Post by Ryukai on Mar 28, 2020 13:07:18 GMT -5
Choose, and act.
❝
The roar of the crowd was the first thing that hit the four assembled students of team MARS as the doors into the arena opened. It washed over them like a tide as they entered, a veritable tsunami of noise and sound the scale of which no one had ever experienced before. It was one thing to do battle in front of their classmates or professors, but here in the mechanical behemoth that was the Amity Colosseum, under the eyes of crowds that dwarfed anything that had ever watched them before, the pressure and weight of the situation would sink in like the proverbial ton of bricks. Before the four students lay the arena reserved for them and their opponents. Larger than three football fields put side by side, the fighting grounds lay a hundred and fifty meters in diameter and had the capability of changing the environments within between rounds, so that no two fights would ever be the same. Split evenly down the middle now were the two biomes that MARS and MRLT would be fighting in, stretching the fifty meters from the featureless grey octagon that sat squarely in the center to the edge of the arena proper and the brown dirt that ran around its edge for a good distance more before it hit the wall and force field that would protect the audience from anything gone awry. Of course, said force field was invisible to the eye unless impacted hard enough to pulse the blue of hard light Dust used to keep it running, so unless stray attacks or trainees were launched into it, it would remain a silent protector of the masses viewing them for their pleasure.
To their left stretched dunes of sand, course and rough and irritating - broken only by the tall, thin spires of sandstone formations reaching out to the artificial sun above. Heat radiated off the ground in waves, enough to make the air shimmer - but that would change soon enough. The hot winds that were whistling past the spires were also gathering up the sand particles in their grasp and whipping them around. Not hard or abrasive enough to wear away at Aura, but certainly enough to prevent anyone inside from seeing properly, and get in the way enough that anyone fighting within would take penalties to their ability to hit opponents, which might be considered fairly important to take into account.
To their right sat a murky swamp - darker and damper than the desert immediately opposite, but only slightly less oppressive in the heat radiating from the ground. Reeds and marshland grasses protruded out of the ankle deep brackish water, along with stunted and twisted trees that grew outward rather than upward, ranging from twenty to twenty four meters tall with loops of strangling vines hanging from their branches. Bubbles floated up to burst on the murky surface, and filled the air with the stench of rotting mud, which wafted outward and over to the contestants.
At the furthest reaches of the Colosseum, immense holographic screens hung over the cheering crowds beneath. Their faces - and those of their opponents entering the arena directly across - were flashing across them now, the pictures they had taken for their student identification cards filling the screen for a few moments at a time along with their name and some basic statistics, before said picture moved to the right side of the screen, shrinking as it went, and an empty bar appeared next to it. Once all eight of the students had been allocated their spots on the screen, the names of the teams flashed once across before taking their places at the top of each team, and each bar filled with green, marking the level of Aura still present upon each trainee. MARS sat in bold black above Arno's stats, while the word MRLT settled in above their opponents' leader, a terrifyingly huge giant of a man who did not look anywhere near his young age and looked as though he had eaten nothing but red meat and drunk nothing but protein shakes since he was born. It was an unfamiliar face to those Haven students currently in the arena, but some of those watching knew him, and a ripple went through the crowd.
Mika Willow.
Said man was entering the arena directly opposite MARS, along with the other three members of his team. He carried a large shotgun that had a bladed attachment at the bottom, and wore little armor but strips of metal that banded about his arms and legs as well as large pauldrons mounted on his shoulders. Another was entering beside him, the military styled gear he wore giving him the illusion of bulk. Over his camouflage uniform the other wore a decently average looking armored vest akin to those used by Atlas soldiers, albeit colored to match his clothing, and a large rifle hung over his back. Evidently a ranged type, though much else could be discerned from this distance.
The Faunus entering on Willow's right was even taller and more broad shouldered than his leader. Large ram horns curved outwards from his skull, jutting out from his shaggy long dark red hair, and in his arms he carried a large circular shield and a huge axe that might have taken two hands to swing by any normal person, but was held as lightly as anyone else might hold a knife in the one. But it was the last member, trailing behind the three, that stood out the most, if only because she was so different from the others. Blonde and dressed in a tightly fitted blue suit that was lightly armored with pads of thicker material across her whole body, she was the shortest out of everyone by far, standing nearly two heads below the Faunus in front of her. The hands that grasped the staff she held were also clearly mechanical in nature, metal parts exposed and gleaming in the light from the artificial sun above.
Regardless of what preparations MARS might take towards their opponents, MRLT would beeline immediately for the swamp biome as soon as they finished taking stock of the situation. Their mouths moved as they did, clearly talking among themselves, but the distance and noise from the crowd made it impossible to make it out unless one was particularly well versed in lip reading - which none of MARS were. Never even approaching the blank octagon of the center of the arena, the man with the rifle and the blonde girl with the staff disappeared behind the trees of the swamp, while Mika and the Faunus took up positions nearby said trees, clearly falling into a battle plan that had been designed before even entering the arena that would allow them to fall back into the cover afforded by said trees if they were pressed from range..
Above them, the holographic screens flashed a countdown, starting from five and ticking down with every second. When it reached zero, a horn blasted into the air, and the words MATCH START flared across in bright red letters.
Welcome to Vytal.
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MADE BY MIZO
