brim with Grimm of all kinds, Nevermores circling above and unless my eyesight was failing, numrous Goliaths in the distance backing them up.
"BUT-" he screamed over the noise of the horde. A roar and a wave of heat and light later, and they were gone. Dust in the wind. Not actual Dust, but still general grime and such. I was in still minor shock, but now in equal parts minor awe.
"But you wouldn't think much of it, would you? Been there as far back as you know it." he said, emptying another bottle down his throat and taking out another.
"Grimm, you call them. Right? Yes, them. They... are not what you think. What are they to you, might I ask?" he queried, in a suprising turn of politeness.
I kind of settled into disapproval. Grimm? To me? Born into a Hunter family, jacked up to near mythic levels by this man's functioning, had Dad wiped out and mom made a cripple, am currently looking for ways to bring true and total death to Conquest and the big boss behind the Grimm?
"Things to... remove." I kept succinct in my choice of words.
I swear then, the Janitor laughed. Openly laughed.
"Nice and simple, ey? No fancy business." He said, knocking me on the shoulder.
Really starting to not like this guy. Nothing open or hostile yet, but something just rubs me the wrong way.
He quietened down, though, and looked out over the vista.
"Entropy is a phenomenon that happens with all things. On a quantum level, and on a physical one. Entropy is the total and absolute loss of energy and substance, whereas before energy can never be truly lost, only converted into a single form."
"Entropy is the loss of order. In thermodynamics, it's the catch-all for randomness within a system." I interrupted HIM for once.
"Not this kind. Damn, should have clarified. Existential. This is Existential entropy." Cleared things up a little, at least.
"The Grimm are the physical manifestations of Entropy within this creation." he summed it up.
And it might just have been me, but at that point things seemed hopeless. The very entropy of existence itself? How were we supposed to fight against that? A crushing, ineroxable force against a bunch of swords, people and comparatively quantum levels of Aura? I tried to voice my expression, but evidently I'm more expressive than I thought, because he caught the point right away.
"You can succeed against it because it's physical. It's present, it exists in a convenient form for you. What you forget, Gamer, is that what exists within nature follows the laws of nature. They live. They can be killed."
"Their numbers are literally endless!" I couldn't stop myself from shouting. "The probability of our success is absolute zero!"
He sneered in disgust. I swear, I feel like punching this guy.
"When you say that, you forget the theorem of expected value. How high is the price of your life?" he asked me. Before I could answer, he asked again; "How high is the price of that which you love?"
"When you say the probability of success is absolute zero, you forget that when price is of infinite size, probability has no meaning."
He was rude about it. But in the end, what he was saying was that it came down to me and my not wanting to die. And everyone's. That's why we fought to survive instead of rolling over and letting the Grimm eat us alive. I looked back - the Pandora Shell, the Goliath, the fight against Penny. Many, many more. In every one, it came down to me not wanting to lose.
And the Janitor must have picked up on my thoughts, because he raised his bottle and toasted me.
I didn't ask any more questions. I sort of got the message anyway. The Grimm were around, humanity (and faunuskind, too) were also around, and it was evident only one of either of us could survive.
One more question popped into my head.
"So, what now?"
The Janitor shrugged. "You go back, I guess."
"And keep fighting?"
"Do you want something else?"
... Looking over it all, I couldn't find it in myself to argue.
"Any changes going to be made?" I asked.
"If anything big comes up I'll notify you."
I... was honestly more than a little shocked. Just like that, things are going to continue as normal? Or at least as close to normal as my life could pass?
"I haven't failed somehow?"
"Nope. Keep up the good work." he said, nodding with closed eyes to me. He acquired a brimmed hat from somewhere which augmented the move.
And the world started again, and I found myself back on the street, heading over to Junior's club to heal up the wounded.
Post location: threads/rwby-the-gamer-the-games-we-play-disk-four.311394/page-1339#post-16300638
