Just according to plan

Pandora
Beep!

Beside her, Yonsa rushed off, leaving his cloak fluttering in the wind for a moment before finally falling to the ground. Pandora quickly followed his example, sprinting as fast as she could towards the enemy team.

As she ran towards them, she saw Yonsa sweep past the shield guy, knock down the dual-wielder and then spin and kick the shield guy an impressive length to the left. A look down at the Scroll hidden on her wrist showed that the stunt had cost him a not insignificant amount of Aura.

His Semblance could be deadly, she mused as she ran, if only he had more Aura to fuel it.

Briefly, she wondered how she would have fared with his Semblance instead of her own. Likely still quite well, but it would mean having to change how she fought and how she thought of her own role in combat. Knowing herself, Pandora guessed that she would likely become too absorbed in the fight going on right in front of her to utilize the team-improving aspects of the Semblance.

Besides, as right now showed, the Semblance had the potential for quite the nasty surprises. That did however require their opponents to not know about it to be utilized to the maximum effectiveness. She wasn't sure that her pride could have taken willingly forfeiting the chance to win training fights in the day-to-day rhythm just to increase her chances of winning a more serious fight later.

As she reached the downed dual-wielder, she launched into the air with a small ball of fire ready in her right palm. The dual-wielder only just managed to roll out of the way before she landed on his previous location and burned a hole through the tiles.

"Woah, were you trying to kill me?", the dual-wielder exclaimed in alarm as he scrambled to his feet.

"No, just break you", Pandora answered and let the flames fizzle out.

She hadn't expected to hit him with that, but on the off-chance that he was slower than she thought, then she didn't want to not take the chance to end the fight then and there.

Not wanting to give him room to back off, she advanced on him with a flurry of blows and kicks that he only barely managed to parry and dodge. His defences weren't impenetrable though, and she did manage to land glancing blows here and there.

Like a tiger refusing to let go of its prey, Pandora kept pushing on her dual-wielding opponent. That didn't mean that he was defenceless however. His parries were becoming more accurate as he got used to the strength and speed of her strikes.

Just as he was becoming more used to her fighting style, so was she becoming more used to his. Openings just out of reach became clearer to her, and those within reach, she tried to exploit at every turn.

In one such strike, he surprised her by dropping a small tear-shaped ceramic object from his belt and then backing off as fast as he could, leaving him vulnerable to an attack.

She only had a split second to shield her face as the explosive went off right in front of her. The greaves on her arms and armour on her chest managed to direct the worst of the explosion away from her vital areas, saving her some Aura, but the acrid scent of burned cloth and hair still lingered in the air.

Without wasting a second, she immediately sent a fireball straight into the chest of her opponent. The sudden counterattack managed to take him completely off-guard, and a good chunk of his Aura disappeared as a result.

"Okay, I get it. No more explosives", her opponent coughed, "jeez, for such a small girl, you sure pack a mean punch."

Pandora doubted that he would refrain from throwing another at her if he got the chance, but surprise attacks lost much of their effectiveness the moment that the opponent became aware of their existence.

Once more, she attacked him, but without much effect. Not so little that she wouldn't win eventually, but not enough to win the fight quickly. Besides, he might have more surprises hidden up his sleeve.

But so did she.

"25 both in 5 for 3", she spoke softly into her headset.

She had thought that her pride would have objected more than it did to this way of winning the fight. Maybe it was because she knew that it wasn't about winning the fight for herself, but just about moving on in the tournament.

This was part of why she had chosen Yonsa over Lafiel to join her in the second round. Pandora trusted Lafiel to be slightly better at winning melee fights than Yonsa, but he was much better at stalling and provided utility that none of the others did.

As the last tournament had brutally shown her, it wasn't about whether the individual fighters were stronger than their opponents. It was about whether the team was stronger.

Not wasting anymore time than necessary, she attacked her opponent again. As she had done before, she started with a kick to the left shin and then followed by an attempted punch to the back of the right hand that was trying to cut into her exposed leg.

As before, he managed to just ward off her punch by turning the sword towards her attack, but just as he did so, she felt a feeling best described as a cold surface held just above the back of her neck. As soon as she felt it, she used her increased speed to grab the turned swordhand with her other hand and then followed it up by using her increased strength, positional advantage and his weakened stance from her kick to pull him forwards and off of his feet.

As he fell towards her, eyes shining with surprise and confusion as to what had just happened, she moved out of the way, let go of his wrist and moved her hand onto to his back to push him into the ground. He managed to hit the ground with a thump and a gasp of air being forced out of his lungs, but before he had time to register what had just happened, she let her Semblance flare up in her hand on his back.

This close, her blue flames shattered his Aura in moments. As soon as she saw this, she stopped the flames, but his loose clothes still got a bit scorched despite how careful she had tried to be.

Ding!

"And Mr. Peridot is out!", the commentators announced excited, "but oh look, Mr. April seems to be trying to avenge his comrade already!"

Pandora turned her head to see what was happening just in time to watch Yonsa jump back as he was deflecting an incoming blow with the tip of his spear. Having deflected the strike to the right side, Yonsa kept the momentum of the spear going and smashed the butt end of it into shield guy's helmet.

The sudden counter-strike left the opponent visibly staggered, with his head rolling backwards. Too staggered to realize that the tip of the spear was coming around again. An unconscious shifting of his shield made the spear tip skirt off of the top of it and then change course upwards, crashing into the middle side of the helmet with a metallic clink sound.

With his opponent still reeling, Yonsa fell further back to put more distance between his opponent and himself. Most people would have probably expected him to use the opportunity to press the attack, but Pandora did not.

She had seen the direction that his spear had had before being redirected by the shield, seen the move done on more than a few Grimm. It wasn't a move meant to safely incapacitate an opponent in the ring. It was a move meant to rip out the throat of whoever was in front of him.

If the shield guy hadn't managed to deflect it, or if he wasn't concentrating on reinforcing his Aura at the throat, which was unlikely given his staggered state, then this fight could have ended right then and there, but much more bloodily than anyone would have wanted.

Combined with what had happened in their last mission, it made Pandora remember something that she had almost forgotten in the years since their first mission; if Yonsa felt backed into a corner, he would strike back with everything that he had, but unlike most others, he was willing to go for the throat.

She doubted that he had meant to do so now, but that his natural reaction had been to immediately go for the kill unnerved her somewhat. Still, if she was to succeed with her plans, then she would need to come to grips with it. Not accept it, she didn't think that she could ever do that, but at least understand and live with it.

Before anything more could happen, she hurried over to join her teammate against their common opponent. She positioned herself opposite of Yonsa to force the shield guy to split his attention evenly between the two of them.

"You could just give up now", Pandora suggested as she sneaked a peek at the Scroll on her wrist. Yonsa only had 21% left.

If only she had been able to switch from one enhancement to the other in rapid succession, he might have had more. Unlike him, she could only do both or one or the other, but not one after the other. Switching so rapidly between them always left her stumbling.

"I don't think so", the shield guy said defensively, "he can't have much left after that, and after him, it's just you and me."

"You will have to reach me first", Yonsa pointed out while emphasizing the greater reach of his speed.

While her opponent was talking about taking out Yonsa, Pandora noticed that his eyes never let her be out of sight. Clearly, she mused with a bit of pride, he knew that she was the greater threat of the two. Especially having seen how quickly she managed to take out his teammate, he would know that his Semblance wouldn't save him if she managed to get her hands on him properly.

Just then, Yonsa thrust forward towards their opponent, stabbing at the armoured chest area. Their opponent tried to bash his thrusts away with his sword, but in order to do so, he had to take his eyes off of Pandora.

She used this lack of attention to close the gap between them, but in the last second, he realized that she was there and tried to bash his shield into her to stop her charge. Having expected this, she managed to stop just outside the shield's range, and just as it was fully extended, she grabbed on to it, stopping him from retracting it.

He immediately changed from trying to ward off Yonsa's strikes to trying to retract his shield arm, but when she wouldn't budge, he brought his sword to bear on her. Unfortunately, since he had stopped paying attention to Yonsa, he didn't manage to see the spear sweeping his legs out from under him until he was already suspended in mid-air.

The surprise of it all made him drop his sword just as he landed heavily on the ground with a loud clang of the plate armour. Wasting no time, Pandora immediately set to burn down his Aura to below 15%.

"And with their quick dispatch of the last member of Team GJMM, Team LPYS has won the match!", the commentators announced, "and this, dear viewers, is why coordination between team members is so important. Isn't that right Morty?"

"Right you are", the second commentator agreed, "however, looking back on the match, it was clear that Team LPYS had more than just coordination. They had a plan that was clearly based off of their own and their opponents' strengths and weaknesses, and they managed to make Team GJMM behave exactly as they wanted to throughout the match. Not to mention that they managed to keep quite the nasty trump cards secret right up until they used them."

"Hmm, I agree with you there", the first commentator said, "and this, dear future Huntsmen and Huntresses, is why you should never discount having more information on your opponents than they have on you. So you better be paying attention in class, because you never know when some arbitrary Grimm fact might just save your life!"

As the commentators kept discussing the match, Pandora helped their downed opponent up. Her parents, and possible future sponsors, would be watching, so it was important to look as good as she could in the spotlight.

"Thanks", he said as he rose from the ground, before he looked back at Yonsa and asked, "where you ever planning to fight me properly?"

"Nope", Yonsa answered easily, "just keep you distracted while Pandora took care of your teammate."

"I see that now", he murmured annoyed, "and if she had lost?"

"She wouldn't have", Yonsa replied without a trace of doubt, before adding, "but if she had, then I guess I wouldn't have minded losing overly much. I'm just here as support anyway."

Pandora felt happy that he hadn't even considered that she might lose her match. That he would have likely given up in the unlikely case that she had lost didn't bother her. After all, both of them knew that his only interest in being here was to help her move on, so if she hadn't even been able to handle that one opponent, then she wouldn't have deserved to move on anyway.

Such a disaster would have crushed her hopes of showing her parents and sponsors that she had the strength to do what she had promised. She didn't need to win the entire tournament to get her point across, though her pride had wanted her to promise such a thing, she just needed to show off her strength in the next round or two.

But that was for tomorrow. Tonight, she needed to celebrate with her team and then scout out what her sponsors thought of the match, along with their overall mood going forward.