A Wicked Game

by RandomPeon

When stuck into a rigged game, the best option was to not play and change the game. Now reincarnated as Torchwick's son, I faced a cruel game in which the other player, Salem, couldn't lose. Thus, time to play a different game. First fic, SI, partial Yu-Gi-Oh crossover, because the mc can't help himself.

10. It's time to d-d-d-d-duel!

Well, this chapter was finished way faster than I expected.

Went back to Total war: Medieval 2 a few days ago. It's been a while since I've played that game.

I picked the Scotts this time, kicked the English outside of Britain and am currently sabotaging their war effort against France while maintaining good relations with the French. Getting some good Auld Alliance vibes there. Feels good.

Anyway, Ilia, what comments do we have?

Ilia: *Sigh* ''We have Reader 451, who can't decide whether there only having one Rose alive at a time is due to Salem finding them or Ozpin throwing the eldest one away to only keep one at a time. He also figured I was gonna die as soon as I went to talk to the dickheads brothers.''

Yeah, your death was kind of telegraphed on purpose. As for the Rose situation… I'm gonna have to not say it for now. Is Summer dead because Salem got to her, or did Ozpin intentionally sacrificed her? Until it becomes confirmed in the fic, it's both and neither at the same time, you'll have to wait before opening the Schrodinger's Rose box.

Ilia: ''GhostToast42 says he loved the political themes and he thinks the fic is a great take on the world of Remnant and the gamer semblance. He also says he would love to see more.''

Well, ask and thou shall receive. I hope you will like this one too. It doesn't have the heavy political themes the last few chapters had, but those will come back soon enough in future chapters.

Ilia, what's next?

Ilia: ''No…''

What do you mean, no?

Ilia: ''The next comment to answer is way too long, I am not reading that.''

Oh yes you will. Now that you're dead and not contributing to the story, you're going to make yourself useful. No free loaders in my author notes.

Ilia: ''Freel… You're the one who made me die early, you asshole!''

So?

Ilia: ''Grrr… Fine. Kolomte'49 says he liked how you described my skin changing colors according to my emotions and that a story where I dated someone like Yang who would tease me because she'd find my color changes adorable would be funny.''

I cannot take any credit for it. This is not only how real chameleons works, but something Ilia actually did in the show. I invented nothing there. That being said, the story idea amused me too.

Ilia: ''I do not consent to be paired with this Yang girl, I don't even know who that is.''

Here, look at this picture of Yang.

Ilia, whistling: ''Damn, she's hot.''

Well, she changed her tune pretty fast.

What do Kolomte says next?

Ilia: ''Mmh… He assumed that the Grimm being more active was Salem's doing. I could see that being the case.''

Me too, but it's not. I've already said in a previous author note that in this fic, Salem had a range on how far she could command the Grimm. Sure, that range is bigger than any Grimm in the world, but another continent is way too far. Even if Salem had the ability to stir the Grimm around Sumire, why would she waste her time with a relatively small settlement when most of those would fall when she would hit Beacon and Vale anyway?

No, the Grimm moves and 'migrates' according to their natural 'instincts', causing some regions to sometimes have temporarily increased Grimm activities, similar to a (sur)natural catastrophe. It just happens. It can last a few months, if lucky, or a few years. Sometimes a few decades. So no, this wasn't a domino effect that made Salem do this, but simply me worldbuilding how the Grimm act naturally without Salem's input.

A lot of last chapter was worldbuilding. It's one of my favorite part of writing, to be honest, even if I have to cut a lot of worldbuilding to avoid it turning into long info dumps essays.

Ilia: ''After that, he talks about Roman's robber knight role and wonder how Ruby in the show would feel if it was canon and she found out about it.''

Probably pretty bad, but I doubt Roman in canon was doing something like that and that his death caused people to die.

Ilia: ''Who is Coeur?''

Uh?

Ilia: ''Kolomte said, and I quote: ''I honestly cannot think of any RWBY story that makes me think that this one is not in second place with Coeur's stories…''''

Whoa! Second only to Coeur? I can't say I can believe it's the case, the very idea of my fic being compared to Coeur's stories boggles my mind. But I am extremely flattered by the compliment, it's beyong anything I've ever hoped for when I started writing.

I don't know if I can express how happy I am of receiving such a compliment. Not with only written words.

I'm screenshotting this part of the comment and will put it on my fridge.

Ilia: ''After that he says that the way you gave background to Ruby's family was great and reminded him of the court of the Owls in… Wait, what does Owls have to do with a bat Faunus?''

Bat Faunus? Ilia, what are you talking about… Oooooh. (She meant Batman. Silly Ilia.)

This chapter also contain information on a character's family legacy, so if you liked that part in the last chapter, then I hope you will like it there too. It's not the focus as much as in the last chapter, though. Just a short mention.

Ilia: ''After that, he says that his favorite part is how you develop the society and history and the family ennemies of Ruby. He also says that he liked the Chibi Omake.''

Yeah, the Christmas Chibi Omake seemed to have been well received. I've had two other comments about it.

Disclaimer: RWBY doesn't belong to me, it is the creation of Monty Oum, a wonderful man I wish I had knew before his passing, and currently the legal property of Rooster Teeth. Yu-Gi-Oh doesn't belong to me, it is the creation of Kazuki Takahashi and the legal properties of Shueisha, the publisher of Shonen Jump. ''You thought you were reading a RWBY fic, but it was I, a Yu-Gi-Oh fic!''

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the 19 300 words long chapter. Well, 12 300 words if you don't like Yu-Gi-Oh and decides to skip that part.

---

''So that's how it is?'' I mumbled, displeased by the news I just received.

I was sitting in one of Aquilain's cafe's private booth, Onyx sitting in front of me.

My father allowed me to come out of Patch for one day since I needed the place's privacy, but that was with the promise that it wasn't about the White Fang and that the day in question was recycled at the end of the two month.

''Something happened, I won't be able to continue training Jaune.'' He texted me out of the blue.

Apparently, Nicholas Arc caught Onyx training Jaune behind his back red-handed and kicked him out of Ansel. And by 'kicking him out', I meant beat him to a pulp and had him banned from the village's territory by the local law enforcement. That was a bit of an overreaction, all this because a complete stranger paid an unknow adult to pass time with one of his kids. What could have possibly ticked the guy off?

… I was going to have to stay away from the man, for personal health reasons.

''I want a report of Jaune's capability.'' I demanded.

''Ah… Well, he only had a little above a year of training, but he learned surprisingly fast. He's got a decent grasp of swordplay, but a little less with his shield since I don't use those and was only able to teach him the barebone basics. His control of aura was coming alone well too, though we haven't quite figured out his semblance yet. He did use it by accident twice during training, but we just don't know what exactly it does or how to activate it.''

''Do you think he'll be able to pass Beacon initiation once he'll hit 17?''

Onys looked pensive. ''… Probably? He can still continue praticing with his weapon even if he can't advance in his training without a teacher. He also can continue refining his aura control too even if he started too late to learn an advanced technique in that timeframe, as well as continue developing his muscles. I think he'll probably be able to use his semblance by then too, with how close he is already. He's likely to be at the bottom of his class, or maybe the middle at best, but I think he can make it.''

Good. So long as he was competent enough to pass initiation without needing to be carried by someone else, I'll consider my investment in him to be have been a good decision.

I also never expected Jaune to show up with advanced aura techniques. Those were extremely hard to learn. Aura in its basic abilities was able to fasten the user's healing speed, give a preconition that you were in danger if something hostile was looking at you without your knowledge and protecting you, your clothes and your weapons (well, any object you held. the larger, the harder). Any huntsman in training could do those the moment their aura was unlocked, but the more advanced techniques could take decades to learn. The easiest technique to learn was an improvement on the precognition ability so that instead of merely warning you of the danger, it also warned you of which direction it was going to come from, an ability that Ren used during initiation. Only about a quarter of students learned that technique by the time they graduated from Beacon, the rest usually were usually able to use it in the handful of years following their graduation, so it was pretty impressive that he mastered it before even coming to the academy.

Even more impressive was that he knew the Aura Shield and Aura Pulse as well, which were usually only used by a small percentage of aura specialists and first years who could use one of the two techniques numbered in the double digits out of thousands of students, all four academies included. You could use your hands to count how many first years showed up knowing both… in a decade.

… I just came to the conclusion that Ren wasn't just good with his aura, but scary good.

Of course, he only used each of those once in the show, but to be fair, Team RWBY had a lot more occasions to show off in the first three volumes than Team JNPR. And we all knew RT forgot what the characters were able to do in volume 5.

Fox Alistair also used the Aura Pulse at the end of Volume 2, and I vaguely remembered something about him using aura to 'see'? Aura Sight was an even more advanced technique than Heightened Precognition, but just like most huntsmen learned the latter in the first years of their carrier, all huntsmen above 35 got Aura Sight down. That technique wasn't an actual 'sight', but an extra sense that allowed huntsmen to feel their surroundings. Mr Xiao-Long and Mr Branwen 100% had it, as did Mr Arc.

That was why I wasn't pissed at Onyx for getting caught. It was inevitable that Jaune's father was going to catch him. Rather, it was good of him to have been able to train Jaune for this long.

There was also the Aura Slice, a technique that was performed with a bladed weapon as a medium (although non-bladed weapons had their own tricks as well.) It extended the reach of a cutting blade's beyond the physical object itself. Honestly? It made me think of the skyward strike in Zelda, or some cutting Futon jutsus in Naruto. The knights of Vale and the samurais of Mistral were know to make regular use of the move.

A warrior of Vale once achieved heroic fame because he cut down a hundred Grimm in a single swing using this technique. That warrior was given a title of nobility, a last name, and was knighted by the king, he was the first of the Arc. For most people, the move was just a way to cut a Grimm or two a few feet beyond their usual reach, though.

Blake used the move once… If I remembered right. She used a move where a purple arc made of her aura extended from her blade. Was it in the Black trailer? Maybe it was in another episode… Or maybe it was just a non-canon thing in Grimm Eclipse and I was just wrong about her being able to use the technique?

I knew Jaune wasn't far from being able to use the Aura Slice in Volume 4, though. The gushes of wind that extended from his blade when he trained during the night? That was how the Aura Slice looked when someone had yet to master it well enough for combat use and it was still inoffensive, it was only able to push some wind. Once mastered, it would form a sharp arc of energy with the same color as the user's aura.

Manipulating the elemental energies of dust also required using aura, however the skills to use aura techniques didn't really overlap with using dust. If I had to use D&D terms to describe it, or G&G (Garrison&Grimm) on Remnant, then I'd say dust techniques were like spells that used INT and aura techniques were like spells that used WIS. My semblance didn't care for the difference, though. I already knew it based all of my Skills on my DEX. Which would be insanely broken if, you know, I was able to actually use my Skill Points.

There was one aura technique that interested more than the others; Concealment, using your aura to erase your presence. It did nothing to make you unseen to the naked eyes, contrary to what some Mistrali myths claimed ninjas could do, but it allowed to hide from the effect of other's aura's precognition, Heightened Precognition and Aura Sight. It was impossible to sneak up on a huntsman without that skill. I only managed to sneak attack Ruby during our spar because her basic precognition was only able to tell her I was around (which, duh, she already knew since we were sparring,) and couldn't tell her where I was hiding, when, or where I was going to attack from.

I needed concealment. Otherwise I was never going to be able to sneak up on Cinder and cutting her throat open in her sleep. That was much safer than fighting her head-on and as much as gathering allies to defeat her could work, there was a very high risk of someone other than Cinder dying. I'd rather keep Ruby, Jaune and the rest of the gang alive if possible. Myself, too.

Unfortunately, all I could do was toggle my aura on and off, the most basic control of aura. I failed to make any progress with anything else and was going to stagnate until I found the aura fragment with the ability of using my Skill Points.

Speaking of which, just where the hell were those? I hadn't found or heard anything about any fragments since the two I found on my twelfth birthday.

''Uh… Boss?'' Onyx said, pulling me away from my thought.

''Sorry, I was thinking. Onyx, I won't need your service anymore, but you've done a great job. Thank you, and good luck with your next contract.'' I said with a smile. He really did well, but I just really didn't need a huntsman for anything else right now. I was keeping his number in case I needed him again in the future, though.

Well, I guessed I had one more person to call for the big fight against Cinder. If I didn't find another way of killing her and it came to that.

''W-wait, please. Do you really not have anything I could help with?''

''… No? Can't think of anything off the top of my head.''

''I'm willing to do any job, please. You use a sword, I could help train you too.'' Thanks, but I was built different. ''Or I could help you with homework, or intimidate bullies into leaving you alone, or clean your room. Is there a girl you fancy? I could be your wingman.''

… Oh for God's sake, I guessed I should have expected Maroon's teammate to be as hopeless as she was.

Also, was he just trying to think of normal teenager's problems I might have? I had problems to solve, yeah, but none of those were of that category. I really didn't need h-

Wait, now that I thought about it…

''Actually, I might need you for one thing.''

''Yes! Alright, what can you tell me about the girl?''

What? ''I'm not talking about you being my wingman, I need you to find someone for me.''

''Oh. Okay, who is it?''

''Her name is Maria Calavera-''

''Ah! A childhood sweetheart, I knew it.''

… Eww, no. She was way too old for me.

''She's not my sweetheart you absolute smooth brain.'' I said, my insult making him blink. ''She's an old lady. Seriously, eww.''

''Ah… So what's the mission exactly?''

''I need you to find her and convince her to come and met me in Vale. The sooner, the better. She's short and has an old model of artificial eyes since she lost her original eyes in a mission.''

''Got it. With her name, that should be enough to find her.'' Onyx nodded. ''But how do I convince her to follow, is she likely to be willing?''

Not at first, she was retired after all, and I wasn't sure she'd be happy that someone tracked her down and found her to convince her to go to another continent.

''I have a message for her aiming at convincing her, note it down.'' I weighted my next word while he was taking a pen and a notepad from his pockets. ''The light that cleanse the darkness has yet to be extinguished. A silver reaper awaits in Vale, in need of guidance.''

He noted the message, before looking at it with a perplexed look. ''That's rather… cryptic. Are you sure she will understand?''

''She will.'' Any silver-eyed warrior who knew about their power and how to use it would know as long as they had functionning neurons. ''It's meant to be cryptic to anyone else but her. That includes you. No offense, but that's really important information. The kind of intel that could change the fate of the four kingdoms.''

There was a moment of silence, before his face morphed into a growing unease.

''Oh gods, you're serious? Are you really sure of what you're saying, this isn't some kid's game you're doing? How did you even get mixed in something like this?''

''100% serious. Do as I say and you will be generously rewarded, but if this message is heard by anyone other than Mrs Calavera and it results in the death of the one in 'need of guidance,' then I swear that I will stop at nothing to take your head.'' I said, with next to no fluctuations in my flat voice.

Onyx gulped under my words and my unblinking glare.

''Got it. I'm not telling anything to anyone. And I'll find Mrs Calavera, don't worry.''

''Good, here's 200 000 Lien as an upfront payment. There will be more once you finish the job or if there are expenses along the way. She should be somewhere in Mistral.''

We then went our separate way. If I succeeded in getting Calavera's help for Ruby…

Eh, Cinder won't know what hit her.

/-/

A week before the end of my two month punishment, I finally received the first shipment of Duel Disks, and I was currently at my shop's desk, busy looking one over.

The Duel Disks could make holograms the same sizes as in the anime (except for Slifer, that one will have to be scaled down once the card came out because this was Remnant and god cards manifesting into reality because ancient egyptian magic wasn't a thing here,) but the size could be ajusted on a scale and made small enough that even if you had five monsters on your side of the field, they could take barely more place in the air in front of you as a playing mat took on a table.

Of course, that was the minimum setting, but people would probably not scale it down to being that small even if they played inside. Still, that feature allowed people to use the holograms at full size like in the anime when playing outside, but also allowed to use it inside without having the upper half of the monster cut off by the roof. Or passing through furniture. It was a pretty convenient feature.

Unfortunately, the Duel Disks didn't have vocal command, but it did have a small screen right next to the Life Points that showed both your and your opponent's monster cards on the field, along with your opponent's LP too. It was a touch sensitive screen, so all you had to do was touch your monster and then touch an opponent monster, or the opponent's LP on your screen, for your monster to do his attack animation. You could technically just play without using the animations and just tell your opponent which monster you attacked so he'd take the monster out of his field and reduced his LP, but where was the fun in that?

The Duel Disks were able to wirelessly connect with each others to be able to do that. This also included being able to receive updates, which meant cards could be added to a Duel Disks without being a hassle to the Disk's owner. It was a must-have feature considering how many cards there was to be added.

The monster's holograms had somewhat barebone animations, but, c'mon, those were never going to be as detailed as shown in the anime. As it was, they had an idle animation for both their attack and defense position and another two for switching between positions, one attack animation to attack an opponent's monster and one for when they received an attack. That was alright, I supposed. It would have been nice if monster effects were accompagnied by an unique animation depending on the monster, but I could only wish for so much before I became unreasonable.

That was only for the monster type card, however. The spell and trap cards only had an hologram that showed the card itself, most of the time. The only spell/trap cards that were actually animated where the field cards (though I wondered if objects might get in the way) and equip cards. They had to make the monsters' holograms hold the equip card's items and animate them using the weapons. Since each equip cards had to be programmed with each monster it could be equipped to, that was a lot of work. That work would grow exponentially each time a new monster, or worse; a new equip card, was going to be released…

Thank you for your good work, Mr programmers. It was greatly appreciated, please don't overwork yourselves too much.

It was a good thing I had decided to released the cards slower than Konami had on Earth. Whoever's job it was to program these Duel Disks, their lives would have been hell instead.

… Oh yeah, polymerization was animated as well, but that card wasn't going to see much use until good fusion monsters other than Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon and Black Skull Dragon started coming out.

While I was sitting at my desk, inspecting the Duel Disk and how it worked, the computer screen, which was showing the security camera's feed live, showed a familiar face enter my shop.

Ruby? I wasn't aware she knew this place.

Apart from her usual cape and her boots, she was wearing a white T-shirt with a goofy cartoon Beowolf face on it and a black skirt.

I decided to go meet her and walked out of my office.

I approached her as she was looking over some cards. ''Hi.''

We both jumped, startled. Her because she didn't hear me coming and me because as fun as startling people was, I actually didn't intend to do that this time.

''Eh? Gem? How are you here? I thought you were still grounded.'' Ruby asked, confused.

''Yeah, I still have a week until it's finished. Until then I'm only allowed out for training against Grimm or for my job. My father wanted to teach me a lesson, not destroy everything I worked for.''

''Wait, so you work here?''

''You could say that, I'm the manager.''

Ruby stared at me in silence, visibly trying to process what I had just say.

''… Manager?''

''Yep.'' I said, poping the 'p'.

''How did you become manager at 13 years old?''

''13 and a half.''

''I don't think the 'and a half' makes much of a difference here.''

Yes it did. I was almost an adult now. ''Well, I have very special circumstances that allowed me to get the position.''

''Like what? Oh, I think I can guess. Is it because your father own the business?''

What? ''No. He doesn't have anything with this business. Where did you get that idea?''

''Remember the first time we met? You mentionned your father had employees. I just thought it'd explained how you became a manager because it made sense.'' Ruby looked a bit disappointed that her guess was wrong, but I had to admit her logic made sense.

''I mean, it wasn't a bad guess, but no, I got the position with my own merit, not because my father wanted me to give me valuable work experience. Although learning how to handle a job like that was my reason for wanting the job. But enough about boring work stuff, let's get to the fun work stuff. I have an offer for you, if you're interested.''

''Uh?'' Ruby blinked. ''Sorry Gem, I'm not interested in a job. I'm focusing on my studies and training to become a huntress.''

I laughed. ''Oh, don't worry. I'm not asking to hire you, just to take your time for a bit. See, I just received a shipment of actual Duel Disks and I would like to test them before the shop starts selling them tomorrow. ''

Her eyes sparkled with interest. ''Duel Disks, like in the show? With holograms of the monsters?''

''Yep. Wanna have a duel with them?''

''Yep.'' She answered, poping the 'p' even harder than I did.

/-/

Our duel took place in the streets in front of the shop. Thankfully, it was a pedestrian street, so we didn't have to worry about vehicules passing by.

Sure, there'd be passersby, but why would I complain about free advertisement? Speaking of advertisement, I told Flax to film this little 'test duel'. I might recycle some shots for an actual ad.

Ruby and I stood at a distance, each holding a Duel Disks on our arms. She already had her own deck, apparently, so I didn't need to help her make one.

I was curious to see which cards she picked.

''Now, it's time to d-d-d-d-duel.'' I said, with Ruby recognizing the catch-phrase and joining me in saying the 'd-d-d-d-duel' part at the end.

''I'll start.'' Ruby declared. We didn't do the whole rock-paper-scissor to determine who started first, I just gave her the choice instead. I didn't really care either way. ''I set a monster face-down and set two cards in my spell/trap zones.''

Three holograms of the back of Yu-Gi-Oh! Card appeared in front of her as she puts the cards on her lent Duel Disk. One was horizontal, the two others were vertical and behind the face-down monster.

On my Duel Disk's screen, the face-down monster appeared. Good, this was working properly. And yes, we were playing with the holograms at the same size as in the anime.

A few cries of surprise arose around us as the people walking by noticed us. Most continued their way, 'Sorry boss, I'm late because I was watching kids play cards in the street' wouldn't cut it as an excuse to be late for work after all, but some stopped to watch out of curiosity.

''So, err…'' Ruby continued. ''I guess my turn is finished?''

''Then it's my turn! I draw!'' I declare dramatically. What? This was a dream come true, I was going to milk this as much as I could and go full anime.

So out of six card, I had two Giant Soldier Of Stone (don't worry, I won't attack the moon,) one Dragon Zombie, Monster Reborn, Waboku and Stop Defense. Alright, I could work with that. First, I set Wakoku on the field.

'I set a card and then summon Dragon Zombie in attack position.''

The crowd jumped back with cries of surprise and fear at the sight of the big purple, half-decomposed dragon. I even heard a 'what the fuck' from somewhere amongst them.

''Calm down,'' I said to them, ''this is just an hologram, it can't hurt you. This is a game, it's not scary, it's cool.''

Then, when people got back from their initial reactions, I resumed my turn. Though not without noticing that the exclamations of the crowd attracted the attention of more people and our audience grew.

But before I did anything else, Ruby spoke up first, revealing one of her face-down card. Aww crud, this was Trap Hole, wasn't it? ''Not so fast, Gem. I activate my trap card, Trap Hole.'' Knew it, always a classic. ''Your monster is destroyed now.''

I took the Dragon Zombie card and put it in my Graveyard, making the hologram disappear.

Trap Hole was a trap that could be activated when the opponent Normal Summoned a monster with 1 000 ATK or more and destroyed that monster. It was a good card, so it wasn't strange to find it in most Decks.

There was an upgraded version which banished the monster instead and also worked on Special Summoned monsters, but while it had been very recently released, Special Summons were rare at this stage of the game, so it wasn't really worth being only usable on monsters with 1 500 ATK or more. Yet.

''I finish my turn then.'' It was a good thing I abstained from using Stop Defense, otherwise I'd have wasted the card. Conventionnal wisdom in modern Yu-Gi-Oh! dictated that most of the time you needed to use your cards as soon as you could, but in the old version of the game, the game was slow enough that it didn't matter that much if a card wasn't used immediately. It was wiser to use it at a judicious time instead.

Ruby gave me a big smile, teeth showing. ''My turn! Draw! I turn my face-down monster in attack position.''

Her monster appeared, a skeletal figure shrouded in a red-orangish cloak, holding a fearsome scythe.

So we both started the duel with a Zombie-Type monster, that was kind of a funny coincidence. Her's was kind of weak, though. Only 900 ATK compared to Dragon Zombie's 1 600.

Not that it mattered since Dragon Zombie was gone, but that monster couldn't stand up to any of mine. Well, now that I thought about it. I owned the game, so the cost of cards didn't really matter to me. Maybe I should have thought about that before the duel started and gave her a card or two to equalize? Oops.

At least, between the clothes and weapons, I supposed that monster suited her pretty well.

''Dokuroizo The Grim Reaper, attack directly.'' Ruby said, only for her monster to remain immobile. ''Uh? Why is it not working?''

''Putting vocal command tech would have cost too much. If you look at your Duel Disk, you'll noticed a screen that show the cards on the field. Touch your monster and then your target to start the attack animation.''

''Oh, thanks.'' Dokuroizo then moved at her command and attacked me, swinging his scythe in a wide arc.

''Argh!'' I grunted in pain and held my chest, hunching forward a little as the monster's attack passed through me.

''What!? Wait, the holograms hurts for real? Oh gods, Gem I'msosorry!''

''No, no. I'm not hurt or anything. I'm just being dramatic to go with the game.'' I reassured her, suddenly standing straight again and accompanying my words with a lazy movement of my hand.

Oh right, that almost made me forgot to reduce my Life Points. A few clicks and my LP counter now indicated 7 100. Ruby managed to get first blood. It seemed like limited bidget or not, this wasn't going to be a one-sided duel. Good.

And yes, I included OCG cards instead of just the TCG. Why would I not?

''Was that all?'' I asked her.

''Nope. I'm going into my second Main Phase. I tribute Dokuroizo to Tribute Summon a monster in face-down defense position before ending my turn.''

… What? There were two high level monsters at this point in the game that someone would want to set. The Reaper of the Cards and the Millenium Shield. The thing was, both of these were kind of useless? Sure, the Reaper of the Cards had a flip effect that could destroy a trap card and Millenium Shield had 3 000 defense points, but Reaper of the Cards had overall weaker stats than many Level 4 monsters and Millenium Shield couldn't actively threathen the opponent with his 0 ATK which meant the opponent was free to continue summoning monsters.

Level 1 to 4 monsters could be Normal Summoned without Tribute, Level 5 and 6 had to be Normal Summoned by tributing 1 monster and Level 7 and higher had to be Normal Summon using 2 monsters. The Reaper of the Cards and Millenium Shield, both being Level 5, just didn't have enough going for them to be worth the tributed monster.

Yet, Ruby apparently decided that one of them was worth using. Which one did she put in her Deck? Did she like the Reaper of the Cards' weapon or thought its effect was worth it? Or did she thought the Millenium Shield was supposed to be a good card because of the name going with the millenium objects in the show and thought that a card with 3 000 points, even if it was defense, was a good deal when its price was pretty cheap? Knowing her, it could go either way.

Well, it didn't matter. I was going to find out quickly. ''My turn, I draw!''

The All-Seeing White Tiger. Not the card I was hoping for, but I'll have to do with.

My Deck's strategy just wasn't complete until I drew a specific card. In the meantime…

''Let's see what your monster is, I activate the Spell Card in my hand; Stop Defense. With this, your face-down monster is forced into attack position.''

Ruby grinned. ''You just activate my monster's effect; the Reaper of the Cards.'' Dammit! ''I can now target your set Spell/Trap Card, and if it's a Trap, it's destroyed.''

Tch, I sent my Trap card to the Graveyard. ''My Trap card, Wakoku, is indeed destroyed. Still, now your Reaper is at my mercy.''

I meant, both my tiger and my soldiers of stone only had 1 300 ATK, compared to the reaper's 1 380, so I was going to have to use my Monster Reborn, which kind of sucked so soon in the game but what can ya do?

''I activate Monster Reborn from my hand to Special Summon my Dragon Zombie back from the grave.''

''Whoa whoa whoa, he's back again?'' Ruby exclaimed in a panic, before flipping her other set card. ''I activate Torrential Tribute, which destroys all monster on the field in response to your Special Summon. What do you think of that?''

And with that, we both ended up having emptied each other's field. How wonderful.

''I think you panicked and should have waited a little before activating your trap. Did you forget I still haven't Normal Summoned this turn?''

Ruby looked at me, her mouth open as she realized I spoke the truth. ''Alright, then, summon your monster.'' She said, knowing my next attack was coming now.

''Gladly, I Normal Summon the All-Seeing White Tiger in attack position and attack your Life Points directly.''

A white tiger appeared with a ferocious roar, which was contrasted by a ''cute kitty'' coming from the crowd. A young child that was alongside a teenager, probably an older sibling.

The Beast-Type monster jumped at Ruby, his clawed pawn passing through her.

''Oh, the pain. It is terribly terrible. I can feel the life draining from me. Tell my family I love them.'' Ruby said in a show of… I hesitated to call this passable acting. She then reduced her Life Points, leaving her with 6 700.

''I end my turn.'' I said.

''Then that means it's time for me to take the advantage back. I draw.'' Ruby said brimming with confidence. ''I set a card and then Normal Summon Solitude.''

The monster that appeared was a centaur like creature with the horse half having blue fur, and it wore a thick green cloak. The monster, despite being a pretty weak one, was a decently imposing figure, but what really caught my eyes was the weapon its humanoid half wielded.

Out of three monsters that Ruby used so far, all three of them had a scythe…

I felt my eye tick. ''Ruby, did you seriously made a Deck entirely with monsters that have scythes?''

''… No?'' Ruby said, clearly knowing what she was saying was full of crap. ''Okay, fine, yes I did. So what? It's my Deck, I can do whatever I want with it.''

''Sure you can. By the way, you have Spirit Reaper in your Deck, right?''

''How did you know!?'' Ruby said with her eyes wide, not expecting me to guess it.

''Because there's only so many monsters who have a scythe and Spirit Reaper is by far the best one, of course you have it.'' It was going to be a pain to deal with if she drew it too, since it couldn't be destroyed by battle.

At least it had the weakness of destroying itself if targeted by any effect, which included being equipped by an equip card, so let's hope I drew one of my equip card before she drew Spirit Reaper and managed to stall for several turns.

''Ugh, so then you must have guessed that I had Hane-Hane too.''

… What? ''Hane-Hane's a good monster, but he doesn't a scythe.''

''Pfft, nonsense. Did you see its artwork, the polearm he hold clearly curves and ends in a point. It's obviously a scythe no matter how you look at it.''

''Nope. Sorry, but it's not a scythe.''

''Whatever. You'll see I'm right when I draw and summon him.'' Ruby insisted. ''For now, I equip the Horn of the Unicorn to my Solitude, bringing him to 1 750 ATK points. Are you scared yet?'' She asked, as her Solitude now arbored a new shiny horn on its forehead, cackling with electricity.

''Not really.''

''What? But he's strong now.''

''Yeah, he's now stronger than any monster I have in my Deck, but I'm still not scared.''

''Really? How are you not worried if you can't beat him. He could kill you on his own.''

''Yeah, he could. So could a dedicated duck, he's not anything special.''

Several people amidst the crowd, which had gotten larger by now, chuckled at my line.

Ruby, however, glared at me, displeased by me making fun of her 'strong' monster.

''Fine then. Solitude, attack the All-Seeing White Tiger.'' She said. Instead of attacking with his scythe, which was probably supposed to be his normal attack animation, the Solitude's horn threw a burst of lighting at my tiger.

My monster defeated, I was now at 6 650 Life Points.

''Eh eh, I'm in the lead again.'' Ruby giggled, happy to have both taken the advantage of the field and the advantage in Life Points, even if it was only a technicality by 50 points. ''I end my turn.''

''I draw.'' I wasn't really worried, since even with a bad draw I already had what I needed to stall against her Solitude in my hand. I added White Magical Hat to my hand, before setting a Giant Soldier of Stone. ''I set a monster in defense and end my turn.''

''That was short, running out of options already?'' Ruby giggled, blissfully unaware of the obstacle I just put in her way. ''I draw.'' She snickered when she saw her card. ''I activate Graceful Charity to draw 3 cards, though I have to discard 2 of them. I send Fairy Guardian and Soul Exchange to my Graveyard and set a card.'' So out of the three, a Trap Card was the one she decided to keep. I'll have to be on my guard.

Also, she had Soul Exchange in her Deck? Ooh, that was nasty. Soul Exchange allowed you to Tribute Summon by substituting one of the tribute required with an opponent's monster, but it came with the downside of not being able to attack during the turn the card was used. But that downside was nonexistant with the Reaper of the Cards, since he was Tributed Summoned in defense to use his flip effect so it wouldn't attack the same turn it was summoned anyway.

That didn't make Reaper of the Cards a good card, but it was a pretty decent combo. It was good for me that she used the monster before she managed to draw Soul Exchange.

''With that,'' Ruby continued, ''Solitude attack your monster.''

The horn sent another burst of lighting, which the appearing Giant Soldier of Stone took like a champ, unflinching from the height of his 2 000 defense. The failed attack brought Ruby's Life Points to 6 450.

''Oh no. Please don't attack the moon, it's already broken enough as it is.'' Ruby said, taking the loss in good humor.

Her joke drew a few laugh from the crowd, but the majority of people had no idea what she was talking about. As those who apparently knew the show explained the joke to those who didn't, Ruby announced the end of her turn.

''Then I'll draw.'' Swords of Revealing Light. A Spell Card that prevented the opponent from attacking until it wasn't on the field anymore and sent itself to the Graveyard at the end of the opponent's third turn after it was activated. A good defensive card to get some breathing room, I might need it if she somehow managed to break my defense so it was still good to take, even if offensive power was what I'd need right now. ''I set another monster and end my turn.''

''Wait, before you end your turn, I activate my Quick-Spell, Mystical Space Typhoon.'' Ruby said.

It was a really powerful card that could destroy any Spell or Trap card on the field, but I only had monsters right now, so… ooooh… Was she doing what I think she was doing?

''With this card, I destroy my Horn of the Unicorn.'' Ruby declared, to the confusion of the crowd who didn't understand why she was destroying her best advantage. ''When it's destroyed, Horn of the Unicorn goes back on the top of my Deck instead of the Graveyard, since it's now my turn, it is now back in my hands.''

That was pretty nice, but while it'd have been a great move if she had a monster with more original ATK than Solitude, her horn was the only card she had in her hand. That meant her only option was her other set card. So it was likely to be…

''I then activate my Call of the Haunted to Special Summon my Reaper of the Cards from my Graveyard and I equip him with Horn of the Unicorn.'' Ruby said.

Yep, her Trap Card was discount Monster reborn. While the both brought back a monster from the Graveyard, Monster Reborn was a Spell Card, while Call of the Haunted was a Trap. This meant that Call of the Haunted had to be set and wait until the end of that turn before being used. It also attached itself to the summoned monster and stayed face-up on the field, and the monster was destroyed if Call of the Haunted left the field, an weakness Monster Reborn just didn't have. And where Monster Reborn could summon a monster from any Graveyard, Call of the Haunted could only resurrect a monster from yours.

That wasn't to say it was a bad card, quite to the contrary. Call of the Haunted was a great card while still being balanced. Monster Reborn was the one that was broken and unbalanced.

And now Ruby's reaper was at 2 080 ATK. Well done, Ruby, well done. That was pretty big brain. ''And now my reaper attack your Giant Soldier of Stone.''

This time, my monster didn't survive the attack, though I took no damage to my Life Points since he was in defense. Then Ruby attacked my face-down monster with her Solitude, only to groan at the sight of another Giant Soldier of Stone.

''That's right, you attacked my second Giant Soldier of Stone!'' I declared with my arm extended in front of me. ''You now only have 5 500 Life Points left.''

'Ugh, fine, I end my turn. But your stone giant will be destroyed by my Reaper of the Cards nex time.'' Ruby said.

Indeed, her reaper was a problem, as its 2 080 ATK points was just barely enough to destroy Giant Soldier of Stone.

''I draw!'' A single look at my card and I grinned. ''Sorry, Ruby, but the heart of the cards is on my side. I activate the Swords of Revealing Light! It looks like my giant of stone will stay with us for now, because your monsters will be unable to attack for the next three turns. I set a monster and end my turn.''

With my White Magical Hat now face-down on the field, we both had no cards in hand. How the Duel went will depends entirely on our draws. I may have managed to force a temporary stalemate for now, but with her Reaper of the Cards still being the strongest monster on the field, I needed to draw something good during my next three turns.

I could think of a few cards in my Deck that could allow me to defeat her monster.

''Swords of Revealing Light, seriously!?'' Ruby was annoyed by my card. It was to be expected. After all, she just took the lead and then this card came in clutch to stonewall her. ''I draw!'' Given the happy look she had on her face, she had a lucky draw too. ''I switch my Reaper of the Cards and my Solitude in defense position, then I set a card and end my turn.''

What card did she set? ''I draw.'' I got Mage Power this time.

A powerful card that gave a monster 500 ATK and DEF for each Spell/Trap card I have on my field, including Mage Power itself. If I equipped it to Giant Soldier of Stone, it would reach 2 300 ATK. Enough to kill Ruby's reaper, but only if it was in attack position. Right now, with Horn of the Unicorn equipped to it, Reaper of the Cards had 2 630 DEF. It was wise of her to put it in defense, since she couldn't attack right now and it had more DEF than ATK.

Also, this was supposed to be a bad card, darn it, why was it giving me so much trouble?

''Eh eh, you don't look too happy. Had a bad draw?'' Ruby teased me.

''Not really. It's a great card, just not enough to help me this turn.''

''Sounds like a bad draw to me.''

''No, it's true. It going to be really useful, just in a few turns.''

''Cooooope.'' The cheeky little brat continued.

''… I end my turn, so if you're done being a pest, you can start drawing.'' I said, an eye ticking out of annoyance.

''Not so fast, during your End Phase, I activate my trap card; Dust Tornado, to destroy your Swords of Revealing Light! Ah, the heart of the cards is with who now?'' Ruby said, happy of getting rid of my defenses. She then drew her next card after I put mine in my Graveyard. ''Ah, um… Well, I switch my Reaper of the Cards in attack position and attack your Giant Soldier of Stone. Then, my Solitude attack your face-down monster.''

With both of my monsters destroyed, Ruby ended her turn with the card she drew still in her hand.

''I draw!'' I was hoping for a monster, but all I got was Seven Tools of the Bandit, a Counter Trap Card that could negate the activation and effects of another Trap Card.

That would have been useful if I had that before Ruby activated her Dust Tornado.

''I set two cards and end my turn.'' I set Mage Power as well because now that she could attack me directly, if she drew Spirit Reaper and attacked, it would make me discard a card in my hand.

On the field, it was vulnerable to be destroyed, but it wasn't exactly safe in my hands either.

''Then I draw!'' Ruby said, eyeing my two set cards with suspicion. ''I change Reaper of the Cards to defense position and attack you directly with Solitude.''

Aaaah, I see someone has been on the receiving end of Mirror Force before.

I used it so many time at school in my last life that I only needed to put a Normal Spell Card face-down and my opponents almost had a nervous breakdown trying to figure out if it was Mirror Force or something benign.

Bluffing your way out of being attacked by a full board of high level monsters with a set Normal Spell you couldn't activate on your opponent's turn even if you wanted and following with drawing a card that allowed you to reverse the situation was peak Yu-Gi-Oh.

In this case, I set the cards to protect them from a potential Spirit Reaper, but if Ruby wanted to play mind games on herself, I wasn't complaining.

''I end my turn.'' Ruby announced, after her attack left me with 5 600 Life Points.

''Then I'll begin mine, I draw!'' The card I drew was perfect, that was the card I'd been hoping for since the beginning of his Duel. ''I set a card and end my turn.''

''I draw!'' Ruby's eyes widened when she saw her card and she grinned. ''I set a card, then I change Reaper of the Cards to attack position and attack you directly with it.''

She may be wary of my set cards, but while putting a monster she needed to keep alive in defense to avoid losing it to Mirror Force was a common tactic, she couldn't just continue like that for too long because every turn she waited without attacking with it was one more turn I had to draw cards that could save me.

Fortunately for her, the card I just set wasn't Mirror Force. Unfortunately for her, it was going to stop her attack nonetheless. ''I activate my Trap Card; Gravity Bind. Level 4 or higher monsters cannot attack as long as this card is face-up on the field.'' And it was a Continuous Trap card. It would stay here until it was destroyed by a card effect.

Of course, all my monster were Level 3 (well, excep for Mask of Darkness, Man-Eater Bug, Penguin Soldier and Magician of Faith, I was starting to wonder if I was going to get one of my four flip effect monsters in this Duel,) so my Deck didn't care for it. But her Reaper of the Cards was Level 5, meaning it couldn't attack anymore.

''Grrr, but my Solitude can still attack, so I attack you directly with it.'' Once again, the centaur-like creature lunged at me and struck me with its scythe.

''Argh!'' I feigned being in pain, my hand grasping my chest.

4 550 Life Points left. Ruby was winning, but I still had enough Life Points left to not be worried. Especially now that her reaper was not a threat anymore, although it was still an obstacle.

''I end my turn.'' Ruby said.

''Then I draw!'' Oh, that one was a good card. Exactly the monster I was waiting for. ''You're out of luck, Ruby, because I've finally drew my ace monster.''

''Ace monster?'' Ruby's eyes grew wide in surprise. ''Wait, but with Gravity Bind, only weak monsters can attack, so…''

I grinned. ''I summons Sonic Duck.''

''QUACK!'' The oversized greend duck appeared, with a red scarf around his neck and a bucket on his head as if it was an helmet. ''QUACK QUACK!''

''That's your 'ace monster'?'' Ruby raised an eyebrow. ''Isn't he kinda… lacking to be called that.''

''You don't run a Deck with high attack monsters either.''

''Eh, fair enough.'' Ruby shrugged. She didn't seem worried, though. Probably because her reaper was still 330 ATK higher than my duck.

Allow me to change that. ''I activate the equip Spell Card: Mage Power. My Sonic Duck gains 500 ATK and DEF for each Spell and Trap Cards on my side of the field, bringing him to 3 200 ATK.'' Sonic Duck now had magic power radiating from him, forming a red aura around his shape. ''Sonic Duck, attack Solitude.''

I targeted Solitude to maximize the battle damage, since Ruby would put her monster that wasn't attacked in defense position, so the monster I would destroy next turn would make her lose no Life Points anyway.

''Not so fast, you fell into my trap. I activate Magic Cylinder.'' Oh God no. That was going to hurt. ''Your attack is negated and you take damage equal to your monster's attack.'' She continued with a smirk.

Or maybe it wasn't going to hurt. I gave Ruby a smirk to match her own. ''I activate my own Trap card: Seven Tools of the Bandits. By paying 1 000 Life Points, I negate and destroy your trap. Thus, my attack continue.'' Unfortunately, using my Trap Card also meant that Sonic Duck lost 500 ATK, but he was still the strongest monster on the field.

Sonic Duck suddenly moved in front of Solitude, so fast that it left rings of air in his path along with afterimages trailing behing him, and pecked Ruby's monster.

''Woah, he's really fast!'' Ruby exclaimed, surprised by the green bird's speed.

''Yeah, his flavor text even says that sometimes he's so fast he loses control.'' Now that I think about it, it could be a neat detail to have its animations have a small chance of tripping to reflect his flavor text. It went without saying that it wouldn't affect gameplay.

''Really? That's… Yeah, I can relate.'' Ruby said.

Oh, right. Ruby did tell me that when she first discovered her semblance, she had lots of accidents until she learned to adapt to the speed.

I was now at 3 550 Life Points, while Ruby was at 3 850. Man, this game was really close. Neither of us had a big advantage in Life Points during all of the Duel so far, nor did we managed to keep control of the field for long.

''Anyway, I end my turn.'' I said.

''I draw! Then I change Reaper of the Cards to defense position and summons Sonic Maid.'' Ruby said, brimming with confidence as her monster, a red-headed woman in a pink dress whose scythe's handle was shaped like a musical note, appeared. ''Since Sonic Maid is only Level 3, she can attack even with your Gravity Bind active.''

''But Sonic Maid's 1 200 ATK cannot match Sonic Duck's 2 700!'' Which meant she was going to activate another card.

She grinned at my words, before proving my guess right. ''That's why I equip her with Fusion Sword Murasame Blade, giving her a bonus 800 ATK.'' One of Sonic Maid's hand let go of her musical scythe and morphed into a fleshy lumb as a katana's blade extended from it.

That only brought her monster to 2 000 ATK, though. She was still 700 short.

But Ruby wasn't finished, she still had another card in her hand. ''And now I equip Megamorph to your Sonic Duck.''

Tch, Megamorph was an equip card that doubled a monster's original ATK if the controller of the equip card had less Life Points than the opponent's, but if the controller of Megamorph was the one with the most Life Points, then it halved the equipped monster's original ATK.

Ruby had more Life Points than me, which meant that since she equipped it to my monster, Sonic Duck's original ATK was now 850. The bonus granted by Mage Power was unaffected, but that still left him with only 1 850 ATK compared to Sonic Maid's 2 000.

''Now, Sonic Maid attack Sonic Duck!'' Ruby ordered her monster. Now the better sonic of the two, Sonic Maid cut my duck without issues with her fused blade. Both my monster and her Megamorph where sent to the Graveyard.

Thankfully, the loss of Life Points was minor, leaving me with 3 400 Life Points.

Ruby then ended her turn, only for me to follow suit immediately after my draw. I only took the time to set the Trap Card I drew, not that it was going to be of any use right now.

Magic Jammer would have been useful to have before Ruby used her Equip Spells.

''I draw!'' She didn't seems to happy with her draw. ''I set a card and attack you directly with Sonic Maid.'' Welp, guess I was lucky she didn't draw a monster.

Sonic Maid slashed me with her sword, reducing my Life Points to 1 400.

Okay, now I was getting worried.

''With this, I end my turn.'' Ruby declared.

''Then I draw!'' Please, my Deck, give something good.

… This could have been better.

Dream Clown's effect was that he could destroy an opponent's monster when he switched from attack to defense position. He wasn't usually able to pull it off because he only had 1 200 ATK, which meant he was easily destroyed by battle, but against Decks that used strong monsters it synergized well with my Gravity Bind. I'd won more than a few game in the shop thanks to that cards.

Who cared about Blues Eyes White Dragon or Summoned Skull if they couldn't attack anyway and would be destroyed the turn after by Dream Clown?

Unfortunately, the monster currently giving me trouble was a Level 3, so Gravity Bind wouldn't be protecting Dream Clown until I could trigger his effect.

''I set a monster and end my turn.'' All I could do was use him to protect my Life Points and hope I'll get something better next turn.

''I draw!'' Ruby grinned again at her card. ''I summons Fairy Guardian and I attack your face-down monster with Sonic Maid, then Fairy Guardian attacks you directly.''

My monster destroyed, Fairy Guardian; a small humanoid with six fairy wings and holding a flail and a scythe each in one hand, flew toward me and struck me with its tiny scythe, shaving another 1 000 Life Points.

''It's your turn now.'' Ruby said. ''Good luck, you'll need it.''

With only 400 Life Points left, yes I will. I was on the verge of defeat. Please, heart of the cards, don't abandon me now, I couldn't lose my first Duel with Ruby, she'd think I was lame.

… Well, okay, Ruby wasn't the type that would think that of me, but I had my pride. I couldn't lose now!

''I draw!'' Oh?

I didn't know if it was good or bad luck that allowed me to draw the third copy of that card in the same Duel, but I wasn't going to complain when it was the lifesaver I needed right now.

''I set a monster and end my turn.''

''I draw.'' Ruby said. ''Now, time to finish this Duel. Sonic Maid, attack his monster.''

As Ruby's monster attacked, mine was revealed, to her dismay.

''Giant Soldier of Stone! Again!?''

Each Deck was only allowed three copies of the same card. I ran 3 Giant Soldier of Stone because when I drew him before I got Gravity Bind, his 2 000 DEF was a lot of help to survive until then, and if I drew him after I drew Gravity Bind, he had 1 300 ATK, which was pretty decent for a Level 3 monster. It was also the only monster with 2 000 DEF that had that much ATK as well.

There was a reason it was one of my favorite monsters in early Yu-Gi-Oh. It was easily summonable, had all-around strong stats and was low-level. It was everything I wanted out of a monster in this Deck.

''Yes, and since he's in defense and both of our monsters are equal, nobody takes damage and both monsters lives.''

Ruby gave my monster a mean look, which honestly looked more adorable than mean on her, and resumed her turn. ''In my Main Phase 2, I set a card and then end my turn.''

Having successfully survived one more turn, I drew my card, which was Fairy Meteor Crush. Not exactly what I wanted right now.

It was an Equip Card that didn't increase the ATK of the equipped monster, but instead allowed it to inflict battle damage when destroying a monster even if that monster was in defense position. Good to press the advantage when I had it, not so much when I needed to take the advantage back.

Oh well, I guess I could keep it in my hand for Magic Jammer in case Ruby activated a Spell Card later. ''I end my turn.''

''I draw! I activate my Trap Card: Call of the Haunted, to resurrect Dokuroizo the Grim Reaper. Then, I tribute Dokuroizo to set a monster. I end my turn.''

That had to be another Reaper of the Cards. That meant during her next turn she was going to destroy Gravity Bind, and with her other reaper still equipped with Horn of the Unicorn she was going to destroy my Giant Soldier of Stone and then attack me for game.

''I draw!'' The card I drew wouldn't allow me to stop Gravity Bind's destruction, but it at least would stop me from losing next turn. ''I summon Possessed Dark Soul and activate its effect. By tributing it, I can take control of all Level 3 or lower monster face-up on your field. Your Sonic Maid and Fairy Guardian are now mine.'' I sent the demonic monster I summoned, whose immaterial body was composed of reddish-purple flames, to the Graveyard.

''What!? But you only control them until the end of the turn, right?'' Ruby asked a reasonable question, considering most card who stole control of the opponent's monsters only did so for one turn.

I remained silent, only giving her a smug smile.

''Y-you only control then until the end of the turn, right?'' She asked again, this time unsure of herself.

''Sorry, Ruby, but Possessed Dark Soul's effect doesn't have a time limit. Your monsters are mine for as long as they remains on the field.''

''Really? What's up with that effect, it's kind of broken.'' Ruby complained. I mean, it only took control of 'weak' monsters, but it did synergize very well with Gravity Bind so she wasn't really wrong there. ''Um… So, how do we do this?''

''That's a good question… I guess I'll just come and take them?'' I walked over to her and she gave me her Fairy Guardian and Sonic Maid before going back to my original position.

Unfortunately, the holograms moved as I did, which made the whole thing kind of awkward, but hey, we made do with what we had.

It'd be nice if the Duel Disk had some sort of 'locked' function to make the holograms stay where they were instead, though. Maybe I should put in a word about it?

Anyway, with Ruby's monsters now on my Duel Disk, I resumed my turn. ''Sonic Maid, attack her set monster.''

''My monster was Reaper of the Cards,-'' Yeah yeah, I knew, ''-its Flip Effect activates and I destroy your Gravity Bind!''

''But your Reaper of the Cards is still destroyed.'' She got rid of my Trap and I got rid of her second reaper, but the one equipped with Horn of the Unicorn was still on her field and could now attack freely, having 80 more ATK than Sonic Maid or my Giant Soldier of Stone's DEF. ''I change Fairy Guardian to defense position and end my turn.''

''I draw.'' Ruby said, before using the card she drew. ''I summon Hibikime and change Reaper of the Cards into attack position.''

Hibikime, it was a monster similar to Sonic Maid, she too having a musical note-shaped scythe, but her hair was blue and her dress green. Also, her ATK was at 1 450, a bit higher than any monster she used so far.

Ruby entered her battle phase with a grin. ''Reaper of the Cards attacks your Sonic Maid, and Hibikime attacks Fairy Guardian.''

I thus lost both monsters I stole from her. I didn't lose Life Points due to Fairy Guardian being destroyed since she was in defense, but the Reaper of the Cards' attack on Sonic Maid made me lose 80 Life Points.

I was now at 320, and I only had my stone soldier to protect me next turn, which couldn't resist against Ruby's reaper.

''I end my turn.'' Ruby said.

Was I going to lose? Or would I pull an anime moment and take victory with my back to the wall? I'd been grinning so hard and for so long that my jaw was starting to hurt. When was the last time I got this excited for a Duel? ''My turn, I draw!'' Aaaand… anime moment, it was.

''I set a card and end my turn.''

''I draw. Finally!'' Ruby exclaimed, sounding like she had a card she was waiting for. ''I set a monster, then Reaper of the Cards attacks your Giant Soldier of Stone.''

''Fool! You fell right into my trap, I activate Mirror Force.'' Ruby gasped as she recognize the infamous Trap Card. ''That's right, both of your monsters are now destroyed and mine is unscathed! Muahahahaha!''

''Pfft, fine. I end my turn.'' Ruby said.

''I draw.'' A look at my card and I found it to be the perfect follow-up to using Mirror Force that I could have draw. ''I summon Sonic Duck, change Giant Soldier of Stone to attack position, and attack your set monster with my duck.''

''My monster was Hane-Hane, and I send your Giant Soldier of Stone back in your hand.'' Ruby revealed her with grin, having prevented me from attacking her directly his turn. She quickly lost said grin when her monster's hologram appeared, however, as the big-nosed floating head and hands held a two-handed axe, instead of a scythe.

''See? I told you he it wasn't a scythe.'' I told her with a smug smirk, even though I was the one who's attack was fended off.

''But how?'' Hane-Hane's hologram disappeared as Ruby took the card from her Duel Disk and looked more closely at it, before reappearing as she put it back, somewhat dejected. ''I-I really thought it was a scythe, though. Now I'm gonna have to take it out of my Deck.''

Why? There was no point to focus so much on just the monsters that had scythes, and Hane-Hane was still a pretty good monster. He had an easy to activate effect that sent an opponent's monster back to the hand. A good way to get rid of a high level monster, since it was harder, and slower, to resummon one than bringing it back from the Graveyard.

Although it was a bit less useful against my Deck since I didn't have high level monsters.

''Well either way, my Giant Soldier of Stone is back in my hand and your Hane-Hane is destroyed. Since I've finished my attack, it's your turn.''

''Ugh… Fine, I draw and then end my turn.'' Ruby said. With her first Reaper of the cards destroyed earlier, her Horn of the Unicorn went back on top of her Deck. We both knew that as good as that card was, it couldn't do anything without a monster to equip it to.

''With pleasure. I draw!'' Another of my Level 3 monsters, Mammoth Graveyard. It only had 1 200 ATK, though. Now, what should I do? I could attack with everything I had, but depending on whether or not she'll draw a monster next turn, she could easily end me by attacking my Giant Soldier of Stone if it was in attack position, and I didn't have enough firepower to end her this turn.

Should I just attack with Sonic Duck and set Giant Soldier of Stone instead of attacking with it?

Wait, no. I still had Magic Jammer, I didn't have to fear her Horn of the Unicorn, and as far as I knew, her strongest monster was Hibikime, which would only inflict 150 damage if it destroyed my Giant Soldier of Stone. The risk was pretty small.

''I summon the Giant Soldier of Stone you returned to my hand last turn. Then, I attack you directly with both Sonic Duck and Giant Soldier of Stone! Now, draw your last pathetic card so I can end this, Ruby.''

''My Deck has no pathetic cards, Gemini,'' Ruby started, going along with the show's quote, pretty upbeat for someone with only 850 Life Points left. Not that I was in any position to talk, with my 320 Life Points. ''but it does contain… Hibikime!'' Ruby announced, confident she was about to win. ''And I equip her with Horn of the Unicorn.''

''Sorry, Ruby… But you activated my Trap card: Magic Jammer.'' I said, sending the Fairy Meteor Crush to my Graveyard. ''By discarding a card in my hand, I can negate and destroy a Spell card. Your Horn of the Unicorn is now finally sent to the Graveyard.''

By this point, Ruby knew she had lost. ''I attack your Giant Soldier of Stone with Hibikime. It's your turn now.'' She said, a little dejected.

With her last attack, I was left at only 170 Life Points. It was close, but now it was time to claim victory.

''I draw!'' Mask of Darkness, a weak monster, but whose Flip Effect allowed me to get a Trap card back from the Graveyard. Well, the game was going to end before I could use it anyway. ''I summon Mammoth Graveyard. First, Sonic Duck attacks Hibikime, then Mammoth Graveyard attacks you directly.''

The skeletal mammoth charged Ruby and, with a twist of its head, struck her with its defenses, bringing her Life Points to 0.

The game being finished, we turned the holographic machines off.

''Thank you for witnessing this little improvised demonstration.'' I adressed the crowd. ''We are still doing the inventory for now, but if anyone is interested in the card game, these Duel Disks will be available for the retail price of 45 000 Lien starting tomorrow.'' Well, 44 999 Lien. Same difference. ''In the meantime, please have a great day.''

It costed a lot, but it was basically a wrist-held video game console with actual holograms, so that was kind of expected. Even if the 'console' could only play Yu-Gi-Oh as its one and unique game, I knew that in my last life I'd have happily paid twice that price if it had existed.

My little sales pitch finished, I brought Ruby back inside the shop, as she was blushing and getting more and more uncomfortable under the crowd's attention now that she wasn't distracted by having fun.

I totally understood that. I may had become better at dealing with people due to having to negotiate for contract and other business related meetings, but I certainly didn't enjoy it, and even then I could only deal with those in small doses.

''That was a great game, I don't think I've been so close to losing before.'' I told Ruby.

I mean, I'd lost before, but that was in my last life. In this life, I'd played a few games with customers at the shop while taking a break, but none of them ever managed to bring my Life Points under 4 000.

Ruby looked at me in disbelief. ''Wait, really? I mean, it was really fun, but I lost almost everytime at school.''

That might be because most people wanted big, high-level monsters in their Deck. Ruby's Deck had good Spell and Traps cards, but most of her monsters were terribly weak. My Deck, having three Gravity Bind and only high ATK Level 3 monsters was made specifically to counter the very common beatsticks that basically every Deck had, but that was a strength her Deck didn't have, leaving us on somewhat even footing.

''Mmh, well either way, I'd love to play with you again.''

''Of course!'' She said with a happy smile, only for that smile to then turn a bit awkward. ''But, um, I don't have the Lien to buy a Duel Disk. Is it a problem if we only play the normal way?''

I chuckled. ''Ruby, you've just helped me test the merch on top of making me what is basically free advertisement. Giving you a Duel Disk for free is the least I can do to thank you.'' Hell, if anything, I should pay her more than that, given how much official advertisement could cost.

''Wait, really? That's awesome, thank you!'' Ruby said before giving me a hug, one that I returned without hesitation this time. Hugs felt nice, I liked hugs. ''But, uh… Are you sure you can give that away? I mean, you said you were manager, right? You manage the shop, but if you give stuff for free, won't the owner of the business be angry at you?''

Aww… Was Ruby concerned for me? How cute.

''Look at the bottom right of the cards. What do you read?'' I said, handing her a random card from the store shelves right next to us, my lips forming a confident smirk.

''… Gemini… Torchwick? I- Wha- How? Why is your name on the cards?'' Ruby asked, confused, but caring more about my name being on the cards than my last name itself. That gave me hope, as she wasn't making a big deal of me having hidden my real name.

''Because I'm the one who created Yu-Gi-Oh.'' Well, as far as Remnant was concerned. ''Being manager is just something I do for fun and some pocket change, the real bulk of my income comes from having a cut of every Yu-Gi-Oh related profit. See everything in this shop? I own this.''

Well, I owned the intellectual property of Yu-Gi-Oh. The shop itself belonged to Illusion Industry. I did bought shares of the company, though, so in a way it partially belonged to me too.

Ruby stared at me in shock, her mouth open.

''What can I say? Having an extra 8 hours a day allow me to be very productive.'' And it really helped that I wasn't actually inventing the product I sold, just bringing it over to Remnant. Yes, it was cheating, but… uh… I didn't care.

''A-ah, I guess it would? It feels a bit surreal though.''

Well, she had just found out her best friend was loaded… and owned a show she watched on TV without having any idea that I was the one to 'make' it.

''Anyway, that doesn't matter right now. Can you follow me to my office? I'd like to talk to you in private.''

''I don't know, you already dropped a pretty big bomb on me.'' Not as big as the one I blew up the White Fang with. ''Do you really need to talk about whatever it is now?'' Ruby said, unsure of both how to react to what she had just learned and whether she should listen to whatever else I had to tell her.

And yes I had to talk to her now, because the more I waited, the more scared I was gonna be to approach the subject until I started putting it off indefinitely.

''It's important. Like, really, really important.'' I insisted.

''Still…''

''I have strawberry cookies in my office.''

''Well what are you waiting for? Let's go!''

/-/

''So? Wha' 'i' you wan' 'o 'al' a'ou'?'' Ruby said, her mouth full as she wolfed down on the cookies.

That she should swallow her food before talking?

''Well, to begin with, there's the matter of my name.'' I said while Ruby swallowed her cookies.

Hopefully she was going to slow down on her consumption so I could actually understand what she was trying to say instead of having to guess it.

''What about your name?'' She said.

I looked at her face, trying to tell if she was joking, but she seemed genuinely confused.

''You… you haven't noticed that my last name, Torchwick, isn't the same name as the one I gave when we met?''

''Oh, uh…'' Unable to hold my gaze, Ruby looked away, a slight blush on her face. ''I just thought I'd misremembered your last name and was too embarassed to bring it up.''

Wait, so I could have just kept my mouth shut and pretended that I'd been using my real name since the start? Man, talk about missed opportunities. It was too late to spare myself this conversation now.

'' ...Well no, you didn't misremember my name, I gave a false last name back then. I'm sorry for lying to you, but I did have reasons to avoid giving my last name.''

''What, is your last name famous?'' Ruby asked.

''More like infamous. My father is a rather well-known criminal. I've never took part in any crimes,'' except for that one time I snuck into the VRB's restricted section(breaking and entering), and that time I tracked down, attacked terrorists(vigilantism) and blew up the public building they were hiding in(arson? The explosion did set the school on fire after all.) But I meant that I never took part in my father's illegal activities. ''but a lot of people, when learning about my name, often assumes I'm the same as my father. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree and all that.''

There was some truth to that saying, like how Ruby was apparently very similar to her mother. But there were also some people who were very different from their parents, like Raven and Yang. Raven was a brute who lived through violence and didn't care for a society's rules, unlike Yang who… Oh, right, the Yellow trailer. Nevermind, while Yang wasn't anywhere near the monster Raven was, that wasn't the best exemple.

Let me try again: Like how Ghira and Kali were such wonderful people, but Blake was… well, Blake.

That exemple was referring to how Ghira and Kali saw what the White Fang was going to turn into and understood why it was morally wrong, but Blake yelled at them and ran away, discarding her wonderful parents in favor of becoming an internationnal terrorist. In terms of morality, Blake didn't even come close to her parents.

''To be honest,'' I continued, ''I've been trusting you enough to tell you my real name for a while, but I just didn't know how to approach the subject. Again, I'm sorry for not telling you sooner.''

''Ah, it's fine. I can't blame you for being careful, and I can't imagine how being judged for having a criminal father is like. It's not like that was enough to make you a bad person.''

''Yeah, I mean, I can be a bad person all on my own. I don't need my father for that.'' I joked.

Ruby blinked, before chortling. ''That wasn't quite what I meant, but I guess that's one way to take it.''

''So we're good?''

''Yep! I mean, why wouldn't we be? You did say you didn't take part of your father's crimes, right?''

''I wouldn't be working here if I was.'' I said. I couldn't imagine being able to work here if I was a nationally researched criminal, with the police coming to arrest me everytime I showed up at work. Father might make the criminal lifestyle work for him, but I personally found that it closes too many doors with the rest of society.

''Eh eh, guess not.'' Ruby smiled. ''Are you feeling better now that you know I still view you as a friend?''

''It does take a weight off my shoulders,'' I said, before resting my elbows on my desk and crossing my fingers in front of me, ''but I'm afraid that was the smallest of my worries concerning this conversation and that we still have much more important things to talk about.''

''Uh? Wait, there's more?'' Ruby said, confused.

''Yes, and I'm afraid that a lot of what I'm going to talk about next is going to be… confidential. So I'm going to need you to swear-''

''That's a bit weird, but sure.'' Ruby cut me off. Wait, why did she thought it was weird? ''Fuck!''

''…''

''...''

''… that you won't share a word of this with anyone else.'' I said, finishing my previous sentence after we stared at each other.

''Uh?'' Ruby looked confused, before she realized what I said and blushed. ''Ooooh… Can we pretend I didn't say that?''

''I don't know, can we? I'm a little concerned that you're apparently willing to swear on command just because I asked you to.''

''… Don't tell my family I said a bad word and I promise nobody will ever hear anything about what you tell me today.''

''Deal. I'm also using that favor I kept from our bet on Neo and Yang's fight as an extra to hold you to that.''

''Wow, really? Alright then, what's so important?'' Ruby asked. She may not yet understand the gravity and scope of what I was going to talk about, but that was going to change soon.

''You already know that my semblance imitates a video game, but there's a part of it I haven't told anyone about, not even my own family.'' I took a deep breath, more to collect myself than anything else. ''You know how video games often have an intro that show bits of the games before the title screen? Well, when my aura was unlocked, the first thing my semblance did was show me an… intro, of sort. I saw things that hadn't even happened yet.''

She trusted me, so I wasn't too worried, but I wouldn't dare share this with anyone who would think more critically about it and question it.

''Wait, like the futur? A semblance could do that?'' Ruby was shocked. There were all sort of semblances in the world, but seeing the futur was pretty out there. Her shock quickly turned into excitement. ''What did you see? Did you see me being a kickass huntress?''

''I'd rather not say. The future isn't set in stone and I don't want to make you live your life constantly thinking about how things could have been. Plus the whole point is to prevent the future I saw from happening.''

My words caused Ruby to look worried, and it was a little apprehensive that she asked her next question. ''What do you mean? Is something bad going to happen?''

''I saw Vale on fire, Grimm running everywhere in the streets of the city, with a giant dragon Grimm taking over Beacon, Atlas military robots being hacked and shooting people instead of the Grimm and the White Fang attacking and killing the huntsmen-in-training while the latter were desesperately trying to evacuate the academy. Also, my father got eaten by a Griffon and Yang had her arm cut off by one of the White Fang terrorist.'' I told Ruby, as she became more and more horrified.

''I want to stop this from happening,'' I continued as Ruby didn't know what to say, ''but I can't do this alone. I need help to prevent the Fall of Beacon and the loss of millions of lives. Can I count on you?''

''Of course you can!'' Ruby said without hesitation, only to lose her confidence. ''But, uh… I'm just one girl, though. I'm not sure what I can do?''

''What we can do, is stop the one person responsible for causing this before their plan comes to fruition. The situation is pretty much like this…'' I then proceded to babble about lots of relevant informations, as Ruby did her best to listen and keep track of what I was saying.

/-/

Once Gemini was finished, Ruby rubbed her eyes.

''Let me get this straight. The Maidens are real, and their magic powers transfers to someone else when one dies, making a new Maiden to replace the dead one.''

''Yep.''

''And this Cinder woman will try to kill the Fall Maiden to steal her magic. To make sure she'll gets the magic and not someone else, she'll cheat by using a Grimm insect of some sort given to her by the Queen of the Grimm, because that's a thing, but will be interrupted by uncle Qrow, because uncle Qrow is the coolest uncle ever, and she'll only gets half of the magic.''

''Yep.''

''So uncle Qrow will bring the half-dead Maiden to Beacon, where she'll be hooked up to some creepy aura machine and Ozpin, who's really the wizard in the fairy tale, will search for someone amongst the students to take the other half of the magic to beat the Maiden's murderer and save the day.''

''Yep.''

''But it'll fail, and Pyrrha, the girl who won two Mistrali tournament-''

''It's actually going to be four tournament won by the time she joins Beacon.''

Really? But nobody won that many Mistrali tournaments before, at least not in an ininterrupted row.

Either way, it was really cool that Pyrrha will go to Beacon instead of Mistral. Maybe Ruby should visit her sister when she'll be at Beacon and 'accidentally' bump into Pyrrha. She would love to take a look at her weapon.

Wait, that wasn't what mattered right now.

''Right, so Pyrrha is going to fight Cinder at the top of Beacon and die.''

''Yep.''

''And both the White Fang and your father and sister are going to be forced to work for Cinder under threat of death.'' Was that why he blew up a White Fang hideout? Because he knew they were going to fight them anyway? She could see him thinking that it was an occasion to weaken them down the line, thus making them easier to defeat when Cinder would be around.

''… Yeah.'' Gemini's face had remained neutral so far, but as Ruby mentioned that last bit, the mask slipped and worry showed on his face.

Ruby wasn't sure what to think of that. On one hand, her best friend had just told her that his family was going to work for a bad guy planning to destroy Beacon and kill so many people, but it wasn't like they would do so willingly. Plus, Gem was planning and preparing to stop that Cinder woman. That's what was important, right?

Ruby nodded to herself. Gem trusted her with this, even though it kind of made his own family looks bad. The least she could do was continue to trust him.

They were going to save the day together.

''So… what's your plan to save Vale?'' Ruby asked.

Her friend clapped his hands together and gave her a big smile. ''I'm glad you asked, but before I tell you about the half-baked ideas I came up with, we need to be on the same page.''

''Alright?'' Ruby blinked. ''What page are you talking about?''

''That the objective consist of killing Cinder. There is no scenario where Vale and Beacon are safe while Cinder still lives. Beating her but letting her live only allows her to retreat and try again. Capturing her alive to arrest her is pointless, both because she can melt her way out of any cell with her magic, to which we have exactly zero way of stopping her, and also because even if we were to 'spare' her by arresting her instead of killing her the law would just execute her anyway.''

''Okay.'' Ruby said, without any complaint.

Gemini blinked in surprise. ''… What?''

''What 'what'?''

''Well, I… I thought you would be more reluctant to the idea of killing someone?'' He said hesitantly.

Ruby gave him an annoyed look, pouting. ''Of course I'd prefer if we didn't kill anyone, but you're right, there's no way of saving the kingdom without killing her. So as much as I'd rather capture bad guys instead of killing them, between the lives of millions of innocents and one power hungry psycho, I'll take the millions of innocents. Plus, that Cinder woman you're talking about isn't evil, she's like, super evil with an extra serving of evil on the side.''

She wasn't a toddler anymore, she knew that her father and uncle had killed in their career as huntsmen, and even though they tried to change the subject when she approached it, they admitted that even her mother had killed once, after she pressed further. They never shared the details, though, something about that story not being appropriate for someone as young as she was.

Ruby knew, and had somewhat begrudgingly accepted, that even if she based her future career as a huntress on killing Grimm, there might be sometimes where she'd need to kill a bad guy to save people. That would always be her last resort, though.

''So you're fine with the objective being to kill her?''

'''Fine'... might be too big of a word. But if there's really no other option, I won't be against it, and I won't begrudge you for planning to save everyone. Are you sure there's no other way to beat her, though?'' Ruby asked, just to be sure.

''I mean, there might be one way, but it would be by implanting a shock device in her skull, forcing her to obey us.'' Gemini made a face at the thought, clearly not pleased with the idea. ''The idea of enslaving her, however, feels more distasteful than a simple kill. Not to mention the risk of her managing to get out of that. Plus, that would require capturing her alive, which would be both harder than killing her and be a greater risk of someone on our side dying in the process.''

This idea also made Ruby uncomfortable, though she wasn't sure if it was just the idea by itself of if it was because Gemini had taken time to think about something like that. She was discovering a side of her friend that she wasn't sure what to think about.

… At least his conclusion was that it was a bad idea and that he wouldn't do it. That had to count for something, right?

Still… ''When I asked if there was no other way, the last thing I expected was something worse than killing. Did you really have to even consider something like that?'' Ruby said, to which he shrugged nonchalantly.

''Brainstorming ideas, exploring whether they could work or not and throwing them away depending on whether they were moral or immoral. It's all part of the planning process. Doesn't mean I have to agree with the ideas that are being mulled over, I just have to explore them all to make sure I don't fail to notice something critical.''

''Uh, fair enough, I guess.'' Ruby conceded. ''So, what is the plan, then?''

''You mean what are the plans?'' Gemini said. ''One consist of gathering allies and cornering her in an everyone versus one fight. Cinder might be powerful, but Pyrrha Nikos put up enough of a fight to show that Cinder wasn't invincible. She can be beaten. Cinder would beat Pyrrha anytime in a one on one, but Pyrrha and you, and me, and Yang, and their teammates, and Qrow? If we stack the Deck in our favor enough, then beating her in an open fight is pratically a guarantee. If that's still not enough, I always have the Lien to hire more huntsmen to help us.''

Something clicked in Ruby's mind. ''Is that why you're doing the whole Yu-Gi-Oh thing? To finance the fight against Cinder?''

''Yes,'' Gemini nodded, ''as of now, I had hired a huntsman to teach Pyrrha's futur partner. He was too weak in the vision I saw, to the point of being more of a burden than help, but with private tutoring, he should be able to actually make a positive contribution. Especially his semblance, which refills other people's aura and temporarily strengthen their semblance, will be of great help if he can unlock it before the fight against Cinder.''

''That's a pretty cool semblance, what's the guy's name?''

''Jaune Arc. Can you imagine if he used his semblance on Yang? She'd have her aura refilled after losing it and activating her semblance, and the strength boost would be even higher.''

Ruby's eyes widened. ''Oh! Forget 'cool', that's almost terrifying. I feel sorry for whoever would be at the other end of that.''

''I know, right? At that point, Cinder won't know what hit her.'' Gemini grinned at the thought of Yang overwhelming Cinder's Maiden powers with pure brute strength and pummeling her into the ground. Puny Maiden. ''Unfortunately, this is a risky plan, as there is still a high chance of a few of us dying in the fight to beat Cinder. This is why I have multiple plans, because this one isn't ideal.''

''That's… Alright then, what's the next plan?''

''Stabbing Cinder in her sleep.'' Gemini said. Ruby made a face. ''What? That way she's the only one dying.''

''I know, I know, It's just… it feels dirty?'' Ruby said/asked to herself, as something about killing someone in their sleep just felt… wrong.

''I mean, yeah it is, but playing dirty to win without having to bother with the hassle of slowly beating the opponent's aura down has pretty much been my MO so far.''

''Ah, right.'' Ruby did remember all the stunt he pulled in their spars, he was difficult to fight against precisely because he wouldn't let you fight him. She tried to spar against him a few more time after he had choked her into giving up. The result?

He hid in the forest. She expected him to try to pull the same ambush as the previous time, so she stayed on her guard while searching for him. But after hours of searching, and him texting her from time to time to ask if she had given up yet, she actually did give up and went back home, only to learn he had turned around when she lost sight of him and snuck back into her house to play video games and trade puns with Yang.

Another time, he used some sleeping gas bomb. They were outside, so the gas dispersed before it could put her to sleep, but it did make her feel pretty sluggish after two minutes of breathing it and slowed her down enough for him to have no issue grappling her and choking her into surrendering, again. Because of course he couldn't be put to sleep by the gas due to his own semblance making sleep impossible for him. Cheap cheater.

The time after, he just threw sand in her eyes. In the following rematch, she was the one who threw sand in his eyes, just to see how he liked his own medecine. She won that spar, finally.

It turned out that he actually liked it, because as soon as he recovered after her victory, he stared at her with his reddened eyes, grinned and told her that he was proud of her.

Then he freaked out because he was worried that he was a 'bad influence on her'.

''But that's contingent on being able to sneak up on her while she sleep, which is nowhere near guaranteed.'' Gemini mumbled, thinking out loud. ''If doesn't work, we'd need to have our allies on standby and ready to fight her.''

Ruby had never heard the word 'contingent' before, but she was going to let the context of the sentence fills in the blank and pretend she totally knew that word.

''So killing her in her sleep is plan A and fighting her is plan B?'' Ruby asked. That seemed solid enough to her.

But Gemini disagreed. ''No. Killing her in her sleep is plan B, and we need to keep in mind the sleeping gas bombs I have. They don't work as well as the ones in the cartoons, but it should be able to help, with the right circumstances. Fighting her head on is plan C.''

''Eh? But what is plan A then?''

''I'm glad you asked, plan A is what I call 'divine intervention'. Here, let me show you.'' Gemini took a thick book from his desk's drawer and and put it in front of Ruby. ''Page 88.''

She recognized the book, it was one of the ones Gemini had showed to her when he showed her his semblance's inventory: 'Encyclopedia of the gods'.

Ruby opened the book and went to page 88, and she blinked when she saw what the page was about.

''Angels, really?'' She said, incredulous. ''Your plan is to pray and hope for an angel to come down and miraculously save us from Cinder?''

Gemini giggled at her reaction. ''Not 'pray and hope'. Ruby, I saw it. Right after Cinder killed Pyrrha, a girl arrived on the site of the fight and a burst of light came out of her eyes, defeating Cinder in one blow.''

''But that doesn't have anything to do with angels? Did you see the white wings? What about the halo?''

Gemini smirked, as he did when he knew something others didn't. That stupid, assured smirk that made her both be curious to hear what he was about to say and tear her hair out, because she knew he was going to say something she had never even heard about before.

Like that time when he taught her that hippos were so aggressive and territorial that they basically chose murder everytime they saw something, including Grimm. And rhinos were a similar case, except instead of being aggressive, they were so blind that they couldn't make the difference between a predator and a non-threat, so they didn't take any chance and just attacked anything that came too close to them. Of course, Grimm were much stronger than ordinary animals, but these two species were strong enough to win against any Beowolf that wasn't an Alpha. And when they attacked a Grimm stronger than them? That was when the stress of being killed by the Grimm made it possible, although rare, for them to unlock their aura on their own, leading to these two species being amongst the wild animals with the highest chances of having aura. Not that 4% was that big of a number, but still.

After learning how dangerous and malicious hippopotamus could be, the idea of one with aura and a semblance was frankly terrifying. She'd never look at these two animals the same way as she did before.

Neither did the Vacuans who lived near the savannah, who considered hippos and rhinos to be sacred animals due to how often they watched one kill a Grimm.

Though at least rhinos, when raised in a non-dangerous environment, were much more relax and pacific. According to Gem, they basically acted like giant, armored puppies. It was kind of cute?

''Turn the page.'' Was all he said.

With how he was going about telling her, she was starting to suspect he had rehearsed this.

Wait, no. He kept the book in his desk, instead of in his inventory like he usually did. He totally planned tho tell her this way.

The first thing Ruby saw after turning the page were the illustrations. Unlike the one on the last page, those weren't depictions of angels she had ever seen.

''Gem, what is this?'' A confused Ruby asked.

''The whole 'white wings' and 'halo' are modern renditions, after centuries of myths, legends and playing the scroll game. If we assume the oldest iconographies-'' oldest what? ''-are the most accurate ones, then the girl's power I saw in my vision is a perfect match for the oldest drawings of 'angels'.

''That's… Alright, maybe. But how do you know it's not just a semblance that happens to be similar to these early angels?''

''Because I know what the girl's semblance is and it's not that. The burst of light was something else. So plan A is to find her, teach her how to use that power, and then smite Cinder.''

'He said that as if it was gonna be easy.' Ruby thought. Oh sure, let's just start searching for a literal goddess that lived somewhere in Vale, not like it was a big place, right? And that was if they were lucky and she wasn't a tourist from another kingdom that came here for the Vytal Festival.

''And what do your 'angel' looks like?'' Ruby sighed. With any hope, she was going to have unique and rare features. She swore if Gemini described the 'angel' as having brown hair and brown eyes, he was going to search on his own.

''Well, to begin with, she's kinda short, but not as short as my sister.''

''Gem, 'not as short as Neo' is all of Remnant.'' Ruby pointed, giving a deadpan look at Gemini, who only grinned playfully as a response.

''So you agree with my description? Great, that means we can start searching.'' He laughed as she pouted at him, annoyed. ''Eh eh, sorry. I'm just messing with you. But I guess I should start being serious, right?''

''Yes, you should. Get to the point, please.''

''Alright. She has black hair that fade to red, and she always wear a red cape.'' Ruby's ears widened as Gemini talked, not sure if she heard that right. ''She also wields a giant black and red sniper-scythe that she calls Crescent Rose.''

Ruby got up so suddenly that the chair she was sitting on fell on the ground, her heart beating so fast it almost hurt.

H-how? They'd talked over scroll while he was grounded, and she told him that she had finished making her mechashift weapon at school, but she never told him what the weapon's name was.

Gemini gave her a sad smile, knowing what he was telling her was going to make her life more complicated.

He took another book from his desk, one Ruby hadn't seen yet. It was an old, dusty book, with half of the cover page eroded out.

The title, or what was left of it, was 'Fair… ale… of t… Vale'. Fair Ale of Vale? It sounded like a book uncle Qrow would enjoy, but Ruby doubted that was the actual name. Fairy Tales of Vale? Fairy Tales of the Vale? Did she get that right?

''Do you know the fairy tale of the 'The Warrior in the Woods'?''

''Of course I know it, it's one of the stories dad read to my sister and I when we were kids.'' Ruby answered, confused. ''But what do this have to do with you claiming that I am a goddess?''

He had to be messing with her, right? This must be a prank.

Gemini opened the book, on the page where the story of 'The Warrior in the Woods' started.

''Read this part.'' He said, his finger next to a part of the text.

Ruby read the paragraph, which described the warrior using a burst of light to destroy the Grimm attacking the main character. Like the angel in Gem's vision, or these old drawings of angels.

''But… but I've never seen this in the copy I have at home, or when dad told me the story.'' Ruby said, shocked at the difference between this version and the one she was familiar with. The fairy tale she had back home just described the lady warrior killing the Grimm with her weapon.

Gemini nodded. ''The council has been subtly rewriting the old classics since king Ozias' death. They can't erase entire stories out of the books, people would notice and be angry, but they can make small changes there and there. Do you remember the last line of this story?''

''The one where the main character says he fell in love with the warrior the first time he saw her eyes?' Ruby asked, wondering what changes there would be.

''Look at the last line.'' Gemini said, turning the page to get to the end of the story.

It wasn't hard for Ruby to spot the difference, the version she had read only had one word missing.

''Her… silver eyes?''

Her head was starting to swirl. This- this couldn't be true, right?

And yet, what Gem was telling her, showing her, made for a pretty compelling argument. And he wasn't done yet.

He took his scroll out, before handing it to her and showing her a photographed page.

''Here,'' he said, ''your ancestors were a long line of knights in the service of the kingdom. This is a military record concerning the use of the silver-eyes' power by one of said ancestors.''

As she read, she felt a weight forming in her stomach. Visions of the future, old fairy tales… Those were all well and good, but this? This was pretty hard evidence.

Ruby, not feeling very well, put the chair back in its original position so that she could sit down again.

''But… W-what is this power?'' Ruby hated how her voice cracked.

Gemini shrugged. ''No idea, for all I know, it very well might be of divine origin. But what really matters is that you have an extra tool to kill Grimm with, and since it's discriminate and only harm Grimm, there's zero risk of hurting someone with it. You can just think of it as a sort of hereditary second semblance.''

''Okay? But what about all this 'angel' stuff?'' She asked.

''Eh, people in the past who had to understand things without the full picture. Probably. Either way, even if that power was divine, that wouldn't make you a goddess, just a mortal with divine powers.'' Gemini frowned, seemingly thinking about something. ''Well, I suppose the accurate term for that would be a demi-god, or a demi-goddess in this case.''

''I'm not going to start calling myself a demi-goddess.'' The very idea made her cringe.

''And I'm not going to start building altars in your honor to burn incense on. Seems like we're on the same page here.'' Gemini grinned.

Ruby rolled her eyes. 'Yeah, yeah. So that's your plan A? For me to learn how to use that power and use it to beat Cinder… Wait, didn't you just say that it only harmed Grimm?''

''And Cinder, for some reasons. I'm pretty sure it's because of the Grimm parasite inside her.'' He clarified.

''Uh, that makes sense. I think? Anyway, how am I supposed to learn how to use them?''

''I've started a search for an old silver-eyes warrior who was able to use her eyes at will during her prime. Hopefully I'll managed to convince her to come and teach you.''

Ruby's eyes widened. ''Wait, there's another one like me?''

''Was.'' Gemini corrected. ''She was hunted down when she was younger and even though she survived, she lost her eyes in the attack.''

''Oh…'' Ruby deflated at the news. ''But who… was it that Grimm queen?''

''She's my foremost suspect, yes.'' He said, using another uncommon word again.

''Foremost?''

He sighed, before translating for her. ''Most likely suspect.''

Oh. She'll remember that.

''She should be found soon.'' Gemini continued. ''Or at least I hope so, because it's becoming urgent.''

''What do you mean?'' Ruby asked, her head tilting slightly in interrogation.

He took his scroll again and Ruby saw that he was searching for a video, before he gave her the scroll with a grim expression on his face. ''Here, I filmed this in the forest of Patch.''

As the video started, Ruby gasped at the sight.

A Seer? It was a Grimm so rare that she only ever saw one in her textbooks. And Gem filmed that on Patch, of all places? What was that Grimm even doing here?

Then she saw Gem engage the Seer in combat. What was he doing? The barbed tentacles showed that it was an old one. Those were super dangerous. And indeed, Ruby watched as her friend's attempt to kill it failed.

Then, the Seer talked. She heard it claim that it would spare him if he lead to a house in the woods. Her house. It was searching for her. She heard it offer rewards to Gem while they fought. Then the Seer caught Gemini, and she would have cried in fear for him if it wasn't for the fact that he was sitting right in front of her. She knew he would make it.

Not that it stopped her from yelping when he blew himself up.

For the love of the gods! What went through his mind to think 'yeah, exploding myself sounds like a winning strategy'? She couldn't even tell whether the fact that it did work made it worse or not.

''The voice that came from that Grimm…''

''It was Salem. She's searching for you.'' Gemini said. The statement, even though she already understood that before he said it, still sent chills down her spine. ''Your silver-eyes are your best defense against her, so we'll start helping you to learn how to use them as soon as possible. While the search for the old silver-eyed warrior is ongoing, I suggest you don't neglect your training with Crescent Rose in the meantime. Because while your power only affect Grimm, the flip side of that is that it can only be activated when a Grimm is close.''

''So we'll have to go hunting Grimm. Alright, I can do that.'' Ruby said, trying to get a hold of herself after the rather shocking thing Gemini shared with her.

Man, she sure could see why he wanted this conversation to stay between the two of them.

''Is there anything else I should know?'' She asked, mentally admitting to herself that she hoped there wasn't anything else.

Thankfully for her, Gem was about done. ''Uh, no? I think I'm finished. I mean, if I forgot something I can always talk to you later about it.''

''Cool. So, um… do you mind if I need a hug right now?'' It was a bit embarassing to ask, but Ruby kind of needed one right now. Learning about Salem was one thing, but knowing that Salem was in the woods surrounding her home, searching for her was on another level. It was too close, wayyy too close for comfort.

''Of course not.'' Gemini said with a gentle smile, getting up from his chair and opening his arms.

Ruby buried her face in his chest, trembling slightly as Gem patted her back with his hand.

''Hey… Are you alright?'' He asked, concerned with how she was acting.

''M'fine. Just scared.'' She didn't cry or anything, not even close, but she took a few deep breath before ending the hug. ''I'm feeling a bit better already.''

''…'' Gem said nothing for a few seconds, before taking her by the wrist and motioning to the door. ''Come on, why don't we go take a walk? Breath fresh air, do a bit of window shopping. It'll take our mind off the heavy stuff.''

''Eh? But wait, don't you have your job here? Is it really alright?'' Ruby asked, not wanting him to get in trouble for leaving in the middle of his job.

Gem took his scroll back from the desk and quickly checked the time. ''It'll be fine. There's only three hours left, Flax can hold the fort until closing time. It's a slow day anyway.''

''Oh, alright then.'' Ruby nodded.

Despite everything, she couldn't help but smile as she followed him outside.

The futur Gem talked about was pretty scary, especially with Salem searching for her and being so close, but he was smart and already made plans to deal with these problems. As long as she trusted him as much as he trusted her, things would turn out alright.

The only thing that worried her was that he might forget to keep himself alright along the way.

/-/

''Hare, this is Ice, target has been sighted at 9 o'clock, 510 meters. Over.'' Winter said over the radio. Her summoned Nevermore swarm scouting the forest had been equipped with small military cameras and trackers, leaving her to watch over the equipement and coordinate her colleague, who was best suited to reach the target as fast as possible.

''Copy, Ice. Going toward the target. Over.'' Specialist Harriet Bree said before turning to her left. 500 meters only? She was going to be there in no time.

''Copy. Over.'' Winter confirmed she heard Harriet, as procedure obliged.

With her semblance, Specialist Bree quickly reached the Grimm they were looking for. She charged the Seer so fast that it barely had time to even move. Unfortunately, it was too late for it and her knee crashed into its bulbous head, killing as soon as the 'fight' started.

''Ice, this is Hare, target has been eliminated. Over.'' Honestly, this assignement on Patch was a little on the boring side, but General Ironwood insisted that it was of the utmost importance, so they were going to do their job. At least even if that was the first Seer they saw in the month and a half that they'd been deployed here, they were free to train between scoutings. Ice was a pretty good sparing partner.

Was there something wrong with the local flora, though? Why were there so many broken trees?

Eh, whatever, worrying for the trees wasn't her job.

/-/

Salem stared at the Seer in front of her, her face arboring a displeased frown.

Atlesian specialists were hunting her Seer in the woods of Patch? So the General had been made aware of her attempts to search the silver-eyed girl. Was this the doing of this unknow child who had interfered with the last two ones? Probably, but who was he that he was able to contact someone as high-ranked as… What was the name of the current General again? Morningwood? Eh, no matter.

Either way, she was going to have to drop the search, at least for the foreseeable futur, otherwise she might spook Ozpin into taking drastic actions. Plus, she couldn't continue the search without being interrupted anyway.

She briefly considered sending Tyrian, but he was a wanted serial killer so even if Atlas was on Patch to kill her Seer they wouldn't let him go if they saw him. Best case scenario, she would trade showing a card Ozpin didn't know about in exchange for one or two dead specialists. Not even close to being worth it.

At least she remembered to keep her minions out of the room as she was searching, so she didn't have Tyrian's screams of outrage hurting her ears.

The most dreadful of all queens let out an annoyed sigh. It was such a shame Augur failed to find Maria.

/-/

''Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for coming.'' I said, grinning as I looked at the scientists gathered in front of me.

Man, the whole business thing I had going on with Yu-Gi-Oh was working so much better than I expected. I had so much Lien that I could afford to hire them way earlier than I was planning too. In part thanks to that SDC share that went back up, not quite to what it was before, but close enough to buff up my capital by a respectable amount. At least I wasn't extorted when selling it. And I did well selling it when I did, because soon afterward, another Schnee was assassinated.

Funding researches on energy production was supposed to happen after I had dealt with Cinder, but if I could start early, why should I not?

''I'm sure you're all wondering why I gathered you here.'' I continued.

''I mean, just a little.'' A young scientist, only recently out of university, said. ''The paid seemed good, but there wasn't much details on the job itself.''

My grin grew even larger than it was before. ''I want you to research an alternative mean of producing energy that doesn't require dust.''

I watched as their shoulder sagged. Sheesh, motivation sure was high.

''Look, kid. I don't know who you are, but you're not the first one to want something like that to be developped.'' One of the scientist, a thin woman with greying hair, said. ''We'll tell you the same thing everyone else get told: Dust is the only source of energy in the world, the idea of non-dust energy production is a pipe dream. Don't waste our time with what belongs to the domain of science fiction.''

''But we use the energy of dust as electricity to convert it into kinetic energy, amongst other things. If the conversion from electricity to movement can be done, doesn't it stand to reason that converting movement to electricity should be possible too? We could use a turbine connected to a generator.'' I insisted.

Another scientist, a man in his thirties broke into a mocking laugh. ''Of course it's possible, but it's not viable.'' He said. ''To generate the movement of the turbine in the first place, you would need to use electricity from dust, and from there you want to reconvert it into electricity afterward? You don't seem to be aware of it, but when you convert a type of energy to another, like say, kinetic to electricity or vice-versa, some of that energy is always lost in the conversion. What you're talking about cannot, and never will be able to produce electricity. It only waste dust for nothing, hence why every experimentations in that direction failed.''

Man, they really weren't seeing what was right in front of them, were they?

''And who said we had to generate that movement ouselves?'' I asked them, my voice booming with passion. ''Is there not enough movement to be found in nature? We may not be able to produced electricity on our own, but we can extract it from Remnant itself. Look at the rivers that are everywhere on Sanus! You think dustless electricity is impossible!? Then build a barrage on a large river to hold turbines that will be turned by the flow of water and attach generators to those turbines! Then, and only then, come and tell me how 'impossible' it is!''

My little speech earned me scoffs and rolls of the eyes, but that was them reacting to what they expected instead of what I said. A few seconds later, when the content of my words registered, I saw their eyes widen and the gears in their head turning.

They turned toward each others and started talking. They theorized, speculated and calculated as they talked over each others, almost losing their mind on the concept I advanced. They seemed to have a hard time wrapping their minds around the fact that nobody thought of that before. After all, it was so obvious in insight.

The wheel was obvious in insight too, yet it still took around 200 000 years for Earthlings to come up with it. Assuming it was invented toward the beginning of civilization and not invented and lost several times before. Who knew what happened before the invention of writing.

I coughed loudly to bring their attention back toward me. ''I'm glad you're all so enthusiastics, but we still have employment contracts to sign.'' I didn't have to worry they would go develop the tech instead of choosing to work for me, they signed a NDA when they entered the room, stipulating that they couldn't talked of what was discussed here without me having the right to sue them.

Fortunately, I didn't even have to worry about it, as they were all on board.

''Of course, of course. Let's sign them then.''

''I can't wait to work on this!''

''I know, right? Hell, I'd almost be willing to pay to be part of this.''

''This is going to revolutionize the entire world.''

''I suppose that would be a great last project before taking my retreat.''

I smirked. Everything was going according to… No, it was going better than the plan.

''Very well.'' I said. ''I will be expecting results, so for that purpose, if there is anything that you need for this project, then as long as it is within the limits of what is reasonable, I shall do my best to procure it for you.''

Hydroelectricity wouldn't allow us to cross the final frontier, but it would open people's mind to alternative sources of energy and fund further researches.

We would need at least nuclear power to travel between stars, but that was something to be handled carefully.

Part of me was afraid the splitting of the atoms and the power it could unleash would require me to seize control of the nation to ensure it wouldn't be used as a weapon.

Remnant wouldn't survive nuclear weapons. Not with most of Mankind concentrated on only four population centers.

---

As always, let me know what you thought of the chapter.

Next chapter, 'God mode activated', hasn't been written yet, but will be out when finished. Probably in the first or second months of 2022.

Feeling quirky tonight, might ask the pope to declare a crusade to take Jerusalem.

It's been a while since I've Deus Vulted my way into the Middle-East.