Post by Colton Deraine on Sept 3, 2019 20:18:00 GMT -5
[googlefont=Open+Sans]
[attr="class","firstfriend"]
Bravery is believing in yourself, and that's one thing nobody can teach you.
It was another day of standard sparring exercises, which were quite frankly a giant waste of Colton’s time almost every single time they happened.
The fact of the matter was, frankly, was that the current crop of students was utterly incapable of actually threatening him. Carmim was a one trick pony, Qiu’li was pathetic, and Argent was legitimately just trying to copy large aspects of the former champion’s fighting style into his own. In much the same way a fake could never match the original, neither could a fake of a fake be any closer to the real thing when the real thing hadn’t been seen. One might consider such blatant copying flattering, but Colton didn’t really care one way or another. If the only way someone could improve was by copying him, by all means let them do so.
The rest of the field, frankly, was even less impressive in singular combat. Ruqa excelled due to her brain and not her brawn, and her loud confidence was annoying. Most of the new people were completely without any promise whatsoever, with one worthless waste of space getting the absolute fuck beaten out of him by Aegle of all people the other day. Not only being beaten but being eviscerated by what was probably the weakest student in all of Haven was a fucking accomplishment – but not a positive one.
It was like someone taking the gold medal in the failure Olympics where everyone competed to see who should’ve been aborted the most out of everyone in Remnant. A guy named Vas had won and secured his spot as most likely to die first out of everyone with the most stunning display of complete and utter incompetence to the point of endangering everyone around him that Colton had personally ever seen in his entire life. If there wasn’t a betting pool for who bit the dust first, there should be. It was a multiple way race between Nik, Vas, and Aegle for who decided they could do more than put on pants that day and got promptly annihilated for it. Or, put more accurately, got someone else killed or maimed trying to save the wastes of space that each of them was. Being at the bottom of the class in a normal setting wasn’t even a mark against anyone, but being at the bottom of such a bottom heavy class like Haven’s new group was fucking embarrassing.
Large egos and low skill levels seemed to be the name of the game, because most of the morons coming in would lose to even a middling Sanctum graduate like Kishka. He himself had been kept away from the new people for the most part, and for good reason. It would absolutely and completely shatter most of their senses of self-worth to be so effortlessly destroyed and humiliated in front of everyone. There was one new girl from Atlas that might be pretty decent, but Evangeline’s earlier transfer made it clear that the weren’t exactly sending their best and brightest across the ocean to come here so the new girl might end up being similarly mediocre. It made sense that a Big Four Academy would only send those that it could spare, because there was no point in letting another school get the best and brightest even from its newest class.
Frankly, most of his spars in class were frightfully mundane. He would assume a fighting stance by putting his hands up and putting his right leg back and would simply obliterate the enemy’s semblance before they had a chance to do much of anything with his sword and shield. The only times people ever really made it into melee range was when they were severely weakened, or he was disrespecting them to an enormous degree.
Colton didn’t bother to change into his armor and instead simply just came out to the fighting area with his standard Haven Academy uniform and his weapons. A black jacket with a light gray outline around the edges, a white undershirt and a white band around his left arm, with one knife in each boot. The fighting area was a thirty meter by thirty-meter square arena made of thick concrete raised up, and Colton would ascend the stairs with neither his shield flared out nor his sword drawn. This was a routine training exercise, and enemies were chosen at random in these things. Most of the time it ended up in horribly one-sided fights, and the teenager had full confidence that this time would be no different.
His opponent, whoever they were, was a bit late. There was a timer set up on the scoreboard that was used for scenarios sometimes that was running, and it still had about thirty seconds left on it. Colton would make physical contact with both his shield and his sword and let Polarity hold them in the air on either side of his body. Just to lift the objects up in the air took next to no aura, and he was fine holding them there until the battle started – that is, if his opponent even bothered to step up to the plate at all. Some of the new arrivals had enough survival instinct in them to know how far they were outmatched, and in at least one instance just decided to run in terror for the entire sparring match. If this opponent was going to do something similar, it was better for everyone involved if they just refused to show up in the first place because it was fucking embarrassing.
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. He very rarely felt the need to pilot the weapons with his own two hands and wouldn’t do it unless he was actually threatened.
As his opponent for this match stepped into view, however, the teenager’s usually aloof demeanor instantly changed as he started laughing. ”It’s about time you showed up. The fuck happened, you get lost on the way here or something?”
As the timer counted down, Colton pulled both of his weapons from the air so that he had them firmly in his hands. He wasn’t about ready to make the same mistake twice in letting his weapon get away from him, because he had barely scraped by with a tie the last time they had fought. Brown eyes met the green gaze of the blonde as he continued, as easily as if he was greeting an old friend. In a way, maybe he was.
”What was it, six months ago? I’ve gotten a fair bit better since then, so this will be a good test to see if you can still keep up.”
Keen to show off and with a cocky grin playing along his lips, it was a shame that most basic sparring matches disallowed the use of dust. The dust injection kit that he installed on both his shield and his sword was fucking amazing and would have made the upcoming fight much easier. In a way, though, it made the match all the more exciting. If she had improved, then without the luxury of his dust he might actually lose the second round.
In a one on one setting, it would be his first loss in a sanctioned fight if she could manage it. While it was definitely possible for him to sit back, cower, and play a purely defensive fight to perhaps lessen those odds a few percentage points the fact of the matter was that this was a training simulation and it would be more enjoyable for everyone involved if he just stepped up and actually engaged. It prevented him from looking weak while simultaneously letting the person he should have been facing off against in the Mistral Regional Tournament get to show everyone what she was capable of. Plus, the only way to see where their respective skill levels were in comparison to each other was to test it out in a setting where both of them could display their actual skills. Winning was less important than that, but there was also the underlying expectation that he was more than capable of winning without resorting to coward’s tactics.
After all, the fact of the matter was that he was the best swordsman in the school by a large margin. He was also the best melee combatant in the school by a large margin, despite the fact that he was a manipulator. Colton was more than capable of winning a stand-up fight with anyone and was happy to prove it against an opponent that was actually worthy of that honor. He wouldn’t disrespect the blonde by stepping forward and would instead hold position and wait for the inevitable charge forward. If he was even slightly off balance when the initial attack came, he would be manhandled and lose from that bad start. If he had known who his opponent would be, he would have worn his full set of armor to make things a bit easier… but he sure as hell wasn’t going to ask for a delay to go get his equipment at this point.
It was way too late to do so with any shred of pride. Whatever he came out to the class with was what he was stuck with, for better or for worse.
When the charge came, Colton would eject his scabbard like a missile using Polarity. He brushed his shield arm against the scabbard again as the timer went down to zero to enable this, but sacrificing his scabbard was fine as long as he kept a hold of both of his weapons at this point. Ideally, he would also be fast enough to move his shield out with his semblance to put in between himself and his opponent to deflect the initial attack. He wouldn’t expend too much aura in keeping it in place, so it would be knocked away to any which direction to be manipulated back to attack from a different angle than his own sword. He wouldn’t bother keeping the scabbard floating around after it had done its job, largely because it was a waste of mental energy especially since the first hit would rattle his brains enough to possibly make him lose concentration anyway.
It wasn’t often that he resorted to trickery and unconventional tactics like this from the start, but he wasn’t dumb enough to come into this with any illusion that he could win without being deathly serious from the very beginning. The two boot knives were new and would come into play later on very likely as a surprise attack since they rested close enough to his skin to be activated at a moment’s notice. If he could win without pulling out that particular trick, he would. He had never been pushed hard enough to resort to that maneuver just yet, but this may very well be the first.
The fact of the matter was, frankly, was that the current crop of students was utterly incapable of actually threatening him. Carmim was a one trick pony, Qiu’li was pathetic, and Argent was legitimately just trying to copy large aspects of the former champion’s fighting style into his own. In much the same way a fake could never match the original, neither could a fake of a fake be any closer to the real thing when the real thing hadn’t been seen. One might consider such blatant copying flattering, but Colton didn’t really care one way or another. If the only way someone could improve was by copying him, by all means let them do so.
The rest of the field, frankly, was even less impressive in singular combat. Ruqa excelled due to her brain and not her brawn, and her loud confidence was annoying. Most of the new people were completely without any promise whatsoever, with one worthless waste of space getting the absolute fuck beaten out of him by Aegle of all people the other day. Not only being beaten but being eviscerated by what was probably the weakest student in all of Haven was a fucking accomplishment – but not a positive one.
It was like someone taking the gold medal in the failure Olympics where everyone competed to see who should’ve been aborted the most out of everyone in Remnant. A guy named Vas had won and secured his spot as most likely to die first out of everyone with the most stunning display of complete and utter incompetence to the point of endangering everyone around him that Colton had personally ever seen in his entire life. If there wasn’t a betting pool for who bit the dust first, there should be. It was a multiple way race between Nik, Vas, and Aegle for who decided they could do more than put on pants that day and got promptly annihilated for it. Or, put more accurately, got someone else killed or maimed trying to save the wastes of space that each of them was. Being at the bottom of the class in a normal setting wasn’t even a mark against anyone, but being at the bottom of such a bottom heavy class like Haven’s new group was fucking embarrassing.
Large egos and low skill levels seemed to be the name of the game, because most of the morons coming in would lose to even a middling Sanctum graduate like Kishka. He himself had been kept away from the new people for the most part, and for good reason. It would absolutely and completely shatter most of their senses of self-worth to be so effortlessly destroyed and humiliated in front of everyone. There was one new girl from Atlas that might be pretty decent, but Evangeline’s earlier transfer made it clear that the weren’t exactly sending their best and brightest across the ocean to come here so the new girl might end up being similarly mediocre. It made sense that a Big Four Academy would only send those that it could spare, because there was no point in letting another school get the best and brightest even from its newest class.
Frankly, most of his spars in class were frightfully mundane. He would assume a fighting stance by putting his hands up and putting his right leg back and would simply obliterate the enemy’s semblance before they had a chance to do much of anything with his sword and shield. The only times people ever really made it into melee range was when they were severely weakened, or he was disrespecting them to an enormous degree.
Colton didn’t bother to change into his armor and instead simply just came out to the fighting area with his standard Haven Academy uniform and his weapons. A black jacket with a light gray outline around the edges, a white undershirt and a white band around his left arm, with one knife in each boot. The fighting area was a thirty meter by thirty-meter square arena made of thick concrete raised up, and Colton would ascend the stairs with neither his shield flared out nor his sword drawn. This was a routine training exercise, and enemies were chosen at random in these things. Most of the time it ended up in horribly one-sided fights, and the teenager had full confidence that this time would be no different.
His opponent, whoever they were, was a bit late. There was a timer set up on the scoreboard that was used for scenarios sometimes that was running, and it still had about thirty seconds left on it. Colton would make physical contact with both his shield and his sword and let Polarity hold them in the air on either side of his body. Just to lift the objects up in the air took next to no aura, and he was fine holding them there until the battle started – that is, if his opponent even bothered to step up to the plate at all. Some of the new arrivals had enough survival instinct in them to know how far they were outmatched, and in at least one instance just decided to run in terror for the entire sparring match. If this opponent was going to do something similar, it was better for everyone involved if they just refused to show up in the first place because it was fucking embarrassing.
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. He very rarely felt the need to pilot the weapons with his own two hands and wouldn’t do it unless he was actually threatened.
As his opponent for this match stepped into view, however, the teenager’s usually aloof demeanor instantly changed as he started laughing. ”It’s about time you showed up. The fuck happened, you get lost on the way here or something?”
As the timer counted down, Colton pulled both of his weapons from the air so that he had them firmly in his hands. He wasn’t about ready to make the same mistake twice in letting his weapon get away from him, because he had barely scraped by with a tie the last time they had fought. Brown eyes met the green gaze of the blonde as he continued, as easily as if he was greeting an old friend. In a way, maybe he was.
”What was it, six months ago? I’ve gotten a fair bit better since then, so this will be a good test to see if you can still keep up.”
Keen to show off and with a cocky grin playing along his lips, it was a shame that most basic sparring matches disallowed the use of dust. The dust injection kit that he installed on both his shield and his sword was fucking amazing and would have made the upcoming fight much easier. In a way, though, it made the match all the more exciting. If she had improved, then without the luxury of his dust he might actually lose the second round.
In a one on one setting, it would be his first loss in a sanctioned fight if she could manage it. While it was definitely possible for him to sit back, cower, and play a purely defensive fight to perhaps lessen those odds a few percentage points the fact of the matter was that this was a training simulation and it would be more enjoyable for everyone involved if he just stepped up and actually engaged. It prevented him from looking weak while simultaneously letting the person he should have been facing off against in the Mistral Regional Tournament get to show everyone what she was capable of. Plus, the only way to see where their respective skill levels were in comparison to each other was to test it out in a setting where both of them could display their actual skills. Winning was less important than that, but there was also the underlying expectation that he was more than capable of winning without resorting to coward’s tactics.
After all, the fact of the matter was that he was the best swordsman in the school by a large margin. He was also the best melee combatant in the school by a large margin, despite the fact that he was a manipulator. Colton was more than capable of winning a stand-up fight with anyone and was happy to prove it against an opponent that was actually worthy of that honor. He wouldn’t disrespect the blonde by stepping forward and would instead hold position and wait for the inevitable charge forward. If he was even slightly off balance when the initial attack came, he would be manhandled and lose from that bad start. If he had known who his opponent would be, he would have worn his full set of armor to make things a bit easier… but he sure as hell wasn’t going to ask for a delay to go get his equipment at this point.
It was way too late to do so with any shred of pride. Whatever he came out to the class with was what he was stuck with, for better or for worse.
When the charge came, Colton would eject his scabbard like a missile using Polarity. He brushed his shield arm against the scabbard again as the timer went down to zero to enable this, but sacrificing his scabbard was fine as long as he kept a hold of both of his weapons at this point. Ideally, he would also be fast enough to move his shield out with his semblance to put in between himself and his opponent to deflect the initial attack. He wouldn’t expend too much aura in keeping it in place, so it would be knocked away to any which direction to be manipulated back to attack from a different angle than his own sword. He wouldn’t bother keeping the scabbard floating around after it had done its job, largely because it was a waste of mental energy especially since the first hit would rattle his brains enough to possibly make him lose concentration anyway.
It wasn’t often that he resorted to trickery and unconventional tactics like this from the start, but he wasn’t dumb enough to come into this with any illusion that he could win without being deathly serious from the very beginning. The two boot knives were new and would come into play later on very likely as a surprise attack since they rested close enough to his skin to be activated at a moment’s notice. If he could win without pulling out that particular trick, he would. He had never been pushed hard enough to resort to that maneuver just yet, but this may very well be the first.
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MADE BY MIZO
