Chapter 13: Tricksters' Duel
Luci looks down at the small arena and sees that the training had already started. He sneaks in and takes his seat at the back of the class next to Judy, making sure no-one notices him. "Anything good?" He asks to the other three while he looks over everyone else in class to see who's fighting.
"No..." Judy says, not taking her eyes off the fight.
"Why?" Artemis asks. "What fight are you waiting for?"
"Nothing really. Just any good fight." He replies, looking again and finally being able to figure out who's fighting. He sees the sword, shield and blonde hair of one of the classmates he doesn't really care about but remembers he's called Jaune, since he's close to one of his main subjects, Pyrrha Nikos, and the large mace of the other fighter, showing him that it is Cardin Winchester. Cardin makes a mocking gesture and Luci looks up at the scoreboard to see that Jaune's aura is almost completely depleted whereas Cardin's is basically unaffected. "He's going to lose." He thinks out loud.
"Obviously." Vak says. "I haven't seen him check his aura this entire fight, or land a hit, or block a hit properly, or-" He continues before being cut off at the sound of Jaune's getting slammed to the floor by Cardin's mace and the end buzzer going off. Glynda Goodwitch walks onto the arena to stop the combat before it gets out of hand, giving Jaune a speech Luci doesn't really listen to but he begins to listen once he hears his own name.
"And Luci Glas." She says calmly, looking directly at him. "You must pay attention during these combat classes, this is not a free period, you cannot leave the class whenever you want."
"I forgot my knife!" He shouts down to her, waving it in the air as the two combatants get back to their seats, inciting a few giggles from the class, including from Artemis and Vak, but only a sigh from Goodwitch.
"You're going to have to start taking this more seriously if you want to get the higher grades, especially in my classes." She says, swiftly moving on. "We will have one more randomized duel before moving on." She says, tapping on her tablet and changing the screen above the auditorium stage, which they use as a practice arena, to the standard randomization screen as the virtual combatant wheels start spinning. The randomization wheel is set to teams rather than people, leaving the teams to select what member would participate in the duel. This wasn't officially a big deal but for the students it meant one of two things, it either gave you a chance to practice, analyze your opponent's moves while improving your own, or representing your team for the rest of the class to show off your skills and prove yourself, for Luci it was a mix of both, although he didn't feel like participating much, plus most of the time it comes down to team leader verses team leader. Every time Luci sees the wheels spin he expects them to slow down before they stop but is shocked when the spinning suddenly ends, showing the acronym JADE as the first team as Luci begins to hear chattering and planning from his left, coming from said team. He looks up again to notice the second wheel has already stopped, showing their opponents with the acronym JAVL, causing their chattering to stop as they look over to them. "It has been decided. Team JADE verses team JAVL. Choose your representatives and send them down, you have five minutes." Goodwitch finishes, walking off the stage again and turning down the lights so that the only thing they could see from the stands was the stage.
"She really likes to make this dramatic." Jayce says to himself, looking over to Luci, since they were both sat at the ends of their rows. "Who are you guys going to pick?"
"Not sure, you probably want to ask Judy." He replied bluntly. Thanks to his luck, JAVL had only been chosen once or twice since the combat practice started last week, but he hadn't activated it this time since he was a bit distracted.
"Well then..." Jayce begins. "I would like to see how you fight, if you don't mind."
"Are you sure?" He asks. "I'll have an advantage since your mortar is better for outdoor combat, it seems a bit unfair."
Jayce looks confuse for a second but then realizes what happened and laughs to himself. "Sorry, I didn't mean to fight me, I'm not allowed to participate due to the nature of my weapon, that was my bad, I worded it badly." Thinking back on it, Luci realizes that every time JADE has been selected, someone other than Jayce had fought, usually Apollo. "I just wanted to see you fight, I notice that you've been letting Vak do most of the fighting for your team, but if you fight then I'll make sure we pick someone who'll give you a good fight, I know that's what you want." Luci notices that the rest of the teams are looking their way.
"One minute." Goodwitch informs them, Luci looks down to her and a lot of the other students look away to avoid his gaze.
"Fine." He whispers, standing up and walking to the back of the class. He looks back to team JADE and notices that none of them have stood up yet.
"We'll make it a surprise for you." Jayce tells him, waving him off. Luci decides to comply, with the promise of a good fight and the pressure of the rest of the class, he doesn't really have much of a choice.
"You guys mind?" He asks the rest of the team. Vak had already stood up ready but gives a quick thumbs up, getting over his surprise and sitting back down. Judy looks up to him in worry but he ignores her and begins to walk around the back of the class right of the class, going down the curving slope towards the right of the stage. Questions rush through his head, trying to plan a strategy for whichever member they pick. If it's Apollo or Eyuno then he could probably afford to show off a little but he hasn't seen enough of Dalos' fighting style to piece together a good strategy, so he would probably have to stay on guard the whole fight. Thanks to the darkness, the only think he can see now is the light as it reaches the stage and the tops of his steps. He pulls out his knife, deciding to keep his hollow arm on, since most of his classmates still don't know about his hidden weapon. Every member of JADE already knows about it so he couldn't use it to surprise them but they might try to use it against him if they think he's trying to hide it. He reaches the stage, seeing the starting area outlined by a line of red lights which turn green as he steps into it. He looks up to see who his opponent is but they haven't got there yet, even if it was Dalos being invisible, the starting area lights would give him away.
"Twenty seconds." Goodwitch continues, showing Luci on the screen as the right combatant while leaving the left as a question mark. Luci looks down at his knife, the same knife he used in his last duel against Judy two years before. He's had other fights with her since then but they hadn't been as serious and had usually been done in private to not draw attention. He didn't want a repeat of that but he didn't want to lose either, they haven't lost a duel yet and he doesn't want to let the rest of them down. He looks up to see if they are watching, forgetting that the audience lights are dimmed so that the fighters can pay attention, but sees the red lights turn green in the corner of his eye. He darts his head back to see, basically what he expected, nothing in the green circle. "Mister Guile, you cannot be using your semblance before the duel starts." She warns and Dalos appears in the middle of the green circle.
"But that ruins the surprise!" Dalos complains.
"I already knew it was you." Luci points out, putting his left foot forwards and pointing his knife at his opponent. The timer starts, showing on both their scrolls, which Luci attaches to the underside of his false left hand, but it also shows for the audience on the big screen which the combatants can't see. Luci goes to look at the timer when the buzzer goes off, beginning the duel.
Luci flips his knife instantly, holding it near the tip of the blade and pointing the handle at Dalos, pressing the trigger as soon as it's in position. Dalos dodges left but Luci dodges with him, getting a few hits in with his gun before flipping it again and trying to rush him before he disappears. Luci expected this but hasn't figured out how to get around it yet, opting for watching the floor for any sudden movements. He gets into a guarding stance, covering most of his face with his left arm and holding his knife reversed to have more grip if he has to block. Before he knows it, he's struck from behind and sent flying forwards, only just stopping himself from falling off the stage. He begins running back towards the center and sees movement in the corner of his eye, quickly readying his gun to shoot again before the object he sees suddenly disappears again. He stops and gets lower to the ground, quickly checking his aura on his scroll and seeing that the hit didn't do much damage. He looks towards the center, expecting a hit to come soon, but instead seeing an impact on the ground at the center circle before Dalos suddenly appears there, suddenly disappearing again once he sees Luci.
He has no idea where Dalos is or what he's planning but he decides that getting to the middle of the stage will help him from falling off the stage and begins the dash over. Half way there he crashes into something and assumes it's Dalos. He swipes at the area wildly, feeling that he's hit him at least twice before his opponent suddenly appears there and blocks his next few attacks before kicking Luci away. Luci gets his footing quickly and begins to fire again, but he isn't completely balanced so he accidentally hits the floor with most of the shots and runs out of ammo once he gets to Dalos' feet. Dalos turns invisible again but Luci sees dust moving around where he was this time. He quickly reloads, taking the bottom of the knife handle out and quickly putting another magazine in before shutting it and aiming the gun at the floor. "I've got you now." He says before firing randomly at the floor around him, covering the stage in a layer of dust from the broken floor. He sees it moving slightly and dashes towards it, throwing his left arm forward to wrap it around where he assumed Dalos is but catches nothing, being kicked from below and up into the air. Looking down, he sees Dalos again before he quickly dashes off and is gone again. He hears a beeping noise and remembers from their first lesson that that means they have thirty seconds left. From how many times he's been hit, he assumes he's lost the most aura at the moment, if he wants to win, he might have to do something drastic, but he doesn't know if it's worth going all out. He sees the dust moving around but it's too quick to try to land on him. He tries to land hard to kick up dust to see if he could get some stuck on Dalos but notices that some of the dust in the air suddenly disappears. Assuming that it hit Dalos, he runs towards it before seeing some dust kick up again to his right and dodges just in time to feel that air off the blade swipe above his head. A beep starts to sound every second, counting down from ten. Luci sees dust kick up and sees it as his final chance. He throws his knife in front of it, hoping it would shock him enough to stop him so he could get a hit in, but instead the knife gets thrown out of the ground, like it had been kicked, and the dust ahead of it kicks up a lot slower than before. Luci takes the chance and jumps forwards, throwing the hardest right jab he could, hitting something before hearing something land off the stage.
Sorry about not updating in a week, I was away on holiday and didn't have any way of typing it up. Just finished this so I hope you like it, it was a complicated scene to write and ended up being one of the longest chapters so far. Hope you enjoy.