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 34: Session 4 Part 1 – Meta-Metagame

Whatever anyone might have said about Penny's methodology of revealing out of character knowledge to all the players, her timing was amazing. Pyrrha had been relaxing after successfully navigating that tricky line between staying with the party like she wanted while doing what her character would do. Nora had just shoved a handful of chips into her mouth. And Jaune had just taken a drink of soda.

The spit take was really inevitable even if no one expected it to be quite so spectacular.

But Nora managed to spew chewed corn chips all the way across the table, hitting Jaune, Pyrrha and Penny.

Penny didn't even flinch, just quickly grabbing a napkin to wipe the mess away.

Pyrrha grabbed her character sheet and blocked most of what was aimed at her with the back of it.

Jaune however didn't notice at all, because he'd just snorted soda up into his nose and was wincing furiously from it.

All hell broke lose for the others. Nora demanding what was going on, Ruby stuck between horror and hilarity, Yang asking what was such a big deal, Blake wincing in sympathy, and Ren just quietly facepalming.

Ignoring all that, Pyrrha patted Jaune's back and handed him a napkin. "Are you okay?"

He took the napkin and blew his nose furiously, trying to clear out the stinging carbonation there. For a second he looked back at her, then glanced away. "I'm fine," he said flatly.

That struck Pyrrha as surely as a slap, intensified by the sudden guilt she was feeling having come up with the whole false identity thing without telling him. "Jane, I'm sorry. I—"

"I'm fine. Don't worry about it." He crumpled the napkin in his hands, crushing it smaller and smaller as he focused on nothing in particular.

Before she could press him farther, Nora was in her face, having sprinted around the table. "What did you do!? Say it ain't so, Pyrrha! Say it ain't so!"

Suddenly put on the spot, Pyrrha shrank back from all the gazes aimed at her—all the gazes except the one she wanted to meet. "Um... well Ruby said we should play differently than we normally do. I kind of took it as the freedom to try things I'd never done before. Everyone expects me to be the same kind of person in game as out, but sometimes I don't want to play myself or play like myself."

Her eyes flicked to Nora and Ren. "You guys always have so much fun passing notes and having dark secrets. I've always wanted to do it too, so this time I made up a dark secret and passed it to Ruby. I was so excited to have a secret that I sort of forgot that there were... other things I was doing with this character."

"Like using her as an excuse to snog Jaune?" Nora asked brightly.

Pyrrha went bright red, made worse by Yang going 'Oooo!' in the background. "Yes?" she squeaked. A quick glance in Jaune's direction confirmed that even that admission hadn't done anything to move him. So she decided to give him some space without their friends pestering them. "Um... maybe we should get back to the game?"

The Nora and Yang might have argued, but Penny spoke over them. "That's an excellent point. What are you doing with this information then?"

It took a second for Pyrrha to recognize that she was supposed to be continuing the game. "Oh. Um... I guess I'll look to the others and say, "Wait. Why should we go to the inn she's telling us to go to. We don't know this halfling. And some how she managed to be waiting for us when we landed with knowledge of exactly who—well not me—but the rest of you wanted to go after? If we're going to do anything beside quietly killing her and stuffing her corpse in a trash bin, then we should at least do it on neutral ground."

Blake had been watching the whole scene with quite concern and decided to join in to keep up the relative distraction. "Putting me down would mean losing at least two of your own. But if you wanna meet somewhere else, you'll get no quarrel with me."

"Actually," Ren shot Pyrrha and apologetic look, "I believe we were meant to come here. Pandemos may have given me a vision of this place."

"Then we can come back later," Pyrrha said, not having to fake the distress in her voice. "Just not at a time of some random stranger's choosing."

Nora, of course was just happy to be playing again and skipped back to her seat. "You two were random strangers yesterday. Strangers are just party members you haven't met yet, right Jaune? I mean Darian? What do you think?"

She was rewarded with a deer in the headlights look at lasted a few seconds before Jaune remembered himself. "Actually, Py—Seri has a point. No offense, Everlee, but this all ready does seem a little too convenient. Maybe we should go somewhere else. At least for the night." He very visibly screwed up his courage and gave Pyrrha a pointed look. It was brief, but pronounced. "We can come back to the Duck tomorrow morning."

Pyrrha raised any eyebrow, wondering why he was stalling what was going to be a highly awkward scene for her if he was so mad he couldn't look her in the eye for more than a split second.

"Well, as leader of the party, I break all ties, so we're going to the Duck." Nora declared.

The got everyone's mind off the situation brewing. "Whoa, whoa, whoa." Jaune said. "I'm usually the leader."

"Duh. When you're a paladin. When there's a paladin in the group, you've gotta do what they say or else they lose their powers or something."

"That's not actually how it works..." Ruby muttered before coughing.

"Is the fact that I've proven I can and would kill most of you without a second thought give me some sort of leverage in the leader department?" Pyrrha pointed out.

Jaune raised his hand. "Um, why can't I still be leader. Bards and paladins are both charisma classes. Perfect for the party face."

"So are sorceresses," said Pyrrha.

Snorting, Nora shook her head and reached over the gently pat Jaune. "Silly. Bards can't be leaders."

"They're literally typed as leaders in Fourth Edition," argued Jaune.

"Pfft. Fourth Edition isn't D&D. It's like a way better game, but it's not D&D. No idea why: there's dungeons, there's dragons, all the other stuff... But the internet says so and the angriest, howliest nerds online can't be wrong right?"

It was then that Ren finally stepped in. "Before we have that argument again—or someone points out that we're not technically playing D&D here in the first place—I'd like to point out that Clerics are Charisma-based in this system too, plus I have the wisdom and power of a god backing me, so Gao should be in charge."

"Even the drunk is ahead of me now?!"

"Hey. I get drunk for the Lord." Ren quipped.

Pyrrha sighed. "I can solve this. Let's vote on it."

"I vote for me!" Nora said immediately.

"Myself, because it's the obvious choice." Ren folded his arms in a rare moment of pride.

Also displaying pride, Pyrrha sat back primly and announced, "And I vote of Jaune. Not being tied to all the rules and roleplay restrictions of a 3e paladin will only make him a better leader." She offered him a smile.

It started to work too, with Jaune returning the smile, but then he seemed to snap out of it and dropped his gaze. A second later, he realized that that left him staring at her breasts, and so returned to looking at the table. Her won smile faltered at that and she too decided that table was very interesting.

"Um... right. So that means Jaune's... I mean Darian's the tiebreaker then and we're going somewhere else." She looked over at Penny. "Is there somewhere else nearby?"

"Why yes," Penny said with the celerity and certainty of someone who just might have memorized every street and shop of the fictional city. "After asking around, you are directed to a slightly more expensive inn called the Third Law. For five gold per person, you can rent enough rooms to sleep everyone and plot in private."

Ren rubbed his hands together and leaned forward. "Excellent. So once we're in the room, I'll talk first: defeat this Queen of Thorns is to cut off her financial backing. As it turns out, my family is heavily tied to her—if we go to my home town, we can do just that."

"Wait!" Nora waved her hands wildly. "Remember? I mentioned that map to phat loots to Seri. It's a straight up dungeon crawl and we can get more treasure and levels going there first! Grind first, then play the main quests, that's what I always say!"

No one, not even Penny, bothered to call Nora out for metagaming. They weren't entirely if Nora got the concept of in game and out of game in the first place. And so, Pyrrha just took her turn providing information after her. "Well I managed to... extract," at this she did an irreverent little hand gesture to convey just how little torture bothered her character, "the location of the Queen's ship yard. It sounds like a very difficult fight."

"Oh, that's gonna be the boss battle!" Nora crowed. "Awesome. So if I got the grind, Ren got the political stuff, and you got the endgame..."

All eyes were suddenly on Jaune. He had once again become lost in thought, finding himself torn back to reality by seven gazes all focused on him. "Um..." Somehow his brain managed to deliver the last five minutes of conversation to him just a moment too late. "Oh. Plot hooks. Everyone got... " He turned to the TV, annoyed. "Wait, Ruby, why didn't I get a plot hook?"

"Ohmigosh, Jaune I tried and tried and tried! Three days of emails and you kept asking crew members about their home towns and families and stuff why the captain was trying to tell you about the village that disappeared. I wanted to cry, you were being so oblivious!"

Jaune glanced aside to Pyrrha and gave her a little grin that confused her even more as to what his mood actually was. "Heh... I do that sometimes. So I guess Darian's got nothin." He looked to Blake. "How about you, Everlee? We've put our cards on the table, what can you tell us about the Queen?"

This got Blake smirking as she settled back into character. "Well now, that's the meat of it isn't it? Now maybe some of your suspicions are true: I was part of a bandit crew operating up near the Tresolm. The Queen rolled in with her own, bigger crew and declared herself in charge. Anyone who didn't fall in, just fell. Friends of mine. Family. I took the coward's way and ran with her a few months before lighting out on my own."

She ran that Eastwood squint over everyone assembled, not even sparing Ruby and Yang. "For me, this isn't about doing good or money or power. For me? This is revenge. I want the Queen to lose everything before I put an explosive bullet in her gut, then she'll feel the round ticking down to the second it explodes."

Entrances, Nora leaned over to Ren. "I think she might be more evil than Pyrrha."

"That's... dark," said Jaune. "And intense. Look, I appreciate that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but I'm noticing a whole... explosion motif... going on with your weapons. The only way I'll work with you is if you promise to limit collateral damage."

"And that she stops threatening me," Pyrrha added airly.

Jaune nodded. "And that you stop threatening Seripheid. Partly because she's my oldest and closest friend," he hit those words with unnecessary emphasis, "And partly because she will straight up murder you. Like you think you can kill people in a gruesome way, but she can just rip the air out of your lungs. It's not pretty. I couldn't eat for days after the last time she used it."

Trying to hold in a laugh and keep looking serious, Blake raised an eyebrow. "She's the one who threatened me first; trying to cast that air knife spell."

"I threaten everyone!" Pyrrha defended. "It's one of the things people love about me."

"Actually, I think we've all really rather you stop doing that," said Ren. "I imagine that's something that will eventually put us on the wrong end of someone even more capable of killing us all then you are."

In response, Pyrrha gave him a look that might have set his shirt on fire if she actually meant it.

"Hmm." Blake mused, scrutinizing Pyrrha's expression, "You know you remind me of someone. Only the Queen favors vitae magic rather than vin. She strangles people with rose thorns instead of pulling the air out of them."

The two women kept eye contact for a little too long for everyone else's comfort before Pyrrha primly tossed her hair, "Then we'll have to see who the superior villainess is, then won't we?" She affected a yawn. "Now is there anything else? Because we've had a very long trip and I'm quite tired."

Blake gave her the squint. "I'm going to be keeping an eye on you."

"Great. You do that. And suddenly I'm feeling even more tired." Pyrrha held the bored tone for a brief second before self consciousness set in. "Um, Blake? Am I being—"

"No this is perfect. An in-character animosity is great for RP. Keep it going." Blake nodded emphatically.

Pyrrha dipped her head and continued. "So I'm going to bed. Penny, Seri is going to go to her room for the night." She looked down at her phone, contemplating whether it would make things worse if she sent another note to the DM.

As it turned out, Penny was in the middle of texting herself. A quick look around the table found Ren trying to hide his tablet in his lap as he read Penny's note. He might have gotten away with it if Nora wasn't reading over his shoulder.

It took a second, but Penny finally shifted her attention back to Pyrrha. "Okay. On that note, I forgot to ask about sleeping—"

"Lynn and Gao are in the same room!" Nora interrupted happily.

Jaune was instantly brimming with his trademark awkwardness, but soldiered through to add, "I guess Darian and Seri are too..."

"Actually..." Pyrrha didn't have to finish her thought to bring all side discussion to a screeching halt.

To her surprise (and an odd mix of embarrassment, delight, and shame), Jaune was taking a sip of soda again. "Ahh! Twice in one night?!" he sputtered, then realized why he had snorted carbonated pain into his sinuses. "Wait, what?"

She really wasn't trying to play coy, but in hindsight, Pyrrha would admit that her doe-eyed ingenue expression might have given that expression. That was mostly to keep herself from squeeing at his reaction to their characters not sharing a room. "I didn't think it would bother you."

Her best friend and recent beau turned red, realizing what he'd just done. "I... well I just kind of expected... Seri's not exactly subtle. About anything. So you know..."

"What he means is she's you without inhibitions, so why isn't she taking advantage of the opportunity to make use of six arms and no waiting?"

Ruby gave Yang an odd look. "Um Yang? Pyrrha wouldn't kill anyone if she lost her inhibitions."

"You never played soccer with her!" Yang snapped, getting a far away look in her eye. Memories of cleats and slide tackles flashed before her eyes. "The horror..." she murmured, "... the horror."

"Right. So we broke my best friend. Anyway, I have my own room and I'm not adverse to skipping to the next morning."

"Actually..." Pyrrha couldn't help but grin a little at seeing the table freeze once again. It was like they were expecting something epic every time she did something at this point. She chided herself to stop before she got to like it. "... there's a reason Seri got a separate room. In the interest of not keeping more—"

Penny's phone buzzed and a quick look around the table reveal Ren to be pouring over a rule book, Nora to be knitting, Ruby trying to snap a traumatized Yang out of it and... Jaune trying and failing to conceal his phone before her gaze fell on him. He froze, shrugged, then put his phone on the table face down.

"...secrets, I'm just going to put this out there: Seri's sneaking out around 1am to go kill that lookalike at the Lucky Duck."

Penny glanced down at her phone:

P3N-E: Quick Perception check, please?

TheLotus: 13

KnightLite007: 21

EmpressAwesome: 8 boo

P3N-E has removed EmpressAwesome and TheLotus from the conversation

P3N-E: Okay, you both notice that Seri is a little shaken up by something she sees as you reach the inn.

TheLotus: I don't trust Seri to not try something against Everlee tonight, so I'm going to post a watch.

KnightLite007: I'm worried about what got Seri so shook up and why she wants to be alone. I'm going to go talk to her after everyone's asleep.

"Excellent. Let's play it out then." She said without even a hint of ulterior motive.

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AN: I know a lot of people expected the fallout with Jaune to be immediate, but trust me, it's better this way. And I've kept things off his perspective again on purpose. My expectation is that you will be pleasantly surprised as there are a number of layers to how Jaune is reacting right now and none of them is the going to be the one you probably think it is.

The other reason for that is that I do want to dig in on the others, especially Everlee since Blake is only guesting... for now.

The idea that Pyrrha and Blake would like playing off each other just happened while I was writing it and I actually kind of want to weave that more into the story now that it's there. A little vitriolic best buds action RP style.

As much as I adore Penny, it did kind of hurt having her play dirty here. No one else had a chance to spot the real Seri, she told everyone else what Pyrrha alone should know, and she didn't try to defuse things when it was clear some of her players were uncomfortable.

But she's a robot who usually only runs games online, what're you gonna do?

Yang is always fun. I do love messing with her and promise she won't always be the butt-monkey, but god it's amazing to play with.

The party leader argument is based in part on an in-character argument I once had that ended with me (as a bard) threatening to make the other person sexually attracted to fire. 3E Bards can do that. Modify memory. Look it up.

Yes, I took a swing at 4e haters. It's a superior system. Fight me.

And speaking with game, the World of Ere d20 playtest is happily underway.

Three players (plus one on the way) have discovered that their caravan is playing host to a very unusual and in-demand book, fighting goblins, a drake and a horde of monstrous frankensteined animals to protect it and its owner. Last session, they fended off the most terrible foe: capitalism as a shadowy figure offered them an exorbitant sum to steal the book for them. They then heroically recruited teenagers with attitude to protect the book and the girl as they struck off to find answers among the Kilicog goblins.

The players are all readers of this very fic and an awesome group of guys. At some point we're going to start streaming and I'll let all of you know when that happens.

Until then, stay awesome folks!