[Colton Deraine]

[googlefont=Open+Sans]

[attr="class","firstfriend"]

Bravery is believing in yourself, and that's one thing nobody can teach you.

Hour Three.

Colton’s landing strategy involved getting as far away from the malcontents and undesirables as possible. Thankfully, most everyone he wanted to avoid had no means of extending their launch with their semblance or anything else, so he was in the clear. By burning some aura, he was able to get far enough away that he didn’t have to worry about meeting up with anyone else for a while. There were definitely some Grimm around, but the former champion hadn’t really encountered anything that posed a threat to him just yet. A couple of lesser beowolves, a pair of Ursa Minor, and a stray lancer was the entirety of the opposition he had faced thus far and to be honest that was fine with him because it allowed his aura to recharge somewhat from the expenditure of the landing.

He was at about sixty-five percent remaining after having some recharge time, which was enough to deal with almost anything that was likely in the forest one way or another. Trying to predict where people would go once landing was impossible – at least for him, so he didn’t bother to try and do it. His objective forced him to go and seek out others eventually, so he just went inwards from his starting point rather than outwards. That ensured that he’d run into someone eventually, if nothing else, and the fact that his landing location was far away from his least wanted choices for a team up he liked his chances the earlier in the day he’d make first contact with somebody else.

The fact of the matter was that for someone like him, being left to his own devices in Haven Forest wasn’t very dangerous. If anything, he was starting to approach the point of being bored, which wasn’t ideal. A fight would relieve the boredom, and so would finding another human to break up the monotony. Since the entire area was a dead zone, they couldn’t even take advantage of the newly installed cross-regional internet at all from their scrolls. That was the real tragedy in all of this, really.

They were stuck in a forest that hadn’t been properly cleared of Grimm for months, and that if nothing else was the real genius of this particular testing. They didn’t have to hire a Huntsman to clear it if they just made the students do it, which both made sense and was a wonderful way to cut corners in costs when the government was trying to re-enter international trade. For clothes he just wore the standard Haven Academy uniform consisting of a black jacket with a light gray outline around the edges, a white undershirt and a white band around the student's left arm. He decided to go light and mobile for this particular exercise, so forewent his usual armor in an effort to carry less shit.

It was twenty-four hours and not a week this go around, and chances were those that overpacked would just get their supplies ripped up by Grimm fairly early on. Mobility, frankly, was much more important than packing in twenty more cans of food you wouldn’t eat. A smaller backpack with enough food for two larger meals and a few gallons of water were plenty in terms of food and drink. A sleeping bag and a tarp took care of sleeping arrangements, and that was really it aside from his scroll – which was useless for everything except for tracking aura at this point due to lack of signal.

For the moment, he was just meandering around with his left hand on his scabbard and flicking the sword out of its sheath an inch or so before letting it drop back in over and over. One possible upgrade might be to install a motor or something to make it shoot out with its own momentum rather than using aura for it, that might be neat. If nothing else, it gave him something to focus on rather than the bugs and the dirt and the spider webs that were fucking everywhere around this place. It certainly wasn’t ideal, but the fact of the matter was that as huntsmen they would be expected to go into places far more disgusting than this to complete their missions, so this was as good a practice as any.

※ 720 total words ✎ 720 words ✉ D rank semblance, D ranked martial arts, D ranked durability, D ranked weapon, E rank weapon enhancement, E rank stamina

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[Erytheia Hellebore]

The noble warrior stood, and the people looked to her.
For she was a beacon - hope given form, yet still only human.
Within that truth there was great promise.
If one could stand against the night, then so too could anyone - everyone.

In her hand the warrior held a Rose. And her aura burned bright.

❝

Being launched a few hundred meters wasn’t always the best way to begin one’s morning, but Erytheia had managed well enough so far. She had had a light breakfast before dawn - enough to keep her going for a while, but not heavy enough to cause nausea on the trip over, which was a good start. Even so, however - hurtling through the air at high speed with high possibility of injury waiting at the end certainly did have a way of putting a dampener on any kind of good mood that was forming. Airtafae wasn’t all that useful when it came to stuff that wasn’t directly dealing damage to foes or outside the confines of civilization, so the Hellebore heiress opted instead for an easier and more graceful landing by using one of her vials of Air Dust that she’d packed for the occasion. Her own Semblance offered her enough firepower that she felt reasonably confident that another vial of Fire or Lightning Dust wasn’t necessary at all, so her selection focused on mobility enhancement. A pity, that she didn’t have access to Hard Light, but Huntresses were supposed to be self sufficient enough that lacking resources were more an annoyance than an obstacle, so she had to make do.

Gliding her way to settle on one of the taller trees in the region, Erytheia landed on one of the larger boughs and settled in, taking a few minutes to take stock of the terrain around her was arranged. Landmarks, places of interest, shelters and clearings, places where Grimm might have a chance of gathering - all were roughly mapped out within her head to orientate herself. Checking the sun’s position and then her Scroll for the time of day,‌ Erytheia nodded to herself and started making her way to the bottom, jamming her lance into the tree bark and using her weight to start descending. Her boots controlled the speed, and the angle of the blade controlled her direction. Setting foot on the soil was no issue, and she set off in the vague direction of a rocky, mountainous region that she’d caught sight of from atop her perch earlier. Caves and the like often harbored Grimm, but if she could clear one out, or find an unoccupied one that didn’t stretch too far, it would help to shelter her from the elements and serve as her base of operations until the twenty four time period was up. The best case scenario was if on the way she could kill a few stragglers while using as little Aura as possible, but things rarely worked out as optimally as that.

She could make fire with her Semblance and some wood, if it came to that. Oh, it would be sputtering smoke all through the ordeal with the moisture still present in the wood, but the nights in the forest were cold, and her Haven Academy uniform with her trademark cloak over it weren’t exactly the warmest clothes one could wear in such weather. Shelter, water, and food, in that order, Sanctum had taught her once upon a time, before she had been otherwise indisposed. She had both of the latter safely stashed away in the backpack on her back, so it made sense to ensure the former was secured before setting out to do her objective, hopefully before the afternoon began so that her Aura could recharge by nightfall. Erytheia was aware that her plan could just as easily go awry without a moment’s notice, however, and so didn’t hold out too much hope, in case those hopes were dashed. She would just have to adapt as she went along.

Making her way through the woods, her weapons sheathed on her back, the Hellebore heiress eventually became aware of a not too distant sound that seemed distinctly not of the forest’s general ambiance. It sounded like metal being moved, repeatedly and continuously. There was a pause between each rasp before a second one, and she frowned a little as she tried to figure out what it could be, before dismissing the notion. Whatever that was, be it some kind of weapon or armor, there was very little in nature that had that kind of regular rhythm to it - it was something only humans or Faunus would do. And of course, in this time period, the only humans or Faunus supposed to be in the forests of Haven were the students themselves. Erytheia made her way towards the noise carefully, stepping over bound and gnarly tree roots that snaked across the forest floor like so many animals of the same name.

Emerging into a small clearing, she paused as she set eyes on the person who was making the noise. Dressed in the male version of the same uniform she was currently, albeit with a red band instead of her own yellow tied around an arm to keep it fairly out of the way in case of combat, was Colton Deraine, one of the more powerful - and popular - students at Haven Academy. She remembered him from the battle scenario where they’d sparred against each other in times past, and so dipped her head in greeting as she approached. He had been fairly civil to her, and as far as she knew she hadn’t managed to anger him in any fashion, so there shouldn’t be any issue interacting with him.

Plus, a woman of Hellebore lineage should always be expected to show respect and manners where she could. Being in the middle of a hostile forest without outside support didn’t change that in the slightest.

“Mister Deraine. How unexpected. I expected you would be quite a distance further off, considering the gap between our ranks. Was it the launching pad, or a personal choice - if I might ask?”

@ ● 964 words ● 964 total words

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[Colton Deraine]

[googlefont=Open+Sans]

[attr="class","firstfriend"]

Bravery is believing in yourself, and that's one thing nobody can teach you.

The terrain was getting more mountainous in this area. Lots of rocks, with the trees getting more sparse. Might be some caves in the region with how it sloped downwards pretty heavily, which would be a nice place to camp out if Colton had the choice… which he didn’t. He needed to go and seek out two separate people to help. Two separate people that he needed to drag over the finish line if needed, and he needed to do it before they had accomplished their objective, or it simply wouldn’t count. He also needed to end the midterm in some sort of group, which was also pretty annoying in and of itself.

The first person he would encounter in this damned forest would turn out to be Erytheia Hellebore, who was far from the worst possible person he could meet up with this early on. She wasn’t helpless and was unlikely to hinder his ability to pass out of spite like some of the others might. He rose up his right hand in silent greeting, while continuing to pop his blade in and out of its scabbard with his left thumb. He wasn’t emotionally compromised, which was the easiest way to attract Grimm, but sound sometimes did it as well. It wasn’t that he was trying to attract any, per se, but he wasn’t entirely opposed to the idea of some showing up so he could wake up a bit more either.

The girl’s first remark consisted of a question that might have very well been a thinly veiled insult. They were four ranks apart out of around twenty, which was hardly the giant gap she was making it out to be. They all also had the same launching mechanism, and she should have been well aware of his semblance and ability to pick where he landed.

Oh well.

Even if it was an insult, it wasn’t like Colton really cared all that much. He didn’t really get the point of it, and if he wasn’t even sure what he was getting insulted for it was hard to be irritated with it. If it was a jab at his failure to be the first ranked student in this exercise, that was completely fine. It didn’t bother him in the slightest, because he didn’t consider Carmim a threat to him in the slightest. Her semblance was similar strength, sure, but at the end of the day she had nothing else except that semblance while the former champion was more than capable of fighting in a number of different styles in addition to being orders of magnitude more durable.

If others wanted to get caught up in rankings, that was their prerogative. Unless someone who could actually beat him climbed up those rankings, the brunette would simply sweep everyone ahead of him in time to be the undisputed top student in time for the Vytal Festival. The chances of that happening, though, grew slimmer as time went on. If others wanted to sneer at him ‘tumbling down the rankings’ in the meantime, it was their funeral if he was underestimated later on.

”Personal choice.” the teenager would shrug. ”Launched off pretty far out, though this far in you can’t really predict where people will go.”

”This area’s not a bad camping spot if you want to stay here. It’ll probably rain at some point, so you’ll be good as long as you clear out a space.” the clicking continued, more of a tic than anything else at this point. ”What’s the yellow team’s objective? Useless to be thinking about that if you’re forced to run around like we are.”

By glancing at their files, it would have been an easy assumption that both Erytheia and Colton had come from similar backgrounds. Both were from wealthy families with aristocratic backgrounds and both had attended the same primary combat school. Both of them were carriers of manipulator type semblances and had at least in theory the same type of training to deal with that. The fact of the matter was, though, that it was those very same surface level similarities that caused them to be so different.

The Deraine family was old money that was left with a fraction of its former wealth in the aftermath of the Great War, and even now was only a middling power in the port city of Argus mostly off the back of connections forged in Atlas. The Hellebore family, on the other hand, was an old and undiminished aristocracy from the capital. Erytheia’s general history, therefore, was perhaps even more open than his own because of all the attention the media gave to the top dogs. He hadn’t pried too much aside from reviewing old Mistral Regional Tournament tapes and a general overview but being the only child of a family that was as close to royalty as you could get came with some pretty heavy expectations that Colton had skirted by being the third child himself. He was likely given a much longer leash as the spare, especially because his brother was so competent at the business side of things.

Roland excelled at numbers and charisma, and Colton excelled in beating the shit out of people. That was just how it was. Life was simple when you only had one purpose, and Colton’s was clear from a very young age. He was given all the support and extra training necessary to make sure he had a massive head start in training if not skill when he started at Sanctum, and the former champion had worked his ass off to not only maintain but extend that gap as much as possible. While he didn’t have the same unending drive due to the lack of worthy opponents at Haven, it wasn’t like he was slacking off by anyone’s definition except his own either. If he just stopped training and trying to improve, then even the trash would catch up to him eventually and that outcome would simply be unacceptable.

※ 1722 total words ✎ 1002 words ✉ D rank semblance, D ranked martial arts, D ranked durability, D ranked weapon, E rank weapon enhancement, E rank stamina

MADE BY MIZO

[Erytheia Hellebore]

The noble warrior stood, and the people looked to her.
For she was a beacon - hope given form, yet still only human.
Within that truth there was great promise.
If one could stand against the night, then so too could anyone - everyone.

In her hand the warrior held a Rose. And her aura burned bright.

❝

“Personal choice,” Deraine had shrugged in response to her initial question as she stepped closer, eyeing him with more than a little curiosity. The Hellebore heiress had wondered why he didn’t seem to be wearing his armor when she had caught sight of him at the launching pads, but having come this close it was blatantly clear that he hadn’t bothered to wear any at all. It was a surprising decision, but she could see the reasoning behind it - if he wasn’t required to fight, and didn’t have the immediate objective of trying to destroy Grimm, then he didn’t need to be as heavily armored and could focus on other options that heavier equipment wouldn’t allow him to. The other Sanctum graduate elaborated a little, and she returned her attention to the younger man and away from his clothing, nodding at the assertion that the path of people couldn’t be predicted after such an amount of time had passed.

“I was just thinking of finding a cave in the area, actually,” she mentioned in a level tone when Deraine mentioned that the area would make for a good spot to camp in, not at all surprised that they had come to similar conclusions. She supposed that the curriculum hadn’t changed all that much between her time and his, insofar as the wilderness survival module was concerned.

”What’s the yellow team’s objective? Useless to be thinking about that if you’re forced to run around like we are.”

“Eliminate five Grimm,” she responded after a moment, the ever so slight pressing of her lips together and the slight exasperation in her eyes making it clear that she found it wanting. Perhaps that might have been a difficult task for an untrained civilian, but after all that she had gone through in terms of physical training at Sanctum and before that, as well as actual experience when it came to killing the black hued monsters and the strength of Airtafae itself, it would only really be a problem pacing herself so she didn’t burn out rather than any actual difficulty in killing them off.

“The only requirement is that we need to fight alone or in pairs. Forbidden from camping together, too. A test of competency in one’s own ability to survive and take down Grimm, or so I gather, but it seems so… basic.”

There was a pause as she glanced off into the part of the woods where the trees started to thicken, as if movement had caught her eye. When nothing else happened after a few seconds, Erytheia blinked and returned her attention to the conversation. The clicking in and out of the sword’s sheath was not something she’d expected Deraine to be doing - he seemed far too self assured to have anything resembling a nervous tic, and he didn’t seem to be doing it to irritate her. Perhaps he was just bored. The Hellebore couldn’t imagine that this was any more interesting for him than it was for her, considering that he had already surpassed her in both skill and firepower despite being considerably younger. It was something she hoped to remedy in the coming weeks and months at Haven, but for now there was no shame in admitting that fresh off Sanctum’s training regimen, Deraine was far more adept at adapting to the situation than her, who’d spent quite the time removed from combat of any sort and had only recently gotten back into the flow of things.

“I was hoping to try and surpass a personal milestone without burning myself out. It seems somewhat necessary to surpass the faculty mandated requirement if I am to improve at all, which is what I shall attempt. And what of your own objective, Mister Deraine?”

Erytheia knew the Roses needed to help two others with their own objectives, but it seemed counterproductive for the younger man to be hanging around when that was the case - and it certainly didn’t seem like he had already completed it. It was something she didn’t want to pry into unless he wanted to speak about it, so the offered question was light and easily turned aside, if Deraine wanted to evade answering her for any reason.

@ ● 702 words ● 1666 total words

MADE BY MIZO

[Colton Deraine]

[googlefont=Open+Sans]

[attr="class","firstfriend"]

Bravery is believing in yourself, and that's one thing nobody can teach you.

It was unsurprising that a Sanctum graduate would go with a boring but effective way to pass the midterm with the least amount of risk possible. Finding a cave and then camping out was logical and safe and was something that Colton himself would likely do if he had the luxury. There was absolutely no point in taking unnecessary risks in a pass or fail exam and running around like a dipshit for twenty-four hours would just exhaust anyone to the point of being useless against the Grimm that infested the forest. When she said the yellow team’s objective, though, the Argus native couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the triviality of it for someone trained like Erytheia. That objective was fit for someone completely green like Evangeline, not for someone who already had experience fighting Grimm and multiple years of training.

”Kill five Grimm?” he repeated, softly, almost incredulously. There was a pause until he was directly asked what his own team’s objective was, mostly to process that he might have drawn the short end of the stick objective-wise and probably needed to hurry up if the pink team also had an objective that easy. ”Well, my condition for passing is helping two other people pass, and since you’re looking to settle down here you’ll have to clear out the area anyway.”

Brown eyes looked around to find that where they were standing at the present was the highest ground in visual range, which worked out nicely. The clicking noise stopped at this point, as Colton raised both of his arms up and arched his back in a momentary stretch and yawn. ”Rather than going down to them, I figure it’s a lot easier to call them up here. We have the high ground, and we’re both manipulator type semblances so this will work out fine.” At this point, his posture would straighten out again and he would clasp his hands behind his back and close his eyes.

He had always been one to have trouble keeping negative emotion in check and could call out a good bit of it intentionally by just thinking about the correct things. For most people, it wasn’t exactly hard to think back to a memory that made them sad or angry or frustrated, and Colton was no exception. It was very rare and very childish for someone to just wake up one day to decide to become a Huntsman. For most people, it was something that they dedicated their entire lives to accomplishing. The most successful had one crystal clear reason for why they wanted to do it, for why they endured the hardships and the danger and the grueling schedule in order to one day be able to participate in the most dangerous job in Remnant in an official capacity.

Wind blowing making the weeds and the grass in the sunlit field sway along with it.

His head was bowed at this point, left hand holding his right wrist in a vice grip. The knuckles on his left hand were completely white in an instant.

Flashes of red and gold in movement fast enough to be a blur.

If there were any Grimm in the area, they would be coming very soon. Breathing went from completely relaxed to noticeably ragged in a second as the brunette immersed himself in the memory.

Too fast to track. Vision returned to the sky after falling time and time again. Billowing red and gold cloak. Black velvet hair tie. Bright green eyes, and an easy laugh that still haunted his dreams.

With his jaw now clenched in frustration, Colton opened his eyes and released the vice grip on his wrist to free his hands to draw his backsword with his right hand and then with a mental flick of the switch open up the shield with his left. He was seething at that point, letting his emotions run wild to be a beacon to any and all Grimm in the area. The rampant feelings of inferiority ran through his brain and caused his hands to tremble ever so slightly. It also made him want to vent his frustrations out on something, to fight and smash and destroy. Aggression rose along with that feeling of inferiority until it reached a fever pitch.

If she needed to kill five, she was probably going to get more than that. While he could ‘turn off’ the beacon of negativity, it wouldn’t exactly be fast due to Colton’s innate lack of self-control for someone with his pedigree. It was always his weak point, and the fact that some of the untrained animals he was supposed to call classmates were even worse at it than he was didn’t change that fact. Bottling up those emotions was very doable, but once let loose they tended to have a life of their own for quite some time before he was able to get a grip on himself again.

After all, he needed to pass this midterm in order to keep up. If he couldn’t exceed her accomplishments, the least he could do was keep at least approximate pace for as long as he was able to. The path he tread was done before, and all he needed to do was follow the footsteps of his betters in order to succeed as they had done. To succeed as she had done. If he was going to fail, it wouldn’t be on a stage so trivial as this one. It would be in front of thousands, breaking his body in an all out effort to make it past that finish line.

This was just another step on that path, a necessary detour from his real objective. Once he helped Erytheia set up shop here, he would be halfway done and have a much easier time completing his objective in a timely fashion. The last thing he wanted to do was be wandering around at the end like a fucking dipshit desperate to pass.

No.

He would get it done early.

Cutting it close was beneath him. The Grimm better hurry up, because at this rate the thoughts racing in his head would do more damage than most of the monsters ever could.

※ 2759 total words ✎ 1037 words ✉ D rank semblance, D ranked martial arts, D ranked durability, D ranked weapon, E rank weapon enhancement, E rank stamina

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[Erytheia Hellebore]

The noble warrior stood, and the people looked to her.
For she was a beacon - hope given form, yet still only human.
Within that truth there was great promise.
If one could stand against the night, then so too could anyone - everyone.

In her hand the warrior held a Rose. And her aura burned bright.

❝

The Hellebore family had always been well versed in the language of flowers - which was something that one should expect from a noble bloodline named after a flower, truth be told. Even their inheritance, Airtafae, meant “Rose” in the ancient tongue, and Erytheia herself had been through many, many classes on the subject of flower arranging both before and after her time at Sanctum. It had been a constant point of humor for the Hellebore heiress that despite the name of her Semblance, she’d been put into a category that was completely the opposite of what she’d expected. Dandelion.

Roses had thorns, a fact that she knew very well, given that it was engraved into the family crest and that a variety of rose bushes had ornamented the grounds of the Hellebore estate where she often walked among them. Only through the pruning and removal of those thorns could a rose’s beauty be safely held in the hands of man - to be appreciated or gifted as the holder saw fit. And yet, despite their cultivation across Remnant, roses only really saw use as a symbol of romance or beauty, with little other meaning. The humble dandelion, on the other hand, had many, many meanings. Despite being classified as a weed, or perhaps because of it, the dandelion had strong roots, the ability to grow and flourish just about anywhere it could take root. Bright and cheery, it signified man’s ability to take troubles head on and blossom into the sunlight again despite constant trouble and opposition - and who could forget that when one blew out a dandelion seedhead, it was said to grant their wish? There were a lot of meanings crammed into that word, most of it positive, and Erytheia wondered if this was the professors’ way of encouraging them to do their best. That like the namesake of their group, they would only grow exponentially from here.

She certainly hoped so.

Without overthinking things, it was clear that the test had been set up in such a way that only a few students required supervision. The Roses required helping others to complete their own objectives, and so their passing grades could be verified by testimony from other students. She didn’t know about the Orchids, but it was a fair bet that they, too, had an objective that could be verified by other students. Which meant that out of the twenty students or so students at the launching platforms, only five or so required direct supervision to ensure that they had fulfilled their objective, if they needed to be supervised at all. Camera drones were expensive, but Haven wasn’t so hard on funds that they couldn’t afford five of them, was it?

For a brief moment, Erytheia wondered how stringent the testing criteria would be with regards to the number of Grimm killed. Did she have to deal the finishing blow, or would it count as well if she but tagged one with the most minute of scratches and someone else finished it off? For that matter, did she even need to worry at all? For simplicity’s sake, the professors might even simply count the number of Grimm slain and divide it among the pair, if they should happen to both be from the Dandelion team. Erring on the side of caution, however, it would probably be for the best if she could eliminate the majority of her targets on her own.Whatever the case, it was likely that she was being observed from a distance, so she had to be sure to perform at least adequately, if not exceeding expectations.

“Call them up here?” she had said, narrowing her eyes ever so slightly as she turned her gaze towards Deraine. “Whatever do you mean-”

There was a pause as Erytheia looked him over, clenching his fists and gritting his teeth, and then a quiet “ah” of understanding, the Hellebore heir stepping over to stand within a few paces of her erstwhile companion, looking out over the small plain below and the treeline a few meters ahead. They did have the height advantage, but it wasn’t anywhere near as pronounced as it had been in the three against three battle that she had participated with the young man standing beside her now. Movement in the forest drew her attention, a myriad number of roars and snarls and various other animal noises washing out like a tide towards the two of them. The Hellebore heir drew her lance, held it in her right hand while the other sparked bright with red lightning.

“Deraine, you can stop now,” she said aloud, watching black shapes swarm from the forest and towards the two of them. She didn’t raise her voice, but she did prod at one of his legs with the blunt end of Arali Irkalla ever so gently, holding it there for a few moments so that he could extend his influence over the metal weapon. As they were working together, it made sense for him to at least have the opportunity to manipulate the steel of her weapon if the need arose - and she trusted him as a fellow Sanctum graduate to have the judgment not to do anything that would endanger her in the heat of battle.

“Eight Beowolf contacts. Three Ursa minors. One major,” she reported, falling back on the concise language used in combat. A loud screech sounded from above, and a look of irritation flashed across her face at the sight of the black stain that darkened the sky just immediately above them, the bird Grimm that was casting the shadow coming around for a second pass. No doubt it would loose its throwing feather attack soon - as soon as it turned around to line them up in its sights, as a matter of fact.

“And one Nevermore chick. You have better range than me; I’ll leave that one to you.”

As soon as the Beowolves came within range, the Hellebore heiress loosed her lighting, sending dual streams crackling out from the one hand to play across the Beowolf frontline - it seemed that she had taken Colton’s advice to learn how to use her Semblance in multiple angles to heart, as rudimentary as her efforts were. Of the two that were comprising the initial wave, one was incinerated almost instantly into black smoke and ash, and the other took a spear through center mass when it leapt up at the high ground they were standing on, meeting the same fate as its deceased companion.

Six more to go.

@ ● 1091 words ● 2757 total words

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[Colton Deraine]

[googlefont=Open+Sans]

[attr="class","firstfriend"]

Bravery is believing in yourself, and that's one thing nobody can teach you.

The shield on his arm, Omen, unfolded into a concave circular shield roughly 76 centimeters in diameter and the boy undid the strap that kept its folded-up vambrace form attached to his arm and activated his quirk to fan the shield out to full diameter before moving on to draw his sword. Regret was a longer backsword that had a blade roughly 89 centimeters long with a single potent cutting edge with noncutting ‘back’ of the blade being thickened up to provide extra strength. The blade had a knuckle bow hilt and a spear tip to make thrusting a distinct possibility.

Erytheia made the call out of the enemies they would be facing in this encounter just as the brunette was opening his eyes, which was extremely helpful. It was a little bit more than he had expected, frankly, but then again, this forest was all but abandoned for the past couple of months so it should be no surprise that it was just infested with Grimm of all stripes.

Eight beowolves. Three Ursa Minors. One Ursa Major. One Nevermore Chick.

The screech was audible to him too, and brown eyes looked up to see a thankfully small nevermore flying above them. If it was a larger one, this lineup would have actually posed an issue. As it stood, though, it wasn’t too much of a challenge as long as they prioritized well. Not easy by any stretch, but something doable if neither of them fucked up.

”Beowolves first, stay separate.” he’d order, largely because to him it made the most sense. The beowolves were the fastest out of that group aside from the Nevermore Chick, and thus posed the most immediate threat. They were easy to wipe out, and if they could do it before the ursa got in close it would make all of their lives much easier. Erytheia had taken care of the first two, so Colton could take care of most of the rest of the charging enemies just fine.

Shield would zip from his left hand to the right, and sword would zip from his right hand to the left. The shield would rip one of the beowolves in half but be forced to shoot upwards directly afterwards for enough momentum to do so again. His sword, on the other hand, encountered no such issue due to the fact that it could simply transform into its shotgun form and generate its own momentum. It would spin in its initial impact, and a shotgun blast would simply be fired to restart the spinning for the next target without the delay the shield encountered. The shotgun blast would fire when the barrel was facing the ground to minimize chances of collateral damage, and thus would hit absolutely nothing. The only purpose to briefly changing the sword to a shotgun was so that he could swap it back to a sword in time for the next evisceration.

In this way, four of the remaining six beowolves were destroyed before they ever made contact. The Nevermore chick would fly by and fire a round of razor-sharp feathers at the brunette while that was happening, but if Erytheia had followed directions and kept her distance he would be the only one effected. He didn’t bother to even try and dodge it, and simply ate the impact with his aura. His aura level before this fight had been around eighty percent, but the rain of feathers had reduced that down to around seventy.

Which was more than enough to take care of this group of Grimm, so long as he didn’t fuck it up. The last two beowolves would move to close into melee with the two trainees, and in Colton’s case it would reach melee range. Kneeling down to physically get the knives out of his boots, he would rise to meet the leap of the lesser Grimm and separate its head from its shoulders by sticking two reverse gripped knife tips in its throat and then yanking as hard as he could in both directions at once. So long as he actually defended himself, the smaller beowolves couldn’t really scratch him. With this one, he just got his forearms out to catch the torso of the creature while digging his knives into its throat in a forward motion that prevented the snapping jaws from getting anywhere near him. It wasn’t strong enough to force the issue, and that was that.

While that was happening, his sword and shield had moved on to the first Ursa Minor. The dust enhancement upgrade on his shield was activated and coated the metal with electricity as it embedded itself in the monster. The sword didn’t have its fire dust activated just yet, but used a very similar trick as before with the last two bullets. Since the impact of even both weapons and one dust enhancement wasn’t enough to take out even a lesser Ursa on its own, the made would simply pull itself out of the creature just barely and transform with the muzzle of the shotgun still touching the hide of the monster and fire off its two remaining shots at a range that was impossible to miss from.

Then, and only then would the first of the lesser Ursa dissipate. The Nevermore Chick would pepper the trainee with another round of razor sharp feathers to drop his aura down to sixty while it flew around uncontested, but that was a much smaller problem than the one that was fast approaching them. Even with all the beowolves taken out of the picture, an Ursa Minor was still durable enough to eat several of Colton’s attacks. An Ursa Major was powerful enough to eat several more on top of that, and was more than strong enough to seriously damage Colton’s aura and likely completely shatter Erytheia’s if it got close.

They weren’t in melee range yet but were only a few seconds off. The hill had slowed their ascent a little, but in about ten seconds they were going to get swarmed if they stayed where they were.

”Fight and run. Hit the one on the left.” he’d call out, starting to move away from the Ursa immediate after. He could take out the smaller Nevermore above them but controlling four weapons at once and doing wildly different things with all of them was outside of his ability to reliably do. If he lost semblance control over his shield and sword, both of the trainees had a much higher chance of death or serious injury. It wasn’t worth the risk at this point, frankly. If they were all going the same place, sure, but not hitting two moving targets four different ways.

The one on the left was one of the two remaining Ursa Minors, and they needed to kill both of the smaller ones quickly or this was going to turn ugly. Even if he activated the fire dust in his blade, his combined firepower didn’t do enough damage to actually destroy one of them in an instant. He either needed time or assistance, and assistance was easier to get at this moment than time. Still holding off on activating the fire dust, his shield and sword would slam into the Ursa on the left and ideally that creature would be finished off by Erytheia and her lightning. The next move, he hoped, would be pretty obvious after that in taking out the other Minor, but wasn’t going to yell that out before this one was dead.

Then, with any luck they could actually have enough time to kill the fucking bird continuously shooting feathers at him before moving on to the Ursa Major. That’s what he was saving his fire dust for, frankly, because that monster would be a pain in the ass to take down. They were unlucky that one of them was in the area, frankly, but it was far from a hopeless situation.

If the dual attack worked, there would only be one Ursa Minor, one Ursa Major, and one Nevermore Chick left on the field. With sixty percent aura left on his end and a likely next to full tank on Erytheia, it was doable if not comfortable. The most likely scenario was that the Major would catch up to them while the Nevermore Chick was still alive, which would be fucking annoying, but not nearly as dangerous a combination as the Minor and Major together would be. It wouldn’t be pretty, but the Major and the Chick together was a much safer bet as long as he was the one that kept getting peppered with feathers.

There was at least one advantage to being able to become a nice little beacon of negative emotion at the drop of a hat, after all. It made those around you pretty much invisible as long as they could keep their shit together. Obviously, this wasn’t ideal, but few things were, and they would just have to make the best of a bad situation. The main threat here was the fact that more Grimm could show up and make things harder than they already were. A second flyer might be disastrous, for example, and more of the faster type of Grimm showing up would make it impossible to deal any damage to the Ursa Major before it closed into melee range.

※ 4321 total words ✎ 1562 words ✉ D rank semblance, D ranked martial arts, D ranked durability, D ranked weapon, E rank weapon enhancement, E rank stamina

MADE BY MIZO

[Erytheia Hellebore]

The noble warrior stood, and the people looked to her.
For she was a beacon - hope given form, yet still only human.
Within that truth there was great promise.
If one could stand against the night, then so too could anyone - everyone.

In her hand the warrior held a Rose. And her aura burned bright.

❝

“Beowolves first, stay seperate.”

Deraine’s order slashed across the space between them, but after the initial lightning barrage Erytheia was already moving, having come to the same conclusion.‌ Neither of the Sanctum graduates were particularly specialized for speed, so it made sense to eliminate their fastest foes first. Prioritizing the Beowolves would ensure that their remaining foes could be dealt with - not quite at leisure, but at least enough time for them to rack up the damage required to smash through the notoriously tough hide of the Ursai. Being privy to Deraine’s full power when he wasn’t having to be part of a team effort was certainly a sight to behold - even her version of Airtafae couldn’t compare to the sheer force behind Polarity. Beowolves crumbled to dust one after the other as his sword arced through the air like a bullet, spinning with every kill from the momentum of the shotgun blasts. For a moment, she glanced at Arali Irkalla, pursed her lips at the worn metal and the age apparent in it, then turned back to the oncoming horde. Nevermore feathers rained down beside her upon the other student more than once, but missed her entirely. She supposed that was one of the effects of having such a beacon of attracting Grimm in close proximity. As Deraine grabbed his knives and cut away at one of the two remaining Beowolves, Erytheia raked lightning over one of the last remaining Beowolves until it charred to ash, her lance never meeting its flesh.

Old school had its own benefits, she supposed. But that was a discussion for another time.

“Fight and run. Hit the one on the left.”

The Hellebore heiress called out an affirmative, and started to move in tandem with Deraine as they started backing up the hill, putting space between them and the pair of Ursai coming up the slope. It couldn’t be a formation, not with only two people, but she made sure to keep herself far enough that the Nevermore up above couldn’t hit the both of them at once, while simultaneously remaining close enough that she could reinforce in close combat if the need arose. If the Nevermore swooped down on Deraine instead of using its feather throwing attack while he was otherwise distracted with the Ursai, she could hit it with a blast to at least do some damage to the bird, or run it off before it could hit him.

Polarity enhanced metal slammed into the Ursa Minor on the left, and Erytheia followed up with a double blast of lightning, stopping for a moment to concentrate and lob another bolt of red energy into the Grimm, which crumbled beneath the onslaught. She guessed that Deraine was focusing more on keeping the pressure on than trying to go for the kill, or he was splitting his focus enough between the various threats that he couldn’t go for the weak spots of the underbellies with any degree of accuracy while the Nevermore was still around. In any case, the blasts of red lightning, one after the other in the quick span of a few seconds, was enough to reduce their mutual target to oily shadow and black smoke.

The conclusion she’d drawn, and the one that she had no doubt Deraine had gotten to as well, was that the Ursa Minors had to die before they could focus on the Nevermore and the larger Major. The beasts were slow, but durable and strong, as their repeated attacks had proven, so the only way this could proceed was if they cleared the field of other enemies so they could focus on the bigger threat. To that end, she launched another blast at the remaining Minor, keeping the steady stream of red energy up before the inevitable Polarity fueled backup damage from Deraine would come and shred the remainder of the Ursa Minor’s defense and life.

Once the Minor was dead, the Hellebore heiress would leap up towards a small outcropping that was between her and Deraine. It was something she’d noticed while scanning the area earlier - an unstable arrangement of large rocks and boulders that had piled up and were not particularly safe to traverse even if one was extremely fleet footed. The addition of weight to the wrong place would cause the whole thing to go tumbling down - not quite an avalanche, but definitely enough to break an ankle if one walked on it, or cause some difficulty to anyone below.

Of course, that was exactly what she was going to do.

“Deraine!” Erytheia would call out, splitting her lance into twin blades and swinging the slabs of metal into a particular spot where the rock looked on the verge of being unable to support the weight above it. The mark they would make would be very light, and wouldn’t seem to do much actual damage even though the shock of the contact would be enough to send shakes up her arms and into her bones. Her response to this would be to blast it with lightning and continuee on her way upwards, leaving it behind with a small spot of crumbling rock where she had been - as well as a nice large spot of charred soot that marked out a clear target.

“Hit the rock there!”

With any luck, a hit from a Polarity enhanced piece of metal would be enough to crumble the remainder of the rock support and send dozens of large and small boulders down towards the Ursa‌ Major. They wouldn’t do much damage against that thick armor and pelt, but even Ursa couldn’t walk on unstable ground, and if everything went to plan, the ground in front of it would, at least for the next half a minute or more, be very unstable. If, however, Deraine didn’t follow up on her call out, Erytheia would simply assume that he didn’t hear her and follow him upwards, doing her best to hit the Major with Airtafae while he handled the Nevermore, being sure to keep a safe distance. Getting herself endangered now would just be a waste of effort and force Deraine into pushing himself into further danger if he needed to save her from herself, turning what could have been a standard cleanup into a battle where someone lost their life. It was clear that he was the powerhouse in this team up, outranging and outdoing her damage by a large margin - so she would follow his lead, and support him where she could.

That was the logical path to take, after all.

@ ● 1082 words ● 3839 total words

MADE BY MIZO

[Colton Deraine]

[googlefont=Open+Sans]

[attr="class","firstfriend"]

Bravery is believing in yourself, and that's one thing nobody can teach you.

Sixty percent aura remaining.

Erytheia’s response was prompt as the dual attack obliterated one of the last two Ursa Minors and was able to start the assault on the other one before Colton was. He had no way to resupply the shotgun with ammo at this distance, so he had to leave enough distance to build up speed and thus power behind any subsequent attacks. The downside to Polarity over a regular manipulation semblance capable of generating something was the fact that ultimately, he needed metal to work with. The higher quality the metal, the less momentum he needed to generate for a solid hit. If anything, he was being safer in this instance because the Ursai were slow enough for the teenager to be able to potentially waste another second or two in between attacks to ensure that he did enough damage with each strike.

Thrusts would take less space, frankly, and do similar damage. The issue with those, however, was the fact that the weapon could get jammed into the hide of the monster and take several seconds to wrest free. Slashes didn’t have that issue, with the disengagement of the weapon merely being to reverse course and slam back into the monster until it died. There was much less risk, frankly, and Colton was all about minimizing risk. Another hail of feathers from the Nevermore chick would reduce his aura reserves down to fifty percent while he completed the kill on the second and last Ursa Minor, but the little bastard would have flown out of Colton’s effective range by the time his attention turned back to the annoying creature.

The fact of the matter was, though, that neither trainee was very fast even when doing nothing else but running. Fighting and running naturally slowed them down a bit due to having more things to concentrate on, which allowed the Ursa Major to gain ground… and quite a lot of it. Colton was already calling his weapons back towards him in preparation for melee combat, but Erytheia came up with a better idea and hollered out his name and what to do. Seeing as though he always kept some spare ammo close enough for skin contact, it was easy to transform his sword back into shotgun form and just force the shot out from its ammo pouch to reload the thing very quickly.

From there, he just moved the shotgun until the muzzle was pointing a few inches away from the spot and blasted four shots into it in quick succession. Each successive shot pushed the shotgun back a few inches and saturated the point with buckshot and more importantly smashed the fuck out of the area. It was a clever little plan, especially considering they were moving up. Making a small rock slide would delay the Ursa Major and give Colton time to finally kill that damned bird. Speaking of, when the little bastard came by for the next wave of feathers it caught a shield with the dust activation of lightning just wearing off in the face. Since it only partially got its attack off, Colton’s aura only dropped to forty-five percent and managed to rip a wing off and mortally wound the creature. Either the landing from the inevitable fall would kill it, or the lightning still arcing through its body would.

No matter what happened, the little bugger was done fighting and that left only the Ursa Major remaining. Assuming the rockslide worked to slow the fucker down, there was nothing to do then but to throw every bit of metal that he had in that general direction. Both knives, his shield, and his sword that would have the fire dust in the injection kit activated to run along its blade would all move to impale the creature, which wouldn’t be enough to kill the damned thing but would make a damned fine start. All of those attacks together plus the fire dust would probably only bring it halfway to its grave, but if the rock slide worked the Sanctum graduate would have the time he needed to pry each of his weapons outside of its thick hide at best or twist the weapons as best he could to inflict more damage inside of the creature at worst.

At no point did Colton outwardly show any excitement or fear, and indeed he approached the entire ordeal like one might the task of cooking or doing laundry. Combat was a routine, frankly, and one that he was well trained for. There was no outward expression of terror in fighting the Creatures of Grimm that some of his classmates displayed regularly, but neither was there any indication that he enjoyed the task. Far from the psychotic glee of someone like Nikolas, he almost seemed bored during the entire ordeal.

In truth, he enjoyed fighting people much more than he liked fighting Grimm. There was no satisfaction in killing what was in essence a mindless creature, especially when most of them were predictable to a fault. There was no skill involved, and no real surprises to be had in fighting them. It was like going through an exam where all you needed to do was remember the correct answers, which in this case corresponded to courses of action. Beowolves were fast but weak except for the Alphas. Ursai were strong but slow, and Nevermores were annoying and durable. Honestly, he believed that only a true psychopath could get any sustained enjoyment from fighting these things on a regular basis.

After all, killing Grimm for the sake of killing Grimm was pointless. They were infinite and were there long before any of the trainees were born and would survive long after each and every one of them was six feet in the dirt. It was only worth something when there was an actual purpose involved, and in this case that purpose was passing the midterms. Not the most inspiring or heroic cause to rally behind, to be sure, but it was sufficient for Colton to at least unleash Polarity to its fullest extent.

Speaking of fullest extent, he just remembered he had two more shots. Transforming the sword to a shotgun while still inside of the Ursa Major, he fired both of them off to wriggle the damn thing out of its hide. This sent residual fire dust in every which direction when the second shot broke it free and the weapon shifted back to a sword… but that wasn’t exactly a problem.

It had rained recently, after all. Only the undergrowth and some smaller trees would be affected even if he was indiscriminate with his attacks… which he fully intended on being. No point in restraint against a creature of darkness created with the sole purpose of murdering humans, after all. Not the best case study of a being worthy of mercy.

※ 5467 total words ✎ 1146 words ✉ D rank semblance, D ranked martial arts, D ranked durability, D ranked weapon, E rank weapon enhancement, E rank stamina

MADE BY MIZO

[Erytheia Hellebore]

The noble warrior stood, and the people looked to her.

For she was a beacon - hope given form, yet still only human.
Within that truth there was great promise.
If one could stand against the night, then so too could anyone - everyone.

In her hand the warrior held a Rose. And her aura burned bright.

❝

Her plan worked like a charm, which was a significant step up from the last time she'd attempted to come up with one for a combat situation. Rocks large and small alike crumbled down into a flooding mass that descended towards the Ursa, pelting and pummeling it with enough stones to build a decent sized hovel with. It was something even Deraine himself might have had difficulty tanking without his shield to ward off the worst of the blows, but the Ursa seemed to take it as little more than a refreshing sun shower. Still, the loose rocks sent it stumbling with every step that it tried to make as it clawed its way up towards them, which was enough for her and Deraine to gain ground further up the hill in the time between, as well as for the latter to send his shield up to cripple the Nevermore without any time wasted at all.

It was a little funny, come to think of it, that for all her preparation against another three students with other people by her side, they had only managed to scrape through by the skin of their teeth in said battle while everything that could go wrong did, whereas coming up with something on the fly in the middle of a pitched battle went perfectly. She supposed that that was the power of mankind - a thinking opponent who could and would out think you was just as much a danger as an ever present looming threat with enough power to decimate you. It was a strange way of looking at things, considering that that strength was something mankind had used against each other as well as their greatest enemy, but the Hellebore heiress decided to take it as a sign of hope. After all, if humanity could afford to wage war against itself and still survive against the onslaught of darkness, then surely once united, they could take back the world that rightfully belonged to them with little issue.

Of course, straightforward comparisons between the two situations were not anywhere near the truth. She couldn't deny that with the overwhelming powerhouse that was Deraine's Semblance behind her plan and executing it to the best of his ability, it was to be pulled off without a hitch. However, it was also simple and easily executed, with none of the complexities involved in the previous scenario that she had managed to mess up on a strategic level. Keeping in mind that she also had more time to better understand who and what she was working with, as well as what it was directed against, and it was little wonder that it had gathered better results than the last. Her mother would certainly approve of Haven's man of iron's strength, she thought to herself, watching the Nevermore descend from the sky to slam into the ground with a sickening crunch, like a puppet with its strings cut. She knew she had been berated for the lack of her own enough times to lose count.

Since the Nevermore was down, time to focus on the Ursa Major that was still struggling to get closer to them, apparently not figuring out that the rock slide only extended around it for a short distance and could be bypassed by backstepping and climbing from another direction. Despite the clear lack of intelligence on display, however, it was still strong enough to take everything Deraine threw at it and then some. It was abundantly clear to Erytheia that despite her preference for close ranged combat, she'd been out of it long enough that she couldn't reliably close into the fray to engage in melee. Ursa were surprisingly fast when they wanted to be, and if she made a single mistake in dodging and keeping away from that prodigious strength and those rending claws then it was quite likely that the Hellebore line would be ending with her. Far safer, then, to keep at range and lash out with the red lightning crackling around her, even if it didn't seem to be doing nearly as much damage as Deraine's repeated blows with his Semblance fueled weaponry smashing into the thick fur and flesh of the Grimm before them.

So that was what she did in spite of her reservations and preferences, the red arcs of lightning crackling through the air in a constant stream from the tips of her outstretched fingers into the body of the Major as she moved to the side, putting some more space between her and Deraine so that she could flank the beast. It might be focused on her erstwhile companion at the moment, but that might change any time with the amount of power she was pumping into it in a bid to do what she could now that they could focus their combined power onto a single foe without needing to worry about being overrun by other, lesser ones. And if it decided to go for either of them, said one could back away while the other continued to do damage. It was only a matter of time before it went down now, but perhaps she could speed it up. Planting her lance by her side, Erytheia raised both hands and let loose with a combined blast of red lightning large enough to send red sparks flying like a sparkler.

"Deraine!" she called out again, over the roar of the Ursa and the roar of her lightning.

"Use my weapon too, if you want! I'll wear it down from range!"

Once this one went down, that would probably be it for any Grimm in a decently sized radius. She would have to sortie out now and again to patrol that perimeter, but this would be a strong foundation to make camp on without being disturbed, at the very least.

AIRTAFAE (SEMBLANCE): [RANK E]

PRAETORIAN ET ROSA: RADIX GLORIA (DURABILITY) [RANK F]
PRAETORIAN ET ROSA: ARBOR IMPERIUM (STRENGTH) [RANK F]
PRAETORIAN ET ROSA: RAMIS MILIA (MARTIAL ARTS) [RANK F]
PRAETORIAN ET ROSA: LAMINAE CHORUS (ACROBATICS) [RANK F]

IRKALLA ARALI (WEAPON): [RANK F]

@ ● 973 words ● 4812 total words

MADE BY MIZO

[Colton Deraine]

[googlefont=Open+Sans]

[attr="class","firstfriend"]

Bravery is believing in yourself, and that's one thing nobody can teach you.

When Erytheia suggested using her weapon, the brunette didn’t hesitate. Lunging forward to make contact with his right hand on the weapon, he would use Polarity to disassemble it into its two sword component parts before launching them at the Ursa Major. They were well made weapons with enough durability to survive being launched as hard as Polarity could accelerate them and also to survive the impact of the blow. It wasn’t on par with his own weapons, of course, but they were a step ahead in quality of the trash that much of the school was carrying around.

The combined efforts of Erytheia’s lightning and Colton’s Polarity wore down the giant Grimm before it was able to close the distance. It was a clever little trick that got around the immense durability and strength of the creature and gave them the time they needed to take it out without either of them having their aura smashed. He had exerted his semblance on each metal weapon recently, so he was able to pull all of them back at once as the Major dissipated into dust. His own weapons were slipped back into their normal places with his sword being launched back into its sheath, his shield rebounding back to his left forearm, and the knives simply going right back into the boots.

With Erytheia’s weapons, he was less precise and just dumped them point first into the ground about a foot in front of her. He didn’t have the balance of the things memorized, and there was the risk of accidentally cutting or stabbing if he tried anyway for the style points and he didn’t really consider that risk worth it.

”Good plan.” he’d note, wholly unconcerned with the fact that the fire was still active and still burning the underbrush near where the Ursa was. It would burn itself out soon… probably. Either way, it wasn’t his problem. ”Well, that takes care of that.” he’d continue, pulling out his scroll to take a look at his aura levels. While he always had a good sense of where he was at by feel, it was always nice to double check the exact number just to have awareness. He was currently at forty-two percent, which while not ideal was the best that could have been expected for an unexpectedly large infestation of Grimm in the area.

”Forty-two percent.” he’d admit verbally while starting the walk down the hill. ”I’ll stay for a bit longer to help scan the area while I get a couple percent back. I’d like to get back to around fifty before heading out again if possible.”

Most trainees would find fifty percent aura to be unacceptable levels to be going off by themselves, but then again Colton wasn’t most trainees. He had completed half of his assigned objective just now helping Erytheia clear out that Grimm infestation, but he still needed to do it again before he could pass. Staying for longer than it took to get the bare minimum aura and catch his breath didn’t make sense, because this area was so far out of the way to almost ensure that nobody else would head over there. For a dandelion that had just accomplished her objective, it made perfect sense. It was a very defensible area that provided a lot of shelter from the elements when it inevitably started raining.

”How’s your aura level? Should be pretty close to full up, yeah?” he’d ask, more for confirmation than anything else. In theory, he would have eaten almost all of the damage from the Nevermore Chick but there may have been some stray feathers or an earlier scuffle that wrecked the blonde’s aura reserves before Colton had arrived. If it had been someone else, he might have gone for a visual check and not trusted their word. The fact of the matter was, though, that he was more than comfortable with giving Erytheia the benefit of the doubt given where she trained and the effort displayed since coming to Haven.

She wasn’t at his level, but that wasn’t a knock on her. She was out of practice and could potentially become a threat later. The blonde also showed the ability to both learn from mistakes and think well on her feet, which meant that he didn’t need to waste mental energy worrying about whether she was going to trip and break her aura due to stupidity or clumsiness. The woman was, frankly speaking, an obvious pick for a team leader when teams inevitably started being formed. Put her in charge of three enthusiastic morons and she’d turn them into a force to be reckoned with by their third year. Put her in charge of a group of psychopaths and her mental state would probably get shattered trying to keep them from getting themselves or others killed and there would be one less capable huntress on the roster.

For both her sake and for Mistral’s sake, he hoped she was smart enough to prevent the latter from happening. That wasn’t even a knock on her mental state, frankly, because his own would be shot dealing with a situation like that too. Imagining a nightmare scenario where he was put in charge of making sure a team of something like… Nikolas, Jacqueline, and Eva as well as being expected to keep them alive for three years would destroy anyone’s mental state. It would be an essentially impossible task that nobody could be expected to reasonably do but were assigned the task anyway.

Thank God this wasn’t like Beacon where the Headmaster assigned every team arbitrarily. There were some combinations that would have made Colton straight up just transfer anywhere else without the slightest bit of shame. It seemed, at least, that the Haven administration realized that they needed to keep the top echelon of trainees at all costs and were willing to wait longer for team creation than anyplace except for maybe Shade Academy. Did Shade even have permanent teams like everywhere else? He wasn’t sure, but there was a decent chance they didn’t even do it except for the Vytal Festival in order to compete.

※ 6494 total words ✎ 1027 words ✉ D rank semblance, D ranked martial arts, D ranked durability, D ranked weapon, E rank weapon enhancement, E rank stamina

MADE BY MIZO

[Erytheia Hellebore]

The noble warrior stood, and the people looked to her.

For she was a beacon - hope given form, yet still only human.
Within that truth there was great promise.
If one could stand against the night, then so too could anyone - everyone.

In her hand the warrior held a Rose. And her aura burned bright.

❝

Thank you."

Erytheia acknowledged the other Sanctum's student's words of faint approval with a dip of the head, and moved over to grab her weapons and pull them out of the ground with little difficulty, proceeding to tap the blades against a nearby rock lightly to get the worst of the dirt off. Irkalla and Arali were old weapons, older than her mother and her combined, perhaps double or even triple that, but they had been well maintained ever since her ancestor passed them into the armory. Yajaira Hellebore had been a powerful woman a nearly two centuries divorced from Alramadi, whose version of their hereditary Semblance allowed her to control earth. As a child, Erytheia had read through some of the woman's writings and insight on how she controlled her Semblance in their accords, along with many generations before and after, and Yajaira's musings had been particularly interesting, considering that, by all accounts, she had wanted nothing to do with the Hellebore family at first. She had abandoned her duty, her ideals, and her family to flee to the distant lands of Vale, where she resided for some time before eventually making her way home.

Erytheia had always wondered about that. What had that person seen? What had that person felt? How different were things then and now, that she had the strength to abandon everything they stood for? And what had happened to change her mind enough to come back and become one of the most feared warriors of her generation? Yajaira had died on a battlefield thirty years after she had returned from her chosen exile, leaving her daughter behind. Wandering the world, going from one battlefield to the next. What had she been looking for?

Now probably wasn't the best time to wonder about such things, though. Returning her thoughts to the present, the Hellebore heiress nodded at Deraine's words of staying until his Aura recharged somewhat before heading out. Polarity was a frightening beast, almost more so than even the Grimm residing in the forest proper. While others might deem it unsafe to be wandering without a plan, she was certain that Deraine would be just fine with that much. Resting her lance against the ground, she pulled out her Scroll to check her own Aura level, her slender fingers pressing daintily against the screen for a few moments before nodding.

"Yes, it is. Ninety five percent, and only because I was using my Semblance so liberally. It is a voracious beast, but I did not take any damage in the fight due to the Grimm's fixation upon you. A dangerous decision, but I am sure you do not need me to tell you that."

Pausing for a few moments to glance over at the burning flames of the underbrush and clearly making some calculations as to whether it was safe to let them be, the Hellebore heiress eventually seemed to decide that it was, and turned back to the other Sanctum graduate, picking up her lance from where it was resting against the ground in preparation to move.

"Around the base of the hill once, along the tree line? It seems a wide enough area to ensure safety - unless you had other ideas?"

AIRTAFAE (SEMBLANCE): [RANK E]

PRAETORIAN ET ROSA: RADIX GLORIA (DURABILITY) [RANK F]
PRAETORIAN ET ROSA: ARBOR IMPERIUM (STRENGTH) [RANK F]
PRAETORIAN ET ROSA: RAMIS MILIA (MARTIAL ARTS) [RANK F]
PRAETORIAN ET ROSA: LAMINAE CHORUS (ACROBATICS) [RANK F]

IRKALLA ARALI (WEAPON): [RANK F]

@ ● 539 words ● 5351 total words

MADE BY MIZO

[Colton Deraine]

[googlefont=Open+Sans]

[attr="class","firstfriend"]

Bravery is believing in yourself, and that's one thing nobody can teach you.

Ninety-five percent, damn.

It was even more than he expected and meant that Erytheia would be completely fine to chill out in this general vicinity for the rest of the day so long as nobody brought a ton of Grimm over. When the blonde mentioned his decision to purposefully become the target of the Grimm was a dangerous one, the brunette shrugged. ”It’s my goal in this exercise to help two other people pass. If I let your aura take a bunch of damage, it lowers your chances of passing. If one of us has to get hit, it should be me because my aura is better at protecting me than yours is.”

Plus, if he helped Erytheia it meant that he might not have to help someone who would be incompetent on any mission later down the road. Just because he couldn’t refuse a group request didn’t mean he was disallowed from simply avoiding people that he saw first and making sure the request never came. If he heard strange noises in the distance and recognized the voice, he could just turn his ass around and go the other way. Strange crying or screaming? If he had completed his goal, it really and truly wasn’t his problem.

When the blonde suggested going around the base of the hill, along the tree line Colton was quick to agree. ”Works for me.” he’d reply easily, both because it was a decision and they could start right then from that logic. He started off downwards at a leisurely pace, because he needed to wait a bit for his aura to recharge anyway and was in no rush whatsoever to leave what should be a relatively clear area before he was at least at around fifty percent. He was arrogant, sure, but that arrogance was not limitless. If there were Ursa Majors running around, he needed enough aura to deal with one even if it got the drop on him without risking death.

Some people seemed to think that Colton was uncommonly brave due to the blasé facial expression and body language he often used while fighting. That wasn’t the case at all, really, because their perceptions of danger were different. Being caught alone against an Alpha, for example, would cause most of the class to shit their pants in terror because they were almost certainly going to die. When faced with the same situation, Colton would know that he could win if he played his part in the fight to perfection even with perhaps his aura intact at the end. It was not certain death for him, so he had no reason to be terrified. It was only death if he fucked up, which fear tended to cause anyone to do.

For the small fry, they posed no danger whatsoever. Ten or twenty lesser beowolves would be certain death for a lot of his classmates if they were alone but weren’t even really a threat to Colton. Why would he be afraid of something that couldn’t realistically hurt him? Sure, his aura would drop, but it would never be in danger of breaking. The same line of logic went for sparring matches, too. Even if he fucked around and the other party was legitimately trying to kill him, most of them didn’t pose a threat to him in the slightest. They couldn’t hurt him even if they tried, so he was in no danger whatsoever. It didn’t matter how angry they were or how they felt, because at the end of the day his own restraint was the only reason why they were able to get up and walk off at the end of a fight. He posed a significant threat to them, but they posed zero threat to him. Nobody called an average person brave for crushing a bug with their shoe, because the bug posed zero threat to them. There was no danger, so why would they not be supremely confident in their ability to survive the encounter? Same deal.

”How’re you adjusting to Haven?” he’d ask over his shoulder casually, giving Erytheia the opportunity to talk if she wanted to. He’d prefer not to walk around in silence but wasn’t entirely opposed to the notion either. It was an open-ended question that could be answered at length and they could chat for a bit or could be brushed aside, and they could just patrol in silence until his aura recharged.

The patrol itself, after all, was just a formality. Any Grimm that were in the area would have been attracted with the rest, so any they did encounter would have come from elsewhere. Since they were not being attacked right this second, it was likely that they had taken out all the Grimm in the immediate area that could have reasonably responded to that outburst of negative emotion. It would take some other idiot running here being chased by a bunch of them to repopulate the area, probably, which would hopefully not happen.

Well, knowing who else was in this forest it could totally happen. In fact, now that he thought about it, it had a pretty good chance of happening due to the sheer number of rampaging idiots who could possibly lead a wild pack of Grimm directly into the camp.

At least Erytheia’s aura levels were almost maxed out, so that if it did, she could in theory protect the rampaging idiot from themselves. She was the good sort that would at least attempt to do so even if it was to her own personal detriment, so making sure she had the tools to do that might prevent at least one death today in the forest. If nobody got at least maimed, frankly, Colton was going to be pretty surprised because his expectation going in was at least three to four straight up fatalities coming out from this thing if there was really zero intervention – which meant that there had to be some intervention to prevent that. Hell, maybe there were people already pulled out of the exercise at this point. He could make a few guesses, but he wouldn’t know for sure until afterwards.

※ 7522 total words ✎ 1028 words ✉ D rank semblance, D ranked martial arts, C ranked durability, D ranked weapon, E rank weapon enhancement, E rank stamina

MADE BY MIZO

[Erytheia Hellebore]

The noble warrior stood, and the people looked to her.

For she was a beacon - hope given form, yet still only human.
Within that truth there was great promise.
If one could stand against the night, then so too could anyone - everyone.

In her hand the warrior held a Rose. And her aura burned bright.

❝

The slight sigh that came from the Hellebore heiress at the mention of adapting was really all that the other Sanctum graduate needed to hear with regards to her thoughts on the subject - and if that wasn't enough, the look on her face was enough to convey her thoughts on the subject. Uncharacteristically pinched with fatigue and more than a hint of irritation, it wasn't a look that was common on Erytheia's countenance - certainly not one she often displayed in front of anyone else, regardless of how often she saw them.

Where to start, she wondered.

"The environment is nice," she said eventually, falling into step just behind and to the taller male's left, keeping her head on a swivel even as she walked and talked, the motions almost automatic now that most of her attention was caught up in her thoughts. She was confident that she could react to any Grimm her gaze might sweep across, though - and even more so given the huge battle they'd just fought and the fact that Deraine was there to act as a second pair of eyes in case hers should fail her. The Hellebore heiress was not often given to distractions while in the field, but he had asked, and it would be rude not to answer.

"And it is not far from home, as Sanctum was. Professor Shadecloak and Haragitanai seem to be very professional and knowledgeable from what I have seen thus far, and the curriculum seems well designed. I can only imagine what this place was like..."

Before the Fall.

"In its heyday," she said instead, steering her mind away from friends gone. There were better ways to bring more Grimm into the area after painstakingly removing the vast majority at great effort.

"Haven is more than I could ask for, and has little about which I could complain. I wish, however, that I could extend that same line of thought to my own abilities."

There was a pause then, as she glanced around. The hand on the opposite side of where Deraine was walking brushed a gloved thumb over her knuckle, tracing the scar underneath - out of view, or so she thought.

"I suffered injuries after leaving Sanctum," she said, a note of something unidentifiable in her voice, though the expression she'd worn earlier had eased somewhat back into a more placid look, more stoic than irritated.

"It took years to recuperate, and the deterioration is quite clear when comparing it to the combat performance I had in my final months at the school, especially when considering that I made it through those years without a single hint of Airtafae ever showing itself. Now, I use it far more than I should. My Semblance has become a crutch, one I have been forced to use lest I drag others down with me due to my lack of ability. My strength has waned, and I have become soft and slow. It feels... quite irritating, to see milestones that I once could have achieved with no issue to be currently out of my reach."

If Colton was looking at her, she would offer up a small smile, one tinged with a hint of bitterness and melancholy. Otherwise, she would not make it as obvious for his benefit, and simply let the corner of her lip curl in the barest hint of self deprecation.

"I feel like an elder."

AIRTAFAE (SEMBLANCE): [RANK E]

PRAETORIAN ET ROSA: RADIX GLORIA (DURABILITY) [RANK F]
PRAETORIAN ET ROSA: ARBOR IMPERIUM (STRENGTH) [RANK F]
PRAETORIAN ET ROSA: RAMIS MILIA (MARTIAL ARTS) [RANK F]
PRAETORIAN ET ROSA: LAMINAE CHORUS (ACROBATICS) [RANK F]

IRKALLA ARALI (WEAPON): [RANK F]

@ ● 569 words ● 5920 total words

MADE BY MIZO

[Colton Deraine]

[googlefont=Open+Sans]

[attr="class","firstfriend"]

Bravery is believing in yourself, and that's one thing nobody can teach you.

When Erytheia mentioned wishing to see Haven during their heyday, Colton let out an uncharacteristic grimace for a moment before turning his head away so that his facial expression could be kept hidden until he could set it back to neutral. It was a sore spot for the Argus native as well as the blonde, and regardless of the words used the meaning was clear and implications unmistakable. What was at Haven now was nothing more than a pale shadow of what came before, and both of them were fully and completely aware of that fact. Being from Sanctum meant that most of the top students at Haven at the time of The Fall were former classmates and friends. It was an extremely predictable answer, and one that would have been obvious had he been even the slightest bit more empathetic. It was a bad question to ask in a situation like this, because generating negative emotions just meant that they would be attacked by Grimm a second time instead of being done with them entirely for a while.

He let the blonde finish talking before saying anything, partially because he realized his mistake too late and needed time to mentally process it and to avoid interrupting his current companion despite the fact that he really wanted to when she said something that was fucking absurd and an insult to both of them. The thought process that semblances were a crutch that made someone weaker was asinine and factually incorrect. There were many licensed huntsmen that relied almost entirely on an above average semblance to function as a fighter, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with that so long as that there was an awareness of the limitations of such a style. Hell, some types like transformation were locked into relying on their semblance to a large degree just by getting straddled with that type to begin with.

”Relying on your semblance isn’t a crutch.” the brunette would rebuke, perhaps a bit more harshly than he intended. The harshness was gone as he continued, as a brief look of surprise showed that even he was caught a bit off guard at the initial tone. ”Semblances are given to you in order to be used. The main difference between an equally skilled pair of people, one with no semblance and one with solid one is that the first person has a much lower skill ceiling. We’re all first years in the weakest class to ever enter a Big Four Academy – nobody expects you to be able to wipe your own ass yet.”

There was a sharp breath after that last bit, even though the delivery was as dry as ever. Eyes kept scanning the area around them, and Colton had either consciously or unconsciously avoided looking in Erytheia’s direction at all since she referenced The Fall. It had been a long enough time that it would have been noticeable even for someone who wasn’t super observant at that point, but he continued talking anyway. ”You still got two more years to go and some change to figure shit out. Pissing and moaning about the past doesn’t help you change the future. Soft and slow or not, there’s a number of others who so obviously look up to you I gag a little bit seeing it. Highly trained, powerful semblance, you know – standard shit for people like us but fucking alien to others. So, you’re about twenty percent of where you want to be – great, we’re all in the same boat. Your twenty percent is way fucking higher than most other people’s twenty percent, because you have a higher ceiling to begin with.”

There was a pause there, and then when the brunette started talking again his voice was softer than usual. Not by much, but it was noticeable, and he was at least making an effort. ”Like it or not, you’re probably in the top five, maybe even top three most experienced people in the school right now in terms of students. In terms of people with both the ability and the inclination to stop half of these braindead lemmings from jumping off the nearest cliff, you’re the best they got no matter how prepared you think you are. It’s not ideal and would never have happened in any of the other Big Four schools, yes. But you chose to be here, and you signed up for this.”

Not exactly the best motivational speech in the world, but then again Colton was fucking terrible at coming up with that shit on the spot. When given some time to prepare, sure he could do it and do a passable job… but on the spot? Nah, that wasn’t in his wheel house at all. He could try and in this case he did decide to, but the effectiveness of that attempt was certainly… questionable at best.

※ 8335 total words ✎ 813 words ✉ D rank semblance, D ranked martial arts, C ranked durability, D ranked weapon, E rank weapon enhancement, E rank stamina

MADE BY MIZO