There was no meaningless chatter between Pyrrha and her opponent. They waited for the countdown and began fighting.
Penny opened with a straight throw towards Pyrrha. Pyrrha moved herself out of the way and touched the blade as it passed her. They might as well call the match now.
Penny pulled the wire and got her blade back. Then, she threw it again.
Pyrrha started closing the distance. She altered the course of the blade slightly, so that she didn't have to dodge as much, but it kept coming for her. She managed to get her shield up in time.
When the sword hit, she didn't feel her semblance on it. Did Penny have something to neutralize it?
Pyrrha moved up more cautiously, dodging Penny's sword where she could and blocking it where she couldn't.
When she got close, Penny jumped to a different side of the arena, throwing a sword at Pyrrha so that she couldn't follow her. Then, Pyrrha felt an amazing amount of electromagnetic energy and when she turned to see Penny, she saw her holding her sword out with a glowing ball of matter in front of it.
Pyrrha immediately got her shield up and braced herself for impact.
Contrary to her expectations, Penny didn't launch a projectile, but instead fired it slowly, as a beam. It quickly ate through Pyrhra's aura and then made its way through her shield. Pyrrha pulled herself out of the way, but the beam followed her, tearing through the ground where she was.
Then, a really horrible plan formed in her mind. It was the only thing she could do. She launched herself up in the air, where if the beam was to follow her, it would probably hit the audience.
As expected, Penny stopped firing.
However, Pyrrha floating in the air by her armor was a dead giveaway for what her semblance was. Oh, well.
Pyrrha moved down experimentally, but as soon the stands were clear she felt the energy around Penny building. She went back up and it stopped.
Penny looked at her for a while, while Pyrrha was trying to figure it out, but then rose off the ground and went above Pyrrha, preparing another blast.
Pyrrha quickly moved higher, but the energy didn't subside. She wasn't in the way of the stands anymore. She quickly dove to the ground, but Penny also moved and sent a beam at Pyrrha, angled toward the ground.
Pyrrha was almost certain that was going to be it when she thought of something new. That electromagnetic energy felt strangely like her own semblance. If she could disrupt that maybe she would be able to disrupt the beam.
Since she had nothing else that could work, she tried it.
She created a powerful electromagnetic field in front of Penny's sword and the ball of matter in front of it exploded violently.
As the flash of light subsided, Pyrrha saw Penny diving at her, with about a dozen swords surrounding her.
It was surprising that she would change tactics so quickly, but Pyrrha had no time to dwell on it, as she had to defend herself from multiple swords attacking her. Without being able to move the swords so that they would miss her, her only choice was to defend herself or dodge, which was impossible when fighting that many projectiles.
The first sword to hit her was entirely stopped by her aura, but the second and third weren't. They went through her skin, but Pyrrha was able to move away quickly enough that she didn't suffer any serious injury. Then she felt a slight magnetic field behind her and she couldn't move out of the way quickly enough. She couldn't even stop herself from moving into it.
"Would you please call the match," Penny said, standing in front of Pyrrha, who was trying to fight with a sword sticking out of her back and poking out through her ribs.
"Not yet." Pyrrha managed to say.
"Miss Nikos is still capable of fighting. Unless she surrenders, the match will go on." came from an announcement overhead.
Ruby knew this wasn't going to end well. She sped through the crowd to the judges' spot.
"Do you want her to get killed? Call the match," she said to Ironwood, who was closest to her.
"A match isn't over until one of the contestants is either unable to continue fighting, or surrenders. Miss Nikos is a very famous Mistralese tournament fighter. Penny is a citizen of Atlas and I'm an Atlesian general. If I call the match prematurely, can you imagine the kind of political strain that would put on me?"
"You know Penny is too powerful to be able to safely skirt the line between killing and incapacitating her. Are you really going to let a promising huntress in training die because saving her might negatively impact your political position? I thought you were a good guy."
"It could start a war," Ironwood said. "You stop the match if you want that burden on your shoulders. You have the authority."
"Fine," Ruby said. She took his microphone. She thought up her words very carefully and even consulted Ironwood before saying them. "My name is Ruby Rose and in my right as a Defender of Vale, and a third party, uninvolved in the politics between Mistral and Atlas, I judge Pyrrha Nikos incapable of continuing her fight without endangering her own life."
She gave the microphone back to Ironwood.
"Glynda would have interfered if she saw a killing blow," he said.
"Would she have been able to? She couldn't stop the beams."
"I don't really know. I shouldn't have made Penny fight after all," he mused.
"You made her fight?"
"Yeah. This is a mess. Should have just cancelled the entire thing after that bunny almost killed her opponent in the finals last time."
"And then you'll have people panicking because they can't see how powerful the forces defending them are." Ozpin said. "I would like to abolish them as well, or at least make it so that students fight until they run out of aura. Unfortunately, we both know that at this point, that's not going to happen."
Ruby realized that the judges might just be prominent figures from all four cities. She really didn't want to be here.
But there was still something she had to ask.
"There is someone from Vacuo here, right?" she said.
"Yes." A woman with bright green eyes and dark skin said.
"You could have been the one to stop the match. It would have been even better than me."
"That is entirely true. I didn't, though. Why would I?"
"To save a person's life?"
"What do I care? People die on the streets every day in all four cities. If you want to save lives, go help them."
"I'll go ahead and cut this off now," Ozpin said. "Ruby, feel free to leave. I'm not kicking you out, I just don't think you'll find anything of interest here."
He was totally kicking her out. Ruby wanted to leave anyway, so she did.
She returned to the stands and explained to her team what happened.
"I have to say," Yang said. "When you went over there, I did not expect you to be able to call the match. You are in the tournament after all. You could have wanted to eliminate Pyrrha so that you wouldn't have to fight her."
"I doubt anyone would think that," Weiss said. "You saw the fight. But I do agree that it was a conflict of interest."
"I didn't have much of a choice," Ruby said. "You saw that beam eat through Pyrrha's armor. Ironwood put it in a good way. It was a mess."
The next fight was between Mercury and someone they didn't know. It was pretty good.
Qrow joined them midway. He yawned before saying, "You guys suck."
"If you were in the tournament you would have slept through the preliminaries," Yang said. "Besides, you haven't seen me fight yet."
"My first tournament, that was exactly what happened. Raven, of all people, won that one."
Yang had to suppress a tingle of excitement and disgust at hearing that name. "I'm surprised she didn't sleep through them as well."
"She did. She didn't need to do any. This was back when she was half-decent at fighting."
"She isn't now?"
"Well, okay, she never really was. She just has the most abusable semblance in the world."
At some point, the people fighting changed to Coco and Neptune. It was over before it really began.
"It's Jaune's fight next," Ruby said before Yang could continue drilling her uncle for information. "And yours is after that." She reminded her.
"I know," Yang said. She would be fighting Melanie Malachite.