The Games We Play

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryugii. This has been pulled from his Spacebattle publishment. Anyway on with the show...errr read.

Skill Tutor

I used my shirt to wipe the sweat off my face, trying to slow my breathing. I'd been here for…around two days now, I think; I hadn't stopped practicing since I'd come out here and I'd lost track of time a few times because of my long meditation sessions.

At first, I hadn't even been able to practice my powers all at once; they were just too exhausting to make it feasible. I could only go full power for about five seconds and then I'd need to meditate for something like ten minutes to recover—the speed I exhausted myself undid the main benefit of using Soul of the World for training. I'd had to train myself piecemeal, starting with just using my persistent skills and then meditating with Soul of the World to lengthen the time I could keep them on.

I couldn't do much else while I was meditating, but for techniques I could train simply by leaving on it didn't matter—at least, not when I didn't have anything else to do. I hadn't done it much while training my Aura, partially because there had been so much else to do, but mainly because I had managed to get it to the point that I could keep it on all the time with just my passive MP regeneration and there wasn't much need. But for this…

The upkeep per minute for Summon Elemental and White Tiger's Hide, quite possibly my two most valuable skills regarding this mission, were ungodly at fifty MP per minute each—higher than that of Claws of the White Tiger and White Tiger's Tread combined. If I used all my persistent skills, I'd exhaust myself in a little over eleven minutes; less time than it took to regain all of my MP though Soul of the World. If I trained them while using Soul of the World, however, the addition to my MP regeneration was such that it greatly slowed the process; with that method, I could train the techniques for over an hour before running out of MP.

Furthermore, the math quickly proved to be in my favor as the cost of maintaining those skills dropped swiftly as they leveled up and were slowly overcome by my increase MP regeneration until I reached the point that they could be maintained indefinitely while I meditated. By the time day had come and gone and the moon had risen, I'd reduced the combined cost of all my persistent skills to around fifty-five MP per minute, discounting the MP I regenerated every minute, raising the amount of time I could fight with just them to close to over twenty-five minutes thanks to the MP I'd gained from Soul of the World—more than twice what I'd started with. At that point, I'd decided to practice my Active skills, leaving the persistent on as I did, because I could use Soul of the World whenever my MP got low and maintain them constantly.

I'd started with Jaws of the White Tiger and, honestly, had kind of felt like a cat with a scratching post. That's pretty much what training it had amounted to, to be honest; shoving my fingers into trees and tearing them apart. I added in Power Strike, Rip, and Crush once I got Jaws cost down some, as the former was already pretty cheap from my week of training beforehand and the latter weren't all that expensive to begin with, at least comparatively. I'd gotten a lot of training in for Soulforge Restoration, too, healing the trees I'd set about ruining, though it improved slowly.

I'd trained that from what I judged to be a little before midnight to around dawn before switching over to training Lunge. Once it got dark again, I put everything together and started bounding around the clearing, tearing the place up and putting it back together again and again and again. Blake hadn't called me yet, so I figured I'd keep practicing until dawn—it was cheap enough to actually use in combat as more than just an ace in the hole, but it still tired me out too quickly, reducing the amount of time I could fight to somewhere around thirty seconds. If Blake didn't come back by dawn, though, I'd probably have to call her instead.

I flexed my fingers, looking down at them. I'd need to meditate soon, but I could go a little bit longer. I'd leveled up Martial Arts Mastery with my earlier training, but improving Bai Hu's White Tiger Technique required using several of the techniques together and since improving Jump was easiest to do while practicing Lunge; all told, now that I had the costs down some, this was the best way to grind all my skills. Taking a breath and crouching, I was preparing myself for another series of crushing attacks.

"So that's the famous technique of the White Tiger of the West," A voice interrupted me—and very nearly scared me out of my skin before I suddenly calmed again. I turned around to stare at Adam's red and white mask and the passive portion of his face that was visible below it. "Impressive. I've known of several Faunus who sought to recreate it from the tablets, but even after years of study and practice, I don't think any of them came as close to mastering it as you have in just two days."

I laughed a little at that.

"Thanks for the compliment," I said. "But this isn't mastery. It's not even close. There are still two techniques I'm not even strong enough to use and even these ones I've only just gotten good enough to use for real. If I had mastered this style, well…I don't even know what would happen, but I think there'd be a lot less trees in this forest."

"Even so," Adam said, reaching up to touch the broken surface of one of the trees. "Your power is amazing."

"Blake told you, then," I said, unsurprised.

"Did you think she wouldn't?" He answered evenly.

"I told her to tell you whatever she wanted. I trust Blake," I returned, not rising to what I figured was probably bait. "I'm glad she told you, actually, because that means she trusts you and it saves us some time. I take it she told you I wanted to speak to you? It's a pretty good time for it—I got most of my skills decently leveled. Now's as good a time as any to start moving on to the next step."

Adam said nothing, just staring at me steadily. Or I assumed he was staring at me—it was hard to tell with the mask, to be honest.

"Since you're here, I assume you'll be joining us on this mission," I filled the silence when it became evident that he wasn't going to. "To be honest, I feel better about this insane plan with you at my back."

"Because I'm strong?" He asked.

"Yes," I told the truth. "No offense, but you and I don't really know each other yet. We didn't really talk much after I healed you and I left shortly after. I only know a few things about you as a person: That you're here, so you must want to help those guys on Mantle as much as Blake and I, that Blake trusts you, and that you're strong as hell. The first two are enough to make me comfortable with working with you and the latter is enough to make me real glad you're here. What about you?"

"What about me?"

I scratched my head and sighed, musing—but no, enormous power or not, there was a reason I'd called him here. I settled my own gaze on him and was glad I was so calm, whatever aspect of my power was responsible for it.

"Well," I said. "I assume you don't like me much."

"Because I'm part of the White Fang," He said and it didn't sound like a question. It didn't sound particularly accusatory, either, thankfully; it was just a statement of something that was, to him, a fact.

"No," I shot down immediately, shaking my head. "I can think of loads of reasons for you not to like me—and any number of them could play into why you might be in the White Fang—but I don't think you'd hate me solely because you were a member. I mean, for one thing, Blake doesn't seem to mind me too much and she's part of the White Fang and most of the guys I healed seemed okay with me, though some of the others were a bit cold. They all at least tolerated me, though, because of what I did. And you seemed to as well, but…"

"If you're worried about me stabbing you in the back, you can relax," He said quietly. "It's true that I hate a lot of humans and I'm apathetic about many more, but I'm aware that there's more to groups than the group and specific individual people can be exceptions to any rule. I don't particularly dislike you, as these things go—and I wouldn't endanger this mission even if I did."

"I know," I nodded. "I got that feeling from you and I trust Blake enough to trust you. But what I'm saying is, though you don't hate me, you don't like me, either."

He shrugged.

"Like you said, I don't exactly know you, do I?" He answered. "If it makes you feel better, I don't like many people. I don't have to like them to work with them."

"Cool. But since we're going to throw ourselves into the fray together in an absurdly dangerous mission that could quite possibly get us all killed, I'd like to get to know you a bit," I said. "As such, I came up with a team building exercise."

"And that's my cue to leave," Adam said, turning around. "Blake said she'd be busy until around noon, but she'd come by then. See you later."

"Wait!" I stopped him quickly. "Stop, it was a joke. Sort of. I really do need your help with something, though!"

"Get to the point, then," He stopped and looked back at me with a trace of irritation.

"Blake told you about my skills and levels and such, right?"

"She did," He said. "I don't know how many games Blake's actually played, so I'm not sure how much of it she's clear on, but I understand how your power works, more or less. You've been training Bai Hu's style out here, I assume."

"Yeah; that and a few other things," I said. "Mostly my combat stuff, since that's easy to practice on my own and I kind of need to abandon my usual style for this mission. But there are a few other skills I think will be useful that are hard to train quickly, or at least safely, without help. I'm gonna have Blake help me with Stealth and Disguise, for example, because those seem to be her things, but there's another one that I think you could help me with."

"Oh?" Adam asked, slowly turning back around to face me.

"For this mission, I'm both the medic and the driver, which means staying active is my main priority—especially since I'm the only one who can fulfill either of those roles. I've been training my combat skills for the point when things inevitably go horribly wrong, but on the whole, my most important skills are my defensive and healing ones, which are what I'd like you to help me train. You've seen my healing skill; it improves based on how much HP I heal, so these trees aren't a great way to improve it anymore. I've also got a skill called 'Physical Endurance,'" I said, bring up its window as I did so. "I got it back in the warehouse, after a robot drained my aura and shot me. Long story short, it makes me more durable; even at level one I receive three percent less damage from anything that hits me. But as far as I can tell, the only way to improve it is to lose HP to physical attacks. Without my Aura on."

Adam tilted his head to the side and I was sure that if he hadn't been wearing a mask, I would have seen furrowed eyebrows.

"Wait, then….you want me to…"

"To beat the crap out of me, yeah," I said. "Many times. You beat me up for a while until I need to back off and heal and then I get back up and we go again, rinse and repeat until I grind both skills up some. I'll need to test how the reduction in damage interacts with my other defensive powers, too, so we'll test that, too."

"Why not just continue to improve your Aura-based defensive techniques?" He asked. "There's one like that in Bai Hu's style, isn't there?"

"White Tiger's Hide, yeah, and I've got my Aura and Metal Aura, too," I said, nodding. "But there's the issue of diminishing returns and we don't have a lot of time. Like…I can usually learn the first ten levels of a skill in about eight to ten hours if I train it right, but getting it to twenty takes around the clock training for several days. Going by my Aura and Metal Aura, getting them up to fifty…I think it'll take three weeks to a month, even if I focused on them. The effort I have to put in to see improvement grows fast, but the amount of improvement per level is usually fairly constant. And since Physical Endurance is passive…"

I shrugged.

"I get more out of ten levels of it then I would from one more level in White Tiger's Hide. So I need you to hurt me a lot."

Adam just shook his head—and then said something that surprised me.

"I guess that's fitting if you're a game character. It worked in Grimm Nights," He sighed.

I blinked at him. Once. Twice.

And then I smiled brightly.

"The lava cheat in Three?" I said.

"I played the first few a long time ago, when I was a kid," He said, looking away. "Before the Rights Revolution."

I assumed from his wording that he hadn't played any of the others. It was fairly easy to guess why.

"You should play at least six, seven, and ten, if you haven't," I said. "They're the best in the series."

"I don't have time for games anymore," He said, voice flat.

"Neither do I, since I'm busy living one. But since I don't sleep I'll be working around the clock, so there'll probably be some downtime for you and Blake when I don't need one of you to help me; you can play mine, if you want," I shrugged. "Or borrow it. My parents will be out of town for a while, so you two can crash at my place if you don't have anywhere to stay."

"Maybe," He said with the same voice as before. "Also, I know what you're trying to do."

"My mom always says that strangers are just friends you haven't met yet," I said, smiling as I gave him another shrug. "And since we'll be out here for a while, we might as well talk some. And hell, if you want me to shut up, you can just keep beating the crap out of me."

Adam was silent for a long moment.

"That seems fair," He mused at last.

For a moment, I was weightless. I saw the bright blue sky above me, white clouds drifting by in the slight breeze. Then I saw the earth below me—green grass and brown dirt partially obscured by the leaves and branches of trees. I saw the sky again, then the earth, sky, earth, sky—

And then I reached the apex of my arc and gravity seized me in its merciless hold once more. I came crashing down into the branch of a tree—I had begun to think of this entire exercise as the Tree's Revenge—but it wasn't sturdy enough to hold my weight so I quickly found it breaking under my weight, sending my plummeting head first back to earth.

It hurt.

A lot.

I lay there for a moment, stunned, before Adam appeared by my side, glanced around once, and shrugged before grabbing me by a leg. The next moment, he was swinging me through the air in an unmercifully short arc that ended with my back hitting a tree, before he let go of me.

Which, by the way, hurt even more then falling, at least for a few seconds—at which point it immediately and abruptly faded and I took Adam's offered hand, pulling myself up.

"So like I was saying, if we both survive this mess and see each other again, could you teach me some sword skills?" I asked, gasping for breath. It had felt like my ribs had broken, but only for a few seconds, and I had been forcibly inoculated against pain within the first hour or so. Or at least the way my body felt pain.

He shrugged. I'd learned a few things about the man through trial and error, mainly what subjects were safe. I mean, I didn't always stick to those subjects, because he was kind of going to beat the shit out of me one way or another, but it was still good to know. He was massively out of date in terms of games—like, fifteen years out of date or something—but he didn't really seem to mind me talking about them. He didn't get excited about it or anything, but he didn't mind the conversation. He also seemed to be fine with me asking for advice and I was getting the feeling that, oddly enough, the mentor role was not new to him.

Subjects that he didn't appreciate or which made him angry were many and included, but were not limited to, the Faunus War, his family, his life before and during the war, and why he wore a mask. I learned quickly which subjects would get me pain and answers and which would just get me pain, but mainly I learned that Adam didn't talk much unless you knew how to come at him.

Talking about swords was one way.

"You use a longsword normally, right?" He asked as I began healing myself. "I don't know if my style would work well with that, due to my focus on Iaido. You could try, though; if nothing else, perhaps you could develop a quick draw skill of some kind. I can find you a sword to practice with and we'll see if it translates over to different weapons."

"Maybe," I said thoughtfully, peering at my status screen while my HP refilled. "Mainly, I just really want to have some really cool sword skills, because now that I have all this stuff, well, I feel like I'm lagging behind there. Like, when this is over, what am I gonna do? I'll need to hide my martial arts stuff but those are now my best moves and stuff. You gave me some ideas, but…"

This time, I shrugged.

"Keep in mind that Bai Hu spent years working on his style," Adam said passively. "That it's stronger then what you've managed to puzzle out in a week is unsurprising—especially since it's all about short burst of incredible power. Give it time and keep working. Ready?"

I nodded and a moment later his boot slammed into my knee and I was falling. He caught my right arm with both hands, heaved, and I was flipping over his head. A moment later my back collided with the unforgiving earth. My legs went into the air as I crashed limply into the ground and Adam grabbed one to swing me up and down, up and down, again and again, portions of my HP bar highlighting and vanishing with each hit. After about ten hits, Adam grunted, heaved, and smashed head first into another tree.

I tried to catch myself as I collapsed but couldn't support myself through the pain and slid weakly to the ground. Thankfully, the pain swiftly faded and I managed to lift myself are, shaking my head even as I half expected it to finally fall to pieces. A pair of windows appeared before me as I flopped over on my back.

Mastery of the skill Physical Endurance increases! Physical Endurance's level goes up by one!

"Oh, hey," I choked. "I got another one."

"Back to normal, I guess?" Adam mused, drawing his sword. He gave me a moment to recover and heal myself and then started stabbing me, pulling his sword free, and stabbing me again after a moment's pause—as he had been for most of the last eight or nine hours. It was simultaneously painful for me and painfully boring for Adam, hence him occasionally practicing his throws, hand to hand, marksmanship, and various other methods of inflicting harm.

"Ow," I intoned obligatorily, used to it by now. Chunks of my health bar faded with each stab and it hurt, but the pain both faded quickly and had steadily lessened as my Physical Endurance improved. I stared up at the sky, past Adam's shadowed, stabbing figure. The sun had steadily risen in the sky above us, but I wasn't certain what time it was—somewhere around noon. I could take my watch out of my Inventory and check, but I didn't care that much. "Ow."

Adam shook his head, sighing quietly.

"I'm deriving a lot less enjoyment from hurting you then I thought I would," He said. "It was fun for a while but now this is feeling like work. And you smell horrible."

"I haven't bathed for, like, three days, man," I said after a moment, frowning as I went over the math in my head. "And I've been training constantly that whole time. Sorry I don't smell so great right now. Also, I'm not sure how I should take that first bit. Ow."

"Take it as 'this is really boring,'" He said, still stabbing me. "I can't go all out and I'd tire out eventually even if I could, so instead I end up standing here doing the same thing over and over and over again."

I squinted up at him against the light.

"Boohoo; getting stabbed repeatedly isn't exactly fun for me, either," I said, laying my head back again. I kept an eye of my HP bar just in case, but after hours of this, Adam and I had a system. The next however long passed in a steady cycle of stabs and heals and if I'd been able to see Adam's eyes, I'm pretty they'd have been glazed over. He wasn't the one getting actual, tangible, permanent benefits from this endeavor, so that was understandable.

I saw clouds move to cover the sun, putting an end to my halfhearted attempts to guess the time, and shifted my attention. I took a moment to search through what topic to bring up next, discarded 'girls,' and went to the next option.

"Adam," I spoke, giving him a moment to return from his zoned out state. "New question."

He grunted which could have meant anything—but he did it a lot and I'd decided to interpret it as whatever was most convenient for me.

"You said before that you were apathetic about more humans than you hated, right?" I mused aloud. "Why's that?"

He silently stabbed me a few more times. Just as I was about to accept he wasn't going to answer, though, he spoke.

"Why do you ask?"

"Just curious, I guess. And Blake's taking her sweet time." I sighed. "We should be working on the next step of our plan but…"

Adam grunted and I was pretty sure this time it was in agreement. Of course, he stabbed me afterwards which kind of sent mixed messages, but still.

"The Faunus weren't imprisoned within Menagerie by the people who hated them, not really," He said after several minutes of literally pointed silence. "Or at least, I don't think so. The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of people who don't care—and that's the problem. You can see it anywhere; when a Faunus is getting bullied in school, does the whole class cheer? No; a lot of them might even disapprove. A lot of places discriminate against us, use us, do horrible things to us, but do I think everyone has this deep-seated hatred for us? No. But how many do anything to stop what happens? When they hear a news report about something happening to the Faunus or see them get hurt, they don't really care, not enough to get involved. Even the ones that could do something."

I thought about how many news reports I'd seen and let pass me by, about the kids in school I'd known were probably having a rough time, and felt guilty.

"Yeah," I said quietly. "I can see that, I guess. 'You don't give a shit, I don't give a shit,' basically?"

"More or less," He agreed as I leaned back and sighed. I looked back at the sky, wishing the sun would come out again.

"I'm guilty of that, too," I admitted. "A lot of times. Little things I never really thought about and stuff I saw on the news that I always thought 'I can't do anything about that' or 'Someone else will do something.' But I guess if everyone thinks like that…"

"I figured," He said, shrugging as he shoved his sword into my stomach. "And I'm not stupid; I get it. But that doesn't make it right and it doesn't help the ones who suffer. I'm not going to curse you for not having a perfect record, if you're worried about it; the fact that you agreed to this mission speaks for itself. But there are things people need to understand."

I had to stare for a moment when I realized that Adam was reassuring me and then snorted.

"I'll work on it," I said. "After I get back to school, I'll sort some things out. Considering that you've given me enough punishment to make up for literally everything I've done wrong in my entire life, let's call it even, okay?"

Adam shrugged one shoulder before sheathing his sword.

"I'm bored again," He said when I gave him a questioning look. "I'm gonna go back to punching you."

I shrugged and he dragged me to my feet before his fist went across my face fast enough to make my head spin. I shook my head in an attempt to clear it but he just punched me again, kicked me in the gut to send me back into a tree, before jumping towards me, boot slamming into the side of my skull. I went down, barely catching myself with my hands, and saw Adam's legs before me. More specifically, I saw his right leg drawing back to kick my teeth in and braced myself.

"What the hell are you two doing!?" A voice—Blake I realized after a moment—startled us. Adam even paused in mid-kick for a moment.

Then he kicked me in the face anyway and turned towards Blake.

"Passing time," He said, sounding bored.

"I like to think of it as a bonding experience," I said after the feeling of a broken jaw faded and I had a moment to heal myself. "He punched me in the face, so now we're friends."

Blake looked at me like I was insane.

"You need a Y chromosome to understand," I explained. For an instant, I thought I saw an expression of Adam's face that—given time, water, sunlight, and tender care—might have one day grown into a smile if he hadn't cut it down young. Blake just stared harder, frowning at me, so I rolled my eyes and told the truth. "He was helping me train my Physical Endurance; don't worry about it. You took your time."

Blake's frown deepened and then she tilted her head, opening her mouth to say something, but for shutting it wordlessly, shaking her head.

"Some things came up," She said, evidently deciding to just keep going.

I cracked my neck once and nodded.

"Then now's as good a time as any to talk shop," I said. "You got everything, I take it?"

"Everything I thought you might need," She answered, nodding. "You said your skills were largely general, so I managed to pull a few strings and, thanks to Adam, I got us a Bullhead for you to practice with. A few of our local members agreed to chip in as well and volunteered eleven computers and some extra parts, as well as some Lien and what they could get about the area. Several of them are on rotation, watching the places we know about, and they'll be sending us pictures of everyone who enters and exits. Rodrick is watching the news, to see if anything important comes up."

I think that last part was directed at Adam, but I nodded anyway. I was smart and wise enough to know I couldn't have done that in her place; neither intelligence nor wisdom were replacements for connections. Or experience, I suppose.

"Way to go, Blake," I said. "Then there's a few things we're gonna need to do. Like I told Adam here, I can gain the first ten or so levels of a skill pretty quickly if I train them right, but after that it starts getting harder and harder to improve. Thanks to you, Tukson, and Adam, I got all the basic skills and I had a chance to prepare for the inevitable, but now we're gonna need to use the time we have left to the fullest—and I'm going to need you and Adam to help me on that front."

"I assume you'll be wanting me to assist you with Stealth and Disguise," Blake asked.

"Yup," I nodded. "I may also need your help getting something; a suit of armor."

Blake frowned, brow furrowing.

"I thought we'd already decided on your disguise?" She said.

"It's not for my disguise," I shook my head. "It's for my training. Weight training, specifically."

"First games, now cartoons?" Adam shook his head, obviously getting the reference. "Well, it shouldn't be an issue with your body."

"I know for sure it does," I answered, glad he understood. "I've been training for a week with my own armor, plus my sword and shield—but the whole thing only weighs about fifteen, twenty kilos. A well-made suit of the stuff can weigh anywhere from thirty to fifty; I was going to work my way up to that, but considering the circumstances…"

"How much is that going to cost?" Blake asked, tilting her head to the side.

"Not a penny, hopefully, since we'll steal the materials," I told her, flexing my gauntleted fingers. "I've been keeping Crocea here on constantly to get him leveled—I don't have a lot of faith in my Crafting skill, but with his help and some practice, it should be doable. I don't need it to be good as armor, yet, I just need it to do what I want which is mainly to be heavy. Once I have the armor, Adam and I will do some training at night."

"Grimm," He guessed. "Might as well gain some levels and grind your skills while you're at it."

I gave him a thumbs up.

"I'll fly us there and back in the Bullhead and get as much practice as possible on that front, but I'll wear the armor as long as I can, even in the day."

"The last time I left you drive me anywhere, I ended up flying into the middle of the road in front of a hostile giant robot," Adam noted evenly.

"Well, this time, wear a seatbelt," I advised. "When we're not doing that, I'll be working on my other stuff, like Computers. We still need to get the manual for the airship, right?"

Blake nodded.

"You're going to use a virus?" She asked and I shrugged, wondering how much experience she had at this type of thing.

"Well, I guess," I said. "Getting it that way would be pointlessly difficult, but I'll grind the skill as much as possible, since it'll help later—so we'll call that plan C or D."

Blake stared at me, tilting her head.

"And plan A?"

I smiled.

"There are a few things you need to know about hacking—it's not like in the movies," I told her. "First of all, and most importantly, never forget that people are stupid."