The Eternal Game - Paused Chapter 2, a rwby fanfic

I'm actually...a little in shock right now.

The Grim Blade, the genius mind behind Playing Our Roles, actually left a review saying they like my drivel! I...was planning on waiting longer before I began this chapter, but it seems fate has dictated that it shall not be.

...Fuck off Neji, nobody likes your Fate bullcrap.

Chapter 2

"Just get the fuck out of here."

Layla waved her sign in front of the aggravatingly stupid man, her lips curled into a bored smirk as he sputtered at her. "Fuck you bitch, I paid good money to come in here and get wasted, I ain't listening to no short-stack slut too scared to even speak!" He tried to turn his back on Layla, but a hand on his shoulder and a firm yank sent his stomach twirling straight into her balled-up fist.

Sticking another sign up towards the nearest thugs, Layla folded her arms and stood over the man as he dazedly tried to get back on his feet. She raised an eyebrow when he actually succeeded, and casually leaned to the side to avoid his wild swing, jabbing a foot out and tripping him up. "Just stay down, you prick." Her sign read, and a few nearby patrons actually laughed heartily, enjoying the free show.

As the man was hoisted up by the shoulders, Layla breathed a sigh of relief that she didn't have to stay out on the floor much longer. Usually, she'd be up beside the bar where Junior and the twins hung out, but several of Junior's men called in sick, and they were already understaffed as it was, so they needed her down there doing crowd control.

Not that she minded. Kicking that guy out gave her 15EXP all on its own, which was pretty nice. Flicking her gaze to her experience bar, she smirked.

Level 4 - (53/400).

Her guess, as it turned out, was actually incorrect. Her experience scaled up in hundreds, which meant it would take 1500EXP for Level 15, 500 for Level 5, and so on, going by the visible trend at least. If the EXP needed was to be doubled with every level, she'd quickly run into a sheer roadblock of experience where levelling would take literal years. Presumably, the game would scale up EXP rewards to match, but it still seemed a bit weird to try and calculate something like that. It was much simpler to simply need an extra hundred experience with every level, maybe 200EXP after Level 10, 300 after 20.

But that was all ignorable for now. When she finished the Job quest and levelled up, as promised she held onto the level, and was able to simply 'use' it at will. When in her private room (Well, she shared it with the Twins, but they weren't in.) she levelled up, and no big effect occurred. There wasn't a flash of light or a hint of anything abnormal going on externally.

Internally, Layla felt a bit weird. Having an extra 10 Health and Aura suddenly pop in out of nowhere was not a pleasant experience. But what was awesome was the points she got. One for Attributes and one for Proficiencies. Recalling stories where characters held onto all their points and dumped them all when necessary, Layla just shook her head at that notion. Sure, if you desperately need an ability all of a sudden you can do that, but that's incredibly short-sighted. She didn't profess to play many RPG games, but when she did, she planned her character out, and she already knew what she needed.

Dexterity. Neo was an incredibly dexterous fighter, and Layla honestly felt the same way. It doesn't matter if your sword does infinite damage if you can't land a single hit on your opponent. With this, Layla could pretty much ignore Vitality, put a few token points into Strength and Luck, instead focusing entirely on primarily Dexterity, and to a lesser degree Wisdom.

Being unable to maintain her illusions was a nightmare, so Layla made the executive decision to put her first point into wisdom, which meant her regeneration rate was now 5%, of 6.25AP/M. Overactive Imagination was a 5AP/M cost, so she could now keep her illusions up permanently if need be. Her second and third level Attribute Points went straight into Dexterity, bringing it up to ten.

The way her Proficiency Points seemed to work was by granting her a full level to whatever skill she placed them within. What was strange though was the fact that underneath them all there was an option to put a single point into an empty bar and receive an entirely random Proficiency. With three points available, Layla placed one into this and received Fishing, which was pretty bloody useless.

Her proficiency page seemed quite odd in that it automatically filtered itself. Any proficiencies that were going to be barely used entered a sub-tab of miscellaneous Proficiencies like Walking, Sprinting, and things that really weren't needed in the main group of useful abilities like Sneaking, Hand to Hand, and things of that sort. She held onto the other two levels, since she didn't really have anything that immediately leapt out to her and demanded to be levelled. Besides, in their early levels they levelled up really easily, so putting those points in now didn't make sense like her Attributes did.

Now, if she could actually train her Strength, Vitality and whatnot, it'd be a whole other story, but since she couldn't, those points got spent as soon as she levelled up. Besides, she still needed to get Hush, Neo's Blade-Umbrella made, and then train with that. Presumably, it would have a sub-category of proficiency alongside blunt, blade and shield proficiency, all on its own as such a unique weapon. Perhaps Brolly-Ficiency!

Shaking her head of her weird train of thoughts, Layla swept her gaze over the crowd and frowned.

Quite recently her Observe had hit level 3, and that revealed ages, immediately tipping her off to the fact that she was earlier than she thought. Her own age was 15, which was surprising, she honestly thought she was younger than that based on her height. Then again, Neo always was really short, yet still acted pretty mature and was well-developed. Miltia and Melanie were both also 15, which was a pretty interesting coincidence.

Junior was 31, and Roman was only 26. Learning character ages was pretty cool, but what seriously threw Layla off was a pretty chance encounter involving a blonde kid who had seven sisters and a hero complex...

"Yes, thanks."

Flickering her sign away again, Layla folded her arms and tapped her foot on the floor as the man behind the counter put her books into a bag. Neo's-...no, Her outfit had some pockets, but there wasn't exactly a convenient place to stuff several pretty big books, so of course she wanted a bag. Honestly, did he expect her to just carry the books around in her arms.

As he handed her the arms of the bag, she hefted it easily and waved, leaving the shop quickly and stepping out onto the sidewalk of Vale, her precious books in hand. They weren't rare or anything, but considering she was forced to spend apparently 15 years with very little reading material, now that she was getting regularly paid Lien and with 'free' room and board, of course she was gonna get some books to read. Miltia and Melanie didn't have anything but stupid teen magazines and crap.

Which was fine, they were welcome to read whatever they wanted, Layla wasn't one to judge, but their own choices were certainly not what Layla would ever want to read. As she made to pull one of her books out and start reading it, a strangled cry came out from her lips as she was bowled over by a blonde blur coming out of an alleyway. As she recovered from having the air knocked out of her, she finally noticed the boy sat on her and staring with wide eyes at her. Flicking her gaze up, Layla took one look at his numbers and groaned.

Jaune Arc - Level 1

Age - 12

Class - Civilian

Title - None

HP: 145/145.

AP: 120/120. - Locked-

STR: 3.

VIT: 9.

DEX: 1.

WIS: 3.

LUK: 4.

Of course, it was just her fucking luck to run into arguably one of the most important characters in RWBY. Jaune fucking Arc. Pushing the boy off, Layla quickly snatched up her bag and checked on her books. Finding them all in decent order still, she turned a glare on the boy, only to watch as he scurried behind her and used her as a shield. "I'm sorry Miss please protect me fro-"

"JAUNE!"

The cry of what could only be described as a banshee yelled out from the alleyway he fled out of, and Layla had to stop herself facepalming when she saw a similarly blonde girl with glasses come flying around the corner. Nimbly evading the charge of this girl, Layla left Jaune to be bowled over. Being knocked on her ass once was quite enough for her.

"Lav-BWAH!" He tried to say the girl's name, but got hit before he could say anything. As the pair went flying to the floor, Layla beat a hasty retreat, spotting more blondes coming from the alleyway and using a quick illusion to change her appearance. If she hung around Jaune, when it was clear that canon Neo never had contact with him, the timeline would really get messed with. Hopefully, this actually happened to Neo randomly, and he would just completely forget her. If he suddenly blurted out that he remembered her in the future, that'd be bad...

Knowing her luck, that encounter never happened in canon...

Jaune Arc was 12 fucking years old.

12. Twelve. She had five years until canon kicks in, during which time she had to be constantly wary of not interfering with the lives of anybody important. At least messing with random civilians wouldn't really get back to canon in a major way considering the butterfly effect was being actively countered by the Game itself. The fact was that canon could never be perfectly followed considering it was never written exactly what Neo did before the story began, so trying to emulate that was practically impossible, meaning she was going to change things like who she spoke to, what she did, and things like that.

Fortunately enough, the game was a step ahead of her, and assured her that as long as she didn't, say, stab Jaune Arc to death repeatedly for knocking her over, Canon would be mostly alright. Of course, remaining as close to canon as possible would be definitely helpful, since it'd make predicting certain events a cinch, but overall it wasn't a huge deal. It meant she could go and hug the fluff-muffin that was Ruby Rose without the universe exploding.

One of the biggest things she had to remember was to make absolutely damn sure she wasn't in Junior's Club when Yang comes a-knocking for information on Raven, or at the very least don't be where Yang would see and attack her. That'd really mess the timeline up something fierce. Catching Junior's gaze, Layla jabbed a finger at her wrist a few times, a clear gesture for him to check the time.

While she was pretty understanding that a lot of guys hadn't come into work, the club wasn't exactly bouncing at the moment, and she wasn't even meant to be working that day. As Junior glanced at his wrist, he frowned down at it before gesturing at her with a 1/2 sign. So presumably he wanted her until the end of the hour, then she could fob off and go do something more worth her time, like reading.

Reading. An absolute haven of the gods. When she visited the Library, she was pleasantly surprised when a few books out of the tens of thousands stood out to her with icons, revealing them to be proficiency books. One was for Fishing, and Layla resisted the urge to tear that damn book apart, while the others were for random things like Wood-cutting, Mechanic, Electrician, Plumber, and really obscure and weird things that really didn't have much of a use.

The thing about the proficiency books was they simply unlocked the proficiency, they didn't give any experience to it, Layla had to actually use the action to gain experience. However, what was really amusing was that by taking all those books into her inventory when nobody was looking, she unlocked a Stealing proficiency, then levelled that along with her stealth proficiency. But, the biggest one, the one that made her want to kiss the author of the book, the one that really tempted her to just whip out those points and level it up...

Animal Friend - Lvl: 1 (0/100). You have a nack for taming and befriending animals. 1% increased chance to Tame Creature, +1% Tamed Creature Attack Damage, Maximum 100%, +1% Tamed Creature Defence, Maximum 75%, Animals will rarely attack you.

That proficiency was basically everything Layla loved and more. Killing people? Meh, who cares. Slaughtering a bazillion Grimm? They all are soulless, whatever. But killing a cute and adorable animal? Impossible, un-doable, and irrefutable. Layla loved animals, so being able to confidently say that animals will rarely attack her sounded awesome. And tamed animals sounded pretty awesome. Depending on whether or not they actually levelled as well, they could genuinely become quite powerful.

It was pretty interesting how the proficiencies actually seemed to work, since some things like woodcutting she was pretty sure she could do decently, so her proficiency just stacked on top of her inherent ability. For things like throwing knives, her accuracy would be whatever she was capable of with a completely normal throw, then improved by her Dexterity, before finally her proficiency with throwing knives was applied and her accuracy was improved further.

It made her wonder what'd happen if she got over 100% accuracy, but presumably it meant missing would be almost impossible, even for an enemy with a high dodge ability. A snapped set of fingers in front of her face startled Layla out of her thoughts, and she turned a glare onto a club-goer who had a dopey grin on his lips. "'ey, wha'ssay you n'i go somhere'?"

Layla cursed the gods above as she used an illusion to disappear from in front of him, stifling a laugh when he blinked at the space she was inhabiting, then took a wary glance at the bottle in his hand before shrugging and going back to chugging his drink. Honestly, some people were just complete idiots. With a flourish, Layla dropped her illusion when she was beside Junior and checked her watch.

Ten more minutes of fending off drunken idiots. Joy.

Roman was having a pretty good evening all things considered, kicking his feet up on his desk and smiling to himself.

He'd finally managed to convince Junior to support him in a joint business venture by loaning his guys out to him on occasion. Only a handful of them, and for small-time gigs only, but it was a start. Hopefully soon he'd be able to start running his own show, using his own hired guys rather than paying another boss to loan them out. Plus it meant he got to decide the cuts everyone got.

Right now Junior was getting 40% of the cut based on the fact it was his guys doing all the heavy lifting, and Roman got 60% for leading the whole thing and planning it all out. All in all, not a bad deal, but Roman didn't want to be giving his hard-stolen Lien away like that. Secondly, he finally got his beautiful weapon from the Smith, Melodic Cudgel. The cane-gun-grapple hook combination weapon was a work of art, and totally worth the Lien. He couldn't just threaten the weaponsmith, the man was far too well-known, and Roman didn't quite have that sort of reputation yet.

But, most importantly, he found out what Neopolitan was up to before she worked with Roman. Apparently she was one of Junior's, which was rather interesting, though it made sense considering Junior also had Miltia and Melanie. Evidently it was a recent thing, considering he overheard her being hired by him. Over the weeks, he'd seen her around the club doing odd-jobs and kicking out drunks. Knowing what she was going to be capable of in the future was amusing when watching her taking her time and stress out on the dregs of society.

What was really surprising was that she wasn't stabbing anything, nor did he see her weapon anywhere. Presumably, either Roman got it for her, or she was simply hiding it for some reason. What really stumped Roman though was how exactly he was meant to approach Neo about her joining him. Just coming up to her out of the blue and asking would be incredibly suspicious, and while he was known and sort-of liked by Junior, just asking him for Neo's contract was a bit much...but maybe...yeah, that'd work.

Setting his shoulders, Roman stood up from his chair and walked over to his spider-web map, pushing a pin into a dust store and binding a string from that to a crude drawing of Neo. With idle fingers he traced the string from Neo to Junior, then from Junior to the dust store he planned to hit.

Smirking, Roman pulled his scroll out and selected Junior, hearing the device ring a few times before a gruff voice answered him. "Roman. What do you need?"

Putting on a mock-affronted voice, Roman gasped. "Agh, Junior, must you wound me so?" A rumble came from the device, and Roman dropped his voice to normal again. "Fine, I wanted to see about getting that Pink-haired girl on the next heist. She seemed like she had a good head on her shoulders, and I want to know if I'd like working together with her more often." Crossing his fingers, Roman waited with held breath and Junior shuffled around something.

"...Give me a minute." Roman hummed, and he heard Junior cover the scroll and yell something. A few moments passed before a muffled and inaudible conversation occurred, and the scroll line was uncovered again. "Fine. She'll be with the team that meets you out on 41st." Stopping himself from doing a little jig at his success, Roman simply cheered.

"Great! Well, I'll try to bring them all back in one piece!"

"Well hey there squirt."

Resisting a growl, Layla instead glowered at Torchwick, making it clear she didn't appreciate that nickname. Holding up a sign that read a simple "Fuck you.", Layla folded her arms over. "Why the fuck am I even out here anyway?" She changed her sign quickly, looking between Torchwick and the group of thugs he'd hired.

It answered the question of just how Neo got involved with Roman, but she didn't have to make it easy. Not that she didn't like Roman, he had a snazzy outfit, but he was a bit too confident and cock-sure of himself for Layla to be entirely comfortable around him, like nothing could hurt him. Considering his level, that was pretty true around the police and civilians, but against a Hunter, Layla was sure he'd meet his match quite easily. He had a high Dex and Wis, but low Vit, Str, and Luk. Anyone who was faster than him would screw him over, since that was his entire strength.

Well, that and coming up with solid plans. "You're out here because I think you'll be useful and I have Junior's ear for stuff like this." Roman stated plainly.

"So what, you want me to essentially give you a hand with some wetwork?" She said with a frown. Aside from a few small-scale fights against drunks or belligerent idiots, Layla really hadn't gotten into many fights, and that wasn't by accident. She was level 4. As in, stronger than a civilian or police with freshly-unlocked aura, but weaker than experienced officers or even Signal Academy students. If she got into a serious fight, she'd get her ass handed to her just off the fact that her Dex would be too low.

Roman made a so-so gesture. "Sort of. To be honest, when I look at you, I see a shrimp, a little kid playing with the grown-ups. Which immediately makes me underestimate you." Rolling her eyes, Layla used an illusion to appear similar to one of Junior's mooks. "And then you go and do that." He said shaking his head. "Look, your Semblance is strong, but what if it fails? What if you can't keep it up anymore?"

"I can keep Overactive Imagination active permanently, don't worry about that." She made a sign appear from the ground, smirking when Roman took a cautious step back from it. "Oh, and it isn't just on me. I like to imagine that the world is my illusion." She said with a serene smile, internally kissing Monty for making Neo such a blank slate. Neo's Semblance was scarily powerful because of the fact that her illusions were seen by everybody, and she was unaffected by the illusion, though she could choose to see it as well, just to make it easier if she was making something she needed to be able to see.

The easiest way to describe it was that her illusions directly appeared in the world, they weren't something people just 'saw', they were actual entities. Of course, she could also use this to create hiding places or simply remove objects from view. If someone walked into a box she made invisible, the illusion would shatter when hit and the box would appear in view again. She'd probably also get cursed out by whatever fool she made trip over a box, but she got to laugh at one of Junior's newest hires, so it was all good.

Weirdly enough, even if she made an intersecting mesh of illusions over an object, they would all shatter, even if only one of the 'illusionary grids' was hit, almost like the world was able to decide what counted as a single illusion and what didn't. It also explained why her illusions didn't instantly shatter when they touched the floor, since it didn't count as a hit. If she, for example, cast an invisibility illusion over herself then jumped from a building and landed without taking damage, the illusion would hold. If she was damaged even slightly though, it'd break.

"Wait, woah woah hold the ph-...scroll. You mean to tell me you can keep your illusions up 24/7?" Tilting her head to the side, Layla shook her head. "So, what, is there a time limit, some kind of condition? Maybe you have to sacrifice five virgins a month to retain your abilities?" He said with a grin. Another sign sprouted up out of nowhere. This time Roman didn't step back, though he did lean away slightly from it.

"Not while I'm asleep."

A fuckton shorter, I know.

Fact is, I don't spam tons of shit like 'SOME' stories about random information. I mean, take her proficiencies. I plan to keep this condensed so I don't absolutely bloat the word-count with crap. She'll, as I said, make mention of Proficiencies like mechanic, crafting, fishing and whatnot when necessary, but that stuff will all remain off-screen and mostly untracked. The important stuff will, as mentioned at the end of last chapter, be listed every 5 chapters, with her Status screen being at the bottom of each chapter so you can see Layla's progression.

Also, how do you like this version of Roman? Quick thing, he doesn't have the Game, he's just a reincarnate. I thought having this new relationship between the two where they don't quite know that the other knows about the RWBY timeline would be quite fun, and it will make avoiding the whole 'I know the future' schtick a breeze.

Don't forget to leave some lovely reviews. I read each and every one, and to those who either require a response or are just awesome enough, I make sure to send a PM back. I don't mind if the review isn't positive, as long as you point things out instead of saying you just don't like it, I'll be happy for it!

Anyways, here's Layla's Status and new/changed proficiencies.

Name(s): Layla, Neopolitan

Class: Slum-child

Level: 4 (53/400 EXP)

Title: Enforcer - 15% Damage Increase when on Heists

Health Points: 155/155 - 3% Regeneration Rate (4.64 Per Minute)

Aura Points:165/165 - 5% Regeneration Rate (8.25 Per Minute)

STR: 3.

VIT: 3.

DEX:10.

WIS: 5.

LUK: 2.

Proficiencies:

Stealing - Lvl: 3 (227/300). You've been pinching things from places that aren't yours, good for you! +1% Chance to successfully steal item without detection per level.

Sneaking - Lvl: 4 (379/400 EXP) - The art of being super sneaky. +1% Difficulty to detect per level.

(The thing is, Proficiencies act like extra buffers atop Layla's own actions. If she was already an expert thief, Stealing would just make her better. If she sucked at it, Stealing would improve her drastically. Now, if any of you can think of extremely useful Proficiencies that aren't really obvious like Archery, Swordsmanship, Parkour, etc, please give them a shout to me in either a review, or if you're a bit shy about your ideas you can just PM me. Thanks boos!)