[Colton Deraine]

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[attr="class","firstfriend"]

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

Yawn.

It looked like it was Colton’s turn again, and his opponent was one of the new ones. He always found the one on one days like this pretty boring, honestly, but every professor wanted to have an excuse to see how the students were doing combat wise for themselves every so often. It was boring for the former champion, frankly, because it was extremely rare for any of his matches to last more than five seconds once combat started. The standard weakness for a manipulator was to get close, and a lot of people had the mistaken idea that up close was where they could win against the brunette. It was flawed thinking that was completely wrong, but he did nothing to dispel that notion largely because it made his matches very quick and formulaic.

The enemy would do their best to close the gap using whatever tricks they had in their disposal, and Colton would cut them down before they got halfway to him with Polarity. It was impersonal, and rather routine. The Argus native would put his hands up in a fighting stance to at least show the basic minimum of respect after brushing his hand on the hilt of his sword and then just wait for the enemy to get in close. From there, his sword would shoot out of its scabbard, flip over, and laser to the enemy to take them out. If their aura survived that or he knew they were durable enough to withstand just one attack or had any possibility to dodge it, he would send out his shield as well for two nearly guaranteed hits.

Even without activating any dust, which was banned in this particular class, there were exceptionally few people who could withstand two Polarity enhanced strikes. The entire thing was extremely impersonal, like a robot getting up to fulfill some preprogrammed actions before sitting back down.

His opponent was one of the brand new students, and her name was called out as Jacqueline. Her physical appearance was the opposite of imposing, really, and was just another example of how someone could be less than the sum of their parts. She was tall, almost as tall as Colton himself was, but her posture was that of an eighty year old lady that was crippled with arthritis. She had shoulder length brown hair, but it honestly looked like she had never heard of shampoo or conditioner in her entire life. Furthermore, it looked like she was trying to shrink into her own gangly ass body as she walked up… which was honestly just kind of pathetic.

Colton, on the other hand, was wearing a perfectly ironed and pressed school 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. It was a lot easier to maintain uniforms when it was extremely rare for your aura to be broken, after all, which helped maintain the lines in the pants and collar really good. His equipment, frankly, was on a whole different plane of existence compared to the rickety old junk that a lot of his classmates were lugging around and calling ‘weapons’.

All of his equipment was made with top of the line materials and his sword and shield even had been upgraded with newer Atlesian dust injection technology that gave them a capability for damage equaled only by upper tier professional huntsman gear. It was a waste of his time to mix up with most of the people here in a fight, and he was keenly aware of that fact. Still, he had to play along in order to get to the huntsman missions that would prove to be actually challenging.

He seriously doubted that the awkward girl would do anything but have her aura break immediately, but it wasn’t his problem. Cold brown eyes stared at his opponent as he lazily raised his fists up and dropped his right leg back in a fighting stance as he waited for the signal to start. He had brushed his left hand against his sword and scabbard before doing so, and even if the signal to go was done a bit later it would only take a quick bit of hip movement to make the hilt of his sword brush up against his stomach which would activate Polarity just as well. It was less efficient, sure, but it wasn’t like efficiency to the second really mattered.

They started a bit more than twenty meters apart, though the arena itself was dirt. It stretched out for quite some distance in every direction, though only speedster fights actually made use of that land. It wasn’t something that Colton had consciously paid attention to, frankly, because people basically had to rush him in order to have even a fraction of a chance because his ranged capabilities equaled even the other manipulators who focused entirely on ranged combat due to his Sanctum training and natural talent. That wouldn’t hold out for much longer at the rate that some of them were improving, but the fact of the matter was that none of them could muster enough power to seriously hurt his aura at this point anyway. If they needed to land four hits to break his aura and he needed to land one to break theirs, it didn’t really matter if their ranged attack could travel a bit farther or a bit faster because he still won at the end of the day just as assuredly as before.

Hopefully the back half of the class had more entertaining fights. The matchups have been really janky today, frankly. At least Shadecloak attempted to make sure that both sides had a chance at winning. It was annoying sometimes, sure, but if the alternative was more matchups like this then he much preferred the faunus professor’s way of doing things. For the lesser skilled party to learn, they needed to at least be good enough to not get instantly destroyed. There was no learning possible if the party that was supposed to do it couldn’t blink without having their aura broken, which would likely be the case with this unfortunate girl.

Oh well, it wasn’t like he had picked his opponent. He was just following directions from a faculty member. At least this would be quick and mostly painless.

※ 1066 total words ✎ 1066 words ✉ D rank semblance, D ranked martial arts, D ranked durability, D ranked weapon, E rank weapon enhancement, E rank stamina

MADE BY MIZO

[Jackie Bariole]

"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear." Jackie muttered beneath her breath as she slowly, very slowly, made her way to her mark on the pitch. This was bad. Very bad. Quite possibly it was the worst thing that could have happened to her, short of another Robin Hazel incident, and there it had been beaten out by a very narrow margin. Even without knowing her opponent's reputation, she would have known it was bad. The looks of pity when this bout had been announced, the whispers, the sideways glances, the meaningful grins, they had all bespoke an undeniable, inescapable truth.
"I am going to die." All that would have been enough for Jackie to know it was true, but she also knew Colton Deraine, by reputation if by nothing else. A ruthlessly accomplished swordsman by all accounts, not to mention a tournament champion, those whispers, glances, grins and stares had not been at all unwarranted. She was going to die, and Colton Deraine would be her murderer.

With fretful hands, Jackie checked and rechecked her pistol, as if the two standard cartridges she'd loaded might have run off somewhere. They were forbidden to use dust, which meant no custom rounds, which meant the one actual advantage she might have had was disallowed.
"Oh dear, oh dear..." She whimpered. She didn't stand a chance. Had she done something to Doctor Haragitanai? Was this some sort of punishment?
"Oh dear."

Jackie searched in vain for some way out of this horrible arrangement. Perhaps, if she feigned a twisted ankle, or shot herself in the face. Her eyes squeezed shut, her hands wrapped tight around Diprosopus' barrel. Who was she kidding though? She hadn't the nerve for the former, and certainly not for the latter. If she had, she wouldn't have walked all the way out onto the pitch to begin with, but collapsed while they were still indoors, where there were fewer eyes to behold her shame. Now it was too late. She'd dallied and missed her chance, and now the only option remaining was...
Jackie opened her eyes, staring across the open ground to where her opponent stood, though perhaps executioner would have been more apt. He looked about as bored as she felt terrified, which was not a promising sign. His cold eyes stared back at her, unblinking, brown pools into a pitiless soul. Jackie's whole body quivered, shriveling up even more beneath that icy gaze. She almost dropped her gun right then. She knew his type from her time at Atlas. Ruthless and cold, a soldier to the very bone, willing to follow any order no matter how distasteful. He was not likely to hold back, simply because she did not want to be there. He would beat her bloody if it was required of her, and her only solace would be that he wouldn't even enjoy it.
"Oh dear. Oh Dear."
She was hyperventilating. Jackie tried to calm herself, squeezing her eyes closed and holding her breath; The only thing worse than suffering a humiliating defeat at Haven's premier trainee, would be fainting before the fight had even started. She could at least excuse the former as simply expected, while the latter would haunt her so long as she remained at the academy. When her eyes reopened, she was speared once more by that cold, emotionless, empty stare. Was it still too late to shoot herself in the face?

Of course, there was always the other option. Jackie drew back her pistol's hammer and inspected its needle sharp point. Her thumb hovered over it for a moment, between the hammer and breach, but the memory of Robin Hazel, of Atlas, was too fresh in her mind. This was her last chance, Their last chance. With great reticence, Jackie eased the hammer back down, it's point unbloodied.

Jackie wiped her sweaty palms on her skirt, fumbling her pistol between hands in the process, then scraped her hair back from her eyes with a few fretful swipes. It was too hot for a jacket, but she'd kept her own on. A stupid habit, for a stupid reason, especially when she was about to do a whole bunch of running about, but there was no way to take it off now.
"Oh, confound it and blast it to dust." She really did not want to do this, but what choice did she have? What choice had she ever had? Perhaps, if she was really lucky, he'd make it quick...

---

Words - 749
Total - 749

[Colton Deraine]

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[attr="class","firstfriend"]

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

God, this was just pathetic.

People like this pissed him off more than anything, fucking cowards. The last thing Haven Academy needed was more of them, and it made the Argus native so angry every time a new one slipped through the cracks. A spot at a Big Four Academy was supposed to mean something, and did mean something everywhere else. Being a Huntsman wasn’t just something any random dirt farmer could roll out of bed one day and do, it was a life calling that many people including himself trained their entire lives for. It wasn’t something that they decided to do on a whim, but something they meticulously prepared for ever since they learned how to walk.

A huntsman was not a random fucking sell sword, they were expected to be the absolute fucking best that humanity had to offer. It was a dream that most kids had at some point growing up, but few had the actual guts to pursue. Of those that chose to pursue it, there were dozens every year across the Big Four that died before they ever got their license. Slain by Grimm. Slain by bandits. Getting caught up in a natural disaster they were trying to save others from. Died from a freak accident airship crash. Dozens of perfectly good and honorable people who were just dealt a shit hand by fate, killed before they were able to accomplish their dream.

And then there were worthless wastes of space like this, sucking in the very air that provided the last gasp of countless more worthy to stand in their place. This fucking moron was having a panic attack at the prospect of a god damned training exercise and being forced to wait for her to take her position only served to let the rage Colton was feeling build very quickly until it hit fever pitch. He couldn’t force the new kid out of the school where they didn’t belong, but he could make damned sure that the first impression was one befitting of someone that cowardly.

For the first time all day, Colton drew 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, and once Regret was firmly in the boy’s right hand and unsheathed, he had his plan settled on. The dust injection kit that ran along the cutting edge was empty and slight for this fight, but he didn’t need it.

The kindest thing to do to people like this was to ensure that they realized they made a critical life error as quickly as possible. Going out and being too stupid to quit until you were killed by something way out of your league was a cruel fate, and one that could be avoided if the talentless hack simply quit before they were killed. If they were scared of a training exercise, then they would be much more scared when exposed to prolonged stress.

Brown eyes narrowed in poorly concealed contempt, and when the signal to start was finally done Colton did something he almost never did – he took initiative and leaped forward to meet his opponent. He had his usual metal bracers and greaves on underneath his clothes and having so little metal on his body strained the absolute hell out of his aura and cut it down to about two thirds after the first jump – but one jump was really all he needed. Almost twenty meters of distance was covered in a second, and a quick and exceptionally rare transformation of his weapon along the way made sure he was in range to be a threat.

The rarely used lever action shotgun form was swapped to in an instant, with the blade of the backsword opened up to reveal the barrel and the lower half staying on as a bayonet while the upper half slides down into a compartment near the hilt of the blade that expands to form the stock of the shotgun. The guard of the blade turns into the lever of the shotgun, and the trigger opened up from the hilt. The shotgun itself had six rounds of buckshot inside, and Colton fired all six rounds off in quick succession in the direction of his opponent to open the match, running forward the entire time in battle behavior completely uncharacteristic of how he normally fought.

To be blunt, the ineffectiveness of Colton’s marksmanship was pretty well known. The only way he could ever be a threat with his shotgun aside from point blank is if he used Polarity on the bullets before they fired, but he didn’t bother to do so in this instance and had never bothered to do it while at Haven. It was one of his old tricks that he had used in the Mistral Regional Tournament but never bothered to actually use at Haven because he didn’t see a point. The point of firing off the shots and charging was not to be effective, because he could have just as easily just thrown his sword and ended the match right then.

The extremely loud crack of each shotgun blast would echo through the arena, and some stray pieces of buckshot were bound to hit the girl in some way or another. While he did at least attempt to aim properly, he knew her aura wouldn’t break due to the fact that not enough pellets would hit. Breaking her aura, though, wasn’t the point. The point was to scare the absolute shit out of her to make it obvious to both this Jacqueline idiot and everyone else watching that she didn’t belong anywhere near a Huntsman Academy. It was a fucking insult to everyone involved that someone this scared of their own shadow was admitted in the first place, and the former champion was going to treat this as the farce it was.

Once his six shells had been expended, Colton would simply reload and fire off the next six while chasing after his prey. If she had some sort of semblance that could actually hurt him, it would be a simple matter to have Polarity rip off the shield from his arm and toss that at her to end the match immediately while flared out to block the brunt of any sort of sustained ranged attack. If he had underestimated the girl, she was going to show it in the next few seconds or be made into an absolute fucking laughing stock. He didn’t really care which it was, frankly, because either way it prevented him from having to look at a disgrace of a trainee for much longer.

Outwardly, though, he would neither smile in grim satisfaction or frown in contempt. He kept his emotions bottled up quite well, keeping a bored facial expression the entire time. Only those that knew how he usually fought would be able to tell how deviant this style was from his usual, and he knew he needed to at least give the appearance of trying in order to not be sanctioned by the professor.

So he did try.

It was just that he was earnestly trying a combat style that was the absolute worst fit for his skill set.

※ 2304 total words ✎ 1238 words ✉ D rank semblance, D ranked martial arts, D ranked durability, D ranked weapon, E rank weapon enhancement, E rank stamina

MADE BY MIZO

[Jackie Bariole]

Jackie adjusted her grip on Diprosopus one final time. She had no real desire to actually fire the weapon at Colton Deraine, but felt she should make some show of defending herself. Not that it would do her any good. She knew precious little about Haven's finest, certainly not enough to have contrived any tactics to use against him, but she did know what his semblance was, and she could see the armor he was wearing. Diprosopus' rounds were not designed for stopping power. The short barrels meant less rifling, and the weapon itself was small and packed comparatively little charge into each cartridge when compared with most huntsman arms. It was a weapon which emphasized speed and ease of use over things like stopping power or accuracy. Really, the only way she could have stood much of a chance at all was if she'd been permitted some of her custom cartridges. Her gravity rounds would have been especially useful against an opponent with a manipulator style semblance, for their ability to make his attacks easier to avoid. Lacking even that basic utility, Jackie was reduced to that tired old standby of keeping her distance and plinking away at his aura whenever the opportunity presented itself.

It would be presenting itself rarely, if at all, if she was any judge. Colton, on top of having a shield and more than the standard assortment of heavy plate armor, was well known for his capacity to absorb great deals of punishment. It was the strength of his aura, as much as his skill at arms and the strength of his semblance, which made Haven's rising star so dangerous. Jackie knew, without a doubt, that her little pistol didn't pack nearly enough power to so much as trouble Colton Deraine. If she emptied every round she carried straight into his unarmored heart, it might not even be enough.

Was that why she was so nervous, so terrified by the prospect of fighting him? Was it because she knew there was no chance of beating him as she was, not without help? Jackie swallowed. That was certainly part of it, but she went into most situations knowing she couldn't handle them. This was a special case, because of what would happen after. Their fight was, after all being watched by the whole of their class. It was, in fact, being recorded for future scrutiny. Jackie would not just have to endure this horribly lopsided match up once, but again and again. Whatever happened in the next minute, because it could not possibly last any longer than that, would haunt her for as long as her classmates remembered this bout.

"Oh dear..."

She didn't even hear the call to begin. Colton heard it though. Faster than she would have believed possible for a man who was not using air dust, the dark haired man sprang towards her with his sword already out. All resolve Jackie might have had crumbled in that very instant, as her mind recognized the threat rapidly approaching and, surprised and overwhelmed by sudden visceral fear, flung itself back on the tried and tested instincts of fight or flight. Which is to say that Jackie, upon seeing the most talented and feared fighter in her class, hurtling towards her fast enough to shatter her aura right then, turned tail and ran as fast as her feet could carry her. All semblance of thought abandoned her in an instant, as the animal part of her brain took over, the part that wanted nothing more than to evade harm and keep clear of a predator's jaws. Colton was that predator, as if it needed saying, and she couldn't have been more frightened of him.

The ground exploded ahead of her as pellets, flying past her gangling sprint, peppered the dusty turf. Jackie wailed. She hadn't felt the blows through her aura, but had no doubt they had struck home. A brief sense of her aura revealed as much of a tenth of it had been expelled in deflecting Colton's opening barrage, and she had already heard him fire twice more. Since when, she wondered despairingly, did he have a gun?!
Jackie stumbled, scrambled in the earth, threw a glance over her shoulder and saw, without doubt, that Colton was holding a firearm. A big, nasty looking thing, sharp edged with a bayonet as thick as her hand. Where on Remnant had that come from?! She didn't even try to return fire. There was no cover, and he was already taking aim for another shot, not even slowing in his flat out sprint as he did it. Jackie was a passable shot at the best of times, but she could scarcely make any shot while sprinting as fast as she could. The effort hardly seemed to trouble Colton though, whose next shot turned the dusty ground around Jackie into a choking spray of upturned earth. She thought she felt something hit her cheek and her chest too, two pinpricks of pain like small insects striking her at high speed. Another tenth of her aura gone, those small bites told her.

Jackie fired blindly back at Colton, less with the hope of hitting him than looking as though she were actually trying to, but her shot was hasty and panicked and went terribly, terribly wide. She didn't care, she just kept running as fast as her feet would carry her. Their arena was generously sized, to accommodate students with a preference for ranged combat and the speed to make use of it, so Jackie had no shortage of space to flee. She was not fast though, no faster than Colton it appeared, so she could not reach the range she was comfortable with to even think of returning fire. Already, her legs were starting to feel rubbery and hot, and her breath was sawing in and out of her chest. It was only that animal need to keep out of harms way that drove her on, that futile and utterly senseless hope that she could somehow escape. There was no escape though, and she was not ignorant of that fact. Even after a few seconds, Jackie could see exactly how this fight would go. Colton was going to run her down, peppering her with buckshot the whole time, chipping away at her feeble aura, until he could get into melee range. Once he did that, it would be over. Knowing that, knowing that was his plan, she couldn't do anything to stop him. What choice did she have but to run? If she stopped running, he would only get into melee all the sooner, and then she'd be just as done.

And the thought of being in striking distance of that cold eyed, soldierly face...

Jackie ran. What other choice did she have?

---

Words - 1,137
Total - 1,886

[Colton Deraine]

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[attr="class","firstfriend"]

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

A third of his aura was gone, but that was fine.

It turned out that the girl didn’t have a strong semblance after all, or really anything useful at a fight. While it was definitely possible for him to sacrifice more of his aura to close the gap, there was no point. Jacqueline had turned tail and ran the moment Colton had landed and had managed to put a meter or two of extra distance between them while the Argus native was recovering from the landing. The recoil of the shotgun bursts also slowed him down slightly, but things had evened out to have him a meter or two shy of ten away from his opponent. This distance changed a bit second to second, closer or farther, but not enough to really change how things were going.

The fact of the matter was that he was willing to bet that he could keep up this pace for longer than his opponent could. Either the incidental hits from the buckshot would break her aura, or she would tire enough to slow down and he would close into point blank range to finish the fight right then and there. He could do it now by either sending his shield over or transforming his shotgun back into a sword and tossing it… but frankly that would defeat the purpose. If she had anything to defend herself with, she would be using it right now.

Colton was using the worst method of attack he had at his disposal and had given up a third of his aura to pursue that attack pattern. Truth be told, he had expected something. She had to have passed even the reduced difficulty entrance exams to get in, surely. To do that, she needed to pass at least a combat exam – likely against Grimm but at least against other hopefuls in front of a talent scout. That meant that she had something going for her at least in theory, but nobody was seeing that at the moment. If the talent scout was grossly incompetent and made a paperwork error and the wrong idiot got in, it was much better to find out about it early on rather than waiting until the unfortunate idiot who accepted was maimed or killed.

The reloads past the first were slower and the shots much more spaced out, largely because Colton had only brought around twenty rounds total to the class to begin with. He had already used twelve of them in quick succession, so would simply take his time with the last eight. In hindsight, he shouldn’t have rapid fired out the first twelve so quickly… but then again, he used the shotgun form of his weapon so rarely it wasn’t like it was muscle memory anymore at this point.

Unlike with his match with Qiu’li, though, he didn’t bother to taunt or even to speak at all. He had done it then to see if his opponent was dumb enough to make noise and reveal himself, but there was no point in this instance. Nobody gave a pep talk to an ant before stepping on it or apologized to a flea before flushing it down the drain. If this girl didn’t belong here – and it sure as hell looked like there was some sort of administrative error – she wasn’t worth even considering as a person because she’d be gone by tomorrow and he’d never see her again. Her marksmanship was as bad as his own in the wild shots she was firing behind her, which meant that shooting was not on the list of this girl’s talents either.

Hopeless at range, yet desperately trying to maintain it. That suggested that she was somehow even worse in melee, which was honestly hard to believe. While he was curious to find out, he wasn’t willing to go to the level of disrespect where he sheathed his weapon and just chased her until he got into punching range. While he could cover his ass by saying he was practicing alternative strategies in combat with what he was doing now, if he sheathed his weapon there would be zero excuse no matter how paper thin. She also showed no signs of using her semblance, unless her semblance was running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

There was no doubt someone unlucky enough genetically to have such a semblance, but while unique it would be much like a fork that had been twisted into uselessness. Unique in every way, unlike any other fork in the world… but also completely useless for its purpose and only suitable for being made into scrap so it could be melted down and fashioned into something more useful later on. There were, after all, tons of jobs all around Remnant that could be done by a coward with no combat ability. The profession of a huntsman, however, was not one of them no matter what trash got through the filter at first.

※ 3137 total words ✎ 833 words ✉ D rank semblance, D ranked martial arts, D ranked durability, D ranked weapon, E rank weapon enhancement, E rank stamina

MADE BY MIZO

[Jackie Bariole]

Jackie could not keep this pace up indefinitely; She probably couldn't keep it up for another minute. Already her strides were shortening and her breath was coming faster and in shallower gasps. Her stamina was suited to distant engagements, where she could keep an opponent at range with a combination of dust and quick thinking, and nothing suited her less than an opponent who was already in range and doing everything he could to close it even further. He had given her some space at least, taking longer between shots, but even that wasn't enough to clear her head.
"Need to," She gasped, "Calm down."
But there was no calm, not with Colton chasing her down, and her strength failing with each step she took. She imagined what he might do when he got into striking range and, though her aura should have kept her save, the travails of melee would only stress her further. If only he would back off, if only he would let her think, just for a moment.

But he didn't. He dogged her heels every step of the way, and the report of his shotgun savaged her nerves as a dog with a rat between its jaws. Relentless, pitiless, and so horribly, horribly quiet. He hadn't said so much as a word, made so much as a grunt, since the fight had started. Somehow that was even more frightening than his blank expression and soldier's stoicism. Much more frightening.

She knew this fight was being monitored, being watched. She knew that Colton wouldn't actually hurt her. She knew her aura would protect her so long as it held up and that, once it dropped, a professor would step in and end the fight. She tried desperately to internalize those facts, using them as a bulwark to the tide of fear that was driving her past extremity, and had already crumbled her resolve to a fine dust. This fight was being monitored, and it would end as soon as her aura went down. Colton would not hurt her.

Just like her fight with Hazel had been monitored, just like it should have ended when her aura went down. Had Robin though similar thoughts, thought that the Corpies would keep her safe, would keep Jackie from going too far?

That was the thing about fear; Once it had begun to burn, one needn't ever look far for something to stoke the flames. Would Colton stop when her aura went down? What if he didn't? She didn't know him well enough to be sure he wouldn't, that he would be restrained enough to keep from firing that one final volley, to resist taking that one final swing. She didn't know much at all about him, save for that dead eyed look he'd given her, the one faintly tinged with contempt.

Jackie staggered, gasping. She had felt a sudden, inexplicable urge to turn and face the other trainee, to stand her ground. An urge, not her own.
"Fortune save me..."
There was always that possibility to worry about too. If she stopped running, if she gave into that burgeoning wont to stand and fight, how long would it take before her body was no longer her own? How long could she endure the stresses of melee combat before she lost control altogether? Was Colton strong enough to stop her if that happened? She did not know. She did not want to find out. It would be her fight with Hazel all over again, except this time her whole class would be watching instead of one Corpie and a medic. And even if she didn't go too far, like she always did, Jackie could not so easily surrender control to Heidi's whims. It had been four weeks the last time she'd handed her big sister the reins. Four weeks spent sating every want and venal desire which came into Heidi's head. Four weeks spent eroding or destroying friendships and relationships and reputations, and building new twisted amalgams in their place. How long would it be this time? A new academy, a new city, all full up with new people who didn't know the sort of person Heidi was.

The inexplicable urge to turn, to fight back, surged inside her. Hot as molten iron, it seemed to fill her veins and wrap red hot tines about her heart. She was down to the last third of her aura by that point, but even that would have been sufficient. A tenth would be enough. Enough to put this fisheyed soldier boy in his place. To grind his teeth to powder and wipe that devilish blankness off his face. She would see what sounds he could make, would end that horrible silence, if only she turned and fought!

Jackie staggered again, tripped, fell sprawled out on hands and knees, her whole body trembling, her head swimming. She only barely had the presence of mind to get back and fling herself headlong into a sprint once more. But she was tiring, and her body was rebelling. It hated this cowardice, this constant running. She hated it too, and the fact that she could no longer discern her own hatred, from that of the girl inside her head, drove Jackie into further extremities of exhaustion. She was losing control, a piece at a time, and the more she lost, the less able she was to think of some plan, any plan, to prevent the inevitable.

Worse still, they had been running for nearly a minute by then, and were rapidly running out of arena...

---

Words - 929
Total - 2,815

[Colton Deraine]

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[attr="class","firstfriend"]

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

He wouldn’t be able to keep this up forever.

He was fine now but might not be here before too much longer. The thought crossed his mind that for someone this cowardly, running away might be their sole skill. It was possible that their stamina was through the roof and he was just wasting his time, but if he ended the fight right then and there, he wouldn’t get to find that out. Four more shotgun blasts wound ring out, each more spaced out than the last. He was taking more time to aim each shot now, though it didn’t really matter in terms of results. He was just a terrible shot no matter how much he manually aimed, though it wasn’t like he ever needed to learn due to being able to cheat with Polarity.

Which he would do for the last shot if needed, he decided, but not until then. To his mild disappointment, though, it looked like his opponent was having trouble keeping pace. He gained about a meter of distance in a stumble, and then another from the pace slowing down after the stumble. Colton’s own speed was steady, and he was no stranger to running long distances. The girl was fading quickly, though, and the next stumble was much worse and fell to the ground for a moment before sloppily recovering to get back up and continue running. Despite the fact that he could have spent his remaining four shots firing an almost stationary and thus much easier to hit target when his opponent stumbled or fell, Colton didn’t do so.

The reason was honestly much more benign than the spectators might have been expecting, and that reason was that it wasn’t sportsmanlike. Whether they agreed with his method of doing so or not, the fact of the matter was that Colton was deliberately giving his opponent time and freedom to show what they could do. What they could do in this instance amounted to absolutely nothing useful, sure, but the fact of the matter was that he at least gave her the chance to prove his initial assessment wrong. Since he could end this at any point, and likely would without another use of Polarity due to the fact that they were getting close to the edge of the arena, he lost nothing by refusing to attack someone while they were down from an unforced error.

Resilience, after all, was one of the most sought after qualities in a trainee. This person didn’t have it but was given the opportunity to display it over and over. A certain level of bravery was also a prerequisite for going out to fight Grimm, and Jacqueline had repeatedly failed to display it in a situation where she was in absolutely zero danger. It was pitiful, really, but as they were approaching the edge of the arena the craven would be forced to either run into the wall or slow down to pivot and run. Given that Colton had done nothing but gain ground due to the stumbles and unforced errors, he was about five meters closer in total than he was before.

It was close enough to ensure that at least some of the pellets hit with every shot the second she slowed down, and he could likely end it with one shot that only half-hit at this point. When that inevitable pivot came, Colton would fire off a shot. He would then wait to see if his enemy’s aura was broken before firing the second and would simply repeat until the girl’s aura was broken or he paused for a moment to open up the shotgun to thumb the last round before using Polarity to aim the damned thing and end the match.

One bright side to having been led so far away, however, was that they were far enough to where nobody else was in earshot. It meant that Colton could speak for the first time the entire match without anybody overhearing once the girl’s aura shattered, and he took the opportunity to do so before turning around and walking off.

”I suggest dropping out. You clearly don’t have the stomach for this, and will only get others killed trying to save you if you continue.” The words came out disaffected and emotionless, like he was reading off the health information on the back of a can of beans or something. ”There are plenty of other jobs where people won’t try to kill you. There’s no shame in taking one.”

On the other hand, there was shame in running around like a terrified animal in front of the entirety of the class and a professor and barely attempting to make a single attack along the way. Being chased down until the one who fled in the first place was exhausted was just pathetic, but Colton didn’t need to say that out loud. If the girl didn’t realize that, somebody with less self-control would be more than happy to tell her in a minute or two. Being made to look incompetent in front of everyone would go a long way into sapping their will to continue as well, he figured, should she be dumb enough to not drop out immediately following that … spectacle.

※ 4015 total words ✎ 878 words ✉ D rank semblance, D ranked martial arts, D ranked durability, D ranked weapon, E rank weapon enhancement, E rank stamina

MADE BY MIZO

[Jackie Bariole]

This was agony, and no mistake. Jackie could feel her heart in the back of her throat, and each step seemed to drive it a hair's breadth higher. Her legs were burning with the effort of running, and the jarring pace had her teeth clenched so tight between ragged panting that she was sure her mouth would soon seize closed permanently. That was not the worst part though. It was far from the worst part.

She could feel inside of her a twisting, a turning, a revolution that was all too grotesquely familiar. A feeling of things shifting, changing, moving, things being reshuffled, reordered, replaced. She could feel her body morphing into something else. Something bigger, stronger, tougher. It was the panic doing it, the panic and the stress of the chase. She'd known it would happen, and known there was nothing she could do to stop it. If only she could have a moment, a second, an instant, any amount of time whatsoever. If only she could stop and breathe without fear for what Colton might do when he caught her, or what she might do. There was no respite for her though, only endless running that must soon come to an end.

The edge of the arena loomed up before her, its extent marked by a perimeter of unmarked wall. No time left now, she'd have to turn, have to stand and fight.
'Do it.' hissed something within her, uncoiling, readying, poised to strike. 'Face him, hurt him. Defend yourself.'
Jackie ignored the voice. She could not give in, could not give so much as a hair's breadth, lest the girl in her head take a whole kilometer as her due.
"I suggest dropping out," She heard from behind her. Colton, she realized, and sounding much closer than she'd thought he was, "You clearly don’t have the stomach for this, and will only get others killed trying to save you if you continue."
Fortune save her, he didn't even sound out of breath. He'd chased her across the whole arena, firing off with his shotgun the whole while, and he wasn't even tired? Her despair was so complete at that realization that it took her a few moments to recognize the words he'd said. Moments that the thing lurking inside her had not needed. A flash of anger singed through Jackie's mind, searing her thoughts, fusing them to white hot shards as sharp as broken glass. A fury broiled up within, wordless, insulted, restless for recompense.
'Stop running,' cried out the thing inside her, no longer as words but as an almost irresistible compulsion, 'Let me free, Let me kill him!'
"No," Jackie whimpered breathlessly, "No," gasping, "I won't!"
Colton did not take her meaning; How could he possibly have taken her meaning?
"There are plenty of other jobs where people won’t try to kill you. There’s no shame in taking one."
'Shame in running, in being a coward,' Raged the voice in her head, which sounded so much like her own.
"Shame," Jackie agreed, panting, "In being scared."
She did not turn from the wall, did not even slow in her approach save for how raggedly she was running. She could barely even see the wall anymore, for the shadows crawling across her eyes, for the hands pulling her back and away from her body. It seemed she was in a dream, and that dream was all anger and fury and terrible rage. Rage at being held captive and contained, at being hunted and oppressed. A rage at this boy who had the gall to make suggestions to her, to tell her what she should do.

At the last, Jackie submitted utterly to that anger and that voice, each so closely resembling her own. She sank back into the dream, the swirling nightmare of rage, and passed from one hand to the other all responsibility for what came next.
'Not my fault.' Said the voice in her head, her voice now, confined in a body that was no longer her own, 'I tried. I really did.'

---

Running to fast too stop, she struck the wall shoulder first, making the whole edifice groan. Her aura balked with the strain and crackled like blue lightning across a bloody sky, but she did not care, did not even notice. All she knew was that he was at her back, coming on with his dead eyes and his blank face and his cold emotionless voice.

Turning, eyes streaking golden though the air, she turned to face her foe. Her victim. Her prey. The anger was hot within her, and it felt good. Deliciously good. Intoxicating. The anger burned and, as it raged, filled every part of her. From her foot, as it braced against the wall at her back, to the tips of her fingers as they curled into fists, she was rage incarnate, the ultimate reprisal. She would teach him to chase her down, to spout his unwanted, his unnecessary suggestions at her. How dare he? How. DARE. HE?!
She saw him now, still running towards her with his tiny gun in his hands, still thinking he knew her, knew what she was capable of. Still thinking he could rouse her and get away with it. He fired off another round, and she did not even feel it, did not notice how her aura shivered beneath the barrage. It did not matter. Nothing mattered. Nothing, except making him pay.

She kicked off the wall with all the strength she had, not away from him but towards him. Towards this tiny many and his tiny gun, eyes burning golden bright with her hatred.
Somewhere, far away, a voice cried out. A meek voice, scared and alone, which only she could hear. A voice whose owner had been paying better attention than her, who had noticed how little aura she had left.

Who had rightly judged that she could not take another direct hit.

---

Words - 993
Total - 3,808

[Colton Deraine]

[googlefont=Open+Sans]

[attr="class","firstfriend"]

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

Seemed like he had finally pissed her off, right at the end when it didn’t matter. He tried to cover his bases by firing a quick shot at both the left and the right of the girl when she was about to hit the wall to ensure one hit, but instead she just fucking ran into it for some reason. With two shots left, and the gap almost entirely closed at this point, at least the next shot was a surefire hit. He didn’t particularly hurry up with it, either, just going at the same pace as he was previously. That slight delay was enough to give his opponent time to launch off the wall and almost make the jump to him before he fired off the shot that would shatter her aura completely.

In that brief split-second before the shot fired, though, a look of confusion was clear on the former champion’s face. The girl that was charging at him was not the same one who had been doing nothing but running, she looked totally different. Taller, more muscular, and quite frankly about three times as attractive. The speed was completely different, too, orders of magnitude faster than it was before. As the already halfway completed action of firing was done, though, Colton blinked, and it was gone.

The girl was back to her gangly, pathetic looking self. Either he was tired, or she had some sort of illusion semblance. Not a very good one, apparently, but he very much doubted that he had just imagined that shift. Maybe a trick of the light, but not imagination. Largely because if it was his imagination it would be someone he recognized at the helm, and he was far too calm at the moment to have even a momentary break with reality. There were no signs of any sort of transformation, and he had never heard of a physical boost type semblance that fucked with other people’s vision. That left manipulator and meant that the girl had almost certainly fought with other people rather than Grimm in her entrance exam, because Grimm wouldn’t be fooled by illusions.

Really, though, the self-modification with that vision alteration was more than a little sad. ”Maybe if you actually saw yourself that way you’d be more brave.” he’d note, words carrying a certain level of cruelty even if his tone was disaffected. He would transform his shotgun back to its sword form and sheath the weapon and turned around as he talked. ”If you were hoping to do one of those visually impressive come from behind wins at the end there, I hate to break it to you but it doesn’t matter how good your semblance is if the person it’s attached to weighs it down that hard.”

He had said what he needed to say at that point, and just moved back towards his seat at that point. He didn’t really bother waiting for a response, because he didn’t care about anything the craven had to say. She was small and pathetic and used her semblance to imagine an idealized version of herself that people would be scared of… big whoop. Everyone had their insecurities and hang ups, but most of them didn’t let those insecurities absolutely cripple their ability to function. Plus, the fact that the illusion was so intensely shallow was just icing on the cake. Taller, more muscular, more attractive, more imposing. It was pathetic, really, even more so because it was the same list of wants that the average preteen would hold near and dear to their heart.

A thirteen year old with the same hang ups was understandable and could be helped, but a grown ass adult with the same inability to get over themselves and do something other than wallow in self-pity was just pathetic. It was about as opposite of the behavior that one would not just expect but require from someone who were training to have the power of life and death thrust into their hands almost daily as one could get. And yet even still, some dip shit scout had decided to offer an invitation to this failure. Whether the scouts lately have gotten blind, stupid, or insane didn’t really matter when the end result was incompetence to this degree.

It was sickening that people like that were even given the chance at coming here.

※ 4745 total words ✎ 730 words ✉ D rank semblance, D ranked martial arts, D ranked durability, D ranked weapon, E rank weapon enhancement, E rank stamina

MADE BY MIZO

[Jackie Bariole]

She saw it there in his eyes, the surprise, the confusion. Not so dead eyed now, not so blank face. How much less stoic he was, now that an actual threat had shown its. Would he still be spitting out his fucking suggestions when he was spitting out his teeth? She meant to find out. She meant to feed him his words, chewing and chewing until his teeth were as dust in the blasted remains of his mouth, in the shattered remnant of his jaw, in the battered place where his face used to be. She would...

There was a flash of red, a crackle of blue, and, like breaking glass, it all fell apart.
'No!' she had barely enough time to think, to rage, before the walls fell in around her again, and the smothering blackness took hold.

---

"No..." Jackie staggered the last two steps, legs like limp rags, wholly unable to support her weight. She crumpled forward, skid a the last few meters, to grind to a stop at Colton's feet. Her whole body was alight with pain, wracked by exhaustion, and trembling from head to heel. At first, she didn't know what had happened, knew nothing beside the strange detached pain that filled her, felt nothing but that and the echo of an anger not entirely her own. Then Jackie remembered; She remembered running, the sense of panic, the fear, and that horrible anger taking hold of her. She remembered not caring as her aura was battered, as it was broken, making no effort to get out of the way.

A cough wracked itself up and spat itself out of her gaping mouth, she shuddered in a breath that tasted like salt and iron, and, for the first time noticed the boots standing before her face, near enough to touch.
"Maybe if you actually saw yourself that way you’d be more brave."
She blinked blearily up at him, eyes clouded with pain and fatigue, unable to comprehend his words. Saw herself how? Like What? What was he talking about?
Her head hurt like a nail had been driven through it, and she could not find the breath to ask. Instead, she simply lay back down, face in the dirt, and waited for the pain to stop. Colton wasn't done talking though.
"If you were hoping to do one of those visually impressive come from behind wins at the end there," He said, in his flat, emotionless voice. Not even contemptuous, just bored, perhaps a bit annoyed, but hardly inconvenienced at all. This had been nothing to him, sound and fury with little of actual consequence behind it. He was still trying to give her advice, "I hate to break it to you but it doesn’t matter how good your semblance is if the person it’s attached to weighs it down that hard."

Jackie flinched beneath the deserved rebuke, but said nothing in her defense, there was nothing to say. Her brief loss of control had, in a lot of ways, cleared her mind. Now, with only the pain of loss and the shame of losing to cloud her thoughts, she saw just how terribly she'd behave in this bout. She should have stood and fought. Even if she'd lost, she at least could have said she'd tried. What had she done instead, except delay the inevitable? Blast it, she'd been unable even to keep Heidi in check. Her fingers dug into the gritty earth, clawing at the ground as she tried to bury her face deeper into it.

"It's because of what my semblance is, that I'm here."

The voice surprised her nearly as bad as the words it had said, not least because it was her voice which spoke them.
Arms trembling, Jackie got upon on her elbows. She remembered how angry she'd been, how angry she still was, how hurt she had been, to have this man tell her what she should be doing, where she should go. How could he have any idea of what it was like to be her? How could he possibly think he knew her reasons well enough to criticize her being at Haven. Some champion. Some rising star. He might be both those things, but that didn't mean he had a single clue what it was like to be dangerous, to be so afraid of what he might do if he let himself slip, for even a second. Jackie swallowed, and was startled to find these thoughts were her own, spoken in her own voice, and yet somehow as vehement, as furious, as Heidi's might have been. She realized she was crying too, which did somewhat spoil the effect.
"I wouldn't expect someone like you to understand it." she croaked. Cold, stoic, dutiful, a good little soldier, he'd probably never stopped to consider the reasons for being a huntsman that didn't directly reflect his own.

---

Words - 817
Total - 4,615

[Colton Deraine]

[googlefont=Open+Sans]

[attr="class","firstfriend"]

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

While the trainee would continue walking without missing a beat, he had heard what the girl had said. He didn’t bother to stop, slow down, or respond verbally because all her talking did was confirm his earlier suspicions of her being extremely shallow and pathetic. Self-pity was only a mechanism to deflect criticism or to avoid taking even the slightest bit of responsibility for anything and everything. It was a pathetic learned behavior only used by the mentally weak to avoid blame, because it reframed the world into a much more comfortable version.

If any number of things completely out of their control weren’t affecting them, then obviously they could succeed! It wasn’t their complete lack of effort, talent, or training. It was because the sky was the wrong shade of blue that morning or they had a long night studying or they were born a spineless coward that couldn’t take responsibility for their own actions or lack thereof. It was a constant state of denial and a slavish obsession to making sure that they were never at fault and that life was just oh so difficult for them compared to other people who were actually functioning members of society.

That delusion, in and of itself, was annoying but not particularly harmful to anyone other than the person themselves. That delusion, extended to a job where you were in charge of keeping from dying… well, when that delusion hit reality all that happened was that everyone the person had been charged to protect died in various painful and horrifying ways while the coward ran and kept themselves safe at all costs. A coward huntsman was like a firefighter with a severe phobia of fires – a danger to those around them and those that rely on them in the mistaken belief that they are competent far more than they are a threat to themselves.

It was the worst type of trainee with no upward progression possible, frankly. Someone who saw themselves as superior to everyone else would either revert to this type of coward or have an intense drive to do better once actually beaten – Kishka was a result of the latter. Some simply had nowhere else to go and this was their last and only shot at becoming a functioning member of society – both Vacuo girls were examples of that. If they failed here, they had nowhere else to go. There were any number of reasons why one might pursue this path, but one thing that all valid ones had in common was that there was this thirst for improvement and some form of internal motivation to rise beyond present limits.

Self-pity had none of that, and never would. Since it was a rejection of the very concept of fault, it turned around even the most legitimate criticisms and reframed it as an unjustified attack against the poor, helpless victim. Grimm didn’t give a fuck about your feelings, frankly, and it would just lead to the coward getting eaten should they try that shit against one. But they never did that, no. They just ran, like Jacqueline had the entire fight. If she had teammates, she would have left every last one of them to die to a vastly superior opponent for just the chance to save her own skin.

That was why he held her and everyone with the same attitude in contempt. That was why he would never accept anyone that shallow as a fellow trainee or as huntsman material. They were beyond worthless, because even dead weight didn’t provide a negative impact on everyone else’s chances of survival. Instead, people like that actively made it harder for everyone around them to stay alive – which was as cruel as it was selfish. Getting someone like that expelled as quickly as possible was worth any personal reprimands, because reckless endangerment of innocent and quite frankly more valuable lives was the worst sin a trainee could commit.

For the moment, though, his main concern after that whole ordeal was to wipe away the traces of dirt that the coward had kicked up on his uniform on his way back. Aura was great at blocking threats to the user’s life and limb, sure, but it wasn’t great about avoiding harmless yet annoying substances like dust or sweat. The chase had kicked up an amount that most people would be comfortable ignoring, but Colton was unfortunately not most people and it irritated the ever living shit out of him. He took pride in the condition of his gear and clothing, frankly, because half of the battle was convincing others at a glance that you the huntsman were worthy of being trusted with their lives. Looking like a fucking hobo didn’t do that, and neither did the appearance of just walking through a dust bowl do it.

It almost didn’t matter how strong you were if you didn’t at least somewhat look the part, frankly, because if nobody trusts you to protect them, they will just run off and die by themselves. It was a concept that most of the street urchins lining these halls didn’t grasp, but one that was drilled into the brunette from very early on. Fair or unfair, appearance had a major effect on performance regardless of competence. Someone physically imposing like Asterion would get immediate trust in an Escort type mission from anyone, because he fucking looked the part of a bodyguard. Someone like Jacqueline looked like she was scared of her own shadow, and would just run and let the escort die at the earliest sign of trouble. She was exactly as good as she looked, which was to say worthless in every way.

Colton was the opposite and knew it. Life wasn’t fair, and you had to live with the hand that you were dealt. Some just did it with more grace and success than others.

※ 5725 total words ✎ 980 words ✉ D rank semblance, D ranked martial arts, D ranked durability, D ranked weapon, E rank weapon enhancement, E rank stamina

MADE BY MIZO

[Wolfe]

XP Distribution:

Jackie: 46

64 + 46 = 110 XP new total

Colton: 57

140 + 57 = 197 XP new total