Post by Colton Deraine on May 3, 2019 16:29:53 GMT -5
[googlefont=Open+Sans]
[attr="class","firstfriend"]
Bravery is believing in yourself, and that's one thing nobody can teach you.
Cold brown eyes surveyed the field as lips curled downward in a grimace. For how much he bragged about Polarity, Colton far and away considered it to be the most limited skill that he had. His semblance range was nothing special in the least, and neither was the damage that he could inflict with it. All in all, aside from the versatility it offered it was in all respects in regard to performance was pretty bum average thus far. Before he came to Haven, he felt that training himself rather than his semblance would yield better results. That was the way Cressida did it, after all, learning to work without that crutch and only developing hers seriously after everything else had been squared away.
The fact of the matter was, though, that Colton wasn’t that good. He found himself relying on his semblance quite a lot even if it was just to rearrange things and for distraction attacks, and if he was going to be using it that often… well, there was no excuse to not focus at least some of his time to making it stand out. He was the best student they had, and it wouldn’t be long until the first missions started out of necessity. The economic squeeze of the bandits at the gates for so long throttling any trade or outgoing trains was only going to be felt more and more as time went on. Grimm attacks were still happening, and it wouldn’t be long until the students were expected to contribute in one way or another.
His ability in close quarters was good, probably the best out of all the students in the school so far. That wasn’t a high bar to clear, though, and he was still markedly worse than even an average Huntsman in that regard and wouldn’t have the time to clear that gap before shit started hitting the fan. Because of that, he couldn’t be picky about what he improved on because he didn’t have the luxury of letting his ego get in the way of progress. Polarity was the only skill that he had that a Huntsman couldn’t do better, so if he ended up having a knack for it in the end… well, that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
Currently, his limitations were pretty obvious and very common to other manipulators. He could either have fine control with a small application of his semblance or very little control when interacting with as much metal as he could. To that end, he found two small metal lockers in one of the storage areas of the school that he got permission to trash as part of his training. Each one was about thirty pounds, which was too much to have fine control with – but both of them together was hard for reasons other than weight. For one, he set up some moving targets in the form of clay disks that fired off from machines that could be moved rather easily to try out different ranges and angles. The entire area was a flat grass field that lended itself pretty well to this purpose, all things considered.
Once the button was pressed on the remote control, they fired off about five seconds later with a built-in variability of about a second. This meant that it could fire a second early or a second late, and the marksman would have to simply react. Colton’s purpose here, then, was to smash the locker into the clay disk while it was in the air. Simple enough in theory, but much more difficult in practice. He had been at this since coming to Haven a few months ago at least once a week, and at first, he it was a struggle to even get the lockers up high enough to interact with the disks at all. He was used to manipulating his weapons and nothing else, really, so the strain of that much added weight was a huge difference that required time to actually get used to. Once he could get the lockers up high enough to conceivably hit the clay disks, though, there was the entirely separate matter of actually hitting the much smaller object with the much bigger locker while both of them were in motion and hurtling towards the ground.
He had gotten to the point where he was able to hit the target about a third of the time today, which was the best that he had ever done. The lockers made a loud crashing sound each time they fell to the ground, sure, and got the shit beat out of them but they were sturdy to begin with and it wasn’t like there wasn’t more unused lockers that he could use and abuse when these broke apart. He was also in the most remote of the training grounds on a day where they didn’t have classes, so he was very rarely bothered when doing this exercise because nobody else was within a mile of him in any direction for the most part.
He was dressed very simply, largely because there was nobody to impress around. A gray athletic tee shirt and denim blue jeans that were nevertheless ironed and well maintained but well below the standard of clothing that Colton would normally wear in terms of flashiness. Brown leather boots dug into the ground as brown eyes looked up once more and both hands flexed while covered with a gray glow waiting for the signal to go. When two clay disks were fired out, one second apart, both metal lockers flew up in the air with a dark gray outline as they hurtled towards their objectives at speeds that any would probably deem unsafe. The first clay disk was smashed to pieces with a glancing blow from one of the lockers, but the other one missed the mark by about a meter. The trajectory of the second disk was anticipated wrong, and the locker was too low.
Immediately after the lockers and the disks crossed paths, though, Colton deactivated his semblance and let the metal lockers crash directly into the ground. He had learned early on that guiding the landing of the objects was pointless as far as training was concerned, because it ate up his stamina and caused his aura to break much earlier. Controlled landings were extremely difficult and ate up aura more than anything else, so just letting gravity do the work for him was much more efficient and much smarter than what he had originally been doing.
It was early morning, so the sun was just starting to poke out over the horizon as Colton walked over to pick up the lockers with his hands to haul them back over to the starting area and reset the clay disks so that another few rounds could be done. Each machine only carried three disks, so every third try he had to reset the things by hand. It wasn’t ideal, sure, but it was what was available and thus would be worked with to the best of his ability. His usual weapons in the bracer that expanded to become his shield and his backsword were with his backpack and some water bottles tossed out on the grass a short distance away from the area where he was firing off the lockers. There was also a packed basic lunch in there for whenever he decided to take a break, and thankfully every training area had its own dedicated bathroom, vending machines, and showers so that wasn’t a problem either. The campus was designed for many more students than it currently housed, so it was easy to get away for a bit from the crowds on the off days where you weren’t strictly required to interact with people that weren’t worth the time or the effort.
Colton’s breathing was becoming noticeably more ragged as he picked up the lockers once more after resetting the clay disks and moved back to the starting area. A thin layer of sweat coated his body as well, because training a semblance was very much like training a muscle with all of the requisite pain and slow progress that the analogy entailed. People were still filtering in slowly as time went on due to all the logistical problems of starting a school year six months early entailed. Sanctum and the other schools in Mistral were more than happy to comply with whatever Haven needed, but those coming from outside the kingdom or from outside of the combat academies usually had other considerations and bureaucracy to go through on their way in. For all of their sakes, Colton hoped there were some heavy hitters yet to come that would be able to share the load on missions so it wasn’t just him going out and preventing idiots from committing suicide because they simply had no idea what their skill level was and falsely assumed that they were all top tier prodigies when in reality they were mediocre throwaway candidates that were invited in only because a mediocre throwaway was better than nobody at all.
The fact of the matter was, though, that Colton wasn’t that good. He found himself relying on his semblance quite a lot even if it was just to rearrange things and for distraction attacks, and if he was going to be using it that often… well, there was no excuse to not focus at least some of his time to making it stand out. He was the best student they had, and it wouldn’t be long until the first missions started out of necessity. The economic squeeze of the bandits at the gates for so long throttling any trade or outgoing trains was only going to be felt more and more as time went on. Grimm attacks were still happening, and it wouldn’t be long until the students were expected to contribute in one way or another.
His ability in close quarters was good, probably the best out of all the students in the school so far. That wasn’t a high bar to clear, though, and he was still markedly worse than even an average Huntsman in that regard and wouldn’t have the time to clear that gap before shit started hitting the fan. Because of that, he couldn’t be picky about what he improved on because he didn’t have the luxury of letting his ego get in the way of progress. Polarity was the only skill that he had that a Huntsman couldn’t do better, so if he ended up having a knack for it in the end… well, that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
Currently, his limitations were pretty obvious and very common to other manipulators. He could either have fine control with a small application of his semblance or very little control when interacting with as much metal as he could. To that end, he found two small metal lockers in one of the storage areas of the school that he got permission to trash as part of his training. Each one was about thirty pounds, which was too much to have fine control with – but both of them together was hard for reasons other than weight. For one, he set up some moving targets in the form of clay disks that fired off from machines that could be moved rather easily to try out different ranges and angles. The entire area was a flat grass field that lended itself pretty well to this purpose, all things considered.
Once the button was pressed on the remote control, they fired off about five seconds later with a built-in variability of about a second. This meant that it could fire a second early or a second late, and the marksman would have to simply react. Colton’s purpose here, then, was to smash the locker into the clay disk while it was in the air. Simple enough in theory, but much more difficult in practice. He had been at this since coming to Haven a few months ago at least once a week, and at first, he it was a struggle to even get the lockers up high enough to interact with the disks at all. He was used to manipulating his weapons and nothing else, really, so the strain of that much added weight was a huge difference that required time to actually get used to. Once he could get the lockers up high enough to conceivably hit the clay disks, though, there was the entirely separate matter of actually hitting the much smaller object with the much bigger locker while both of them were in motion and hurtling towards the ground.
He had gotten to the point where he was able to hit the target about a third of the time today, which was the best that he had ever done. The lockers made a loud crashing sound each time they fell to the ground, sure, and got the shit beat out of them but they were sturdy to begin with and it wasn’t like there wasn’t more unused lockers that he could use and abuse when these broke apart. He was also in the most remote of the training grounds on a day where they didn’t have classes, so he was very rarely bothered when doing this exercise because nobody else was within a mile of him in any direction for the most part.
He was dressed very simply, largely because there was nobody to impress around. A gray athletic tee shirt and denim blue jeans that were nevertheless ironed and well maintained but well below the standard of clothing that Colton would normally wear in terms of flashiness. Brown leather boots dug into the ground as brown eyes looked up once more and both hands flexed while covered with a gray glow waiting for the signal to go. When two clay disks were fired out, one second apart, both metal lockers flew up in the air with a dark gray outline as they hurtled towards their objectives at speeds that any would probably deem unsafe. The first clay disk was smashed to pieces with a glancing blow from one of the lockers, but the other one missed the mark by about a meter. The trajectory of the second disk was anticipated wrong, and the locker was too low.
Immediately after the lockers and the disks crossed paths, though, Colton deactivated his semblance and let the metal lockers crash directly into the ground. He had learned early on that guiding the landing of the objects was pointless as far as training was concerned, because it ate up his stamina and caused his aura to break much earlier. Controlled landings were extremely difficult and ate up aura more than anything else, so just letting gravity do the work for him was much more efficient and much smarter than what he had originally been doing.
It was early morning, so the sun was just starting to poke out over the horizon as Colton walked over to pick up the lockers with his hands to haul them back over to the starting area and reset the clay disks so that another few rounds could be done. Each machine only carried three disks, so every third try he had to reset the things by hand. It wasn’t ideal, sure, but it was what was available and thus would be worked with to the best of his ability. His usual weapons in the bracer that expanded to become his shield and his backsword were with his backpack and some water bottles tossed out on the grass a short distance away from the area where he was firing off the lockers. There was also a packed basic lunch in there for whenever he decided to take a break, and thankfully every training area had its own dedicated bathroom, vending machines, and showers so that wasn’t a problem either. The campus was designed for many more students than it currently housed, so it was easy to get away for a bit from the crowds on the off days where you weren’t strictly required to interact with people that weren’t worth the time or the effort.
Colton’s breathing was becoming noticeably more ragged as he picked up the lockers once more after resetting the clay disks and moved back to the starting area. A thin layer of sweat coated his body as well, because training a semblance was very much like training a muscle with all of the requisite pain and slow progress that the analogy entailed. People were still filtering in slowly as time went on due to all the logistical problems of starting a school year six months early entailed. Sanctum and the other schools in Mistral were more than happy to comply with whatever Haven needed, but those coming from outside the kingdom or from outside of the combat academies usually had other considerations and bureaucracy to go through on their way in. For all of their sakes, Colton hoped there were some heavy hitters yet to come that would be able to share the load on missions so it wasn’t just him going out and preventing idiots from committing suicide because they simply had no idea what their skill level was and falsely assumed that they were all top tier prodigies when in reality they were mediocre throwaway candidates that were invited in only because a mediocre throwaway was better than nobody at all.
 |
|
MADE BY MIZO
