Playing For Keeps - Ch 48 (Adv) - Awakening (Patreon)

Lots of RWBY fans had theories about the chant Pyrrha had spoken when unlocking Jaune’s Aura in canon, but when the subject had come up one evening in the dorm I learned it was part of her personal religion. In truth, nothing of the sort was necessary for awakening Aura, though in most cases it tended to help focus the mind and soul on the process.

Of course, like any skill, I didn’t need to do any such thing to activate it. Simply choosing to do so was enough for my Semblance. But hey, when in Mistral… may as well do as the Mistrali do. I took a deep breath and let both the words and my Aura flow.

“We are the music makers,    And we are the dreamers of dreams,Wandering by lone sea-breakers,    And sitting by desolate streams; —World-losers and world-forsakers,    On whom the pale moon gleams:Yet we are the movers and shakers    Of the world for ever, it seems.”

My white-gold Aura flared, illuminating me without casting shadows, and from the point of contact between us, I felt… him. Nothing so coarse as reading his mind or seeing his memories, but I was still touching his soul with mine. I felt a rush of emotions wash over me; anxiety and envy, desperation turning to aggression, a sense of otherness fading into a feeling of belonging, satisfaction at putting the wretchedness behind… and then a surge of doubt and slight guilt. His entire body trembled, and he fell to his knees with a gasp as an emerald glow suffused his body, shining brightly without shifting any of the shadows in the room.

That was… his soul, I realized. The emotions he associates with the deepest parts of who he is, stripped of all the rationalizations that usually soften them. Holy fuck that was uncomfortable. And then at the end… I get it, he was feeling me, too. My confusion on being isekai’d, my fear about the canon timeline, my Oath and resole… Did I make him question himself? Ugh, and I have to do this two more times today…

With effort, I held what he was feeling away from me and watched his single-digit level suddenly double. I’d barely paid attention to his information before, but after that…

‹Dock Spider›LV 12Nikolaos Gonatas

Even dockside extortionists have backstories, Jaune, I chided myself. Disagreeing with his path in life doesn’t make him less of a person. This is what I’m fighting for… because he’s still better than the Grimm.

Swallowing, and not wanting to lose my momentum in the face of how deeply discomforting it was to feel other people’s feelings like that, I let go of his wrist and seized the woman’s in turn.

“With wonderful deathless dittiesWe build up the world's great cities,    And out of a fabulous story    We fashion an empire's glory:One man with a dream, at pleasure,    Shall go forth and conquer a crown;And three with a new song's measure    Can trample a kingdom down.”

Just like her partner, she shuddered, and I felt emotions that weren’t mind buffeting the edges of my mind. This time, I felt a desperation even stronger than Niko’s, continuously underlying the subsequent envy, misery, rage, and sudden belonging. Then once again, a flicker of doubt and guilt, though this time I could feel them being buried by the clinging, grasping desperation for more, more, more.

I shuddered, too. Whatever’s gone on in her life… it’s been rough. I’m betting she never had enough of anything, until along came Spider and gave her a place to fit in while she earns her keep.

‹Jumping Spider›LV 14Demeter Pétrou

Unlike Niko, she stayed standing when she snatched her hand back, staring at the honeydew-green glow dancing around her fingers.

Some people need to work outside of regular society, I reminded myself with a sigh. That was why I was able to unlock the Aura of career criminals without actually contradicting my Oath. Even a fully-welcoming community is going to have people who reject joining it; those people still have virtues and they still need somewhere to belong. A mafia that manages to have rules, no matter how harsh and unforgiving… better Spider than the likes of the Branwen Tribe.

[Your skills have increased. Tap for a full list. You have maxed out Awaken Aura! Please select a Mastery Bonus for Awaken Aura:]

Alarums and ExcursionsFocus on awakening souls en masse, in preparation for war.Awaken multiple Auras at once.

IlluminatorFocus on gently awakening those seeking enlightenment.Grants faster Semblance access.

Hell, that’s actually a dilemma. Okay, let’s think this through… If I was putting together a gang or an army I’d probably want the first one, especially since I’m pretty sure it’ll come with a bulk discount. Maybe even a Combat School would want to go that route, making us able to field more bodies… but I just feel like it’s the wrong play overall. Past the Vytal Festival I have no idea what the future’s going to hold, but I do believe in the ‘no victory in strength’ adage. Even if I awakened the Aura of every single mortal on Remnant we wouldn’t magically come together to beat Salem. Numbers aren’t the solution here.

I was fucked if I knew what the solution actually was, but I swallowed any regrets and mentally selected and confirmed Illuminator. Helping someone understand themselves well enough to grok their Semblance faster is a lot more holistic anyway. If I need to do it for more people at once, I’ll just have to meditate.

[Awaken Aura (Active) LV MAX MP: 2000][A skill to draw out the potential of others, enflaming one soul with another. Through will and strength of empathy, sweep away the lies that hide the light within, releasing a soul kept bound by mortal flesh helping them to understand themself.][Awakens the Aura of another living being.][Mastery Bonus - Illuminator: Those awakened by the user are granted insight into themselves and their emotions, frequently leading to faster grasping and understanding of Semblance.]

I looked back at Lil’ Miss Malachite. “If you want the third one, take me to Lionheart.” I made sure to catch her eye directly. “If he dies before I get there, no matter the cause, I will burn Spider out of this Kingdom. Do we understand each other?”

Demeter and Nikolaos both started forward, but I tapped my own [Aura] and pressed it outward in a way I rarely tried, causing them both to stagger as their newly-awakened souls faltered under the weight of my trained one.

The effect on Lil’ Miss Malachite herself was much less pronounced, and she simply waved her people back again.

So, that confirms she either doesn’t have her Aura unlocked… or she’s an even better actress than I suspected. At a certain point, though, I have to go with my observations over paranoid hypervigilance.

“We do,” she said with eyes once more narrowed. “Brick will take you to the good Professor. Collect him and get out of my city.”

Love to. Unfortunately, that’s not happening and we both know it. Fuck, this is going to be precarious.

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When Brick led me back outside, I scooped Qrow off my shoulder, murmured, “Text.”, and then tossed him upward. Not wanting to take either of my Scrolls out, I texted him via the Semblance interface even as I followed Roll Fizzlebeef to our destination.

DM: Paladin -› Scarecrow | Sunday 16:04

‹Paladin› don’t follow me. stick around and see if you can confirm the WF connection

‹Paladin› if I get in too deep I’ll raise enough hell that you’ll notice, but we NEED to figure out what they’re up to

‹Paladin› I’ll keep you posted; sync up later

I felt his Aura pause on a nearby rooftop, and then a flicker from [Detect Magic] that must have been him transforming.

‹Scarecrow› Fine, but you’d better fucking call if you’re in trouble.

I breathed a sigh of relief, drawing a glance from Brick that I ignored. We were being followed, of course, but not by anybody with an unlocked Aura in the half-klick I could [Detect Aura]. We passed down two more rings and a quarter-way around the mountain to a perfectly normal apartment building. Aside from the exact layout, it honestly wasn’t terribly different from the place we were crashing.

The elevator ride was a hair tense, as Bolt VanderHuge was joined by another, equally-beefy thug, and they insisted on bracketing me — tense for them, at least. There’s a certain calm in knowing you’re the strongest person in a room that I rarely get to appreciate, spending so much time around my family and Ozpin’s crew. Shame it won’t last.

We debarked on the sixth floor, and the newcomer rapped a pattern on the door before turning the key and letting us in. There were two other souls inside, one of which was guttering weakly, and I brushed past the guide as soon as we were in, beelining for the bed. One of the men behind me, presumably Brick, must have waved off the last guard, because he didn’t quite point his gun at me before lowering it again.

[Observe].

[Name: Leonardo Lionheart][LV ???][Title: ???][Race: Faunus][Age: 52][Job: Headmaster - Haven][Class: Artificer][Semblance: ???][HP: 128/854][MP: 0/8821][Stats: 82 STR, 103 CON, 139 DEX, 181 INT, 36 WIS, 99 CHA][Background: Headmaster of Haven Academy and a member of the Mistral Council. Also a member of Ozpin’s Guardians, and previously an informant for Salem’s Circle. Upon the Gamer’s defeat of Samiri, he regained enough hope to return to fighting Salem, but couldn’t bring himself to confess what he’d done to his fellow Guardians.][Emotions: None (unconscious).][Relationship: Ally?][Status: Comatose][ : Poisoned [Low]][ : Aura Exhaustion [Low]]

I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to seeing such low HP scores, even if I know intellectually that most Hunters’ durability comes purely from Aura, I mused, even as I triggered [Lay On Hands] and [Cleansing Touch]. Still, Leonardo’s HP was higher than Amber’s when she’d been comatose. Even if the scale got wonky when dealing with people who didn’t have exact stats like me, they were still somewhat comparable between each other. I’m guessing two stings brought him up to Moderate poisoning. He’s got enough Aura that his raw regen was probably it at first, but the poison outlasted his ability to regen through it and now Aura Exhaustion is nerfing his regen enough that the poison’s killing him even though its potency is reduced…

With that in mind, I focused my first [Cleansing Touch] on the [Poisoned] status, sighing with relief as it vanished before touching [Gaia’s Pulse]. As I poured HP and MP back into the unconscious headmaster, watching color return to the man’s cheeks in fast-forward, I let my mind turn over the details in his Background section.

So it was my butterfly that caused this? Vi and Grandma didn’t turn up any suspicious number of Hunting casualties, so maybe I caught him early on, after he’d flipped but before he did too much for Salem? Enough for her to have him eliminated, though… unless Tyrian is acting on his own? Not enough data to confirm.

A single minute was enough to bring Lionheart’s HP back to full, though his MP would take some time longer. Fortunately, [Cleansing Touch] also removed [Aura Exhaustion], so he was regenerating on his own now. His Aura was still at a low enough ebb that he hadn’t woken up, but the [Comatose] status was reduced to simply [Unconscious].

A glance at my own stats showed my MP was back over 2000, and Lionheart was no longer dying, so I released a deep breath and turned to face the Spiders. Brick was watching me carefully, while the others seemed to be staring at Lionheart’s recovered condition it shock. None of them deal with Hunters often, I reminded myself. And I’m a weirdo even by Hunter standards.

I extended a hand. “C’mere, Buck PlankChest; my word is my bond.”

“It’s Brick,” he said, annoyed, though he did grasp my wrist. I took a moment to brace myself — though I knew nothing could really prepare me — before triggering [Awaken Aura].

“We, in the ages lying,    In the buried past of the earth,Built Nineveh with our sighing,    And Babel itself in our mirth;And o'erthrew them with prophesying    To the old of the new world's worth;For each age is a dream that is dying,    Or one that is coming to birth.”

Brick flinched as my Aura rolled over him, sinking into his flesh and coaxing his soul into shining beyond its fleshly shroud. And once again, I got a bit of insight into who Brick was, by way of the core emotions that made up his character. The familiar desperation was a lot lower; mostly what I felt from him was loneliness, followed by a sense of belonging that underscored a loyalty more ironclad than either of the other Spiders I’d Awakened today. Here is a man who just needed someone to accept him. I hope to fuck Malachite appreciates what she has in him. His sense of doubt from feeling my emotions in turn was nearly nonexistent. Some guilt was there, but unlike the others I felt a new resolve forming before he dropped my hand.

Also unlike the others, he didn’t seem unsteady on his feet. He stared at the deep red Aura suffusing his body for a moment, before turning his gaze back on me.

‹Wolf Spider›LV 26Brick Ironstag

Not as big a numerical jump as the others, but qualitatively… bro is as dangerous as a typical freshman now, according to my Semblance. He clearly already worked out, so just the boost of having his Aura accessible puts him head and shoulders above most thugs. And yet… I feel better about this one than the others.

Getting to my feet, I put a hand on his shoulder and murmured, softly enough that only he could hear, “I hope you get the recognition you deserve. If you decide you’re ready for a higher responsibility, ask a Roma to pass a message to me.” Brick gave me a conflicted look, and I patted his shoulder before letting go. “Not saying right now,” I added at a normal volume. “Just keep it in mind. You’re a lot more in tune with yourself than you were five minutes ago; more than you’ve ever been in your life. Don’t make any rash decisions. Just don’t forget, either.”

Not waiting for his response, I turned back to the bed and effortlessly hauled Lionheart over my shoulder. “Our deal is complete. I’ll get out of your hair now. Fare well, Brick Ironstag,” I said softly, using his actual name for once — including the surname he hadn’t ever given me.

None of the Spiders made any effort to stop me from leaving.

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Name: Jaune ArcLevel: 61 (Next: 63.35%)Title: Academy StudentRace: HumanAge: 18Job: Journeyman HuntsmanClass: PaladinSemblance: The GamerHP: 8202/8202MP: 156/4456STR: 223 (100)CON: 279 (102)DEX: 162 (54)INT: 136 (51)WIS: 110 (52)CHA: 151 (52)Points: 112Money: 1,008,990LStatus: Cursed – Yellow Death [High]

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A/N: Miles confirmed at some point (per the Wiki) that Pyrrha’s chant is a personal thing and not actually required to unlock Aura.Like most fans, I have written a version of that chant (aside from the Arc Family one that Indigo used way back in Chapter 3), but I felt like this was more appropriate for when Jaune is doing this kinda-sorta under duress (or at least, in suboptimal circumstances).

Olivia also pointed out in Chapter 3 that awakening someone’s Aura is an intimate act. It involves touching someone’s soul with your own. I’m not sure I managed to make it come across as invasive as it probably feels, but I’m done fiddling with those sections.

Yeah, obviously I was inspired by Bleach’s reiatsu for the sensation of pressing your Aura down on other people, but for a twist on it I don’t think it does much to normal people — you have to have your own Aura awakened before you’re sensitive enough to feel others’ at all, and most even most Hunters don’t seem to be Sensors in the way that [Detect Aura] makes Jaune, so this is more of a niche trick.Plus, most of the time flaring your Aura this much is just going to draw Grimm to your position like moths to a lamp.

Roll Fizzlebeef, Bolt VanderHuge, and Buck PlankChest are, you guessed it, yet more jokes from MST3K episode 820 - ‘Space Mutiny’.