[Rose Phoenix]

❝I Was Lightning,

Before The Thunder❞

426 w./ 426 w. total

d strength| e stamina| f Acrobatics| f Dust

d semblance| F weapon| f martial arts

The girl leaned against the counter, kicking her feet lazily against it as she stared at Colt. Her chin rested in her hand comfortably but her emerald eyes were anything but calm. There were so many sparks when she narrowed her steely gaze upon him. On one hand she respected his fighting prowess, his no nonsense attitude, and natural leadership talent...but then she also hated how cold he could be. There was no room for anything but improvement, at least that's what she got from him. And it royally pissed her off.

He offered to take her with him to the cabin, but Rose was stubborn and proud. So she took the bus instead to spite him. Not like it mattered much anyway, since he didn't seem to excited to see her. Or maybe he did? She didn't freaking know! At first he was a rival and nothing more. She barely eeked out a win during the Mistral Tournament against him and their first fight in Haven ended in her defeat! It frustrated her to lose and if she had failed the midterm? Utterly mortified.

Though she was shocked to see him show respect toward her. Whether it was because of her skills or otherwise was a mystery to her, but Colt wanted Rose around. Enough to ask her to join his team, it seemed. She accepted of course, since having two of the strongest students on one team was just smart to do.

This was stupid. Why was she even here to begin with? There was free food, sure, but the first thing she did was look for Colt. Then again he was the only friend at the cabin, so it was natural to seek out those you were familiar with. But now she was just sort of chilling out. The others were all laughing and having fun while the less than stellar duo stood there stone faced.

"So I see you stole my idea, Mr. Leader. Thanks for that. Hell, whatever man, at least it gets us all out of school for a little bit. I was going a bit mad with how stiff some of those jerks are."

Rose kicked off of the counter and reached her arms up high to let out a very loud stretch that popped a few of her bones as she did so. The blonde turned to the brunette and threw her arms behind her head.

"Bored as hell, though, and the others are starting to piss me off. Wanna play something? Or maybe go out back and see how hard I can punch?"

© SETHANIEL OF adox 2.0 + WW.

[Colton Deraine]

[googlefont=Open+Sans]

[attr="class","firstfriend"]

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

Booze was provided, because of course it was.

It was a good thing, too, because Colton was basically the opposite of a party type. While the others scattered across the cabin, the brunette would just sit there on the couch with a drink nearby just chilling out and existing for a bit. While he had set the whole thing up, it wasn’t even really for the purposes of enjoying it himself. The real reason, frankly, was that people were fucking stupid and something like this with the cost offloaded to Erytheia anyway was a goodwill gesture delivered at its most effective point – the beginning.

People were fucking stupid and were usually more willing to listen to people they liked or at least respected. Because people were fucking stupid, the latter couldn’t be done with strength alone. There needed to be a degree of trust involved, or he would have to resort to just smashing people’s auras at the start of every joint mission for everyone’s safety because they wouldn’t fucking listen. That would be a lot of effort and wasted energy, so he would much prefer if that wasn’t a necessary part of his time at Haven. It was a bribe, essentially, but one paid with someone else’s money. It was a lot more efficient than going out to each of them individually, which would have been a giant pain in the ass and a lot of wasted time and effort.

He was leaned back in the comfortable leather couch with his eyes closed in a state of tranquil relaxation, but that was never going to last very long. When he heard Rosalia’s voice and the complaining tone, he reached out to his whiskey and took a drink while she started. ”If you want to go up and down the cabin telling everyone it was your idea, I won’t stop you.” he’d remark, drily. ”I don’t really care who gets ‘credit’ at this point. I didn’t like the idea when you said it at first, but changed my mind later and decided to do it.”

He opened his brown eyes, and with his current posture leaned back so far on the couch he was looking up at the blonde because he had not yet elected to move. ”Sure, I think there’s a game system over there. If not, I know they got one in the Entertainment Room or whatever – and it’d be a nice change of pace. Lets me drink and beat you in something else at the same time, yeah?”

The perception of coldness wasn’t wrong and was in fact basically how Colton treated everyone these days. He wasn’t the type for rousing speeches and wasn’t the type to be overly familiar with people. The general consensus among a lot of the people who disliked him was that he was a smug asshole who thought he was better than everyone else. That part was half true, because while he was better than everyone else he didn’t really bother being smug or an asshole for the most part. It was the behavior of a nouveau riche to flaunt their assets, but Colton had always been a prodigy. Him being better than everyone else was the baseline for his life, not a deviation.

He didn’t need to lord it over people, because the underlying assumption with everyone that joined Haven would be that they would be moderately worse than him if they were a stellar candidate and several orders of magnitude worse if they were a bad candidate. Someone coming close to him was an achievement and an abnormality, but nobody had beaten him yet. It would take years for the first person to do so, very likely, and they would only be able to do it because he had been there in the first place to push them.

That was his role. He wasn’t there to be a friend, and he wasn’t there to be popular. He was there to provide a bar that almost every trainee that would pass through the capital would fail and fail miserably to reach. Every school needed a prodigy or two to pound the above average students into the dirt and prevent them from being able to rest on their laurels. He didn’t need to be liked and didn’t particularly want to be either. He just needed to not be universally hated to the point of people refusing to listen to him in the field, because the alternative was not something that would be fun or engaging for anyone involved.

※ 756 total words ✎ 756 words ✉ C rank semblance, D rank martial arts, C rank durability, D rank weapon, D rank weapon enhancement, E rank agility, E rank stamina

MADE BY MIZO

[Rose Phoenix]

❝I Was Lightning,

Before The Thunder❞

334 w./ 760 w. total

d strength| e stamina| f Acrobatics| f Dust

d semblance| F weapon| f martial arts

Rose couldn't help but snicker as she looked down at Colt. She had been trying to tease him, but the guy had absolutely no chill. It was like he wasn't even a young man, but some old fart who drained the fun out of everything. Hell, did he even wanna be here? Or was this just some tactical emotional exercise in team building so everyone didn't hate him when he needed to bark orders?

Wait...did he even care about her as a person? Or just how strong she was? Rose felt the corners of her mouth curl into a snarl, but she pulled it back. No, it wasn't worth destroying the cabin. Maybe she was just being silly anyway. The girl wanted to start anew at this school, which meant making friends and biting her tongue. Steering clear of violence whenever possible...yeah fat chance of that happening.

"Alright, shit lord! Yer on! But I get to pick the game!"

Rose grasped the couch and vaulted her entire body lithely over to give Colt a nice view of her as she did so. The girl landed expertly in front of him, bending over to grab the controllers of the system as well as shoving her butt in his face to gauge his reaction.

"Think fast!"

She tossed the controller over her shoulder to Colt as she perused the game library and found a fairly popular 2D fighting game. Though she never really played games much in the Vacuo desert, she played a fair bit in the arcades when she was on her champion tour. In the short time, the blonde had caught on quickly to the concepts and mechanics, so she was confident that she could woop Colt's sorry ass from hell and back again!

Rose jumped backward, landing heavily with a loud sigh as she plopped down next to him. The game came to life and she smirked, choosing the clearly OP character that could only be picked by entering a specific button combination.

"Ready to get yer ass kicked, Colt?"

© SETHANIEL OF adox 2.0 + WW.

[Colton Deraine]

[googlefont=Open+Sans]

[attr="class","firstfriend"]

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

”Alright, new rule. No shoving or kicking or punching during the game.” he’d declare, largely because when the blonde’s butt was shoved in his face and pressed him against the couch firmly he didn’t have any way to do anything about it. Without metal, frankly, Rose could do whatever the fuck she wanted. When the controller was thrown, he still was a little confused and managed to just clip it with his middle, index, and ring finger of his right hand. Thanks to Polarity, it didn’t really matter if he caught it as long as he touched it and it was yanked from the air before it smashed against the ground and into his right hand. From then on, it was just a matter of seeing what game she would pick. He was confident in basically any of the popular ones out there, at least enough to beat someone who had likely never even encountered a gaming console before…

Ah, fuck. She had to pick a fighting game. Why the hell would someone pick a game about what they did in real life, basically? It was like a farmer booting up a corn simulator, or an online troll booting up a basement simulator. Why would a huntress in training ever decide that a fighting simulator was the way to go?

This wasn’t a game that he normally played, but he knew of it at least. As the game was booting up, Colton pulled out his scroll and typed in the game in the biggest search engine he had bookmarked in the hopes of getting a tier list, a guide, or something to help him out here. Thankfully, being in the capital the internet connection was pretty fast and Colton was pretty decent at skimming through to get the key words he wanted… in this case ‘S or A tier’ with the ‘Easy to Play or Beginner Friendly’ tag. It took him about fifteen seconds extra to pick his character, and in the next loading screen he’d just search for a move set list so he could just imitate it while playing.

In response to the taunts, the brunette just shrugged. ”We’ll see. I like my chances, though, because I can’t imagine you had a gaming console in Vacuo.”

It turns out, though, that looking at the guide and actually playing were hard to do at the same time, so Colton got absolutely destroyed. He’d immediately flag for a rematch, only to get absolutely demolished a second, third, fourth, and fifth time. It was only at the end of the fifth game where he finally searched an overall tier list and saw that Rosalia was using a character banned in actual competitive play.

”You fuck, that’s a cheat character!” he’d whine, leaning back into his chair with a sigh. ”No wonder you did so much fucking damage. Pick someone that’s actually legit and we can go again, I think I got the hang of this.”

He didn’t get the hang of it. In fact, Colton was objectively fucking terrible at the game. He could chain together combinations pretty easily, sure, but his sense of timing was absolute garbage and he had no ability to actually block or evade anything coming his way because he lacked the mechanical skill to do so. He’d grow increasingly visually frustrated as time went on, with or without trash talk coming in from the other side because he was just absolutely and utterly hopeless at this fighting game no matter how many characters and strategies he cycled through.

It was kind of sad, really.

※ 1354 total words ✎ 598 words ✉ C rank semblance, D rank martial arts, C rank durability, D rank weapon, D rank weapon enhancement, E rank agility, E rank stamina

MADE BY MIZO

[Wolfe]

XP Distribution

Colton: 13

140 + 13 = 153

Rose: 7

161 + 7 = 168