DISCLAIR: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryuugi. This has been pulled from his Spacebattles publishnt at threads/rwby-the-gar-the-gas-we-play-disk-five.341621/. Anyway on with the show...err read.
Final Strike
I ca back to my body with a crash, the power of Ohr Ein Sof leaping from my fingers in a rush of annihilating light. I saw it rush over Gilgash's body, a thin line piercing through the center of his chest and the portal therein, before the blast expanded. It lost all semblance of shape as a beam as it expanded, growing into a wave of light that could have dwarfed mountains and devoured cities. It blotted out the world in front of as if soone had taken an eraser to a whiteboard, clearing it of everything in sight.
When it faded, everything in front of was gone as if cut away by a surgeon's knifeand so were Malkuth and Gilgash.
Slowly, I let hand drop to my side, the tension that had built up within over the course of the fight easing as I relaxed, receiving what was perhaps the best possible confirmation I could ask for.
Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one!
I'd won.
I wanted to smile, laugh, cheer, and celebratebut I didn't. I couldn't muster up the will to, in the end, couldn't relax quite that much. Because even though things had gone well, even though they'd gone better than I could have expected or hopedthat had been close. Too close for even to be comfortable with, to not feel just a little tired and worried. It wasn't the fight, which had gone better than expected, all things considered, but what had co after; the negotiation between Malkuth and I. If I'd been wrong, if I'd made a mistake in my assumptionseveryone I loved would be dead right now, or in the process of getting there.
On a level, I'd known it would co to thisI knew better than to focus on an event to the exclusion of what ca after. Defeating Gilgash and Malkuth was necessary to get to the computer and whatever laid within it, but even that was almost secondary to my real goal.
Buying ti.
I had no other choice, when it ca right down to it. I'd needed to find a way to forge a temporary armistice with Malkuth, because I'd known full well that if I let him out as I was, if I faced him at my current level of powerI'd lose. With tatron active, it was possible I could have made it a fighting defeat, but I'd had no delusions about how that fight would have endedI would have died, followed by everyone I knew and loved.
And I couldn't allow that, not when I might have been able to stop it. But I'd also known that the mont I proved myself strong enough to do whatever it was Malkuth intended, he'd try to force my handto make give him his freedom. I knew how far he could go to do it, too, and so there'd only been one way to go about doing it; putting us in a situation where neither of us could win, even if it ant gambling my life, with all of our lives.
But if I'd been mistaken about him, if he had been willing to wait, if I'd been wrong
I hadn't been I reminded myself. It was okay. I'd bought them, all of us, a bit of ti.
How much tithat I wasn't sure of. I wasn't foolish enough to believe that Malkuth was going to stop being an assholesure, I could bend space and ti to my whim, but I knew to keep my goals realistic. He wouldn't have agreed to my plan unless he'd had sothing in mind as well, I just wasn't completely sure what. Was he counting on Cinder's plan? Death? Or sothing else? How did any of those play into getting one over on and making obey?
There was no way of knowing yetand depending on what he was scheming, I might not see the knife coming until it was too late.
That was one of the downsides to this little arrangent of oursneither of us wanted to obey the rules; we just wanted the others to obey them and didn't want to suffer the consequences of breaking them ourselves. We'd both be trying to push the boundaries of the agreent, seeing which rules we could bend and which we could break. The only problem was that Malkuth was better equipped to skirt the edges of it than I was. His threat was that he'd start wiping nations off the map if I did anything, whereas mine was that I'd die fighting before letting him out. Sadly, he could do quite a bit without ending civilization, whereas I wasn't going to make him give a shit by doing anything less than dying. The deal had been in his favor in that regard at least.
But then, it had to be. If he hadn't been able to see so advantage to it, he wouldn't have accepted the dealand I stood to profit in other ways besides. It was unfortunate and less than ideal, but that was compromise, I suppose; everyone was a little bit unhappy. But I was happier then I would have been watching everyone die and however long I had, I'd just have to make the most of it.
I had to make the most of what I'd been given, by both life and my past self. Use this ti to figure out a way to finish what I started.
It was almost funny, really. I couldn't go any further without the knowledge within the computerand to reach that knowledge, I'd had no choice but think of a way to survive just a bit longer. That was my life, I suppose.
For a mont, everything was silent, muted by the simple fact that just about everything capable of making noise was gone. It was only after several seconds passed and she saw relax that Raven spoke.
"Jian," She said. "Is it over?"
"Almost," I said, opening my eyes again. "We still have to get what we ca for."
Raven nodded once, expression tight and hand still hovering by her sword; she was still expecting a trap, which seed wise. I just wasn't sure if it would be a physical trap.
Either way, we'd just have to deal with it.
Before that, howeveras the items appeared before , I snatched them up with my Psychokinesis and held them in the air before . The exorbitant amount of money, I simple stored away, having no real use for it, but the othersa mask, a suit of armor, and one of those trange tallic plates like the one I'd gotten from my father.
You have obtained the item 'Enkidu.'
You have obtained the item 'Utnapishtim.'
You have obtained the skill book 'Shutur Eli Sharri.'
I added them to my various collections as well and held out a hand to Raven, who took it.
Then, I gathered the power of tatron around myself and slipped through the dinsional barrier that yet remained untouched, Trespassing with a simple act of willand we entered the ancient city that had been left behind. In a way, it felt like venturing into the unknown, but in another
It was like coming ho.
Ozpin's words hadn't done it justice. The city was awe-inspiring, built to a scale that I had never seen. Building rose high, many of them towering hundreds of ters in the air, and they shined brilliantly in the light. The chaos of our battle thankfully hadn't touched anything on this side of the barrier and neither, it seed, had the passage of ti. The sun lit up gleaming towers of steel and glass, reflections casting yet more light down to the streets far below. The buildings seed as if they'd been arranged carefully, the streets and skylines sohow artistic in placent, and even on a personal level it was remarkable. The buildings were sohow colored by the passage of light through them, turned the colors of the dusk and dawn, whilst the streets and sidewalks seed polished into mirrors of black and white.
From top to bottom, each structure looked as though it were the masterpiece of so architectand the city hadn't just been built up, but also out. There were thousands of buildingsno, that was understating it; there were far over a million, spanning everything from houses to factories to office buildings. The city seed to roll over the land like grass over plains and hills, stretching out as far as the eye could see, and I was willing to bet that the artistic design applied to a bird's eye view of it, too.
All told, it was enormous. Large enough to fit the inhabitants of entire Kingdoms in, maybe the inhabitants of all the Kingdomsit was so large, in fact, that I had to catch myself as I started wondering what the point of it all even was, because it took a mont to rember that at one point there had been people enough to justify such a thing. I'd known that ntally, of course, but even for there was a difference between hearing talk of a civilization that had boasted a population of billions and seeing the truth of it.
At one ti, cities like this had been all over the world, host to a Humanity that didn't have to hide or struggle to survive, that could grow and expand, explore and reach, dedicate themselves to such things as this.
And then, of course, the Grimm had co.
Remarkable as it was, I braced myself for the trap. I reached out with my senses, sending them into and through the city walls. Flecks of light rose from my skin and leapt to nearby surfaces, shining through them even as they mapped out my surroundings, flowing through surfaces and into walls as they touched upon what was within. I scanned the area, flickering through my various senses to better determine if there were discrepancies between layers of perception. Did sothing appear in one that was invisible to another? Were there marks or remnants that shouldn't have been there? Was there anything hidden and lying in wait.
I waited a mont, searchingand then frowned.
No. I didn't see any hidden traps or enemies and what traces I could find were faded to the extre by ti. When it ca to the city itself, it was foreign enough to that I wasn't sure what qualified as odd or unusual, but I didn't see anything that struck as wholly out of place considering the overall design.
And yet, it felthollow, sohow, and I finally knew what Ozpin had ant. This was real, yes, but it wasn't alive. It was as if everything beneath the surface had been cut away, all the things that should have made this a city, a place for people, a safe Haven, simply gone. Everything that could have carried power had stalled and died, the water was still and stagnant, the air was stale, and wherever there should have been life, even if only that of plantsthere was nothing. There weren't even any signs of rot or decay, as if even those things had been halted. The city was perfectly intact, untouched by rust, overgrowth, or ti, but it was like a piece of artsothing beautiful to look at, but not ant for life or use.
The only question was, was that a natural part of whatever had created this barrier? Or the result of sothing else? The na Death sprang to mind, because if this place was anything, it was dead. A city this large, built like thisit could have been used as a shelter for people, a final bastion of mankind if everything went to helland if nothing else, I liked to thing I was pretty good at finding multiple uses for things. If I'd built this place, even if my primary goal had been to host and protect whatever was stored on that computer, I was fairly sure I would have gone the extra mile and made this place habitable. Why not, after all? It would have been a safe place for Mankind, a shelter for the innocent who may have suffered. Why not make that possible? There were have been downsides, risks, and concerns; there always were when you added the human elent to the mix, even before addressing Auras and Semblances, but it would have been better that leaving them to die.
There was little reason not to make this a place that people could be safe inand if people weren't a concern, why bother with an entire city.
But perhaps it simply hadn't been enough. Closing my eyes for a mont, I rembered what Conquest had said during our fight, about the things he and his brothers had done.
Then I started walking. I didn't let go of Raven's hand, carefully shielding her from our surroundings. While I knew Death was a soul-based weapon, I hadn't the slightest idea of what form he might take. Would he register to my Third Eye, even though the Grimm itself should have been soulless? Was there a material component to it here sowhere, a physical vector? Was I missing so sign of him, even now?
There was no way for to know. So far, Death was the only one of the Riders that I hadn't definitely proven I could detect and until I did, I couldn't take anything for granted. With my senses, I liked to think I would notice whatever was going on in my vicinity, but if this was the one ti I was wrong and it completely fucked up everything I'd been working for and planningwell, that'd be both tragic and embarrassing.
Bring Raven along with was a risk in that regard, but so long as she was close, we had options. With the power of tatron, I should be able to enhance her portals with Trespasser, allowing us to put not only spacial but dinsional distance between us and any threat that appeared. That was one of the greatest powers tatron granted control of my power and how it appeared. If Malkuth was the result, tatron allowed to adjust the equation. The core concept would remain the sa, but the detailsthose could be adjusted with ease. I could manifest an attack in its normal form, layer it over a physical object, form it into a barrier or personal force field, fire it as a beam or sphere; I could even simply emit it as light, inflicting the effect on anything I illuminated. A skill like Trespasser that was normally either a personal transfer or a shattering effect, I could cover another with, form into a doorway, or whatever else I chose.
It was one of the things I thought I could depend on even against Malkuthand I kept it at the ready here. Adjust the effects here and there to either touch or evade Raven and I could prepare to drop Longinus as a space-rending explosion. It should work as a first line of defense.
"This way," I murmured to Raven as I sensed what we were looking for. We both moved with caution.
The building the computer was housed in was at the exact center of the city and it towered over those around it, reaching up to touch the clouds. It looked like a cross between a skyscraper and a palace, made out of similar materials as the rest of the city but crafted in such a way that the light shining through it made it softly glow. The colors shifted and changed minutely, too small for a regular eye to notice, but I saw it slowly shifting in tune with the sky above. At dusk or dawn, beneath the light of the moon, or even when the sun was at its peak, I was sure it would have looked magnificent.
But I wasn't here to sightsee and so I opened the door with an effort of will and entered the building.
Taking a look around, I quickly ca to the conclusion that Ozpin flat-out sucked at describing things. Had I looked at it only from the outside, I might have expected sothing like a grand hall or even a throne roombut what awaited us within held more in common with a laboratory than anything. It was clean, sterile even by the standards of the city, and it looked as though it had once been full of things, from strange devices to odd stone tablets. There were what might have once been forms of storage, from glass tubes to screens, and an entire wall of what must have once been samples.
I say 'once' because while the rest of the city appeared almost bizarrely untouched, this place looked as though it had been ransacked and torn apart. All the items had been rent apart in a fury, torn to scrap tal and broken glass. I saw traces of what might have once been biological samples, through whatever had left them was utterly gone, as well as chemical residues. To one side, there was a reinforced but empty room that I assud had been ant for containing experints, but the door had been torn off and the viewing window shattered. The walls bore claw marks, as did the ceiling and floor, and I could see other things purely by their absence here, with items that should have been there and items of shelves simply gone.
It was a ruinbut for one area that was completely untouched. Near the center of the room there was a raised platform, empty of anything at all, but none of the chaos went anywhere near it.
I frowned for a mont, actually allowing the expression to show as I considered the room and what lay beneath the surface. This place was more than it appearedor rather, more then it currently was. It was hard to describe, but from the way my power flowed through this place, it felt as if it wasn't ant to exist like this, to be all in one place. Parts of it should have been separated by spacial and dinsional barriers, held continents apart but still connected. Things like that containnt room were ant to be isolated from the rest of the world, so that behind a thin pane of glass, anything could happen. Want to test out what happens when you have a ping-pong tournant with matter and anti-matter? Do it inside the room to avoid fucking up everything else. Similarly, the entrances and exits of this room were ant to lead to more than just the next rooms over, but to connect this place to another through permanently twisted doorways.
But insteadit was here. All of it was present in this one ti, this one place. It felt wrong, sohow, even if all the pieces seed to fit together seamlessly; there was a kind of feedback.
Even so, it didn't keep from feeling what lay beneath and around the platform. Circuitry, of a sort, though the connections twisted and broke oddly, seeming to go nowhere. Yet were everything else was dead, I could feel sothing within it.
This was the 'computer.'
I hesitated before I approached. If there was ever a ti to spring a trap, it was now. That was how I'd do it, at least, conceal it as best I was able and make sure to strike when the target's guard was down. Whatever was inside the computer, it seed safe to assu it would be distracting one way or another, and as soon as the target's attention was elsewhere, I'd strike.
But I couldn't sense anything. I scanned the room with my senses, sent out waves of searching light, glowing softly as I altered the way my senses manifested, and more, but I couldn't find a thing. Were my opponents that good at hiding or was there truly nothing there?
Either way, I had work to do.
Gently squeezing Raven's hand in a signal, I let go of it and stepped away. She let it fall to her side but kept her fingers open, ready to lift it to her sword in an instant as she watched over as I made my way towards my goal. Remaining calm as ever, I strode up to the platform, stepped atop it, and knelt in a place where I saw vague traces of sothing.
The mont I did, I felt sothing wash over , the feeling sowhere between that of distant attention and the touch of cold air. It ran over my skin, looking at , and I felt it touch my Aura as if to analyze it. The circuitry that had seed to go nowhere was lighting up, filling with the patterns of my own Aura as it used as a power source and I could see where another person standing in the sa place might have created a different configuration. Whatever the results were for , they seed to appease it, but instead of doing anything it seed to wait and grow colder until a feeling like ice seed to fill my veins, my head.
For a mont, I was uncertainbecause this wasn't what I'd expected when it ca to computers and passwords. If anything, given how everything was arrangedit was like the user served as the computer.
Ah, I realized, lowering my gaze to the floor. And with a sensation like the tap of a keyboard, I rembered what it had been like to learn my true natatron. The mory I had inherited with Arcana, the feelings that had gone with it, everything.
And with a sensation like the final keystroke on a computer, I felt a lock give way and a doorway openand with a sensation like breaking glass, ti stopped.
"Hello," A voice said. "You must be , then."
I would have blinked once, had my body not been halted as well. I tried to hone in on the source, but found that my senses weren't working as they were supposed to, failing to reveal anything out of the ordinarybut then I ntally clicked my tongue, understanding what was happening. Slowly, carefully, I stood up from my own body, Projecting myself but differently, letting tatron color the results. My spirit left my body behind and I closed my eyes for a mont before turning around and opening them.
As I did, I saw a figure who didn't appear to any of my other senses, because he existed only in mynot quite my mind, as such, but within the system I was now a part of. He had no physical presence, no spirit, beyond what I created with a self-imposed illusion, but as I crafted the Delusion it slipped from my hold in an odd way and the figure began to move in his own right. He was about my height, perhaps a little shorter, with hair sowhere between auburn and blonde and lightly tanned skin. We didn't look much alike build-wise, either; I was taller and built stronger, while he was morehonestly, the only word I could really use was statuesque. He looked like an actor to my warrior, which probably wasn't a coincidence given our natures, and I wondered absently precisely how much was defined by our powers. It must have been at least a few things, seeing as our eyes were the sa color.
Exactly the sa color.
"Hello," I greeted, smiling slowly. "That would be , yes. Should we bother with introductions seeing as we're the sa person or just skip the formalities?"
"I wouldn't consider it a bother," He said. "Unlike you, my knowledge of the situation is sowhat limited. It's rather difficult to prepare for sothing so far in advanced. By now, you no doubt know as Keter, seeing as you must have already rembered our true na, and it's hopefully safe to assu you're my reincarnation, unless I failed and made so dramatic oversight. May I ask for your na, then?"
"Jaune Arc," I said. "It's a pleasure to et you, Keter. I assu you're a record of so kind? Not quite an AI, but"
"Not quite a person," He finished, smiling. "Yes. There was only so much I could do on short notice, especially with so much uncertainty involved, so I borrowed this trick. To make things simple, you could consider an interactive daydream of sorts; I contained what I could within this place, keyed it to parts of our soul as tightly as I could, andhere we am. I'm not an independent being, per seif anything, I'm just a projection of your soul upon itself, drawing from what was locked within this."
He tapped a foot on the platform and I imagined it making a sound.
"Interesting," I mused. "We couldn't rely on our own mories, so we hid them sowhere elsesowhere Malkuth couldn't risk tampering with."
"Precisely," He agreed. "Though mories might not be precisely the right word. Matters of the soul do have a tendency towards the complex, ours in particular. In a way, it's more like I locked so of our ti away. Our past and future history? Our life? I apologize; I don't think there's a word in your language for it."
"I figured a few things might be lost in translation," I told myself. "Don't worry about itwhatever the case, I'm glad for this chance to finally see myself. I was a bit worried, you see; as you probably expected, I don't rember much about my previous lifeand I rember more of the early days than the later ones. Death's work, but you obviously suspected much."
He nodded in understanding.
"It wouldn't make sense for Malkuth to leave us with much, given the chance to take things away," He said. "It'd leave us with too many advantages, after all, too much knowledge of how things work. Returning to our full power would still have taken ti, but vastly less than he would have liked. Luckily, it seems you didn't have too much trouble making progressI hope you didn't have too much trouble on the way in."
"I had to fight Gilgash," I said before shrugging. "And Malkuth, through him. I managed."
"That's good to hear," He replied. "And Death?"
I sighed, shoulders falling slightly.
"Not here, as near as I could tell," I answered and at that, the mory looked surprised. "Unless he has so ans of hiding extrely well that I couldn't counter, which could be bound. I take it he was supposed to be here?"
The image of Keter hesitated.
"I don't know anything for certain, of course," He began, musing as much to himself as to . "I wasn't active for any of the intervening ti. ButI'd suspected he would be here."
I nodded, having figured as much myself. Having seen this place now, knowing more about it, things didn't add up. It didn't make sense for Malkuth not to leave anyone inside, just in case. It was always possible, after all, that I might have snuck in without Gilgash or his cronies noticing, so it only made sense to have soone stand watch within, to sound the alarm if nothing else. That was, in part, why I hadn't tried to sneak inthe last thing I needed was to run into one problem, have them say a word, and end up as the at in a Grimm sandwich.
And if it were to be anyone, I'd thought it would probably be Death. The one who'd scrubbed clean last tiif I were to learn of anything untoward, sothing Malkuth hadn't expected and couldn't handle, it made sense to have him on hand to make sure I didn't get a chance to use it. Failing that, Death seed pretty much bound to be the greatest of the Riders and the most likely to still be able to ruin the day of soone who made it past a small army of super Grimm. It even fit with the general state of things here, the emptiness and lack.
And yet, there hadn't been anyone waiting for . It had been suspicious as all hell from the very beginning, leaving only a small handful of options.
The first was that it was a trapwhich was still a possibility. Death could be lying in wait, positioned sowhere I couldn't see even with tatron active. That'd take so pretty serious space-ti fuckery at the very minimum, but Malkuth probably could have managed it if he'd had a chance. If so, I could expect unpleasantness as soon as I left this dream sequence.
As much as I dreaded the possibility of that happening, though, I almost hoped it was the casebecause the second was, if anything, even more worrying, though for different reasons. That Death simply wasn't here, that sothing had convinced it to leave its position, sothing that changed things. But Death was a Rider and must have had a host, and I knew of one person who might have served that purpose. Was this the proof I'd needed to prove Ozpin's true nature? The inconsistencies, the lack, everything?
Maybe. I really, truly hoped not, but maybe.
If there was ever a ti for to be wrong, though, I'd really like for it to be now.
Either way, thoughI'd have to deal with that as I ca to it.
"I'll handle Death, one way or another," I said. "For nowyou know what I'm looking for."
He looked at for a mont and then smiled, lifting an empty hand.
"It may not be what you wanted," He warned before lifting the other as well. "But it may be what you need. Would you like to know? The reasons behind it all andthe nature of tatron's Cube?"
I nodded and reached out to grasp his handand the world dissolved beneath my feet.
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