This is a work of fan fiction, created for entertainment purposes only and with no claim to the characters depicted. Ownership of RWBY characters and concepts belongs to Rooster Teeth. Dungeons and Dragons and the d20 System belong to Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast. The World of Ere setting belongs to Landon Porter and Paradox-Omni Entertainment.
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Chapter 28: Monkeyshines Finale
"Wait!" The other's chatter, Sun's gloating and even Neo's cursing stopped as everyone looked toward the source of that single word: Weiss Schnee.
For just a moment, the weight of all that attention actually left her speechless and a tiny bit self conscious. Then her upbringing reasserted itself and she straightened her spine and cleared her throat, turning her gaze on Neo. "Why didn't you reroll that?"
Neo raised a questioning eyebrow.
"Your character's a halfling, right?" She tapped on her phone until the proper page of the game's PDF was displayed. "See right here? Favored of Pandemos: Once per day you can make one roll you make or someone makes against you a natural one or a natural twenty. So you can make the one you just rolled a twenty."
After a beat, Neo blinked and muttered something that might have been thanks before looking expectantly at Sun.
He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. That works. So you crit kill this minion and now Reaper lets you attack the other." Neo rolled and easily hit the other minion, taking it down. Looking smug, she sat back, arms crossed and gave Weiss a nod.
Roman of course, couldn't let this go without comment. "You forgot you were playing a halfling, didn't you?" Neo sent him a baleful glare. "You did, didn't you! So much for all your expertis—ow!" Roman yelped from a sharp kick to the shin.
"Okay, so there's no more Kaiyupei outside now. There's two soldiers and a worker on the inside. Start of their turn, the soldiers take damage from Neptune's spell. That drives this one to one hit point. He's going to attack Emerald and... hit for nine damage."
"We need to talk about how I'm the one soaking all the damage around here." Emerald grumbled.
"Oh, it's not just you," Sun assured her. "Roman, the other solder looks from you to your gun to the rifle dropped by the dead guard next to him. He saw you kill his queen and glares at you. Berserk doesn't make 'em less smart, so he drops his cleaver, picks up the rifle and shoot you. That's thirteen damage."
This broke Emerald out of her annoyance over being damaged so much. She let out a full belly laugh and almost fell out of her seat. "Okay. Neptune? You have to draw that. A koala shooting Roman with a rifle. That's the image of the session right there."
Neptune clearly agreed, as he too was reduced to gales of laughter. "Can't argue with that!" He reached into his bag and came up with a sketchpad and a handful of colored pencils, setting to work immediately.
Even Roman couldn't fully commit to his indignation, just shaking his head.
Sun was grinning from ear to ear. "The minion moves around to the last guard and tries to claw him and missed. The guard shoots back and takes him out. Roman, you may retaliate when ready."
"Retaliate nothing. It's a flying teddy bear who can act as a sniper. Is there a way to tame this thing and make it my partner in crime?"
"Maybe it you hadn't gunned down its queen, but it's pretty attached to seeing you not live anymore."
Roman shrugged. "Oh well. Too bad for him. I was going to get him a little eye patch and bandanna, maybe teach him to smoke cigars. I'm gonna walk up to him here..." he moved his mini to a square adjacent to the soldier. "And then shoot the one attacking Em."
"Huh?" Emerald blinked at him. "Since when do you actually play nice with the team?"
He made a noncommittal noise in his throat. "Whatever. You were having a hard time of it tonight. That, or yours only has one hit point while we don't know how many mine has. So this way, we'll get rid of an enemy for sure as long as I hit. Speaking of which..." He rolled his dice and smirked. "Bang. Oh, and since the little cub next to me has a ranged weapon in hand, he doesn't get an attack of opportunity. However, that was my third shot, so I'll drop it and use my minor to draw my sword cane. If he tries to attack, I get an AoO on him."
"Clever," said Sun. "Weiss?"
"Hmm." Weiss leaned over the board, considering the situation and her place. "Are the holes they tore in the train big enough for me to go through?"
"Sorry, but no," said Sun, "The Kaiyupei are Small, so they don't need to make hole big enough for someone your size. Plus, y'know, your wings."
Weiss nodded slowly. "Alright, then can I see through the hole to the last monster?"
"Sure. Gonna cast a spell at him?"
"Yes. My Cryomancer spell: Icicle Lancet. It says 'a howling void opens above your head that disgorges lances of ice at your enemies'. It lets me make a ranged attack as a minor action to try and spear him with ice, so I'll try one..." she rolled and only got a five. "That's probably not going to hit so I'll take my Move as a minor and try again. Seventeen total and I'm sure he's unaware of me. Six plus four Charisma—ten damage."
Sun took a moment to check his notes and smiled. "Roman, as you're standing there, a spear of ice comes through one of the holes in the wall and goes right through the Kaiyupei's gut from the side. He wobbles, lets out a crooning groan, then straightens up, ready for more. Nice attack, Weiss, but not enough to end him."
Once again, Neptune clapped, but it didn't shock anyone this time. He only took a moment to be disappointed at this before going on to say what he'd intended to. "No worries guys. This combat ends right here." He took his mini and slid it into the square next to Roman's. "Charging to here and... fifteen on the attack."
"Is that with the charge bonus?" Sun asked.
"Yeah."
"Then you just missed his AC. Sorry, combat's going on a little longer, unless you wanna blow an Action Point."
"Eh, I like to save those. Go for it, Emerald."
The girl with the mint-colored hair steeple her fingers as she perused her spell list. "Hmm. Let's see... Huh. Looks like Dey says it's my duty to stab the crap out of Ruxpin Dundee over here. So I'm going to walk over to here and cast Deific Smite. That's a natural roll of a 19, which is a crit for my dagger too! For a grand total of..."
"He's only got four hit points left," Sun pointed out.
"Shh." She held a finger to her lips and gave him a look that dare him to say another word. "Mama's adding epic damage. Four for dagger, two for strength. That's doubled to twelve. Plus six for the smite and three for my Wisdom. That's twenty-one damage. I split that little shit from groin to sternum and pull out his innards."
Roman let out a fake wail. "My sidekick!"
"There there," Emerald said, making a face at him, "We'll get him stuffed or something. I did make space for the stuffing after all." Leaning forward, she looked to Sun. "Okay, so with koala guts still on my knife, I'm going to storm over to the last guard. Is he the one that shot me, by the way?"
"You know what? Yes. Because it's way more fun that way."
"Good, so as I talk, I shake the knife so he gets spattered. 'Alright, jackass. What's the deal with you guys keeping a flaming fairy koala bear in a cage and getting all your dudes killed? And you better not say it's a secret or you'd rather die than tell me because I've got a direct line to my goddess. I guarantee you won't die no matter what I do to you—got that?"
By this time, she's leaned across the entire table to get right in Sun's face. The red contacts she wore made her look demonic enough without the light of madness behind them. Sun, however was used to this and merely said, "That'd be an Intimidate check. With a hefty bonus."
Emerald grinned. "Sweet." dropping back into her seat, she picked up her d20 and rolled a thirteen. "That's a twenty total before bonuses."
"Yeah, he's filling his pants," said Sun. "'I-it's for King Fayronn of the Mecardia Kingdom. He paid to have the Kaiyupei queen captured so he could capture her hive."
"That worked super-well for you, by the way," Neptune said with a roll of his eyes.
"'I noticed', the guard grinds out. 'We had a non-detection spell on the cage, but it was dispelled shortly after the train left the last station. I have no idea how they reached us this quickly though."
Roman scratched his head. "Come to think of it, none of these guys had a gun or the coordination to snipe two engineers through the window of a moving train. And I doubt they have the ability to disenchant spells either. Looks like someone was helping these little wankers."
"Dun-Dun-Duuuuun!" That came from Sun, Neptune and Blake all on cue. Neo and Weiss looked at them, confused while Emerald just shook her head and face-palmed.
"And that's where we'll pick up if you guys decide we want to make this a campaign. What'd you guys think?"
Emerald shrugged. "It's pretty much high power D&D and as long as I can steal shit and hurt people, I'm good. Might change my spells up for a campaign though. Maybe a whole new character, I don't know."
Sitting back, Roman crossed his legs. "I didn't even get to scratch the surface of Maribeth in this. I'm in if everyone else is." His phone chimed and, after checking it, he added, "Neo wants to do some respeccing, but she's in too."
"Oh, Paolo is so in." Neptune flashed a double thumbs up.
That left Blake and Weiss. Blake shrugged. "You know I'm up for any kind of fantasy gaming as long as we don't repeat the Lamentations of the Flame Princess incident."
"It's not my fault you guys aren't hard core enough for my DMing style," Roman sniffed haughtily.
"Hey, I liked it," Emerald pointed out. "Then again, I'm not the one who had to have a foot amputated. Or had a character go crazy and eat their own arm meat. Or exploded into a hail of meat. And even I could have done without that part of the module with the kids..."
Roman held up his hands to stop her comments. "Okay, enough damning me with faint praise."
"Anyway," Blake continued, "I might have to play a different character than Alhaen if Weiss isn't going to be in the group.
Now the full force of everyone's stares were on Weiss. She shrank back a bit, before composing herself. "Well I would be lying if I said I didn't have fun. However, if I'm going to be doing this regularly I'm going to need some concessions."
"You know this is a gaming group and not a business meeting, right Snow White?" Roman demanded.
Weiss waved his comment away. "No, I understand, however I am in a most delicate position. Meaning I have my father for a father and Yang Xiao Long as a friend." There were a few winces and looks of sympathy from the peanut gallery. "So first of all I'd appreciate the discretion that keeps people from knowing about Blake's hobby."
"Not unreasonable," said Emerald. "After all, we are kind of the closeted gamer group. Most people don't know about my gaming either."
Roman let out an annoyed groan. "God, you people are trapped in the eighties or something. Don't you get that we're living in the Age of the Geek? Magic the Gathering is on ESPN, the last President collected Spider-Man comics, the top ten grossing movies of all time is full of Superheroes and Lord of the Rings, and the some of the most popular TV shows on right now are a sit-com about a bunch of nerds, a zombie apocalypse drama based on a comic book, and what is basically the televised version of my Lamentations of the Flame Princess game. The only place being geeky isn't cool right now is in stuff written by old men who talk about how things were in the good old days before 'the rap music'. You've got nothing to worry about."
Weiss frowned, deep in thought. "I... actually have no idea what most of that is—like what's an Espin?-but anyway, I have plenty to worry about and I'd just like a bit of friendly cooperation, okay?"
"Sure, whatever." Roman rolled his eyes.
"I do know what he's talking about and I still think he somehow goes to a different school than us instead of Sun and Neptune," said Emerald.
Once again rolling his eyes, Roman sighed. "It's all a matter of confidence."
"Anyway," Blake drew the group back to the point. "No one's going to 'out' you as a gamer if you don't want anyone to know. If you want it to be a secret, it'll be safe with us." She could have stopped there, but she couldn't help herself. "But... and I say this as her best friends mind you... Yang might surprise you."
"And that's why you've told her all about where you disappear to on Sundays, Tuesdays and alternate Wednesdays." Weiss gave her a patented Schnee glare.
Blake's silence said everything Weiss needed. "So we're agreed on concession one. Excellent. Now as for my second and final concession: I don't want to continue borrowing Blake's dice like a beggar, so I'll require a set of my own."
There was silence at that, broken only when Emerald managed to lock eyes with Weiss and state simply. "You're rich. 'Daddy Owns the Mayor' rich. Dice are less than ten bucks."
At this, Weiss sat up straight, looking imperious. "Sorry, but my father always says to insist on getting everything you can in a negotiation and remain firm. I'm actually being incredibly generous; I could have demanded a hard copy of the game rules and the paper version of that stick comic."
Silence reigned once again and after it went far past the point of awkwardness, Weiss started to fidget. Considering how literally nothing else her father had told her or wanted for her seemed to turn out well for her, why did she expect it to go well this time.
She was dealing with people not business executives. People who she was supposed to be making friends with. Who Blake, one of her very few friends had vouched for her with. And here she went again screwing things up by... well being a Schnee.
"Look..." she started. "Forget all that. I was being a dolt and this isn't a negotiation. To be honest, I really would like to play with you guys again... if you'll have me after that."
Roman snerked. "You think saying stupid things is enough to get you kicked out? If that was true, we wouldn't have Neptune."
"Hey!"
"See? That added absolutely nothing to the conversation."
"And even demanding we give you stuff, you're not half the asshole Roman is," Emerald pointed out. "Plus with you and Neo, we've finally shifted the ratio of women to men in the right direction."
Still shooting a death glare at Roman, Neptune picked up the Crown Royal bag he kept his dice in. "And if you're really all that bothered about bumming dice? Don't be. Most of us have been in the hobby long enough to have a couple of pounds of dice. As in I literally bought a pound of dice online this summer. Only ten bucks—good deal."
Randomly extracting a handful, he started picking some out. "D6's for Shadowrun and HERO, D10's for White Wolf. D8's—that reminds me, we should try Cortex sometime. They've got a game for that show, Leverage. FATE die... you don't need that right now... And a couple of D4's, a D12 you'll never use... and of course a couple of twenty-siders. Here ya go."
As it happened, he'd picked out dice that were either white or blue in varying shares. These he slid across the table to Weiss, who stared dumbly at them for a second.
At length, she managed, "Um... thank you, but I thought the game was over for this week."
"No, I meant you could keep them. That was the concession you wanted, right?" Neptune gave her a winning smile that made her suddenly decide to look anywhere but directly at him. Damn Blake and her harem of unusually beautiful men.
"Oh. Then thank you very much." She picked up the dice and looked at them curiously. What was the 12-sided one for anyway. "And um... I suppose it's only fair that I make a concession of my own: I will take care of all the snacks and such from here on out."
"And she now officially has more value to the group than Roman." Emerald remarked languidly, causing everyone but a certain ginger provocateur to laugh.
Once everything had died down, Sun stood up and proclaimed, "Alright guys. Then it sounds like we've got a new Sunday game. I'll hit you guys up in Skype this week to see what changes you want to make to your characters or if you want to start new ones. Great game, everyone."
With Sun's wrap-up as a distraction, Blake found time to send a text to Ruby telling her things were going well on her end.
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AN: An thus ends the Monkeyshines Arc. I'm thrilled that so many people were positive about taking this little detour into another gaming group and let me stretch my wings with Nerd-versing a few of my favorite side characters. I'm particularly happy with Emerald an Roman. I loved the tiny bit of interaction we got out of these two.
So many references this time. Two to the excellent heist TV show Leverage (written by pulp writing master class in human form, John Rogers), first with Roman calling it 'The Age of the Geek' like Hardison and then to the excellent Leverage Cortex System game.
Roman also mentioned Big Bang Theory, Walking Dead, and Game of Thrones. Ironically, I only like one of those shows and it's probably the one you don't like. One of the great things about living in the Age of the Geek is that we don't have to support every geeky thing out there. Back in the 90's I knew Batman and Robin was going to be garbage, but went to see it to support superhero movies anyway. Nowdays I'm happy to report I have not and will not see Man of Steel, BVS or Suicide Squad ever because they are terrible and I don't have to anymore. Same with all things zombies and also anything grimdark.
So hooray!
Speaking of grimdark: Lamentations of the Flame Princess. It's an old school D&D retroclone that's basically advertised as being so grimdark that Warhammer 40k recommended it see a therapist and also a massive character meat grinder. A lot of people seem to like it, but it's not for me.
Neptune also has the official dice bag of college: a Crown Royale bag. Because seriously, those are the best dice bags. And he namedrops a bunch of game systems including HERO, the absolute best system if you are okay with all the math forever. The second best is 4e D&D. Fight me.
Roman's intention to make a pet of the Kaiyupei is based on the fact that my group had a tendency of making pets or allies of everything they came in contact with that could possibly be negotiated with. They never made anything smoke a cigar, but it may yet happen.
Speaking of gaming groups, my new group here for a HERO game includes a character with the Disad: Unusually Beautiful Man, which is where Weiss's line about Blake's 'harem' came from. Whenever he succeeds at anything, we chalk it up to 'Well he is an unusually beautiful man'.
Next chapter, we enter the Winter Formal arc with more Arkos. Pyrrha wants to keep Jaune from stressing out over making their dates perfect—so she takes it upon herself to make sure everything goes perfectly by asking for her friends to help make it so. So yeah, she's basically asking for it here.
