Treya stood over the dismanteled robots and her private fighting cell lowered revealing how the rest of the students faired. Out of the dozens in attendance, little over a dozen were still standing strong, a few others were winded next to their fallen foes, and the rest were defeated by the robotic warriors. As she had expected all the other 14-year-old registries such as herself all lost to the training bots.
"As stated in the registration forms, anyone's Aura that has entered the red zone or lower may now leave," Ironwood said with all the authority in the world. "if you cannot beat these Knights than it would be too dangerous to enroll you into Atlas. The Knights will now escort you out of the building. Better luck next year, although some of you may be able to enroll normally next year." He said jokingly. Down towards the end of the line a girl in grey laughed in a way that seemed extremely unnatural. Like the poor soul had never heard a laugh in her entire laugh. "Well someone appreciates humor," Said the general, "the rest of my stall will be handling the next part of the assessment on their own, I will merely be observing until I have made my decision. They will have you go through numerous trials to test your effective use of your weapons, aura, semblance, and strategy, best of luck to you all."
The general walked off to the next area and the staff led the remaining potential students to a small domed arena used for target practice and testing of new tech. "As custom, we will be going in order of age so first up will be…" he checked the paper and read through the entries for a moment, "Treya Bel'Mon, age:14" The solider stated. The girl stepped confidently into the middle of the arena holding her head high. A few of the other contenders were chuckling and laughing almost undoubtedly expecting her to fail and thinking that her making it this far was some sort of fluke. However, it did not faze her in the slightest if anything it just made her more determined to shut them up.
A machine came up to scan Treya quickly and then as it ran off the large screen towards the top of the dome showed all of her figures. "Height: 4'11", Weight: 100 Pounds, Weapon: Tempest, Twin Leeches." Treya recognized most of the information as stuff she had already filled out in the paperwork she did with Flynt's help, but she assumed they had to be sure everything was accurate. Finally the lights dimmed down and Treya could hear a voice command to prepare herself for battle. She slid her finger across the rim of her hat revealing the white dust crystals that make its serrated edge and took her stance.
"Miss Bel'Mon, your goal will be to eliminate all of the targets as quickly as possible, are we clear?"
Treya kept her focus and did not look back but responded, "yeah yeah let's just get this rolling pointdexter."
"Understood," the man said keeping his professional manner, "3…2…1… Begin!" and at that moment a large number of holographic targets were now surrounding her, seemingly filling the entire arena. She wasted no time and quickly used her dust hat to spin in place using the wind to eliminate all the targets that were immideatly surrounding her. After that she took the hat off of her head and proceded to throw it at the walls of the arena. It began to ricochet back and forth and then she took out the two hammers on her back and threw them out as she shot out the chains from her gauntlets to connect to them. Her precision with her weapon was impressive especially for a girl of her age, she would land each swing with her chain hammers and as Tempest would lose momentum she would use one of her Twin Leeches to give it a boost while also altering the direction if needed. In what seemed like no time at all, Treya was finished and she put her hammers back onto the straps on her lower back then shot out her right chain from her gauntlet one last time to retrieve her Tempest. For what looked like no less than 100 targets, Treya had struck each one in 45 seconds. "Astounding performance Ms. Bel'Mon." the official said as Treya began walking back to the viewing room. As she walked into the room she couldn't help but wink at the boys who were mocking her before as they all looked shocked because they could not pull that off themselves.
Each of the other students began to go one by one and most of the students all got below Treya's initial performance time, and they were already on the last of the 15-year-old applicants. "Nero Variant, age:15, please step into the arena." The young man walked in and said nothing. The robot came up to scan him as it did for the rest of them. "Height: 5'5", Weight: 126 pounds, Weapon: Aegis, Assault". The display was put above again and he pulled out his weapon, an extendable spear he calls Assault that comes out from the forearm of his left armor piece and the same armor piece also expanded to form the shield called Aegis. As he began to take on all of his foes Treya took some of her "precious" time to go look at this contestant, as she had been lazing around feeling that her position was secure. What she saw amazed her this young man flowed through the battlefield like a true warrior and displayed a type of finesse in combat that only she had shown so far. Halfway through his run however his entire fighting style had changed. What was a calm collected and precise spear wielder suddenly changed into this fanatic, almost psychotic flurry of swings, and he was eliminating the targets almost twice as fast. Even his weapon had changed both in shape and in color. The basic but effective silverish spear had changed into a golden Naginata that revved with a serrated edge like a chainsaw. The piece on his left arm that was his white shield had turned into a golden arm blade that pierced out like shiv. At the end of the run his golden weapons reverted back to what it was and he had finished with a time of 49 seconds with absolutely no ranged weaponry. As he returned into the viewing room he went to the same isolated corner he had been standing in for the entirety of the trials. Treya being so excited at seeing someone as skilled in combat as she is decided to approach him. But as she did so she noticed that he was muttering something to himself
"Hey you alright," Treya started, "you know talking usually involves two people mind if I lend you an ear?" she said jokingly. It caught Nero off guard as he still seemed to have his attention to something else but after a second he responded.
"Yeah sorry, just uh, I was just thinking about how I could've done a better job in there."
"Well you did good enough if you ask me, I haven't seen anyone hold a spear like that since I was with my parents." She said enthusiasticly
"Thanks your, your parents were huntsman too?" he pondered.
"Nah, not really much about the whole 'paid mercenary' thing, my parents were dust miners, we have our own mine in the south west, we made all the deliveries ourselves so we had to be able to protect our shipments to."
"Wow, you guys lived outside the kingdom all on your own?"
"Yeah, my parents are the best fighters I've ever known," Treya said with upmost confidence. "They started showing me how to use my Aura on my Sixth birthday, so I started pretty young. Year after that is when they started showing me how to my little Twins here" she said as she raised one of her bracelets.
"Well that would explain your skill with those chains, that was insane in there, I've never seen anyone your age fight like that." He said encouragingly
Treya got a cocky grin on her face, "Well, I was trained by the best."
"Good to know modesty is your strong suit," the boy said sarcasticly, "so what about your hat, we were wondering about that too."
Treya looked at him confused and then responded, "And by 'we' do you mean you and the wall or…?" Nero's eyes widened and she had noticed but just as she was about to continue the intercom went off.
"All registries report to the center of the stadium, the first trial is complete." Everyone headed outside to check to see how they had done. The same voice came from the speakers and spoke again. "We would like to remind you that this is not the final listing and that doing well in the other trials will increase your chances of admission." The voice began listing names from the bottom of the standings, and Treya could already see the boys mocking her become less and less confident. She wasn't really paying attention to names until she heard the name that was in fourth place. "Our fourth best performance is… Nero Variant, with a time of 49 seconds."
"Ayy congrats gold boy." Treya shouted across the room smiling.
"Our third best performance is… Treya Bel'Mon, with a time of 45 seconds."
"What!?" Treya said in shock, she couldn't believe that she was put down all the way to third. She had only missed the last two performances, so she pondered what it was that she missed while talking to Nero.
"Our runner up is… Alesia Grey, with a time of 40 seconds." Treya looked over to see it was the girl that was awkwardly laughing at the General's joke from earlier in the day, she never expected to see anything out of her, she hadn't seen how she fought or even what her weapon was.
"And finally our last contender, setting in a new record amongst registries of 35 seconds, is…" Treya looked anxiously around to see who this person could be, she had no idea who could eliminate all the targets so quickly and efficiently, especially for being no older than sixteen. But just then she noticed a red haired girl who was being awfully smiley, Treya wondered if that girl could really be it but she figured it couldn't be then one last time the speakers rung. "Penny Polendina!"