The Name of the Game
a RWBY/The Gamer crossover, SI.
Arc 5: Bent Penny
Chapter 20: Heads I Win, Tails You Lose
Smoke and shrapnel swirled around me as I stood in the middle of the swiftly falling remains of my stolen Bullhead, Air Walk holding me aloft and the brightly glowing field my my Spinning Mana Shield—now long since renamed to Kaiten—causing the smoke around me to glow faintly. A glance at my MP bar showed my MP at just over 3000—I'd used a fairly large portion breaking into the black site and throwing around high level spells, then eating two vehicles… but my regen rate had mitigated most of that. The missile, on the other hand, had broken both my Mana Shield and my A.T. Field and it was only by dumping mana into the Kaiten that I'd not taken damage to HP. The sound of the explosion had bypassed my shields and left me temporarily stunned and deafened until Gamer's Body had kicked in. I was down to just under twenty percent of my total MP, in a foreign country, and surrounded by a cloud of grimm so thick they blotted out the sun.
"I feel as though I have been denied critical, need-to-know information," I ground out, one thought standing out as I cast a glance northward, back towards the black site—a fact that hadn't truly registered until now, as mental math underscored the fact. 'Nearly a hundred miles in under 30 seconds. That's around Mach-15. Atlas has hyper-sonic missile technology. Why, why on Monty's green Remnant does Atlas need hyper-sonic missiles?'
That sort of tech was of little use against your average grimm—hell, it wasn't ideal against the big ones, either, unless they were being used to deliver a large payload warhead very quickly. No, they were put to best use exactly as Atlas had just demonstrated—swatting aircraft out of the sky before they could do anything about it. There was a gap there, though—as far as I knew, Atlas didn't have hyper-sonic craft to need missiles fast enough to catch them but the fact that the tech was there, in use, implied that someone did. There were things going on on the wider stage than I knew about, and I'd just gotten a nasty introduction to the effects of one of them.
'Massive troop transports, large numbers of ground-based mechs to act as filler mixed in with regular soldiers, AI, cybernetics, power armor, I can assume large stockpiles of munitions—Dust, in this instance…' Historically, a nation only really started building up certain technologies and resources when they were preparing for a shooting war or some other drawn out, large-scale conflict. Atlas was preparing for a shooting war.
There was no time to put further thought into it at the moment, however—I had to extricate myself from the current mess first. I dropped the Kaiten and called up my other shields, knowing this moment of respite wouldn't last much longer—as soon as the smoke cleared, the grimm would be on me. First things first—I was too low on mana for comfort, and I could have kicked myself for not taking a few minutes to sit and meditate and top it off before leaving the ID.
Opening my Inventory, I selected a mana potion, popped the stopper and downed the blueberry tasting potion in one shot. Immediately, my mana regeneration rate shot up and I gained an instant shot of MP straight to the mana bar—going from 3000-odd to over 8000. Not full, but it would give me options. There was a problem, however. As with all good things, there were apparently limits. After downing the mana potion, the first I'd ever used here in Remnant, my Semblance popped up a warning that consuming more than one in an eight hour period could be dangerous.
'Dangerous? Dangerous how? Will it cause nausea, blackouts, diarrhea, addiction ala Dragon Age, memory loss? Well, pretty sure I could fix that last one by reloading my save file. Death?Erectile dysfunction?The girls would kill me, may as well say 'death' twice there. Come on, this would have been nice to know before I needed to use more than one in a row!' I growled and shook my head. Fuck it, whatever I was going to do would have to be done without the aid of another mana potion, until I could test and see for myself what the supposed negative effects were.
'Okay, I need a plan… Plan A, as in 'Avoid the enemy.' Fuck it, let's go the cheap route,' I thought, reaching for Create ID, intending to create a small bubble around myself and descend. To my absolute surprise, the skill failed to engage and a warning message popped up.
Warning. Local Spirit Density combined with area level are above recommended safe levels. Empty Instant Dungeons have become temporarily unavailable. Creating an Instant Dungeon will summon a boss or multiple boss-level monsters until local Spirit Density decreases and you will be unable to leave the ID until the bosses are defeated.
Unlike Normal Mode Instant Dungeons, where the player is rendered unconscious and ejected from the ID upon being reduced to 1 HP, in Challenge Mode, the player is capable of being reduced to 0 HP, which will result in permanent death.
Would you still like to open a Challenge Mode Instant Dungeon?
I grimaced, shaking my head and swiftly dismissing the message while a fast check of my map confirmed that the entire area was now so dark a red it looked black. If light red, almost pink areas had produced hundreds of mobs around my level and the occasional rare boss, then going into an ID here was suicide. In fact, it was high enough that, as I watched, I noticed several grimm simply drip into being like beads of moisture collecting on glass to form a larger drop. Grimm weren't simply moving with this thing, they were spawning in its path.
That had some pretty disturbing implications in and of itself—namely, that even if an area was cleared of grimm and Sanctified, it may still be possible for some things to breach those protections and for new grimm to spawn. I would have to research more to see some more fine details on how Sanctification worked before I made a call one way or another on that. Still, this was another instance of my Semblance not telling me things I needed to know before I needed to know them. Though, the argument could be made that I'd never encountered this situation in the real world, so it really had no basis to go on there—in other words, it hadn't told me because it hadn't known, and this was its way of telling me that trying to open an ID now was suicide. It really depended on how much I wanted to read into the Semblance being tied to my subconscious.
'Spirit density wasn't anywhere near this high when I got here which means it changed, and that it can change. Maybe it's like tides, or winds, and it's being pushed ahead of the storm? Is that why my ID around the black site wouldn't move or resize when I tried to leave? Creating an ID is out, so go invisible and maybe I can descend to the ground, under the trees, and hoof it to the other side of this flock of grimm. Alternately, if that doesn't work, move on to Plan B—as in 'Be somewhere else.' I can try using Air Walk and Flash Step, cutting down whatever gets in my way, and try to force my way through them and outrun them.'
Throwing on Invisibility, I dropped Air Walk and allowed myself to fall, dropping through the smoke and hoping nothing noticed me on the way down. Those hopes were dashed like they'd hit the ground below as I caught sight of what was coming up from beneath me—the portion of the flock that had initially chased me upwards had not given up the chase. Even if they couldn't see me, I would never be able to avoid them all, and once I hit one they would all be on me once they figured out I was there. Likewise, the flock covered enough space that I'd never get clear in time if I did decide to run. A storm of small pinions thrown from above and below hailed off my shield, highlighting my position for a moment, making Invisibility all but useless, and made my decision for me as it seemed that even if they couldn't see me they could sense me somehow. 'Looks like there's no getting out of fighting. Shit. Okay, fight tactically.'
Recasting Air Walk, I charged a Powered Leap and jumped. At the apex of my jump, I took off running away from both parts of the flock before stepping into a Flash Step and gaining some distance, timing it so I could Leap, run, and Step to maintain momentum while gaining altitude and distance on them. My plan was pretty simple, really—before, I'd been in a poor position as I was being flanked on two sides, with enemies above me and below. Now, I was attempting to force both groups to converge, to cover the distance I'd made and climb to match my altitude. If I could get them to cluster up tight enough, I could possibly discourage them from continuing pursuit. Maybe.
Looking back, I found my plan had only partly worked—the upper group of larger enemies had technically been closer, being at a higher altitude, and the lead members of that group were now nearly on top of me, while the lower group of smaller grimm was forced to climb up to my level, but weren't slowed nearly as much as I'd thought they would be. In fact, they looked to have accelerated, spurred to greater speed by the thrill of the chase. Turning around, I Leapt backwards and spun up a volley of AP Rounds, letting them fly towards the lead elements of Griffons—level 40, elites by the silver griffon icon beside their names. I hit the first with Observe just to confirm what I'd already seen and winced—they had all the same skills the Beowolves I'd fought with Ruby had and then some.
Still, AP Round was one of my strongest skills for a reason—it tended to punch straight through grimm like these, to dramatic effect, and did an enormous amount of damage compared to my other skills, due to the number of rounds it produced. I'd spread out my shots to take out or at least damage as many targets as possible, I knew that if I focused fire on any one grimm it was going to go down. The problem there was that I wasn't facing one or two grimm, I was facing an entire goddamn swarm that was growing by the second and focusing on any one enemy would give all the others a chance to attack. I'd aimed my first volley in a spread across the nearest of the first group and, while none of them died, most of them dropped several yards on being hit as rounds tore into and through them, some of those that punched through hitting targets behind them while most missed.
Switching elements, I laughed as another group immediately caught fire and panicked upon being hit, falling out of the sky. 'Right, burn effects cause panic,' I mused, before my Perception skills warned me of an attack. I had only an instant to look around and try to figure it out before they were on me. The group from below had caught up in the time I'd taken to stop and fight. A living stream of Nevermores and smaller grimm I couldn't identify slammed into my Mana Shield, claws and beaks and wings slashing against the barrier—the sheer weight of numbers and repeated impacts throwing me skyward and sending me tumbling. Sky and ground changed places repeatedly, but I only caught brief glimpses of them in between the flood of black and white around me.
My shields broke a moment later as something large smashed through them and crashed into my chest, slamming the air from my lungs and drawing a strangled scream from me as two sets of claws buried themselves in either side of my chest as the Griffon that had hit me bore me back down through the storm of smaller grimm, which either scored my armor or scraped off my Aura/Reinforcement combo. I managed to get a hand up in time to block the first strike of its beak, but I felt the bones of my right arm snap and my vision momentarily went white with pain.
The Griffon pulled its head back for another attempt and for a moment, the pain in my arm vanished along with the break as Gamer's Body kicked in while the feeling of its claws digging into my lungs remained—a limitation that was obvious in hindsight. Then again, I'd never anticipated anything punching straight through all my shields. It snapped down again and this time I was ready, my arm already outstretched to intercept it. My arm disappeared down its gullet and I felt the bones break higher. I couldn't concentrate to call up a technique silently, but then I didn't need to. "Rasengan," I ground out, feeling blood bubbling at the corners of my lips, and the upper half of the griffon's body exploded, showering me in gore.
The griffon's grip went slack and I kicked what remained of its body away. As soon as the claws left me, Gamer's Body kicked in and the pain vanished—leaving behind only an echo of the agony that having them inside me had been. I ignored the many notifications about Physical Resistance leveling and instead focused on my HP. 'It did half my HP in damage, throughAura and Reinforcement. So, anything that penetrates my shields, armor, Aura, and Reinforcement does damage to HP directly—that explains the mechanics of penetrating damage. I can't get hit like that again.' Of course, I wasn't going to get much of a break, as the flock of Nevermores and smaller grimm had turned around and was streaming towards me again, while the larger Griffons were stooping in a dive on my position, and I had no doubt they intended to do much the same as the first one. Good news was, they'd finally clustered to my liking and I had an opportunity.
"Fireball," I growled, sending the spell streaking upwards, where it hit my intended target—not the lead elements, but a Griffon a good twenty meters back from the first, as close to dead center as I could manage. The attack detonated, exploding in their midst. The AOE range on Fireball was thirty meters, spherical—meaning everything within thirty meters of that Griffon got to eat AOE splash damage. It was less damage per enemy than my AP Round was capable of, but every enemy in the range of that AOE took damage—and while none of them died outright, all of them went screaming down towards the ground as they panicked upon being set on fire. Around them, other grimm scattered for a moment, giving me some breathing room. The smell of smoke had already begun to drift up from below, but if burning grimm had started a fire there wasn't much I could do about it at the moment.
Calling up my shields again, I cast both my heals on myself, watching my HP shoot back up. Next, I focused on my buffs. I'd been forced to teach myself how to move and react normally when using the buffs, so that I wouldn't constantly be moving at Haste levels of speed or accidentally breaking things with the boosts from Aura, or Reinforcement. I'd limited myself while using the skills to the point where it was now reflexive to do so. So, I released those limits I'd held myself to—allowing the skills to go back up to their full potential. Before, I'd only upcapped those skills for brief bursts of speed or strength as needed. Now though, I could feel the difference immediately. I was undecided whether the fact that there was no difference in mana cost for keeping the buffs in their limited state and using them as they were meant to be used was a good thing or a bad thing—on the one hand, I wasn't using any extra mana at the moment, while on the other hand under normal circumstances it was almost wasteful.
I looked around, spotting the grimm regrouping and more from the main flock moving to join them as they sensed the bloodlust building. 'Still got time,' I assessed, turning my focus inward for a moment. I had been loathe to try creating new techniques in battle, because I didn't want to ever have that become a bad habit and I'd rather go into battle with skills I was familiar with, but in this instance I felt it was worth it. I only needed one skill, and I knew which one I wanted—one of the Final Fantasy set I'd yet to get around to making. So, I focused and bent Skill Creation towards creating a new buff. A moment later, I was rewarded with a familiar popup letting me know I'd created the skill Focus, which at the moment would only increase my INT by 25%. I didn't have time to read anything on how the skill grew, but I assumed it was along the lines of the rest of my buffs.
The flock was nearly on top of me by now. Tossing out another Fireball, I dropped into Invisibility and picked my target—a Griffon outside of the exploding AOE. Closing the distance with Flash Step, I spun up a pair of Plasma Blades and drew, aiming at its neck. Stacking bonuses stacked and the Griffon's head parted company from its shoulders in a shower of burned hair and blood. The roar of chirping birds from my blades drowned out the sounds the grimm around me made, drawing their attention my direction—but without being able to see me, they couldn't zero in on my position, and since I had no intention to remain in one place for long it wouldn't matter. Another Step put me above a second Griffon and I repeated the process before moving on to a third and fourth. Landing astride a fifth and decapitating it, I took in my handiwork and almost sighed—for all that I could take out individual targets easily, there were a seemingly limitless number to replace them, and I wasn't making any sort of a dent in their numbers. I was sorely tempted to try using a large scale casting of Bind—I could use Ice to hold them in place since there was no ground or plant life to use up here—but for the fact that I was trying to conserve mana and using Bind on that many creatures at the same time would drain much of what I had left.
I almost didn't hear it over the roar of my blades, but Perception kicking in again gave me the warning I needed. Turning to look up and back, I found another stream of Nevermores bearing down on me. Taking aim and tossing out both Plasma Blades at the stream of enemies in a set of Strike Raids, I followed them with a Fireball. The stream collapsed and, as the swords approached, I grabbed them with Telekinesis, allowing them to orbit me for a moment before I sighted in another target and flung them at a nearby Griffon. The weapons struck, shearing the wings from the grimm and sending it plummeting. Plasma Blades cost too much to keep up full time though, so I allowed the swords to dissipate.
Perception kicked in yet again and I Flash Stepped out of the line of a pair of converging streams of Nevermores. Turning back to look at them, I frowned as the streams slammed into each other and a sphere of concentrated darkness began to form—more seemingly squeezed out of the air itself in drops that looked suspiciously like grimm blood. "The hell?" I wondered as more and more streams streaked in and slammed into the sphere, which began to solidify and leak bloodlust. All sorts of warning bells went off in my head as I recognized it for what it was—a boss forming.
Thinking quickly, I spotted another Griffon nearby, heading away from the sphere as fast as its wings could carry it—in fact, all of the Griffons were, as if some animal instinct were telling them a larger predator was coming. Sighting it in, I fired my line launcher and reeled myself in. Slapping it with Dominate, I settled down on its back and ordered it to continue moving away while I turned back to watch, tossing a Fireball over my shoulder at the forming sphere as a matter of course—and I was entirely unsurprised when the spell did exactly fuck all to the sphere itself, while temporarily destroying or setting fire to a few of the grimm streaking into it.
I didn't bother to count the number of Nevermores that disappeared into the black sphere, which had begun to deform into more of an oblong egg shape—it didn't really matter. All that mattered at the moment was getting the hell away from the thing. I had absolutely no desire to fight a boss on my own, especially not one forming outside an Illusion Barrier, where it could chase me down in the real world—hunting one was an entirely different matter from being hunted by one. It didn't seem like that was going to be an option, however, as the 'egg' exploded outwards, an absolutely massive pair of wings unfolding from around a large, narrow body. I was slammed down against my ride as the Griffon I was on was thrown several meters upwards by the force of the air off the boss's wings. As my ride settled down, I managed to get a good look at the boss. 'So, that's a kaiju class grimm,' I mused, wincing as I took in its fifty-foot wingspan. It was larger than I remembered the normal Giant Nevermores being. Then again, it was a boss.
N̨̘̬ͤ͟ā̲͈̯̞̬̞̙̟͂m̳̹͕̰͓̲̓ͯ̈ͧ͂ͮ̉ͦ͝ẹ̫̭̩̐͑ͫ͑̐͌̓͟l̛̤̜̖̖͓̞͈̜̟̋̑̈͐̉̆͡e͙͙̞̞̭̼̣̲͙͒͜s̛̤̝̻̉̋͐̓͞s̞̰͆̐ͥ͒̋ͣͮ͐͢ ͍̰͔̼̼̟͌̊ͨͮͬ͌͗Ḣ̼͍̜̻̲̠̹̌ȇ͇̼̦͇̟̼̤͉͆̄̾̋͘͞r̠̗͍̤̭̓͋̆͌͋͟e͇̙̮̓́̈̑̾̓ͣ ̴͓̙̪͚͓̮̟̾̋̒̈ͩͦFͤ̐̈ͥ̏̒́͏̫͚̘̣̲̠̰̩ó̷̪̻͉̭̭͈̒̾̎̃̏r̸͕͎̼ͮ̈́ ̧ͬͧ̿͏̫̥E͕̍̐ͨͤ͑̔̊͆̔v̖̬̟̜̼̣̂̍ͫͫͬ̀̀e̛̩̱̪͕̰͇̺̊ͣ̒̅͒̔̉ͯ̚͞͡r̈́͆̋ͥ́̃̒͑҉͇̜̟̖̬̼̕m̛̫̖̪̟ͭ̈́o̙͖̝̤̟͕̗̹̒̐r̡̮̺̥̈́̍͋̾͆̕e̵̷͖̙͈̟̬͕͗̎͡
–
Level: 50
I winced, feeling a stab of pain in my brain as I took in its title, noting that the name field was absent, save for what looked like a line struck through the space it should have been. 'That can't be good,' I hummed, hitting it with Observe. There was nothing there, save for a single line of eye-stabbing text.
Q̯͖̫̣̳̱͍̾̌͛͆̋ͤ́̅ͅu̻̟̟ͭ͂ͣo̵̹̩̺̼̾͌̋̍ͭ̊̇̚͞t̡͕͖̻̭͌͋͟h͐ͭ̓̉҉̷͓ ̢̮̩̺̼͚̳̓̊͜͝t̖̦̤̘͔̻̜͓̙͆ͮ̄̄͑́h̶̒̔͒̉ͬ̈͌͑͏͎͈̯̜͙̦e̼̙̞͎̍ͣͥ̽̀̕ ͙̻͈͕̬̀̊̒̈ͬͨ͌͘͞R̔ͤͪ̏̎̐̕҉̪̘͖ą̭̼̪̆̑̉̓̀͟v̧̭̺͔̱͎̯̤ͩ͒̓͗̑͞e̟͕ͭ̒ͣ̿͆̒ͬ̈́͟n͔̲̼͔͂͞ ̮͙̹͉͍̩́̂̇ͣ́͢"̍ͯ͑ͨͬ͊͏̻̮͍̪Ǹ̝̾̃ͭ͝e̸̡͇̰̯ͩv͇͔̬̰̙̜͓̯ͭ͊ȅ̞͍̩̊̈̇̊̔̕͟͢r̵͖͓͓͎͔͈͍̾ͪ͝m̨̧̘̦̥̙̗͖̭̾͐ͥ́ͅò̠̩̘̰͍̼̤͇̗͒̀͋ͦͤͥ̿̚r̬̥̼̬̥ͧ͜e̸̮̺͊ͮ̾ͅ.̦̬͎̫̞͍̜͚ͭ̈ͥ͘"̗̼͖̖ͪ̇́̒͝
Despite the lack of information, I had two important facts available—its level and the icon beside its level: a Nevermore, in black. I'd never seen one of those in black before, which told me this was a grade or two above what Ruby and I had fought—probably a field raid boss, unless I missed my guess. Any speculation on that was cut off as a wave of something washed over me as it opened its eyes—four huge, luminous red eyes, two on either side of its head stacked vertically and slightly offset, the higher set slightly further out than the lower set. I could tell the exact moment they focused on me—as my Invisibility failed entirely. "Shit," I grunted, urging my mount to move faster. I swiftly realized that was futile as the nameless Nevermore's wings beat once, twice, bringing it up above my level and sending it hurling towards my position.
There was a brief moment of pants-shitting terror that slapped into my like an almost-physical wave, before it was washed away under the effects of Gamer's Mind and I took stock of my situation. 'It has a Fear effect AOE, like dragon fear. That's never a good sign.'
An idea occurred. It was stupid, and desperate, and might not even work but it was the best thing I had at the moment. Turning my Griffon northward, away from the beast, I sighted the Nevermore in and fired off a volley of fire-elemental AP Rounds. The red-tinted spell streaked across the distance between me and it and impacted upon its breast. Looking at its health bar, I could see I'd done damage, but not much—about one percent or so—and the Burn effect hadn't taken. Still, I had pissed it off—as evidenced by the Nevermore opening its massive beak and loosing a sound my brain couldn't quite interpret. It was a roar, and a screech, and a word all at the same time and the force of the attack slammed into my shields and I barely kept me and my unwilling mount in the air, as around us, other Griffons fell.
Recasting my shields, I began spamming AP Round at the Nevermore, cycling through elements to find something that worked. In between castings, I threw out other spells to see what would stick. After trying for Confuse and getting a failure notice, I made a judgment call that it had high enough mental resists that I wasn't going to just put it to Sleep or Dominate it. Silence and Slow were likewise ineffective, telling me that Blind might be as well. I was getting closer to my destination, but I still had to buy a few minutes, and the damn thing was gaining fast. Going over my options, I spotted a few more Griffons and began casting Charm. Immediately, they peeled off from the main group and powered towards the boss.
The Nevermore ignored them, until the first Griffon stooped and slammed its claws and beak into the boss's masked face, clawing and pecking at the eyes on the left side of its face. Almost faster than I could track, the Nevermore shifted its head, opened its beak, and brought it down on the Griffon—cleanly bisecting it, swallowing half of it before snapping up the other half and swallowing that as well. Its upper left eye was a ruin of gore, but with three more it didn't exactly seem bothered and, as the other Griffons neared, it pulled back into a hover for just long enough to snap each up whole before continuing its pursuit. Below me, I caught sight of my target and grinned. Coaxing my mount on, I turned to throw another AP Round at the Nevermore, only to find it doing something new. New typically meaning bad, I tensed and prepared to evade.
Sucking in huge gulps of air, I watched as the Nevermore's chest expanded to two, then three times its original width before, with another of those sounds my brain didn't want to acknowledge, it spoke—and vomited a stream of black at me. I Leapt, not a moment too soon as my mount evaporated in a mist of black gore. The crack! of something supersonic passing by rocked my ears for a moment before the 'stream' broke apart—into hundreds of smaller Nevermores, which immediately turned and spread their wings, flapping at the same time and throwing a storm of black feathers at me. I Flash Stepped in an effort to avoid it, but many of the feathers punched through my shield and, when I dropped out of Flash Step, I found my armor had been turned into a pincushion. I swept most of the feathers from my armor where I could reach quickly and took off at my fastest pace.
More feathers cut the air around me, some striking my shields and bouncing off as I closed range with my destination. Behind me, the Nevermore was gaining, and I could feel the steady thump of its wing beats on the air. 'Not going to make it. I need a distraction, something to slow it down,' I decided. Remembering how it had reacted to the Griffons, I quickly sighted one in and snared it with my line launcher, slapping it with Dominate as I got close and ordering it to turn around towards the nameless Nevermore. Digging into my Inventory, I dug out a pair of items and a few feet of paracord—specifically, a grenade that had come from Roman's stash and a grade 6 Dust crystal: Electric Blue. Tying the crystal to the grenade, I then looped the rest of the paracord under the Griffon's neck and tied it tight. Taking hold of the pin, I crouched on the Griffon's back and waited.
Seeing me closing distance with it, the nameless Nevermore poured on the speed and, as I neared, opened its maw wide and jerked its head forward. I Flash Stepped, taking the grenade pin with me, as the Nevermore swallowed the Griffon I'd been riding whole. Summoning up a pair of Plasma Blades, I touched down on the Nevermore's back and stuck, then began running over the bony armor plating there, counting down from five in my head. As I neared its upper back, I flung both Plasma Blades in a pair of Strike Raids, where both stuck just towards the inside of the avian's wings. I hit 'three' and Leapt, and not a moment too soon as the air suddenly grew heavy with the smell of ozone and burning flesh and I heard a great zap! behind me and the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood up.
Looking back, I saw the boss was locked in a rictus of silent agony as its muscles locked and its giant wings stopped beating—and, more importantly, it began to fall. "It's not the voltage that kills, it's the amps!" I taunted it, chuckling as I took off running again. That little trick of physics hadn't killed it, but it had sure as shit done more to hurt it than anything I had thrown at it—the Nevermore was down by a quarter of its HP, at least.
Hitting it from the inside must have counted as a critical—which made sense, biologically speaking. Armor was meant to protect from external threats, and even if grimm didn't share much in the way of biology with living creatures, odds were good that was one of the few traits they did share. From a gaming perspective, that would have been: no DEX bonus, no natural armor bonus or Damage Reduction, no Reflex save, guaranteed critical hit, and likely a Sneak Attack bonus of some sort since there's no way it could have expected it. I was mildly surprised it wasn't a Fort-save-or-die situation, but then I supposed I'd have had to use a higher grade of Dust for that.
I had hoped merely to lock its flight muscles—use the charge of my Plasma Blades to direct the current of the exploding Dust crystal inside of it through the grimm to those two swords, hopefully resulting in some arcing between them and some locked muscles, causing it to fall long enough for me to gain some distance away from it and closer to my destination. I suppose I hadn't counted on just how powerful Dust crystals were—which made me wonder why the effects from the grade 9 crystals in my swords wasn't nearly so spectacular. I supposed it could be because they were in the weapons' power slots and not being used as ammunition, but I didn't really have time to figure it out at the moment.
'That trick isn't going to work twice,' I decided, as the sound of the Nevermore's flapping reached my ears again, followed a moment later by a bone-rattling screech of rage. 'Yeah, I think that pissed it off.'
Suddenly, the ground below me cleared out, trees disappearing in a large circle and I stopped, realizing I'd made it. Sighting in another Griffon, I took it over and began forcing it to climb. Below me, the nameless Nevermore reacted aggressively, rapidly catching up as it poured on speed. A few seconds later, the first red tracer rounds caught my eye and I laughed as I heard the Nevermore below me shriek in outrage as, below us, the black site opened up on the largest threat in the area.
Whereas before, they had been content to leave the massive grimm the hell alone because it had been outside the range of everything but their missiles, I'd forced it to follow me into their airspace and they couldn't ignore it as close as it was now. If it stuck around, it would eventually turn its attention to them, and self-preservation was a hell of a motivator. Explosions rocked the air as rockets streaked up from the base and slammed into the Nevermore—apparently, they were too close to use the larger missiles like they'd used against my Bullhead. A glance back, however, showed it was still in pursuit. Its three red eyes met mine and I saw it there—a bottomless rage and hunger, driven by a cruel intellect intent on seeing me broken and devoured. Not liking the look in its eye, I ordered my Griffon to pull back into a roll, then stoop into a dive.
The Nevermore's chest expanded, but it was going for a quick burst as opposed to the larger stream it'd used before, as it released its attack immediately. I pushed off the Griffon as it disintegrated below me, my wingsuit catching air for a moment as I went into a dive straight for the Nevermore. As I neared, I reached forward with my left arm and took aim, my line launcher striking just above its ruined eye, digging into the flesh just under the mask. I allowed the glide wing on my left to collapse while leaving the right open for a moment and pulled the line taunt before releasing the right wing, which had the effect of slinging me around the Nevermore. As I went over its back, I disengaged the line launcher.
"Flash Freeze," I chanted, followed by a second, third and fourth. All of the attacks streaked in towards the joints of its right wing—I only needed to disable one of them to cause it to fall and I'd already proven that even with the level disparity, it wasn't immune to certain hard facts of reality. The first attack struck and I could see the wing go stiff for a moment before the second struck, and the joint froze over. Mass, wind, and velocity did the rest of the work for me and I heard a massive cracking snap, even over the sound of machine guns below, as the Nevermore's wing joint broke and it began falling in a spiral towards the ground.
I was forced to jink to one side as a stream of rounds abruptly shifted their focus and punched a hole through the side of my shield. I caught sight of movement below, my glasses zooming in on some sort of panels spread evenly over the base slid open and recessed weapons moved up to lock into place. 'What the hell are those?' I had a moment to wonder, my glasses highlighting one long enough for me to catch sight of the word FLAK and a number tagged into it before they opened up as one and I Flash Stepped, losing focus of it. More than one of them were targeting me once again, telling me they'd figured out what I'd done as far as luring the boss there and weren't too happy about it. Likely, they figured since the thing seemed to have a special hate-on for me, that taking out the focus of its agitation would either cause it to leave or leave it distracted long enough for them to finish it off. Well, screw that. I wasn't sitting around up here long enough to get turned into a fine red mist.
A combination of Air Walk and Powered Leap had me on the ground first, in time to watch the massive beast fall from the sky while still taking damage from the black site's AA batteries as it had come too close for rockets. It struck the ground on its injured wing between the second and third barriers. I winced as an entire section of the mine field below it exploded into shrapnel and grimm parts, dust and smoke temporarily covering the area. I knew better than to think it was dead—I hadn't gotten any EXP, nor had the red dot on my minimap disappeared.
A second later, the air was rent by the loudest screech yet, and the smoke around it was blown away from the sheer force of the sound. The nameless had rolled over onto its feet. Its right wing was missing entirely and black grimm blood dripped from its right side, most of which was ruined, likely from the mines. Its beak was cracked and chipped, and its mask had been shattered almost completely—only a section on the left side of its face remained. In addition, the eyes on the damaged side of its face were simply gone, leaving it with only its bottom left eye—which immediately focused its baleful gaze on me. A glance at its HP bar showed it to have a little more than a tenth of its health left—which would be plenty enough to do me in, even if it had been weakened.
Pulling back its left wing, the nameless Nevermore flapped it in my direction. The concussive wave of air that picked me up and threw me into the tree line—where I hit a tree hard enough to blow through it and into the one behind that, destroying my shields in the process—was what saved my life. My eyes took a second to refocus as I picked myself up and caught sight of the small forest of pinions the Nevermore had left where I'd been standing—each taller and wider than I was. Pulling its wing in tight against its body for balance, it hopped forward and tore through one fence before it began hopping bird-like through the space between fences. Behind and in front of it, machine guns opened up on it, causing it to jerk minutely as it was riddled with more bullets. Shifting its one-eyed gaze, the Nevermore inhaled and breathed out a stream of smaller members of its kind, obliterating first one machine gun emplacement and then another, repeating the process until no more were left on that side to fire on it while the smaller members of its kind that it had created swarmed over the top of the facility and began harassing who or whatever had been inside the walls but outside of the facility itself.
I hadn't been idle while it was otherwise occupied. Around me, several pieces of iron bar—rebar, specifically—floated in the hold of my Telekinesis. Digging out another grade 6 electric blue crystal, along with the pistol strapped at my side, I locked eyes with the Nevermore for a moment before sending the rebar flying downrange. A few pieces missed, but most of them embedded themselves in its chest. Individually, none of those pieces of rebar were long enough to kill it—but that wasn't what I was after. As if sensing my intent, the Nevermore's eye narrowed and it shifted its good wing into position to use as a shield the moment I flung the Dust crystal at it. Bringing the longslide up, I took aim and fired. The crystal exploded just shy of the Nevermore's wing. Unfortunately for it, I'd planned ahead. Instead of exploding into AOE splash damage, the arcs of electricity were drawn to the rebar sticking out of its chest, through its wing and down through its body to ground, in a repeat of what I'd done to it earlier. This attack didn't do nearly as much damage, certainly not enough to finish it off, but that wasn't my intent. I'd wanted to distract it and hopefully stun it long enough to enact phase two.
'Now!' I sent, at the same time casting, "Bind!" Ice and earth shot up from the ground, stabbing into its feet, circling the Nevermore's ankles, and reaching up as far as its lower body. A moment later, a dark form streaked across the space between me and the Nevermore, through the hole I'd taken the time to tear in the first fence. Nearly two hundred pounds of great cat slammed into the Nevermore's shielding wing and proceeded to climb, claws digging in as Sanguine scrambled up the numb wing, crested the top, and leaped from the Nevermore's blind spot onto its ruined shoulder, around the back of its neck, before pouncing on her intended target—the Nevermore's remaining eye. Front claws dug into the flesh above the eye under the cracked mask while back claws dug into the eye itself, and like any cat with prey, she kicked—leaving behind a ruin of blood and gore.
The Nevermore shook its head, slinging Sanguine off to land in a roll on the ground at its side. Bounding back to her feet, the spirit streaked around behind the Nevermore and out of my sight. I was more preoccupied with the Nevermore itself at that point, as it regained muscle control and began flapping its one good wing madly, spraying pinions everywhere. I was lucky enough to be in the tree line and shielded from the wind this time. My luck ran out as a sound like cracking glass reached my ears as my shields flared to brilliant life and a ragged hole exploded in the center of those in front of me before the rest disintegrated, sudden pain flared in my chest, and I felt like a bus had slammed into my back as my vision swam.
Looking down, I found one of those me-sized pinions buried in my gut, pinning me to a pine tree. "F-fu—," I coughed blood soaking my mask, worry flooding me as my eyes tracked to my HP bar where about 80% of my HP was just gone and the rest was quickly bleeding out. The edges of my vision went red, throbbing in time with my pained heartbeats, while everything in my focus seemed to leech of color and take on a grayish hue. My Semblance took the opportunity to pop up a warning message, telling me I had been Critically Wounded and I would die if I did not get treatment soon. I ignored it in favor of assessing my situation.
I tried grabbing the pinion, but for some reason my arms felt weak and heavy, and I couldn't feel anything below the point where it'd pinned me to a tree—everything below that was completely non-responsive. 'Spine severed, at least one lung ruined and the other probably punctured, didn't get me in the heart but close enough, bleeding out,' I assessed quickly, somehow coldly dispassionate about that as the worry dissipated. They were simply facts—status effects I'd need to deal with before I could heal myself and finish this fight.
I couldn't speak to call it up, but I managed to pull up my Inventory with the proper focus command. Reaching in, I dug out a couple of HP potions. I grabbed my mask—now thoroughly soaked in blood as every ragged, gurgling breath I took brought up bright, bubbling blood with it—and yanked it down from my mouth. Popping the top on one, I attempted to drink only to nearly drown myself, most of the potion getting coughed back up in an example of real world physics and biology imposing itself in unwanted ways on my video game Semblance granted body—you couldn't really drink with a throat full of blood, after all.
'No. No, fuck this. I haven't even been here a full month. I am not dying here like this.' I dropped the spent and unopened potion bottles on the ground and forced shaking arms up, to wrap my hands around the spear driven through my body. I tried to pull it away, but blood had made it slick and my hands slipped. Next, I tried for Telekinesis, intending to just yank the pinion out, but my focus was slipping away and the technique wouldn't engage. My hands slipped off the pinion and my right hand slapped something cold and hard at my side on the way down. Twitching that hand back up, I found the handle of the longslide and I realized I had my way out. 'If I can break it off, I can push myself off this thing.'
My hand wrapped around the handle and drew the pistol out slowly, shaking the entire way. The thing must have weighed a hundred pounds in my hand and nearly slipped out from the blood making my hands slick—only the textured grip preventing that. Bringing the pistol up and planting the barrel against the rod at the center of the pinion, I thumbed the safety off and pulled the trigger. A red Dust round ripped through the pinion with a sound like cracking wood and the gun was nearly yanked out of my hand, even as part of the force of the gunshot ran up the pinion stuck in me and violently agitated my wound. Seeing it hadn't given way yet, I brought it back up and repeated the process—and this time, I did lose the pistol as the pain of the second gunshot caused my fingers to spasm and go slack.
I heard the weapon clatter onto the ground nearby, but the feather pinning me to the tree behind me had drooped and cracked where I'd shot holes in it, breaking under its own weight. My concentration was fading fast as I reached out and tried to shove the broken pinion away. I grit my teeth and bit back a curse as the damned thing refused to budge and blinding pain shot through me at the attempt—there was just enough left holding it in place that I'd need to work it a bit to break it off the rest of the way.
My eyes closed involuntarily for a moment before I forced them back open, movement catching my eye and drawing my attention to my HUD.
Executing am_i_a_real_girl*rpm.
Green light swirled at my side and, a moment later, I heard a familiar voice. "Oh my! Jaune, are you okay?! I'll help!"
Pain twinged in my chest as Penny took hold of the broken pinion and yanked it out none too gently and dropped it to the side. I fell flat on my face in the snow, only to find myself being rolled over and pulled into a seated position a moment later. Gamer's Body kicked in and my chest spasmed. I turned on my side and coughed up blood and wasted potion as I felt a hand rubbing my back. Quickly grabbing the other potion, I downed it and groaned in relief as the phantom pains vanished and my HP bar began climbing. Casting my heals, I allowed the shorter gynoid to help me to my feet. Reaching up, I pulled the mask back up and grimaced at the smell and feel of bloodsoaked cloth against my face.
"You just wait right here a minute," Penny beamed. "I'll be riiight back." Something in the way her eyes narrowed in visible anger clued me in to the fact that while canon Penny may have been a bit protective of her friends, this one seemed downright vindictive by comparison.
I wondered for a moment why there hadn't been a follow-up attack where the giant bird took advantage of my situation, but I got my answer when I stumbled out to the edge of the tree-line and caught sight of the Nevermore. Sanguine was latched onto its neck, currently digging out a trench while she held on for dear life as the Nevermore attempted and failed to shake her off again. She hit paydirt a moment later and blood began spewing out of the Nevermore's wound like it'd come from a high-pressure hose.
"Here kitty, kitty, kitty," Penny called and, to my amusement, the great cat slipped down the Nevermore and stalked quickly over to the gynoid. Its eyes may have been gone, but nothing was wrong with its hearing as the Nevermore shifted its head to focus on Penny, opened its beak, and let out a squawk of rage before it began inhaling again, damaged ribs creaking as its chest swelled. It had to know that its special attack would likely kill it at this point—meaning, if it was as smart as I thought it was, then this was to be a suicide attack. It never got the chance to try.
"I think," Penny murmured, the backpack on her back opening up as wire controlled swords spilled out of it. Shifting in the air, they folded down and moved in front of the gynoid, where a green glow began to build as the energy weapon spun up. "We've heard about enough out of you!"
A beam of green death momentarily connected the gynoid's weapon and the Nevermore, its focus shifting swiftly down along the weakened boss's body. Blood and bits of gore exploded outwards as everything the beam struck either burned or flash boiled depending on whether it was solid or liquid, two halves of the boss splitting down the middle along the laser's path and falling into a messy heap. I blinked at the EXP and Spirit gain—a smooth 100k experience, bumping me from mid-level 25 to level 28, almost 29. Though I felt a bit better and was back up to full HP, I was still mentally wiped and sore with phantom aches in places. 'That… that's just not fair. I want a giant frickin' laser beam. Question is, did she start out at a higher level than me or is it because she's 'epic level' gear? Eh, figure it out later. Also, another thing to add to the list of weapon tech Atlas has: lasers. How long before they figure out a working Starwars program, I wonder, and get laser weapons into orbit?'
There was a sound of something crumbling and I winced as one of the guard towers and part of the wall in the beam's path behind the Nevermore collapsed. Penny turned and trekked happily back across the black blood tainted snow, beaming a smile up at me. "Sorry about the mess. You installed the good stuff. I don't know my own strength yet," she chuckled, one hand trailing up to rub at the back of her orange hair as she scuffed the toe of one shoe in the ground in front of her.
'Oh, right,' I hummed, remembering the three grade 9 crystals I'd installed before activating her. "It's fine, Penny. Stay here a minute, would you?" I asked, and she nodded.
Sighing, I pushed off the tree I'd been leaning on and made my way over to where the boss was swiftly dissolving. Stepping into the mess, I found a clear spot in the middle with a pile of drops. Picking them up with Telekinesis, I funneled them into my Inventory. I stored over 500kL, a small mountain of red potions, an elixir, and a pile of grimm-related crafting ingredients. In addition, there were three items that I quickly stashed without bothering to look at—though, I caught a glimpse that set my curiosity to itching and my Semblance popped up a notification about a quest starting that I would have to look into later—I could look at them after we got away from the black site, which had begun scrambling men and aircraft. They had already noticed me, so I hurriedly made my way back towards the tree-line. Dismissing Sanguine, I mentally issued Penny the same command to dismiss and she turned and shot me an amused look that seemed to say 'are you kidding?'
"I'm sorry Jaune, but I'm not going anywhere until you're back in Vale at the very least," she denied, and I rolled my eyes. I suppose I shouldn't be too terribly surprised that, despite technically being a piece of equipment, the girl had her own will and wasn't simply subordinate to my own will. It was the nice sort of surprise I could live with.
"Fine," I grunted, hopping into the treetops. I hit us both with Invisibility and we made our way away from the black site. The wave of grimm above us was beginning to thin, but I hadn't found a place to summon up a Bullhead yet. Grumbling a curse to myself, I sighted down a Griffon and snagged it with my line launcher, repeating the process from before followed by hitting another nearby Griffon with Dominate as well and sending it down to pick up Penny. Thankfully, the grimm around us paid us no mind—seemingly disinclined to engage with us, given the wide berth they were giving us as we flew on.
Once we were both up high enough for my liking and close enough, I wrapped us both in wind and gravity to speed our passage and leaned forward against the beast under me to rest and focus on Meditation for a while. I was tired—damnably so—and I ached in places, phantom pains from my earlier wounds. The smell of blood was distracting, so I took the time to swap out my mask quickly before I turned us westward, following my waypoint, and allowed my eyes to slip closed.
I jerked awake and looked around, shivering as I did. It was dark and the stars were covered by a thick blanket of clouds. Something cold and hard slapped my face and I winced, reaching up and rubbing at the sting, only for it to be followed by another, and another. 'Hail?' I wondered, catching sight of one of the small balls of ice as it stuck to my armor. A sideways glance at Penny left a smile twitching my lips upwards. 'Good thing she's not more robot-like. I bet canon Penny would have sounded like rain on a tin roof. Ah, levity.'
The hail swiftly picked up in intensity and was joined by a downpour of rain. Equipping my glasses, I could just make out the shine of a river below us in the now occasional flash of lightning, so I ordered our mounts to take us down. Once we were nearer the ground, I could see that there was actually a fairly wide bank along this river, which would be a good place to take off from in the Bullhead. Setting us down, we dismounted and killed both of the Griffons.
"You could have woken me," I shot at Penny, somewhat annoyed and still feeling tired.
The girl shot me an amused look. "I tried. You were snoring so loudly that I could hear you over the wind." She paused a moment before adding, with a completely straight face, "I am not exaggerating. I was equipped with the best noise canceling directional microphones Atlas could produce."
'I can't tell if that's just her being overly earnest and socially awkward, or being a smartass,' I hummed, eying her speculatively.
Grumbling, I summoned up the unarmed Bullhead, knowing it had a full tank of fuel. Pulling up my map, I checked our position and then hummed as I realized something important—the area around us was no longer red-black with Spirit density. It was still a dark red, but not nearly so bad as it had been. Zooming out, I caught sight of the tail end of what looked like a wave of black stretching across the map, moving slowly preceding the same path the storm was following, confirming my suspicions there. The good news was that while that line of denser Spirit may have been long, it wasn't very wide and it didn't extend into the storm itself.
It was an interesting phenomenon to study later, at any rate and I had a number of questions needing answers already. Was it a semi-natural phenomenon, caused by wind currents or something similar? Would similar occurrences happen around other 'natural disaster' level events and acts of weather—tornadoes, earth quakes, brush fires and the like? Was this one way grimm could cross into the real world without the aid of an Illusion Barrier? Given the potential misery, suffering, and death tolls that tended to follow many natural disasters, my magic 8-ball said 'Signs point to yes.' I wouldn't be getting any definitive answers any time soon, but my curiosity was piqued. "Come on, we're still a ways out from the quarry."
Penny followed me inside, taking the co-pilot's seat beside mine. "I can fly, if you'd like to get some more rest," she suggested.
I yawned and nodded. There were about a million questions I wanted to ask her, but I just didn't have the energy to at the moment. There was one that was pertinent, however. "You can see the waypoint, right?"
"Of course, silly," she laughed, already starting the Bullhead. "I'm equipped in your ancula slot. Technically, I'm running a minor version of your Semblance—though, it'd be more accurate to say I have user access to your own Semblance and enough privileges to run some of the basic functions, such as UI, mapping, Inventory, and some skills like Drive or Use Computers. Kind of basic stuff. I could do more, but you'd have to give me access."
"In my what slot?" I grunted, allowing my eyes to slide closed for a moment, before basic necessities reared their heads. "Hold off on that. Stay on the ground and give me a few minutes," I sighed, pushing myself out of my seat and going outside, flipping my A.T. Field upwards to use as an improvised umbrella. I took care of biological waste needs, washed my hands in the stream, and went back to the Bullhead as the rain began to come down in sheets. Dropping down into my seat, I dug into my Inventory and pulled out a bottle of water and a ration bar. Looking sidelong at Penny, I waved the bar and the water. "You want some?"
Penny shook her head, killing the interior cockpit lights and bringing the Bullhead up into level flight, keeping us low and fast. She wasn't running with exterior lights and there was no real light from the stars or moon, so I had to assume she had sensors of some sort built in—as if the green glow to her eyes didn't give her away. "I can eat, and I think I will enjoy doing so. I do not require it as often as a human and I do not think I want my first meal to be that."
I snorted. "I see." Tearing into the packaging, I bit into the bar and had to agree with the gynoid—it wasn't the best thing I'd ever eaten. I made a mental note to toss some real food into my Inventory, for emergencies. "But you do require it?"
"I have some functional but non-critical biological components that require everything a person would, but since they only make up a small part of my body, I do not require much in the way of food intake, according to my on-board operating manual," Penny clarified.
So, my Semblance was right in calling her a gynoid and not a robot—she was a cybernetic organism, not a pure machine. That it went to the trouble to label her distinctly with the feminine pronoun instead of one of the more generic ones probably meant something relatively important, but I was too drained to work it out at the moment. Probably, though, it was the distinction between a purely artificial creation, which I believed she was, and an altered human cyborg. That left me wondering what, exactly, was biological on her. I supposed I could ask later. "What about your power source? You were equipped with a grade 4 Electric Blue when I found you. I didn't screw anything up by installing all grade 9s did I?"
"No," Penny shook her head. "I should be okay for now. My power core is rated for up to grade 8 output, which is what I used against the creature back there. Having a higher grade installed will not hurt anything unless I attempt to draw too much power. However, given that I am connected to your Semblance now and can gain levels independently, I may gain upgrades that allow me to fully utilize them. I am not certain how leveling will work with me, though."
"We'll have to test that later," I agreed. Would she simply gain stats? Would my Semblance fabricate new parts? What about maintenance on her current body—would my Semblance take care of all of that, all those things that I figured would need a full lab like the one we'd left? It was something to figure out later—one more item on a growing list of things put off until some nebulous 'later.' Right now, I wanted details on something she'd mentioned earlier. "What's an 'ancula slot?' No, let me rephrase that: I get that it would be an equipment slot for an ancula, but what exactly is an ancula?"
"Well, the word itself derives from Latin. The closest meaning in English would be 'manservant' for the masculine word anculus or 'maidservant,' for the feminine 'ancula' or 'ancilla,'" she explained, and I hummed.
"It's Latin-derived, so… as in 'ancillary,'" I guessed, and she nodded.
"They are related," she confirmed. "According to your Semblance I am an 'Ancula Myrmidon,' or in other words, a battle servant."
I rolled my eyes. "You're mixing your Latin with your Greek, there."
Penny turned an amused look my way for a moment before returning her eyes to the terrain through the cockpit window, somehow seeing straight through the downpour while my own visibility was in the tens of feet at most. "I am not mixing anything—it is your Semblance. I am just telling you what I see when I open my own menus. It is on my character sheet, under Title. I think anything sufficiently advanced, with its own intelligence, would qualify as an ancula. A regular old puppet would not qualify, but an AI…"
"I get it." Nodding, I finished off the last of my water and ration bar. Putting the trash away, I considered the girl beside me. She was part of my Semblance now, even running a user version of it, but my natural paranoia wouldn't let me rest without checking up on her. I had just pulled her from an Atlas black site/prototyping facility, after all. So, I hit her with Observe and began reading through her biographical information and stats. My eyes paused on her Loyalty stat, seeing that it was comfortably high at 80%.
With that fact confirmed, I kicked back in my seat and got comfortable. "That's enough of that for now. Wake me when we get near the quarry, please?"
Penny nodded and I closed my eyes. I was out what felt like no time later, though I never made it completely into sleep. Over the sound of the wind, rain, and the engines, I think I heard… humming. It was soft and feminine, and just on the edge of my hearing. When I next woke, I found Penny removing her hand from my shoulder, where she'd shaken me. "We are a few miles out. There was nowhere to land, so I have put the Bullhead into hover."
Nodding, I stood and stretched the kinks out, my back giving a satisfying crack. "I'll be back in a few." Penny raised one dainty orange eyebrow and I rolled my eyes. "I'm fine. I'll be fine."
"Pardon me if I am overstepping, but you do not look fine," she denied.
Sighing, I checked to make sure my equipment was secure, that I had ammo, and that my line launcher had a sufficient amount of Dust. "It's just an infiltration. Slip in under Invisibility, drop Cinder's little hack tool on the right terminal, then get out. Easy peasy."
"If you are certain," she hedged, and I nodded. "As you wish. I will wait here for you."
Opening the Bullhead's side door, I dropped out of the cabin and into the top of a tree. Moving swiftly through the forest, I found the quarry and looked it over, allowing my glasses to tag everything of relevance. A faint glow caught my eye and I focused on a building on the far end of the compound, marked 'Storage.' I couldn't see much of anything from here, aside from the glow, but that was enough. Smirking, I wrapped myself in Invisibility and made my way towards the main office. The office was deserted, but the door was alarmed. With the line of Spirit preceding the storm cleared out now, I wasn't without the ability to use IDs any more so I created a small ID and cut my way inside, then destroyed it. Waking the proper terminal from sleep, I dropped the queen piece on the glowing interface surface. Immediately, a digital representation of the same piece flashed on the screen. Below it, a progress bar propagated and began filling.
Looking around the office, I spotted a safe in the back. Stretching out Telekinesis, I focused down into the mechanism of the lock itself, finding where the tumblers would align and moving things around until everything clicked into place. Inside was a printed out hard copy of what looked like a manifest, along with a set of keys. Pocketing the keys, I picked up the manifest and began to read. I whistled quietly at what I found there. Tons, as in literal tons, of what was known as raw Dust in all colors and grades—boxed into shipping containers and prepared for transport to processing facilities, where they would be cut or ground down into their ground and 'uncut' forms.
Yeah, despite its name, 'uncut' Dust was in fact cut off of a larger chunk of raw—or unshaped, or unprocessed depending on how one wanted to call it—Dust and cut down to specific sizes, weights, and shapes, with the leftover fragments typically being ground up into ground Dust or thrown together into a pile of like Dust crystals and melted down into Dust rounds. Waste not, want not after all. The difference between cut and uncut Dust was that so-called uncut Dust crystals were used to create either cut Dust crystals or Dust rounds—cut Dust crystals typically going in settings for armor, small devices, or any sort of clothing used for Dust casting. As far as my Semblance was concerned, however, the only difference between the two was what size/shape slot they would fit in, potential energy output, and potential duration for output. I didn't have any slots on any of my gear for cut crystals yet, but I was going to remedy that soon—especially after the farce that was today.
Behind me, the terminal chimed and I looked to find the progress bar full. Swiping the piece off the terminal interface, I powered the machine down and left the office the same way I'd gotten in. Making my way to the storage building, I climbed up to the roof level and found the skylight there, having a peek inside for myself. Containers filled with Dust covered the floor of the building in nice, neat little rows. What stood out, however, was the security. Security had been sparse outside. Inside, however, I counted well over thirty armed men along with a contingent of those prototype knights a hundred strong lining the walls. Most of the men seemed to be clustered near one container in particular—the source of the glow I'd seen earlier, as what looked like a scientist type had some sort of equipment set up before the open door to the container and appeared to be monitoring what looked like some sort of energy output.
Unable to resist sneaking a peek for myself, I opened up an ID on top of the skylight, destroyed the skylight and jumped inside, then collapsed the ID behind me—allowing me to fall quietly to the floor without anyone on this side of things being any the wiser. Making my way over to the scientist type, I studied the display over his shoulder. 'Prismatic Dust Core? Sounds important. …And expensive.'
Humming quietly, I shrugged and moved to get a look at the contents of the container. Reaching up, I pulled off my glasses as I took in the sight before me. Inside the box, a Dust crystal floated on its own. I would have estimated it as being about that of a beach ball… until it shrank down to the size of a bowling ball a moment later, then expanded to take up much of the container in the next moment. It had no shape, as it shifted randomly between various geometric patterns, even fractal shapes. The light it produced was almost white, and yet it was also every color of the Dust spectrum, both individually and all at once. Quite honestly, it hurt to look at, in much the same way reading corrupted information hurt my brain. Tensing preemptively, I hit it with Observe. Thankfully, the information there was not corrupt, though it was vague. The description simply read: Prismatic Dust Core, Grade ?.
That had disturbing implications all by itself. I'd assumed the grades of Dust went up to nine—but this pretty much said they could go higher. The question then was, how high? Each level of Dust was geometrically greater on the power and effect scale than the level below it—likely one of the myriad of reasons why Hunters had to be licensed to buy certain grades of Dust and why they didn't hand out the good stuff to rookie kids. The difference between a grade 1 and grade 2 was noticeable. The difference between a grade 8 and a grade 9 was like comparing the difference between a firecracker and a stick of dynamite, based on what I'd read. Would a grade 10 be in the kiloton range of yield? A grade 11 in the megaton range? What would happen if someone accidentally set off a Dust vein? I didn't even want to know the answer.
More disturbing than its general shifting formlessness and unknown, but presumably god-awfully high grade, was the fact that I could feel it. Something, some heretofore unused aspect of my general Use Dust skill practically sang in its presence. And I didn't just detect its presence—it felt like it was literally calling to me. I didn't think I could use it, yet, but I wanted it—more than that, I felt that I needed it for something. I knew it wasn't a mental effect, since Gamer's Mind hadn't so much as twitched—which meant either I was just being greedy, or more likely, gamer instincts built up over a couple of decades of gaming were telling me I was looking at a key item. Casting a quick look around, I opened up an ID around the box and stepped inside, where I was met with an inexact duplicate of what I had seen outside. 'That's… strange,' I thought, looking it over. It looked identical to the original but it didn't feel identical. It felt somehow more. 'Like it… Like it has Spirit of its own,' I realized.
Shaking my head, I opened my Inventory and grabbed it with Telekinesis—or, at least I tried to. My Telekinesis slipped right off it, and I frowned. "Well, that's not ominous at all," I grumbled. Reaching out, I carefully touched the crystal's surface, and it immediately froze—all external movement ceased, though I could see it still shifting shape internally through its translucent exterior, and light still played off its surface. Moving to find a way to get a decent grip on it, I blinked as the whole thing shrank down to a perfect sphere the size of a golf ball in the palm of my hand. Carefully, I pushed it into my Inventory window and released it. Nothing more happened. No notices, no popups, nothing. It simply sat there, taking up a single Inventory slot. I rolled my eyes. "That was anti-climactic. Stupid thing got me all worked up over nothing."
With a sigh of annoyance, I moved out of my ID and collapsed it behind me. I could still hear the siren-song of the original crystal, but with one already in my Inventory, it was much lessened. I still wanted it, but I wasn't enough of a kleptomaniac to botch the operation just to get it—after all, there was no way Atlas wouldn't notice the glowy shape-changing floating Dust core missing, even if I hit everyone here with Forget. Turning my back on it, I debated the merits of tearing into a box of unprocessed Dust under an ID, before deciding against it. I had no way of knowing how volatile it was, for one. For two, I had no way or knowledge of how to process it myself. Instead, I made my way to the door between two of the inactive Knights and left by ID, before trekking my way back across the quarry, through the woods, to where I found the Bullhead still hovering. Pulling myself up by line launcher, the door opened long enough for me to slip inside before closing again, and we were in motion before I'd gotten up to the cockpit.
"How did it go?" Penny asked, turning to regard my soaked, muddied form.
Before I sat down and ruined the seat, I equipped the fresh copy of my Shiro outfit. It did absolutely nothing about drying my wet skin and hair, but at least the clothes weren't soaked through and partly covered in mud or grimm bits that hadn't evaporated. The moisture I took care of with some Water elemental Aura, wicking it away from my body and onto the floor. Dropping down into the leather seat, I loosed a quiet sigh and buckled myself in. "Got the data, and a little something extra. Ever heard of a Dust Core?"
"Hmm… Nope," Penny denied, shaking her head. "Where to?"
Pulling up my map, I looked over the terrain we'd already passed over before selecting a straight stretch of road to the south, in the middle of nowhere between two towns and setting a waypoint. "There. Then we'll swap over to the Duster. Once we've swapped over, we've got a few hours of flight time before we get to Vytal, where we can stretch our legs and get something to eat, and then it's off to Vale." Frowning, I shot her a glance as a thought occurred. "Though, we may have a problem. You've got kind of a distinctive look, there."
Putting a finger up to her lips and tilting her head, Penny hummed, and I had to wonder if it was an affectation or genuine—after all, being an AI running on a mobile platform, surely she could process thoughts and decisions hundreds, if not thousands of times faster than a human mind. It would make sense, though, if she'd been programmed with some basic gestures and mannerisms—like idle animations on a video game character. She shifted her eyes enough to meet mine for a moment and beamed a smile. "Well, you know what that means." I raised an eyebrow and her smile widened. "Shopping!"
"Sure," I rolled my eyes. I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to come up with something for her. Some new clothes, maybe some hair dye… She'd said she was running a user session of my Semblance, so theoretically, she may even be able to make use of the inventory and armor system. It was worth looking into. In the meantime, there were other things I should be asking. Leaning back in my seat, I allowed my body to relax and let my eyes drift closed as I slipped half into Meditation. "So, how do you know what you know? From what I understand, the people at the lab wiped your memory prior to General Ironwood showing up."
"Well," Penny hemmed, hesitating a moment before she admitted, "You told me. Not in words, obviously. If I had to guess, it was when your Semblance registered me as Soulbound."
"Makes about as much sense as anything else," I shrugged. "How much do you know?"
I heard her shift and cracked open one eye to find her looking at me. "About what? You? The situation? The world at large?"
I rolled my eyes. "Little smartass," I murmured, a small smile spreading on my lips. "How about all of the above, in that order."
The gynoid hummed quietly. "About you? Little more than a general summary. I know you are not Jaune Arc, and yet at the same time you are, John. I have a general idea of what you have got planned for the future, and that you know things you should not—but not exactly what you know, though I have to assume that I'm one such example of information you have that you should not. I do not know anything about Remnant that is not in my on-board databases, dictionary, and other resource material—nor do I really know anything about myself, other than that my name is Penny Polendina and the things I have gathered via access to your Semblance. I could connect to the CCT network and explore the internet, but I know you feel that would be a bad idea. What you said about my memories being wiped? I have access to encrypted files on my local storage that look like trash data, but which are not—I think I made a backup copy of my memories. Should I try to decrypt them?"
Turning a look on her, I thought it over a moment before asking, "Do you want to?"
"Y—yes?" she asked, more than answered, as though unsure how I would react to her answer.
There were a few routes I could take here, but really, only one was viable in my opinion. I wanted her to trust me, and that would mean showing her I trusted her as something other than an AI waiting to go rogue. "They're your files, Penny. I'm not going to tell you you can't look at them. Just be careful with them. For all you know, they could've been planted there and may contain code designed as a kill switch for curious rogue AIs, should you ever decide to disobey," I pointed out. After all, if someone wanted to make sure an AI they were programming didn't try to recover its own deleted memories, planting fakes and waiting to see if she accidented herself to death opening them would make for a hell of a loyalty test to ensure she obeyed.
"I will. Thank you, Jaune. Or John. Which do you prefer?" she asked, and I sighed.
"You know, 'Jaune' has grown on me, and it's what everyone else uses. You might as well, too," I chuckled. "Besides, switching back and forth or slipping up would cause problems in the future that I don't want to deal with."
Unbuckling, I pushed myself up from my seat. "Wake me when we get there," I yawned, moving into the back of the Bullhead. Opening my Inventory, I pulled out my sleeping bag and threw it on the floor. Kicking off my boots, I collapsed face first on top of it and let the hum of the engines and the roar of the wind lull me into the blissful dark.
Once I'd been woken again and we switched to the Duster, the flight passed by in a bit of a blur for me, at least until we got to Vytal and I went about constructing a disguise for Penny. Two things kept playing themselves on repeat in my memory—a Griffon burying its claws in me and being pinned to a tree. Gamer's Mind made sure I wouldn't be going into shock, but it did nothing to stop me from dwelling on it. I had come close to dying—twice, in the span of an hour. It ran through my head as a simple fact: water is wet, fire is hot, I was mortal.
Oh, like anyone, I'd lived with the knowledge of my own mortality from the moment I figured it out and had come to grips with it years ago, but not accepted it—never accepted it, because it wasn't something I could accept. Having my nose rubbed in that fact—that even here, with magic and powers only dreamed of where I'd come from I was still just as vulnerable as anyone—really… pissed me off. I was glad, though, in a way—it meant that while Gamer's Mind blunted some things, it couldn't completely screw with my head. I could get truly angry, and likely the rest of the spectrum of human emotion with it. It just wasn't debilitating.
So, instead of simply being lost in anger, I was focused—focused in a way I'd rarely been before. I wanted to enjoy this second chance at life I'd found here in Remnant, and I couldn't do that if I was dead. That lead me to wondering what, exactly, I could do about the situation. As far as preventing my untimely demise by grimm, I could train, obviously. However, now that I really considered it, I didn't particularly feel like keeling over of old age, either. So, I had a new goal, to go along with the first: survive long enough to enjoy the new life I'd been granted and find a way to extend that life indefinitely. Of course, a life without friends and loved ones was a pretty goddamn miserable thing, so I couldn't just find a way to keep myself going and call it a day. I was a caster. I had a Semblance that allowed me to create skills as I needed them, so long as I was strong enough. The solution seemed pretty damn obvious: get strong enough to 'cure' death and age.
That all started as soon as we set foot in Vale again. Well, after I saw the girls and introduced Penny. And explained to Ruby where I'd gone off to and apologized for leaving without saying goodbye. Still, I had spare time to put to use—namely, the time where I'd normally be sleeping. My Semblance negated the need for sleep, to an extent, but not the desire for it. In theory, I had about eight hours extra a day to work on getting stronger, that I hadn't been using. I had never truly put it to the test, however, so this would be a first aside from the occasional all-nighter. No one else could keep that pace, but Penny could. So, that was my plan, once I managed to settle things down after my return.
Still, all of that was for later. At the moment, right this second, I stood staring into no less than five unamused sets of female gazes. I'd set us down at the airfield and Penny and I had made our way back to the apartment, after I'd switched to my Jaune clothes. There, we found the twins, Neo, Ruby, and Jane. The last one was a surprise, until I realized what the date was—Jane had switched with one of the other sisters on baby-sitting duty, Jean I believed. "You are in trouble," Penny pointed out from behind me.
"Quiet, you," I grumbled, ushering her into the room and closing the door behind me. "So, what's up?"
Everyone spoke at once and I sighed, palming my face. After a moment of that, I whistled sharply, silencing the room. "One at a time," I admonished, before pointing randomly, ending up on Ruby. "You first."
"Uhh," the girl hesitated, put on the spot for a moment, before chuckling and remembering her question. "Who's this?" she asked, gesturing towards Penny.
Penny shot me a questioning look and I nodded. The gynoid held out her hand to the little red-and-black haired reaper. "Penny Polendina. Pleased to meet you."
"Ruby Rose. Nice to meet you too," Ruby beamed, accepting the offered hand. A moment later, her smile faltered, shifting into a look of confusion. "That's weird. Your hand feels… um…" she trailed off, sending me a searching look.
I chuckled. I'd discovered that one myself, early on. Penny's pseudo-flesh was warm and soft to the touch, but it was too smooth—there were none of the normal features of regular skin. No pores, no occasional patch of dry or rough skin, no sweat, not even that fine, downy coating of hair pretty much everyone had. "Artificial is the word you're looking for. Penny's a robot. Well, an android. A gynoid, specifically. Atlas made her."
"What?" was the overall consensus at that, before Ruby asked, "How did you convince them to let her come with you?"
"Aw," Melanie chuckled, Miltia giggling beside her. "Isn't that adorable?"
Laughing, Neo nodded. "I know, right?"
Ruby puffed out her cheeks, going red and in the process only making herself more adorable. "What?"
A hand came down on the girl's head, ruffling her hair and drawing a pout. "Sweetie," Jane laughed quietly, "I doubt Atlas parted with her willingly."
"Remember that discussion we had in the Dust store?" I asked Ruby, and she nodded, before taking on a look of understanding, mouth forming a small 'o.' "Yeah. Next! You," I pointed at Melanie.
The twin rolled her eyes. "You look like shit."
Beside her, Miltia nodded. "How bad was it?"
Sighing, I moved out of the entryway and into my living room, dropping down into my chair as the girls took seats on the couches. "Honestly? Worse than I was expecting, but better than it could have been. You should see the other guy."
"When I activated, Jaune was pinned to a Pinus Ponderosa with a six foot giant Nevermore pinion through his chest cavity," Penny supplied.
"A what?" Jane asked, raising an eyebrow.
"A pine tree," Penny clarified. "I removed it. And then removed the grimm. With lasers. That is not counting all the little feathers sticking out of his armor."
"Traitor," I hissed quietly at her. I hadn't been intending to share that detail.
The gynoid looked confused. "But Jaune, it's true."
"Show us," Melanie demanded, and I sighed, stood up out of my comfortable chair, and equipped the set of gear I'd worn during the battle. The pinions were gone, but the armor itself was in a bad state, being that it was full of holes of varying sizes. "You look like someone used you as a pin cushion."
"Pretty much," I rolled my eyes and shifted my gaze towards Neo as I swapped gear and dropped back into my chair. "My turn?" she asked, and I nodded. "I was going to ask if you'd stolen anything interesting, but you've got that covered," she grinned, gesturing towards Penny. "She's cute. We can keep her, right? And on that note though, I thought you said you couldn't dupe people."
"I am not a human," Penny answered, before I could respond. "While I produce an Aura while active and I am capable of independent thought, in my inactive state I am as much an inanimate object as a gun, a chair, or a Dust crystal." Not enough biological material to count as a living being, in other words. Something flickered across her face too fast for me to catch, but it came over clearly through the connection we shared—as clearly as a tangled up knot of someone else's raw emotions could.
'Penny?' I sent, and her eyes met mine. 'What's wrong?'
The gynoid smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. 'I am simply worried about the original Penny, Jaune. There is nothing you can do about it at the moment, so please do not worry yourself over it.'
'Worried about,' I noted, as opposed to 'worried for.' It didn't take a huge leap of logic to realize she was likely going through her own little existential crisis at the moment. Reaching out, I pulled her into a hug against my side and ran the fingers of one hand through her hair, drawing a surprised look from the ancula. I knew a pointless battle when I saw one—I would never convince her she wasn't simply a copy with words alone, so I wouldn't try. Actions would speak louder than words and that was a fight I could win, though it would take time. In the meantime, she was right in a way—I was currently doing all I was capable of at the moment as far as that problem went and it would be a 'wait and see' situation.
Finally, I turned to Jane, who looked the least amused of all. "Why didn't you tell one of us you were going?"
I blinked, thinking it over. The truth was, it honestly hadn't occurred to me to do so. It was only a short trip and I hadn't been expecting much in the way of trouble. Aside from that, well, there was no point needlessly worrying her, Joan, or any of the rest of the Arcs over it. As I opened my mouth to answer, she sighed and rolled her eyes. "Never mind. I get it."
"I didn't say anything," I pointed out.
Jane shot me an amused grin. "You didn't have to. I've seen that look enough to know it anywhere. It didn't even occur to you." My expression must have been amusing, as she laughed. "Called it."
"Sorry." I apologized, and the woman shrugged.
Pushing up off her seat, she stretched and headed for the door. "Well, I'll leave you kids alone." Shifting her green-eyed gaze to me, she added, "I'm taking the next couple of days off, so come visit, okay?"
"Sure," I agreed. The door closed behind her and I turned to the others, who had been mostly quiet. Now, they were all—except Penny, seated beside Ruby—sending me expectant looks. "What?"
"Details!" Ruby demanded, to laughter from the others.
I hummed, looking them over. "You want details?" I asked, and they nodded. "I want a glass of something alcoholic." Neo, being the closest, got up and moved into the kitchen after a glass. "So, I got a message the other night from a project I'd been working on, letting me know it'd found something interesting…" Taking the glass in hand and taking a pull off it as Neo returned to her seat, I settled into my chair and got comfortable. 'It's good to be home.'
As I began retelling the whole escapade, my mind began putting facts together, and several stood out as being of immediate importance. Firstly, I had gotten a scroll call while inside an Atlas black site. Cinder herself had warned me that using my scroll at the SDC quarry would tip them off. How much of a stretch was it to assume that the black site would be going over local transmissions with a fine-toothed comb and would, eventually, come across a call logged as connecting to the nearest tower from the area of the facility, from a scroll that didn't belong to anyone who worked there? Worse, Candice had used my real name—even if just my first name, and I'd used hers. And even if I hadn't answered, there would still be a record of a scroll not on the usual list of those working at the facility connecting to the CCT network. It could be done on Earth, so I had to assume Remnant could as well.
No, it was too great a risk to leave alone and I couldn't put it off. I had at least two things to do before I could consider that dealt with. First, to buy three replacement scrolls. One of those would go to Candice, the other two would stay in Inventory, clearly labeled for separate use as Jaune and Shiro, while both my and Candice's originals were to be destroyed. Secondly, to remote login to my server in the Red Hand's base and have it sift through the CCT towers for the one nearest the black site. I assumed physical access was needed for some things, otherwise Cinder never would've needed to infiltrate the CCT tower at Beacon, but being networked meant there was a whole lot of nasty things I could do to it from afar—potentially even remote-wipe their logs for the last day, or just edit out the entries I wanted removed.
'Wait. The CCT tower for Vale isn't at Beacon. It's on the other side of Vale from Beacon. I'd know, I've been there.' Shaking my head, I put it aside to investigate later—at least I'd planned ahead on that account, when I'd done the Repository job. Pushing up out of my chair, I reequipped my work clothes and made my excuses to the girls, letting them know I'd be back soon, before taking off into the city.
Secondly on my list of Bad Things that had not gone according to plan: Atlas had seen me, or at least Shiro, and had to have video of much of that fight—I could assume everything from the time I kited the nameless back to their base was recorded. From throwing around fireballs to plasma swords to controlling grimm, if they had seen everything from the time of the missile impact. Otherwise, at the very least, they'd seen Sanguine and maybe Flash Freeze, plus Conjuration and Telekinesis. Of course, my only other option at the time being 'become grimm chow,' being caught on camera was the lesser of two evils there. No, the part that was worrying was that they had Penny on camera and physical evidence of her presence there, in the form of a section of their wall having been blasted down by the diminutive gynoid. It wouldn't take them long at all to go down and check to see if she was still there, then put two and two together and start wondering where Penny 2.0 came from.
Penny activating when she did had likely saved my life. Odds of me getting that pinion out before I bled out were slim, though I'd never know if I could have mustered enough strength to break it the rest of the way and pull myself off. I had a feeling that even trying to cast heals would've failed—you can't just 'heal' having an object physically stuck inside your body. For example, bullets could stay lodged in people for years until they were removed. Hindsight being 20/20, I hadn't had much in the way of options at the time.
Briefly, I wondered if Gamer's Mind or my WIS or INT scores were broken, before shaking off the thought. Thinking clearly in a tense situation, having the intelligence to come up with a plan on the fly, and the wisdom to decide on the best course of action were all well and good—but meant little when there were no good options, only options with varying degrees of negative consequences. In fact, constantly second guessing myself on that front was not just counter-productive but potentially harmful if it lead to a future situation where, instead of making the sort of snap decisions I needed to make to survive, I wasted time trying to find some other means to get out of a situation. Clarity of action and purpose was one of the most useful things someone could have in a battle, whereas hesitation and indecision got people killed.
So, good news was that I was alive. Bad news was that it was at the cost of Atlas seeing a duplicate of their combat gynoid in action, likely at a level they had never trusted the original with. I could attempt to hack the black site itself using the same exploit I'd be using for the tower, but I got the feeling that wouldn't play out the way I wanted it to. I would try, but I wasn't going to hold my breath. It would be better if I just planned around not being able to simply erase the digital evidence. That in mind, my first step for throwing off any potential pursuers from Atlas would have to be to have Shiro lay low for a while. Maybe take up a new look, or alter my current outfit somehow to call any connection into question. 'Well, it shouldn't be too hard to avoid being seen as Shiro. I'm already pretty paranoid about running around under Invisibility as it is.'
The whole geo-political climate thing with Atlas and their weapons development would have to take a back burner to keeping Shiro and Penny off of Atlas's radar for the immediate future. 'Now there's a buzzword I never thought I'd find myself using un-ironically,' I mused, finding a blind alley to switch outfits so I could buy new scrolls as Jaune, with cash. 'Maybe I can talk Candice into doing some research for me, if she's not too busy necking with her new beau, since this is at least partly her fault with her horrible timing. …I really, really hope he's not in when I get to her place. That is not a conversation I want to have. "Who's this, honey?" he'll ask. "Oh, just my ex-boyfriend," she'll answer. And then I'll have to mind-rape him just so I don't have to listen to the whining and/or posturing. Fuck today. Just fuck this day. I demand a do-over, or a re-roll, or even a God-save.'
And then, of course, in addition to actually having to deal with Atlas and the evidence I'd left behind there were other things needing addressing over the next few days, once I finished covering my ass that is. I'd had a few glaring weaknesses pointed out to me recently, and now I needed to see about rectifying them. First and foremost among them was my physical durability—or, more precisely, my lack thereof.
I'd gotten the message after the first near death experience, but having a giant nevermore feather rammed through my guts to pin me to a tree, leaving me mostly helpless to do anything about it had driven the point home. I needed to get stronger. More to the point, I needed to level physical resistance and my shields so that this could never happen again, and if it did, I'd be better able to deal with it. That would be a good first step towards my longterm goals.
It was with that in mind that I recruited Penny to help. As it turned out, all of Penny's weapons were powered by her internal Dust store—and since those weapons were swords and some sort of laser/beam gun, they didn't run on traditional ammunition. The swords themselves took little energy at all for physical attacks—practically nothing, according to the gynoid. The beam weapons took more, but as Penny had said, I'd given her the good stuff. Ignoring overheating issues, she could have fired a continuous individual beam for years before she ran out of juice—such was the power of a grade 9 crystal being used properly.
So, we trained—though, I don't think most people would call it that. Our training went in phases. The first stage was to open an ID and clear it out, expanding the cleared area around the apartment as we went. The next stage was the most painful—hand to hand martial arts practice, in between allowing Penny to simply wail on me to improve my endurance. Considering Penny was made of some of the strongest, toughest materials Atlas could produce—even the soft parts—there were times I wondered how I didn't break my own bones hitting her at times.
All of which was done while under the effects of Gravity Manipulation—not to decrease my weight, but rather the opposite, increasing the weight on my body. As opposed to wearing weighted clothes or working out with weights, doing it that way would give an even distribution of weight across my entire body. The only real issues I could foresee were the effects of a heavy gravity environment on a human body but then, my Gamer's Body wasn't necessarily entirely human any more, and whatever damage was done I could heal.
Good news? It worked, and I gained points in CON and STR in addition to leveling Physical Resistance. Bad news? It hurt. Oh god damn but it hurt. Which was why that phase was in the middle, specifically so I could have a breather afterwards before we moved on to the next area. Phase three involved training my shields by letting Penny burn them down with lasers—all of them, until I ran out of mana and had to sit and meditate to refill it. After which, we would move on to a new area and start all over.
The second glaring weakness I'd noticed was in my movement options. I was fast on the ground, and I could otherwise move well in the city where I had a whole lot of tall buildings to turn into my personal playground, but out in the open I had to rely on Air Walk for the majority of, well, everything if I was above ground level. The skill was useful, but it had its limits. I could only move with a 45 degree inclination or declination, unless I wanted to jump or purposefully fall.
I could use Flash Step and Run, but maneuvering in three dimensions required shifting my body around to create platforms to 'land' on and kick off of with Powered Leap—and while that was amazingly useful over short distances against enemies I intended to fight, it was terrible for long distances against fast enemies I was trying to run the hell away from.
I needed powered flight, desperately. However, I couldn't just create that skill with Skill Creation due to a lack of base stat points in INT, unless I wanted to start dumping saved points into that one stat. Instead, I needed to figure out some way to cheat—to game the system. So, after my bouts with Penny, I spent time testing theory. It was Neo's suggestion that I use Telekinesis that stuck out most, so that was where I focused my efforts—making sure to use the skill as much as possible, in as many ways as possible, to level it quickly to the point where I could even consider making the attempt to abuse it the way I wanted to.
Once I got Telekinesis up to level 10, I began testing. My first few tests were pretty simple affairs, done on a small scale, to at least see if it was possible. First, I created a single flat plane of force, similar to my A.T. Field. After that, I moved on to testing the shape in water to make sure it would retain its form. Once I was certain it would, I began experimenting with different shapes and combinations of shapes in three dimensions—spheres, tubes, eggs, pyramids, and so forth.
My first live test to scale was made in the middle of a long glide, from one of the tallest buildings in downtown Vale. Deploying Telekinesis, I focused on creating a large, triangular plane above me shaped similarly to a hang glider. The test was both a success and a resounding failure. The construct caught wind and immediately threw my balance off while killing much of my forward air speed, nearly sending me into an uncontrolled tumble for the ground. I'd been expecting that though, so I'd had my line launcher ready and managed to recover quickly. After that, it was back to the drawing board.
Firstly, I needed a shape that would cover the entirety of my body, while still being aerodynamic. That ruled out a bubble or egg and lead to a more tapered shape, more akin to a bullet, stretching from just in front of my head to just beyond my feet. I knew enough about aerodynamics, thanks to my education, a natural curiosity, and my skills to know that I would need some sort of lift surface. I had an entire other world's worth of aviation history to borrow from—or, at least, what I remembered.
A bullet design with short wings at its sides allowed me to glide without the wing-suit, but I quickly noticed the absence of wind inside the construct—I'd sealed it completely, which was a mistake. No wind meant no new breathable air. Making the field porous would be a mistake, so instead I created openings at the nose and tail to allow air to pass through. That still left me with the fact that I was still just gliding with style and had little to no control over the direction I was going. So, focusing on maneuverability first, I worked in areas into the field that would flex and change shape, creating what amounted to flaps.
With gravity manipulation, I was light enough to maneuver, but it was still awkward and without thrust it would continue to be. That in mind, I went to work on the powered part of my flight problem. With wind elemental manipulation, I could easily generate lift and even some thrust, but not in the sort of volume I needed. So, once more, I turned to telekinesis and knowledge from Earth.
My first real success at generating any kind of thrust like I wanted came as sort of an accident. I didn't yet have enough fine control to do what I really wanted—that is, simulate a jet turbine engine using tiny bits of force. Instead, I wound up emulating something more akin to a prop plane or a helicopter, if either of those had mated with a squid and the bastard offspring had made it to adulthood. Reaching out around me with large, shaped blades of force, I could grab air and use it to throw myself forward, essentially swimming through the air. Refining their shape and rotating them allowed me a smoother, more controlled flight, but my speed was still low. In fact, my speed was low enough and the squid construct allowed me enough control at that speed, that I didn't really need the rest of the complicated construct I'd been creating. The bullet shaped streamlining helped, but the wings were all but useless and if I wasn't moving at speed then I didn't really need the outer bullet-shell.
Still, it wasn't anywhere near as fast as I wanted. Both the Duster and the Bullheads could outrun me, and I was nowhere near my top run speed—which I'd finally taken the time to clock, at something like 250mph on a straight shot, using Haste and Flash Step. It would suffice, for the moment, but it looked like I'd hit a major hurdle in the control department—meaning I either needed to level up Telekinesis, or start dumping points in INT, or both if I wanted to truly fly at the speeds I would need to outrun trouble. And if I was going to dump points, then I may as create my own flight skill—and I was still holding out hope that by actually taking the time sitting in Beacon for eight hours a day to study, even if it wasn't necessarily the material they wanted studied, would allow me to gain points in INT. That didn't mean the entire exercise had been useless—far from it. I could now freely maneuver in midair as I saw fit, and combining it with my other movement skills allowed me some options I hadn't had before and a greater ability to dodge attacks while in the air.
My third mistake had been a failure to plan ahead on my part and take advantage of everything available to me. Namely, in this instance, I had been putting off finishing out my list of essential spells—namely, the D&D set. Specifically, buffs. I suppose it was one part wistful thinking and one part hubris, assuming that I'd been thorough enough in my preparation, leveling, and training that I could face what I needed to and run away from what I couldn't kill outright. In another way, I'd… wanted a challenge, as opposed to simply walking up and being able to overkill whatever got in my way.
Well, I'd gotten a taste of one, and I didn't like it. At all. My versatility and skill levels created an odd disparity—against other Hunters in my level range, I had enough tricks in my bag that so far I'd yet to fail to come up with something that would allow me to defeat or escape them, and I'd yet to have an excuse to go all out against someone to find out what my limits were there. However, against beings so much more powerful than myself, when most of those tricks—and my favorite ones, no less—failed I came up short. Lethally short. At the moment, I was the epitome of the phrase 'jack of all trades, master of none.'
All I could really do about becoming a master of anything was train—practice, grind, and level until it stopped being an issue. Until then, though, my best bet would be to fill in the holes where I could, abusing the magic systems I knew of to boost my power up far beyond what it should be at this level by using buffs. In other words, more of exactly what I had been doing. Looking at my stats, I hadn't felt I'd truly needed them yet, but level disparity was a bitch and I wasn't keen on falling into that trap again. Though, given what I knew now about the way Aura leveled—at least for me—I suspected others may get a similar boost in power, which would account for different levels in strength in people roughly of the same age and level of training. Aside from that, and I'd been developing bad habits. As with Haste, I'd grown used to holding up the buffs I did have full time and adjusting myself downwards to 'normal,' or close to it. I'd never truly pushed myself to the limit of what I was capable of as things stood—and taking a few cheap shots didn't count.
As far as buffs went, Focus had helped, but there were others I knew of—and what the hell, if I was already on the 'jack of all trades' route, I may as well start filling in my wish list. So, I spent a morning simply going down the list seeing what worked and what didn't. Bull's Strength, Bear's Endurance, Cat's Grace, Owl's Wisdom, Fox's Cunning, and Eagle's Splendor, all came from various incarnations of Dungeons and Dragons and each individually gave me a 20% bonus to six of my seven stats, increasing 1% per level—which, when I did the math on it, sounded about right as far as what the skills had given in their source material. Well, aside from the fact that my skills grew progressively as opposed to having to learn a higher version later. I hadn't yet been able to create one to increase Luck, however, though I didn't mind as I was more focused on stat boosts and defensive spells. And with that in mind, I'd gone out of my way to create Mage Armor as well, granting me another level of magical defense on top of my shields, Reinforcement, and Aura, adding 10% plus 1% per level of damage reduction on top of what I already had.
Some things I either couldn't create yet, or couldn't create at all. For instance, Spell Turning was a complete failure, as was the 'Protection Against X' class of spells. Skill Creation failed to even engage at the idea—meaning I couldn't just turn back Aura, Semblance, or Dust based attacks on their casters or protect myself against generic 'evil.' Time Stop was a bust for the moment, but only for the moment—I hadn't gotten a non-response, rather I'd gotten the same response as when I tried to create flight: skill point level insufficient, essentially. Likewise with most of the Travel Domain stuff. I'd created Locate Object, which did pretty much what it said on the tin—Dimension Door, Teleport, and Phase Door were all beyond me at the moment, however, while Astral Projection… well, the answer I'd gotten wasn't a 'not yet' or a non-answer, but rather a 'no.' For the first time, my Semblance had actively refused to create a spell, and that worried me for a variety of reasons.
Oddly, I'd had a harder time creating many of the spells I remembered from that particular genre once I started going down my mental list and actually trying my hand at creating new spells en masse as opposed to just the stuff on my list that I considered most useful to my current situation. Most were either out of reach or received non-answers, though I was beginning to notice a definite pattern. Create Water, for instance was a level 0 spell that created clean, drinkable water from nothing. I couldn't do it. My Semblance refused to budge on it.
On the other hand, if I wanted to create water, I could call up Water elemental Aura and pull water vapor out of the air, moisture out of the ground, trees, grass and so forth until I'd achieved essentially the same result—just without the 'creating something from nothing' thing. Augury, a level 2 Cleric spell, was met with the same result—so I couldn't directly ask the universe itself to fact check me or throw me a bone. I couldn't Detect Undead, nor could I Bless or Curse objects. I could, however, make a variant specific to grimm, in Detect Grimm, and another for spirits, in Detect Spirit—once I'd stopped trying to cast it as Divination and instead look for specific energy signatures.
The rules seemed to be fairly simple, then: spells couldn't create something from nothing, call on divine favor or the universe itself, nor were 'undead' technically a thing—spirits notwithstanding, I suppose. With those things in mind, it was not surprising that most of the stuff that was typically in a Cleric's purview was out of my reach—but it had made the most sense to start there for establishing a baseline on what was possible and what wasn't. Still, I had Wizard, Sorcerer, Bard, Druid, and Ranger to go through at the very least. I wasn't going to get everything in one sitting, however—odds were good I'd miss something like that. So, I made a note to make it a daily thing to try to create at least three new spells and moved on.
The last big issue I'd found had come about before I'd left to go get Penny. It was something I'd pretty much resigned myself to as being inevitable. I'd spent enough time fighting as Shiro, using that style of combat, that fighting as Jaune, without using my more obvious spells, was awkward, by comparison. That one was more easily resolved than figuring out how to fly, thankfully. All I really had to do was get some fighting time in as Jaune, with the weapons I'd be using. So, I modified my routine. Instead of gathering all the mobs in the barriers Penny and I were clearing and nuking them from orbit with Fireball, I gathered them and laid into them with sword, shield, and rifle in an effort to familiarize myself with my equipment.
Using Telekinesis and Conjuration gave me an extra edge and some much needed practice. I was tempted to practice without Flash Step, but honestly, it was simply too useful not to use. True, it was one of the few skills that could tie me to my other identities, but I honestly didn't think anyone would notice. As Shiro, I had a habit of using hit and run tactics or instant kill techniques, using Flash Step to move between multiple opponents quickly. With Jaune, I could become a shield for anyone I could see in the range of my skill, taking blows that would have struck from blind spots and the like. Aside from that, I figured if I had to use Flash Step in my close quarters attack patterns, as long as I didn't go for surprise one-hit kills, no one would really link the two identities. There were simply too many people with incredible speed out there to point at three different people with three different fighting styles and say they were the same person in disguise. Hell, Team RWBY had three people that could pull off the same thing by themselves.
That was, of course, assuming I took a forward position instead of taking on the position of heavy fire support/artillery. Really, of all the teams I knew of from 'canon,' Teams RWBY and JNPR had been the most unbalanced individually. RWBY was best suited as a strike team, plain and simple. On the other hand, JNPR was a good support team, providing heavy defense. Individually, either team had the potential to be good. Together, however, they were great. I'd had the thought before—other team combinations could work, but those two had Synergy in a way others did not. Then again, that was going off of what I remembered from two seasons of the series. Maybe they introduced new teams later, for all I knew.
The only other teams we'd seen as belonging to Beacon had been CRDL and CFVY, which, come to think of it, followed the same pattern—discounting the rabbit faunus girl, as I had no idea what she did. Maybe that was Ozpin's thing? Maybe he'd intentionally set up four-man teams of different configurations—assault and defense teams—and no four-man cell was meant to work alone. Maybe the canny bastard had always meant for teams to be paired. I had no way of knowing without asking.
How hard would it be to aim those spring platforms used during the initiation ceremony and throw two people in the same general direction and see what happened? It would really just boil down to basic math for the angles and force required, and a little probability as to whether or not two people in the same general vicinity would find each other as opposed to taking off in opposite directions, completely unaware of each other. It didn't account for people like Yang sending herself flying down range, but then I think Ozpin would have been aware of that possibility and he was simply hedging his bets by controlling who went where on a general level.
Of course, all of that would only truly begin once I finished un-fucking the Atlas situation. With no re-rolls or do-overs forthcoming, I valiantly resisted the urge to face-palm and set about doing some fast damage control.
"Time to get to work."