Chapter 235: Light-Hearted

Chapter 235: Light-Hearted

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryuugi. This has been pulled from his Spacebattles publishment at threads/rwby-the-gamer-the-games-we-play-disk-five.341621/. Anyway on with the show...err read.

Light-Hearted

I was two and onea division and then a unity. Lines blurred, edges faded, and then there was a connection. My twin and I were, after all, originally the same. Were still one, for all that they were also separate. Linking themselves together was as easy as coming apart, if somewhat more spectacular.

It couldn't be helped, though. They were the Dual Contending Forces. To unite, they had no choice but to come apart and forcibly merge, splitting along the lines that separated them in order to come back together. As they divided, they felt themselves waver, as if the solidity of their existences had been disrupted. In that moment, they were energy as much as matter, wavelengths and signals that communicated and aligned. At the same time, they were matter and antimatter, something bound to disrupt and eradicate on contact. Though they could draw lines like 'the original' here and 'the second' there, the truth of the matter was that they were identical, pieces split equally and housing halves of the same soul. If anything, they were both copies and it was only by merging that they could recreate the original.

And wasn't that was the point? They were Thaumiel, the Duality and Twins of God. The division of that which is perfect only in unityof Keter, the Crown. It only made sense, then, that Keter be here as welland he was.

At the center of it all, there was light. A riotous calamity of power and forces, only barely contained by their Light Elemental's power. They couldn't blame him for struggling, consider the magnitude of the power in questionRaven's temporal trick had created something that had shocked even him, a cycle of endlessly increasing light. That Keter was able to control it at all, even just for a moment, was astonishing.

But then, he was the Light, or at least my Light. There was more at work now than a struggle of physical forces; this was as much a mental effort as a matter of power and a test of being more than even that. Who they were, what they were, what they believed, what they hoped for, and what they intendedthe answers to those questions meant more than any amount of MP, here and now.

And thankfully, I knew all of those answers now, or at least thought I did. There was still a great deal missing in terms of memories and such, but that was okay. I was 'Keter', what laid above the mind's ability to comprehend. Even if I couldn't remember, I knew and I was. I was Jaune Arc and Jian Bing and Keter and Metatron. I was meand I simply was.

It was enough. My divided selves fully lost coherence, coming apart and flowing back into place. They came together like a collision of particles, a fusion in addition to a reunificationa resonance and a chemical process, a release of energy and a change of state. People existed on countless levels that most of them weren't even aware of, but as I became one again, I was aware of them all. I became myself again as my halves underwent a convergence of being.

And trapped between them, held in place by my will and my soul, was Keterand all the power we'd managed to gather thanks to Raven. If it had been power alone, it wouldn't have mattered; the reunification of my halves operated only partially in Malkuth and couldn't be affected by a gathering of energy any more than it could be stopped by physical distance or barriers.

But because Keter was there, it was more than just a lot of energy. All throughout that conflagration of power was my Elementala part of my soul given physical form in the world by attaching itself to something else; a part of the world with 'substance,' something that didn't apply to a soul on its own. Like Thaumiel, it was a part of me, at once separate and united. That was how skills like Agni worked, after all; they temporarily fused those parts back together, just like I was piecing myself back together now.

And those similarities were why I'd first considered this, why I'd had the idea and tested it out.

I'd obtained Agni and the skills like it by using Tiferet, but the process wasn't a fusion as such. I wasn't entirely sure how it worked, but I was pretty sure it did so along lines of similarity. Rather than creating skills, I was finding them, having my Semblance draw upon ancient knowing in a fashion similar to however it created skill books. I gave it reference points and the power it needed to search for something useful, connecting the dots I laid out for it. At a guess, that had something to do with the nature of my Semblance or the nature of Keterwhat remained above 'knowledge' or 'thought,' above 'action' or 'formulation.' The spark that eventually grows into something more. It was probably connected to why I was so skills with sensory techniques, too, and why my soul had a million eyes.

Even so, Tiferet couldn't do everything; it had its limits. The first, of course, was the need for reference points, allowing it to find something specific. Without that, I assumed there was simply too much to find anything specificif I was drawing from a well that went above thought or even separation and individuality, the signal to noise ratio was probably rather severe. That could be dealt with by learning more skills and became easier as Tiferet's level improved, presumably allowing it to find things with less specific information.

The second was trickier to work aroundTiferet couldn't find what wasn't there. It was the center of the Sephirot, connecting every point but Malkuth, the place where everything would take shapebut it needed to have taken shape for Tiferet to work. Someone needed to have put the pieces together, to created results and completed a process for it to exist as a fact instead of a concept.

That wasn't even a weakness, per se; Tiferet was a point of integration, allowing me to stand on the shoulders of giants. That's what Mankind did, in science and literature and everything else. We built upon successes and tried to learn from failures. My power, great as it wasI owed it all to others. To the countless people who'd struggled and works for years or decades to create the skills I now used in concert. That I'd mastered and combined to create something greater.

But the fact remained that Tiferet couldn't create thingscouldn't build things on its own. It was where things came together, drawing up knowledge and ideas and drawing down what had been lost from human memory. It was a balance of surrounding forcesbut the one Sephirot that it didn't touch directly was Malkuth, the Kingdom. Instead, it touched upon the Foundation of Yesod, because that was what it had provided.

Tiferet couldn't create thingsbut I could. I had, with magic Missile so long ago. Given the choice, I preferred to make use of what had already been perfected, but I could make new things as well.

The rest was trickier. Agni, Kubera, Varuna and the others had several things in common and power was only one of them. Agni had formed in battle, Kubera in the face of the death of his people, Varuna in the wake of unbelievable disaster. The presence of power to draw upon in each case, but also need. Necessity was the mother of invention, and it played a role.

That was the first hurdle I'd had to figure out a way around. And I had motivation, yes, and a desperate need, but they were calm things, intellectual. I needed power to defeat a foe, but they were a distant one, shadowed in unknowns. I was terrified of Malkuth and his minions, for completely logical reasons; they were nightmarishly powerful, after all. I knew I had to defeat them somehow, for me, my friends, and the entire worldbut it was a little hard to be that hard pressed when mulling things over on a couch. Even without the Gamer's Mind, I'm not sure if I could have done it; I was worried and desperate, but not like I'd been when it was my father on the line.

In truth, that had been another part of why I'd put myself on a time limit, why I'd given myself only a week to prepare. Malkuth was a world-ending threat, yes, but it was hard to really conceptualize or feel a danger that was wrapped in secrets and maybes. Malkuth's strength, the strength of the Legendary GrimmI had to see it for myself. Had to test their limits and mine, push myself to the breaking point, and not just know but experience what I was up against, what was at stake.

Gilgamesh had pushed me more than I had been in a while, but even he hadn't been enough in the end. He hurt me, might have even been able to kill me early on if he'd wanted to, but I'd had plenty of things in my bag of tricks and I'd pulled them out one after another. I'd set things up in my favor, changed the tide, and I'd known all the while that I could win. That I'd need to be cautious, careful, and do things right, but that this was a foe I was theoretically able to defeat. He hadn't been what I'd needed and if I'd won against him and Malkuth hadn't appeared, I might have been relievedthis is all I was up against? Even if he turned out to be one of the weaker Legendary Grimm, if I could beat him, then with enough effort, enough time, I could defeat the others, too.

But Malkuth had appeared. He was weakened, limited by his current form, but he was here, and I'd thrown my best hits at him.

He'd shrugged them off like rain. Crushed me. Terrified me when he tore apart my plans and captured Keter. Ripped through my barriers and went after the ones I'd loved, forcing me to pull out the Arcanaand even then I'd known he was holding back. He even withstood an assault from Raven and I that would have annihilated me with ease.

If I couldn't even match him as he was nowthen how was I ever going to face the real deal. I'd lost before, when my previous self had had centuries more experience and I was losing again now. Fighting him, facing him, it had made me wonder. Maybe even doubt.

Good.

And to cape it all off, I had a blurring of the self. That was the other thing those skills had in commonan understanding of who they were, but also a blurring of the lines. I knew who I was already, what my Elementals were, but it hadn't been enough.

This was something else. Thaumiel, pushed to its limits. The use of Ohr Ein Sof, nearly unmaking me each time. Coming apart and back togetherseeing, feeling, knowing.

It made the difference and all my pieces came together at last. I felt power flowing through my being, power beyond wordsbut it was nothing compared to the certainty, the feeling of wholeness and completion. The knowledge of a simple truth.

I am.

Opening the eyes of my new self, I saw the world around me. Raven behind me, Malkuth before me, both of them stopping just to stare at what had happened. In my heart, I could feel the Arcana shifting, and before my eyes

You've thought of a new skill. Would you like to name it?

I paused for a moment, considering it. Those who'd come before meor perhaps just Tiferethad named skills like this after themselves, or else had taken those names for their own afterwards. Perhaps they'd been their human names or the names of their Elementals or maybe they'd even found their true ones, as I had so long ago. But in my case, what should that name be? Jaune? Jian? Keter? All names that were mine, that were important to me.

But here and now, knowing what I was doing and why I was fighting, with my goal almost in sightwith the computer I'd left myself still waiting

I suppose there was only one thing it could be. Out loud, I could call it something else, but this skill was mine, the combination of everything I was, and it deserved the name.

With a thought, I titled it Metatron.