[Wolfe]

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[attr="class","boldtext"] Well, there was one thing left to do before the end of this whole tournament business. One thing to do before they were off to where ever the fuck and went off to learn how to destroy giant monsters and shit. One more thing to cross off the bucket list before getting the hell out of this cold as fuck Argus place for good. When it came to swordsmanship, there was one guy who stood out from the rest according to the other bright eyed shits around the tournament who had no problem singing their praises. Colton Deraine from Haven Academy was widely considered to be the most skilled swordsman in this entire tournament even after he was knocked out of the tournament in the second round of The Blitz. He was the one that she wanted to fight from the start, and it was a shame it couldn’t be done in public. It was a shame it couldn’t be done in the arena for all to see. Beating someone with his reputation in front of the whole world would have done a heck of a lot for her reputation, but it was not meant to be. This would have to do. Rose managed to bump into the guy during the day and arranged this little duel by twilight to see where she stood in terms of the people who were admitted into Haven already. Fighting every single one of her new peers was pointless, as was actively seeking out someone who countered her. Even someone with lesser skill and talent could eke out a surprise win if their semblance was a great matchup, and that didn’t interest her. She was a melee fighter first and foremost and considered her skill with a blade to be pretty damned good. If this Deraine guy was considered the best sword fighter among the three combat schools, she wanted to beat him to prove herself the new best. That was how things worked, right? To be the best, you had to beat the best. The winner of this year’s tournament wasn’t decided, but if it wasn’t her… well, then she’d smash them too. She heard these huntsman academies forced you to work in teams, and if she could establish a reputation before they even got there… well, it would stop the scrubs from interacting with her. The last thing she wanted was to be dragged down by scrubs who somehow made it past the recruiting process, the weak and defenseless types who couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag let alone out of a fight to the death against a giant scorpion or something. Fighting giant scorpions was something Huntsmen did, right? She certainly hoped so, or she was in the wrong place. Beacon was the first school to give the blonde a formal offer, but it was for next year. This whole wandering thing was fun and all, but she didn’t want to do it for another year. Atlas was apparently cold as shit and had this whole military thing going on, and to be honest she still wasn’t convinced that Haven was the right choice either. If even the top ranked students couldn’t hang, maybe it was best for her to just walk into Shade Academy back home and demand a tryout there and just beat the piss out of anyone they sent against her. It would work, and she knew damn well it would work because there wasn’t any student there aside from maybe the later years that could beat her in a straight up fight. She didn’t come all this way to just sit there and not even give Mistral a chance, though, so she was going to see what the top flight of Haven Academy commits could do. This was day three, the rest day. Rose didn’t even have her Round of 16 match until Day 5, and the long wait was going to bore her out of her mind if she didn’t do something with the time to keep her intensity up and her focus sharp. She was dressed in a red leather jacket with a plain black t-shirt underneath alongside ripped blue jeans. Her red and silver sword was roughly one hundred and ten centimeters (110cm) long, and she wielded it easily with one hand due to her tremendous strength. Just holding it with one hand wasn’t impressive, and anyone could do it. Actually swinging the damn thing around with any control or force with one hand, though, that was something not just anyone could do. The area in which they fought was rather nondescript, just one of the training areas allotted to all participants in the arena that was just an open field in the grass. Nobody would bother them there, and it would just be one swordsman against another in a clash of wills. Green eyes looked up and saw a figure approaching and unfurling their round shield. That was him, all right, and Rose wasn’t going to give him a chance to blink. ”Let’s go!” she roared, red lightning crackling across her body as her semblance enhanced her speed and durability significantly as she blitzed forward to start this battle off with a bang. Pleasantries and talking could wait, because the only way to truly judge someone was to meet them in battles. Words could lie, but skill and courage didn’t. They could talk later, if the former champion hadn’t lost his edge. A horizontal swipe of her sword at chest level would be the initial attack, followed up by a knee to the face if her opponent decided to duck or a semblance-infused lunge forward to strike with the pommel of the sword if they moved backwards to avoid it.

Word Count: 960 Tag: Colton Deraine Combat Abilities: E rank Semblance F ranked weapon E ranked strength F ranked stamina

MELUSINE

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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.

This was bizarre.

Colt just had the best luck meeting all the wild cards this year, it seemed. This one, Rosalia Phoenix, had absolutely curb stomped her first two opponents with her brute strength and wanted a sparring session with him specifically. She said he was considered the best swordsman in the tournament, which was true at least for now, and that she wanted to beat him. Strategically, it was stupid. He could just spar her and relay any information he gained about her style and semblance to her next opponent if they happened to come from Haven, and he was already out of the tournament. There was no point in fighting him at all except to prove a point, and you know what?

He respected her for actually seeking him out and making sure she got to face someone like him in the very area of his expertise. It wasn’t exactly a secret that he thought very highly of himself, and it made him feel good that despite his early exit in this year’s tournament that people respected him enough to still consider him the final boss of sorts when it came to a stand up fight. Most people avoided fighting him in melee like the plague, so to have somebody call him out and ask for a close quarters fight was intensely unusual in an environment like this where winning was prioritized. It was the area that he excelled in above all others, and the area where he shined the brightest. This Rose girl was right on one thing, if she did manage to beat him… well, she was going to prove herself the new best. He doubted some random girl from Vacuo with no primary school training could seal the deal, though, but he respected the guts.

He came upon the field that she said to meet her at, dressed in a brown leather jacket zipped up all the way to ward off the cold as well as blue jeans and brown leather boots to stomp through the thin layer of snow with. When he saw the figure in the distance, he unfurled his shield as he walked over… but to his surprise the girl charged up her semblance and was off to the races already. Colt had enough time to draw his sword before she closed in on him, but he was definitely taken off guard by the action. It was weird for someone to blitz in without setting the rules or even saying hello, but it looked like this girl just wanted to fight. Was every foreign wild card completely fucked in the head? It was weird and rude and all sorts of other not so nice words, but what the hell.

So be it. He couldn’t exactly get her to step now by asking nicely or something, and it wasn’t a secret that the purpose of this meeting was a fight anyway. Down to business right away wasn’t his style, but he would have to run with it this go around out of necessity.

The girl started off with a horizontal slash, but the way she moved was off. Her semblance seemed to give her speed, and her strength was there even without the red lightning so that was probably natural… but those two things didn’t give her technique. It was a sloppy horizontal strike, and one that he had no problem blocking with his own blade. His blade met the blonde’s in a hanging right position, so that the strike hit the part of the blade directly above the cross guard of the backsword and the momentum was slowed enough to where the hit wasn’t severe. This entangled the blade of his opponent while the Argus native’s own sword tip was angled downward for a stab downward that would likely catch the girl off guard and force her to waste time wrestling her blade away from the entrapment.

His shield stood ready in case she repositioned quickly or had a secondary weapon or something, but this lead off was just a clean attempt to assert his dominance early on. Making his opponent’s weapon useless while getting clean hits was his reputation, after all, and far be it for him to let down a fan who had come all the way from Vacuo to fight him and people like him in this tournament. No matter how strong she was, there simply wasn’t enough space to give a counter attack with her blade that would be anywhere near the power of the thrust that was aimed right at her chest. He was going to win the first exchange, and it was going to be decisive. If she was going to win, she’d have to find a way to nullify the advantage he had in swordplay pretty quickly, or he was going to continue to chip away at her aura while simply dancing around any retaliatory strikes like the champion that he was.

※ Wolfe ✎ 827 words ✉ E rank semblance, F ranked weapon, F ranked durability, F ranked martial arts

MADE BY MIZO

[Wolfe]

[googlefont="Pt Sans"][googlefont="Dancing Script"]

[attr="class","boldtext"] Green eyes opened wider for just a second as she realized just how easily her first swipe had been blocked. The cross guard on the sabre wasn’t big enough to really do much to dampen the effect of the thrust even if she tried to brute force a retaliation, so she didn’t bother. Red lightning crackled around her body to increase her durability and speed once more as she instead lunged forward and accepted the fact that she would be stabbed and her aura would drop a decent percentage from that stab… but she also stepped forward into a left elbow right into the shield of her opponent. That elbow would hit and then a grab attempt would be made on the shield as the girl would simultaneously disentangle her blade from her opponent as swiftly as she could and just start hacking with the full force of her strength in multiple directions. She wasn’t about to let this become some chess game where they exchanged blows one for one and whoever was more precise was going to win – she was going to turn this into what fighting should be about… taking your strengths and relentlessly abusing them to smash your opponent. The red lightning stayed on for now as she had twin objectives in nullifying the shield by wrestling it away from her opponent as well as occupying his sword with her own to prevent any more funny business. She was faster than he was, so there was no way he could retreat at this point to reset the fight in any way. All she needed to do was keep in as close as possible and wear the guy down, and to that end she savagely stomped down with her right foot onto the boot of Colton Deraine. She was going to wear him down with a flurry of attacks, and not give him the breathing room to make efficient use of his own semblance. Not a second to catch his breath, and not a second to think of a way out of the situation he was in until the Vacuo native had already won. Rose had seen Polarity in action, and it seemed like it worked out amazingly when given time to prep. The shield went out and ran interference while the rifle chunked down the aura of the opponent as they had to defend against the shield… but she didn’t let him do those things in this fight. They both engaged in melee with full aura, just like she wanted. There was no starting advantage, and the entirety of the fight would play out in melee where she was confident that she would win this and prove that she was the better fighter. ”Come on, you fucking turtle! Not afraid of a few soft elbows, are ya?” she taunted, a wide smile plain to see across her face as she did so. ”How many more tricks do you got left, I wonder?” she wondered aloud, putting the full weight of her body forward to make sure her strikes and grappling had just that little bit more power behind them. She knew that she was stronger than he was, and she continued to abuse that fact relentlessly because it allowed her to simply smash at the shield to do aura damage to the boy’s arm as it desperately tried not to break under the force of the blows which were strong enough to break cinder blocks. The stomps would continue every time she felt she had an opening and gained an inch, because she knew damned well that her opponent would simply be knocked over if he lifted either of his feet due to the difference in strength between the two. It was massive, and so was the difference in speed. Rose could lash out with a stomp and have her foot back in place supporting her relentless barrage of strikes forward in the blink of an eye, too fast for the Sanctum Academy graduate to react with anything. Unlike in the tournament, he wasn’t wearing any metal on his feet, so he couldn’t even use his semblance for this one. That was a mistake, and one that Rose was happy to punish. If he was taking this seriously, he would have put on the same suit of armor that he did for the actual match. The fact that he didn’t think she was a worthy enough opponent to do that honestly kind of irked her now that she thought about it, so this little match just became much more personal. He didn’t think she was worthy of wearing armor against and underestimated her. This son of a bitch had the cockiness to underestimate a girl he watched completely shit stomp two other academy graduates. That wasn’t an insult she was going to let stand, oh no. That wasn’t how this was going to work at all. If he wanted to insult her like this, Rose couldn’t lose. To lose would be to prove this cocky bastard right, and she wasn’t going to do enable that at all. She not only deserved to be here, but she was going to win the entire goddamned tournament. She was going to come from nowhere and blind side each and every one of these ‘primary combat school’ kids and show them that their fancy schools didn’t prepare them nearly as well as actual, practical experience did.

Word Count: 905 Tag: Colton Deraine Combat Abilities: E rank Semblance F ranked weapon E ranked strength F ranked stamina

MELUSINE

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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.

Shit. That good start didn’t stay good for very long.

The blonde took the blow on purpose to get an angle on Colton’s shield. The initial elbow was strong and forced him on the back foot for a split second, and a split second was all the girl needed to grab a hold of his shield. To prevent the shield from being wrestled away from him, he had to activate Polarity to generate enough force to fight back. A gray outline showed on both his hands and his shield, Omen, because it took the use of his semblance to match this girl’s insane strength. He had known she was strong physically going in but fighting against it was really something else. If he didn’t have his semblance to bail him out, that would have turned very ugly… very quickly.

His semblance was strong enough to fight back, but not strong enough to force her to break her grip on the shield. The best he could do was force a stalemate for now on that arm, and her wild strikes with her sword were wicked fast and just as strong to boot. An outline on his sword, Regret, made it fast and strong enough to at least nullify the wild swings that were coming his way due to the atrocious form that was being used in executing those attacks. She was using the sword more like a club than an actual sword, and the thought dawned on him that he doubted very much anyone had actually trained her how to use the damned thing to begin with. Each wild strike was parried and knocked back in such a way that it would open up a normal person for a counter attack, but the girl had such speed that all it did was force her to continue using her semblance to attack to use her raw physical strength and speed to make up for the vast deficiencies in form. This was not going to be a walk in the park, that was for sure.

She was confident enough to taunt him, and fast enough to get some solid stomps at his feet while he did so to get those little bits of chip damage on his aura. It wasn’t doing a lot of damage, mind you, it was just an attempt to distract him and keep him off balance and win the endurance game. Both of them were using their semblances the entire time, and even knocking off three or four percent of Colton’s aura with each stomp ensured that he wouldn’t have the stamina to outlast the girl. It was a very unusual style of fighting, and one that forced him on the back foot both figuratively and literally. It forced him with a way to change up how the fight was conducted, or he would simply lose in a war of attrition and that was plain for both of them to see. Clever way to nullify his skill advantage initially, but not perfect.

”I got a few more left in me.” he said in response to the blonde’s taunt, and found himself with a wide smile across his face as well as he did. It had been a while since someone had challenged him in his own strength of up close and personal fighting, and he was enjoying it a lot more than he thought he would. The next strike the Vacuo native made with her big two hander, Colt let go of his blade to let Polarity take the reins in the same block that he did earlier except with much more speed and power due to being enhanced by his semblance the entire way. The blade shot downward in a thrust, and at the same time he pushed his shield forward as much as possible in an attempt to get the girl off balance. With his now free right hand, the teenager lunged forward to try and get even a finger to touch the weapon. One finger was all he needed, just a split second of contact to allow him to use his semblance to disarm the girl and turn her own weapon against her for the rest of the fight. It wasn’t exactly a swordfight at that point, but then again it didn’t seem Rose was very interested at a nice duel of skill and tactics to begin with. If she wanted to brute force her way through this… well, two could play at that game.

If he managed to get even a finger on the blade, the first thing he would do is use the full might of his semblance to try and force the blade out of Rosalia’s hand. If he managed to do that, he would have the blade start rotating hilt over blade as it spun out to roughly five meters away from both of them. He would use it in an attack later on and would command his own sword back to his hand as well the second after the thrust was completed. If he managed to disarm his opponent, the rest of the fight would become much easier.

All he needed was one small advantage to start being on the offensive for once, and that small advantage could snowball into so much more with a combatant as skilled as Colt Deraine behind that offense. Rose had forced his hand into matching semblance against semblance, but Polarity was pretty damned good, and he wasn’t afraid to lean on it as much as he needed to in order to come out of this with a win. Just because he didn’t usually spam his semblance in this way didn’t mean that he couldn’t, it just meant that there were few people that consistently forced him to rely on it so much in a spar. What he had resolved to do, though, was to convince this girl to come to Haven. Her fearless, in your face style of fighting was one that he hadn’t had a lot of experience facing and that was awesome.

※ Wolfe ✎ 1009 words ✉

MADE BY MIZO

[Wolfe]

[googlefont="Pt Sans"][googlefont="Dancing Script"]

[attr="class","boldtext"] The desperation play was bound to happen sooner or later, but it was telegraphed enough for her to get the gist of the strategy before it was fully enacted. Her opponent was going to try to overpower her strength with his semblance and attacking from more angles than she could defend. That was a fine and dandy strategy, if it wasn’t for the fact that she was almost positive that she was the one ahead in aura. Her durability was due to her semblance, and it didn’t seem like Colt’s boosted his at all. Sure, he might be practiced with aura management… but natural ability would lose to the power of a semblance every time. Fortunately or unfortunately, that was simply how the world worked. She would take the full brunt of the thrust once more, but the former champion made a critical mistake. He lunged forward to grab the sword, which meant his weight and center of balance was also forward. One semblance empowered hand went to grab the hilt of the enemy’s sabre before it could return to him, but it wasn’t quite strong enough to pull back against the semblance. This was known, and fully intended. Rose had tricked him into pulling back with the full might of his semblance and sacrificed her sword in the process to set up a tackle that would use the boy’s own semblance against him because he doubted very much he would be immune to the slingshot of his own power. When she let go of the sword, it would rocket back to the boy and would either hit him or distract him from the running tackle that she would do at the speed of a professional sprinter that would ideally knock the local hero to the ground where she would just keep him there with her superior strength and just absolutely pummel the poor guy into submission with her fists that were too fast and too strong for him to do anything about. Simple, brutal, and effective. Just the way Rose preferred to do things. Sure, Turtle still had his shield, but her punches were more than strong enough to break the bones of the arm behind that shield so each one rained down would cause his aura to drop down further than it already was and it would do very little to mitigate any of that damage. Colt had made the dual mistakes of focusing too much on her sword and then assuming she would try to get it back, pulling it away from her in anticipation of an event that never came. Truth be told, she may carry a sword… but the damage all came from her immense strength, and that strength didn’t go away when her weapon did. He read her wrong and was going to pay for it. The sword was just a tool she used to beat the ever living hell out of someone, and it was a tool she was just as effective without. She didn’t rely on her weapons the same way that someone like Colt did, and projecting that need onto his opponent put him in one hell of a terrible position. He wasn’t strong enough to fight his way back up from the ground, and the only things he could manipulate now were the two swords and his shield. His aura would break before hers even if he charged up all three to attack, because she both had the initial aura advantage and could rain down a number of blows before he could even react to send the blades her way. Victory was in sight, and it may not have been pretty… but it was so close she could taste it. There were few confidence boosts one could have going into the next round of the tournament than defeat the former champion in his own area of strength – melee combat. Just a couple more punches and elbows and this thing was over. Red lightning crackled over her body as she unleashed a flurry of attacks with her fists and elbowed with the enhanced speed from her semblance. Colt was largely immobilized due to Rose literally sitting on top of him after the tackle, so it wasn’t like he wasn’t the easiest target in the entire world at that point. Each strike that she put out was strong enough to break a cinder block, and each one would carry with it the force to go straight through that shield and into the arm of her opponent. He had already lasted longer than any opponent she had so far, but it was time to finish this. She needed to end this and stop his semblance before it could do anything, and she was confident she had this one in the bag. Mistakes were made, but Rose was quick enough to capitalize on those mistakes and make quick work of the guy that everyone else seemed so afraid of. The swordsmanship skill, sure, she saw it. But in terms of tenacity and actual combat skill overall? Eh. She was able to blitz him and manhandle the guy just as badly as she had manhandled her official opponents in the tournament thus far. A rematch might be a little bit closer, but initial impressions were that she honestly wasn’t that impressed. Colton Deraine really didn’t live up to the hype, quite frankly, because she was expecting someone stronger for the way they talked about him. Maybe the field was just really weak last year, because this was no real stand out aside from the swordsmanship skill, and if brute force can overpower that skill gap… than what was the point of having a skill gap in the first place?

Word Count: 954 Tag: Colton Deraine Combat Abilities: E rank Semblance F ranked weapon E ranked strength F ranked stamina

MELUSINE

[newclass=".boldtext b"]font-family:PT Sans; color: #C77966;[/newclass]

[Colton Deraine]

[googlefont=Open+Sans]

[attr="class","firstfriend"]

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

Mistakes were made. Some of them may have even been pretty big mistakes, but that was all in the past now. This was the present, where Colton seemed to be in quite the pickle as a result of those earlier mistakes. It was funny how that worked out sometimes, how one thing led to another and you were on your back getting the absolute piss beaten out of you in a random field in Argus. Y’know, just normal every day things.

It was a natural reaction for someone to fight against their own weapon being taken away, and he hadn’t expected the girl to basically just let go of her own sword. Nobody did that shit, usually people had some form of attachment to their weapon. To square off against someone who had none was quite frankly bizarre and weird… but it worked out for her in the end. She had also fucking tricked him into getting distracted pulling his own sword back, which left him even more open than usual for the tackle because he was too focused on getting his own weapon back to adjust his physical stance in time in order to get his balance back to try and fight off the takedown… not that he was physically capable of doing that, given that his opponent had a semblance that enhanced her speed. And she was also much, much stronger than him because… well, of course she was. That was just how the world worked sometimes, wasn’t it?

It was no wonder her form was so bad. When you were that strong and that fast… there wasn’t a lot of people who could avoid being run over. Hell, Colt may very well end up being the latest victim of that. Before he could even react, the rain of punches and elbows started bashing down against his shield. The good part, though, was he didn’t lose his concentration when he was knocked down. He still had polarity active on the blonde’s sword – which was barreling down pointed right at her back… his own sword, which had been knocked away at the last second with Colt’s semblance and was now on its way back with its tip pointed towards the girl’s left side, and his shield which he manipulated with Polarity to try and catch the girl off guard by hitting her in the face with it after just letting go of the damned thing. It wasn’t like holding onto it did anything except put his left arm at very serious risk of getting snapped in half anyway.

His aura was already cracking under the pressure, and he couldn’t take another hit. The shield was big, too big to be ignored. She could continue punching it fine, but little to none of that force would get back to Colt at this point because Polarity was just that tiny bit stronger than she was. Semblance advantage was a real thing, and he was more than happy to abuse it just like Rose had abused it the entire damned match. The most important thing right now was to buy time for the two swords to connect, and one they did they would just start slashing with all the speed and power that Polarity could muster until one of their auras broke.

When he had lost in the Tournament, it was just because of a semblance mismatch. It was because fire countered him… if he lost here, well, he didn’t really have any sort of excuse. The armor that he had used for the tournament was back home until the tournament was over for repairs, so he couldn’t exactly rush back to put the damn thing on for a random sparring match in the middle of nowhere. Even if he did have the armor, he couldn’t say he wouldn’t fall for the same exact tricks and exploitations that he fell for this go around. Reacting faster by relying on his semblance may have loaned him a second here or there, but the outcome and final destination of all those mistakes would have been the same.

This marked twice in three days that he was taken to his absolute limit by someone not from Sanctum Academy…. And honestly? He was really excited about that fact. It meant that the crop of new people in this tournament was really, really good and there were people he could learn and grow with that were probably coming to Haven. It was good for everyone coming into that class that the competition was fierce here, and all that was left to do was to convince these strong people to choose the school that Colt was going to so he could continue to have extremely challenging match ups like this one.

It was clear that Rose came here looking for a fight, looking to prove herself. She wanted a challenge just as much as Colt did, if he had to guess, which meant the best way to convince her was to scratch and claw his way to a draw or a narrow victory to really piss her off. He knew just how frustrating it was to come within an inch of getting a clear win and not being able to seal the deal, and just how infuriating a draw was. If he could just not lose here, that frustration would be more than enough to pitch her picking Haven Academy. In order to get a rematch, she’d have to come do it when they got to campus. He might be literally broken in half when they got there, but he was confident he could get her there if he was able to deny her a clear victory in this little scuffle.

He hated having to rely on his semblance for everything, and often took great pride in not doing so to the point where his martial arts skills were pretty well known. For this fight, though, he had nothing but Polarity to give him even the slightest glimmer of forcing a tie or a win by the absolute skin of his teeth. This was going to end, one way or another, in the next few seconds. Everything always seemed to come down to the wire with him, for better or for worse.

※ Wolfe ✎ 1044 words ✉

MADE BY MIZO

[Wolfe]

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[attr="class","boldtext"]Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuck. This was unexpected, and not only that this was bad. The tricky little bastard shot his shield up in time to block the first punch, but the blonde just savagely swiped the thing aside with the full speed of her semblance combined with the full strength of her body with one hand while she thrust down with her other fist right in the face of her opponent. His aura had already shimmered, which meant that it was very close to breaking. One more punch was enough to end this fight once and for all. She was only able to slightly pull the shield out of the way, barely opening a gap big enough for her other fist to go through and barely threaded that needle, but it was delayed by a few seconds. Colt, however, had bought enough time for his earlier strikes to connect. A few seconds was all that damned Turtle needed to get her. At roughly the same exact time that Rose punched out her opponent’s aura into what amounted to bits of shattered gray glass, her side and back were hit with the blades and her own bright red aura shattered as well. The blonde threw one more punch in the ground next to the boy’s head, piercing through several inches of earth and soil before the girl sighed in frustration and abruptly rose back up to a standing position and went to retrieve her sword, sulking all the while. Just as her opponent had predicted, the lack of a clear victor absolutely infuriated her because it rendered the entire point of the spar pointless. How was she supposed to prove she could beat the person everyone else was so scared of if they simply drawed? A draw wasn’t a win, damn it! It wasn’t even close! ”Can’t tell who won that without a replay.” she admitted, her lip curled back to expose her teeth as she did. Her left hand, free from holding the sword, clenched and unclenched repeatedly. ”How fast does your aura recharge? Leaving on a draw is the least satisfying thing that could possibly happen. I can beat you in a rematch, hundred percent.” she growled, green eyes flashing as they turned back to regard the Argus native. ”You just got lucky towards the end. I should have ducked to dodge the attacks, you aimed too high.” The frustration in her voice was apparent when she realized her opponent was having trouble even getting upright after the fight and simply irritated her even more. ”See? You can barely even get up after that. My punch smashed through your aura, and you only managed to barely make mine break.” she commented aloud as she continued to clench and unclench her free hand. ”All I do is duck at the end next time, your semblance times out, and we have a clear winner. Easy!” Adrenalin carried her for a little bit longer after her aura broke, but suddenly the exhaustion all hit her at once and was forced to sit down. Having one’s aura broken was not something that one could just shrug off for long and no sell, because the exhaustion would hit you sooner rather than the later when adrenalin stopped being that stopgap to keep you moving. ”Okay, since you’re so banged up… I guess we can delay a rematch for another night. I don’t want to accidentally injure you, just beat you.” she exhaled, covering up the fact that she was exhausted as much as she could. She wasn’t going to let that fucker have the satisfaction of knowing she was winded after that, it was bad enough that he managed to get a draw that he didn’t deserve right out of his ass like some sort of fucking genie at the last second. It wasn’t like he had even won with his swordsmanship, either, all he did was spam his semblance for the entire back end of that fight the whole time to even have a chance of competing same as her. There was none of this fighting normally business like she was expecting, instead it was all weird angles and hits from behind. Maybe her mental image needed a little bit of amending. The rumors were still just that and pure exaggerations of his competency in combat, but she had to at mid that he was at least base line level competent in the basics. That was all the credit she was really willing to give at this point, but some miniscule amounts of credit was better than no credit at all. It showed some level of grit to be able to pull a draw out of that aura disadvantage, but it also showed how desperate the former champion had to become in order to make up that gap. It wasn’t skill that prevented her from winning, it was the desperate clawing and scratching of someone who knew they were beaten and had nothing to lose. That was it, plain and simple.

Word Count: 841 Tag: Colton Combat Abilities: E rank Semblance F ranked weapon E ranked strength F ranked stamina

MELUSINE

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[Colton Deraine]

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

Well, that hurt. And it continued to hurt every moment he remained conscious.

A lot. An extreme amount, even.

The last hit had not only broken through his aura and went well past that, but the aura was the only thing that prevented him from having a broken face right then. Attacks that barely broke your aura were bad, sure, but if the final blow was strong enough to bring down your aura by twenty percent and you only had ten percent left, for example… well, it hurt a lot more. By the way he felt, the ratio was probably more than ten percent. Holy shit, Colton felt like he just got hit by a car and then just tossed off a cliff into a pile of rocks. His whole body was aching from that one with pulsating waves of pain burning through his body at regular intervals that were entirely too rapid to be anything except for excruciating.

A punch landed next to his head, but he was too out of it when it landed to really notice or care that much. If it would have actually been aimed at him, he would have been completely defenseless and dead in the next swing or two. It was a sobering thought, but thankfully this wasn’t a life or death fight and instead just a spar. The girl, Rose, stood up immediately after her aura broke and started sulking about. He must have just barely gotten her with that desperation play at the end… or she was just tough as shit to begin with, which was also a distinct possibility. The blonde started talking, and that talking quickly turned into a rant. That suited Colton just fine, because quite frankly it was going to take him about forty five seconds to a minute to get back on his feet and in a state to actually reply so the more she filled up the air time the better as far as he was concerned.

He made the mistake of over prioritizing the sword of his opponent, but that wasn’t a mistake he would make twice. She went on about how she was a duck away from winning… which was completely true. If she had ducked using her semblance the two swords would have just banged against each other and he wouldn’t have even come close to winning. The problem with that, though, was assuming he’d make the same mistake twice to get to that point. There was also no way in hell he was ever going to take a rematch without metal armor to combat that strength with, too, because holy shit that was not a fun experience to just be fucking rag dolled.

Not counting semblances or Huntsmen, this girl was probably the strongest person that Colt had ever met. Considering he went to the top primary school in the Kingdom of Mistral, that was saying something. It was possible for someone to learn technique, but it was much harder to train to get that level of strength in the teenager’s opinion. Strength was never his strong suit, so maybe he was biased. He could jury rig Polarity to act as a strength booster when needed, but he needed to activate his semblance for that. It wasn’t always on, and it was always a drain on his stamina to try it. She had it without her semblance, and that was fucking terrifying to think about.

By the time he got into a sitting position, though, it seemed like his former opponent finally had her adrenalin wear off and was sitting down as well. There was no point trying to show off by getting up now, so Colt simply stopped trying.

”Glad to hear you’re so concerned for my well being, especially because that punch would’ve broken my face pretty good if it was a few inches to the left.” he replied drily, brown eyes matching the green gaze of the blonde. ”If you want a rematch, though, just win your next match and commit to Haven Academy. It’s been a while since I’ve been beaten that bad in melee, but it won’t happen twice. My armor’s going to take some time to get repaired, and when it’s back up and running I reckon I’d win pretty easily with my full strength.”

A cocky grin spread across the boy’s features as he spoke those last words, knowing full well that was a statement he wasn’t entirely sure he could actually accomplish. ”You come to Haven, and I promise you that I’m not the only one there that can shatter your aura just like that. If you want to get better, there’s no better place to be. The Huntsmen in Mistral are stretched so thin, you’ll be able to do way more. Why prove yourself in spars at Atlas in the middle of nowhere freezing your ass off or go to boring Beacon in the middle of a forest in a place where nothing ever happens when you could set up shop here and actually have battles that mean something against opponents who actually matter?”

”You’re good in a fight, sure, but if you’re actually brave enough to use that strength of yours there’s only one place to go. Bandits blockaded the capital of Mistral where Haven’s placed at, so we’ll have to actually go by air ship. I really doubt the gangs will go away just because they’re asked nicely one more time, so it’ll be someone’s job to drive them off eventually. That someone will probably be Haven Academy. You’re not gonna get the chance to shit stomp bandits anywhere else but Haven, and that’s a fact. No other place would even let you try, let alone turn you loose.”

”Plus, think about it. In other academies they’ll have licensed Huntsmen doing all the heavy lifting for your first two years, and when are you do get to come along on missions they’ll just be your glorified baby sitter. Haven isn’t going to be like that, because they can’t afford to be. Stay in Animus, and you’ll get all the fights you can ask for.”

※ Wolfe ✎ 1011 words ✉

MADE BY MIZO

[Wolfe]

Grading post:

Wolfe XP: 36 x 2 (event bonus) = 72

19 starting XP + 72 = 91 ending XP

Colt XP: 39 x 2 (event bonus) = 78

233 starting XP + 78 = 311 ending XP

Word counts in spoiler tags.

SPOILER: Click to show

Wolfe word count: 934, 905, 954, 841 = 3904

Colt word count: 827, 1009, 1044, 1024