:Post Completion Note:
So, we happened to get really lucky and this chapter got finished in the last half hour before Christmas, and while there are references and chat about that in the closing notes, I figured it would be remiss of me to not include some not about it here.
So, to end this Post Completion Note, I'll just say have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Greetings all! Happy Holidays! So, I decided to crank this out since I had it scratching at the back of my brain for a while and if history is any indicator, this one should be out right quick!
Creativity: Plus, it's a good way to break up work on that Before: KH miniseries, our renewed work on Venom: Resurgence and our new Star Wars project.
Author: I really have gone even more mad than before, haven't I?
Well, the Star Wars one won't run nearly as long as my other stuff, so I'd say we're okay in that regard. And yes, I've done some thinking and planning and it will not run nearly as long. Might do a spinoff or two to flesh things out, or maybe a couple one-shots (Never done one before).
But you're not here for that, you're here for Limit Breaker! But first, let's answer the chapter 24 reviews:
Potassium: Ooh, that bitch of a witch ain't gonna know what hit her.
Guest 1: Sorry. Might have made for an interesting subplot, but I'm pretty sure that those powers can only transfer to Remnant-borne people. Or at least, that's how I understand it.
Guest 2: Hey, when you're mentally and emotionally unstable, it's a pretty precedented response to lash out at something you believe to be the magic save-all button. And yeah, I figured had things gone a little different with Pyrrha at the end of volume 3, Jaune would have gone straight into overprotective mode.
Ben: I'll keep an eye open for your story.
Avenger: Why thank you! I hope this one continues to entertain!
Cbustroyer: I get the desire for consistency, but I think people put WAAAAAAY to much emphasis on it, to the point of lunacy. That's not to say I'll be doing literally whatever insanity I want (though I easily could. I am crazy), but my thoughts can be summed up by one famous movie director's thoughts on the victims in horror/ slasher movies, and why they don't go to the police: "They don't go to the police, because it's boring"
The Apex Predator 01: I'll do just that.
Master-ofmanga: For those of you who don't know who Pavlov is…
Creativity: And that's where we're ending it! We got a chapter to provide!
Author: Right, back on topic!
So, last chapter, we were technically in-between volumes and by now, team RNJR has set out on their quest to hunt down Cinder and co, starting at Haven Academy. Yang is still languishing, Gula and Amber are still training, and Pyrrha… We'll get to Pyrrha soon. Oh, MAN am I excited to share what I've got for her!
Creativity: But before we begin, let's get the Discord password out of the way: R23A8zG
Author: And with that, we're ready to begin…
Allow us to proudly present chapter 25 of Limit Breaker!
It was oddly peaceful in the Rose-Xaio-long cabin. It was almost disconcerting to Pyrrha, though by this point she was just glad to have some more constant peace and privacy. It had given her plenty of time to consider her future without constant interrupts from Jaune or the rest of her team (though it was mostly Jaune, bless him).
When she'd returned from her most recent trip to the hospital to have her injury examined, they'd determined that while it was technically possible for her to walk without aid from a crutch, cane or some other aid was likely to aggravate the muscle and cause her significant discomfort. That had not been the news she was looking for. She hadn't felt as devastated as she'd expected, at least at first. It wasn't until a few hours after the news had been broken that it seemed to sink in. She'd cried for quite some time after that. According to Jaune, it'd been closer to an hour and a half. He'd been extremely reluctant to leave after that, though Pyrrha wouldn't hear anything of it. Among the last things she said to the remainder of her team before they left was 'You staying behind to console me won't bring Cinder any closer to facing justice. Knowing that you three are out there fighting to stop the monster who did this will do me more good than keeping you here' and she'd meant it.
That wasn't to say that she didn't them, or that she was ignorant of the danger they were walking into. However, she knew that Gula had warned Ruby of what she could do, though he didn't name a source. It was safe to assume that he knew the basics regarding the Maidens, considering he was instructing Amber in the strange ways of Ki manipulation, but she also suspected that he'd left the specific nature of the power out of it, instead warning her that she had abilities beyond simple Aura and to exercise extreme caution. Pyrrha had made sure to remind them that Cinder had successfully slain professor Ozpin in single combat, and that to forget that was foolishness.
Her last act before Jaune left though, was to give him a kiss on the cheek before they began their journey. It had been in private, or suspected private (Nora was a notorious snoop and terrible liar) and now they were gone. They'd left a few days ago and their absence could be felt in the house. Aside from the occasional rumbles and kabooms that came from Gula and Amber's training sessions, it was pretty quiet. Another break in the calm had been Taiyang's panic attack when he discovered the letter left behind by Ruby before they left, though that had dissipated pretty quickly. Pyrrha could see that Taiyang knew that he couldn't keep Ruby or the others out of this, no matter how hard he tried. However, she could see that he didn't appreciate her goodbye being in the form of a letter.
Still, the peace also had the secondary benefit of being an excellent environment for Pyrrha to think and plan. It'd taken a while, with lots of thinking, emotional episodes and second-guesses, but perhaps the biggest turning point had been when she finally cracked and finally unloaded everything to Amber in what she thought was private, but it turned out that Gula had been around for a not-insignificant amount of it and asked Pyrrha if could provide his own two cents on her predicament while Amber was doing her best to console her.
"What do you want to do?" Gula asked. Pyrrha looked at him with her red, tearstained eyes.
"I want to go back to before I was crippled! I want to walk without a crutch! I want to help everyone fight Cinder!" She'd exclaimed.
"Well, I can't go back in time, but there are ways to get around the latter two problems, I think. First problem is that you shouldn't put constant strain on the damaged muscle, right? Well, I don't know how to return it to completely normal, but I'm pretty sure you could find something to take the strain off of your feet while walking. Add a staff or some other some other means of support and you should be okay for a decent amount of time." Gula recommended. It wasn't a perfect solution, but Pyrrha had to agree that the idea did have some merit.
"As for fighting, that I can wholeheartedly provide a solution for. First off, you're never going to be able to fight the way you used to, near as I can tell. So, you need to find another way to fight. Luckily, you've got a surprisingly versatile Semblance you can employ. You can't rely on constant movement and acrobatics, so you need a fighting style that revolves more around slower, minimal movement and can take lots of punishment." Gula recommended.
Which brought her to now. She'd spent plenty of days in her room, emerging only for personal hygiene, meals and to occasionally request politely that Amber and Gula not cause the entire house to shake when they threw energy blasts at each other.
How strange her life had become.
Days she'd spent working on the designs for her future equipment for her new fighting style on a desktop scroll, and now she was finished. She just wanted to run it by Taiyang before she went to Signal to forge it. Amber had also designed her new weapon and the two were going to head there in a few days to begin the forging process. Amber was creating a simple staff, like she'd had before Cinder's attempt on her life. The main differences were that it was longer and could telescope, and it didn't have Dust Crystals set into either side of the staff. There was no need with her new abilities.
As for Pyrrha's new weapon, well, she wanted that to be a surprise. Despite being… less than fond of the circumstances that had brought about its creation, she was rather proud of herself for the designs as she casted them from the desktop to her personal scroll. It would require quite a bit of training and getting used to, but that was negligible when held up on the results she could get from it. It was a proud moment for her.
A proud moment that was immediately dashed when the entire house began quaking. Pyrrha managed to grab the desk to prevent herself from falling over as the tremors stopped before she slipped on a pair of slippers and grabbed a crutch that was sitting nearby and made her way over to the window before opening it to stick her head out. Amber and Gula were floating in the air, arms crossed in front of themselves with Amber trying to shove Gula off-balance while Gula merely held his ground.
"Excuse me, but could you perhaps not shake the house to its foundations? Thank you!" Pyrrha called out politely before she closed the window. However, that didn't stop her from hearing Taiyang's shouting, with the sound of his front door being thrown open as he went outside to try and put an end to the constant shaking, explosions and other such consequences of Gula's training. His real training as it turned out.
It was several minutes of shouting and grumpy rebuttals and dismissals on Gula's part before things calmed down. Pyrrha heard the door close not too long after and multiple sets of feet walking around downstairs. Pyrrha was just glad that the explosion had occurred after she'd finished her new designs for the gear. If something like that had happened during the designing that messed them up, she'd have been considerably less polite when they caused that shockwave. She got up and carefully made her way down the stair, making sure to keep her weight off her injured foot as much as possible. She came downstairs to see Amber sitting on the couch, looking exhausted in multiple forms of the word. Taiyang was striding about throughout the house, doing chores and whatnot while Gula sat in a chair and just glared at Taiyang a bit. Pyrrha just sighed. Both her and Amber were getting a little bit tired of the petty antagonism that underlined the majority of Gula and Taiyang's interactions. From the sound of things, it sounded like Taiyang hadn't quite gotten over the fact that Gula had yet to thank him for grabbing clothes for him. If it wasn't so exhausting to deal with daily, it probably would have been amusing to watch, but as it was Pyrrha found it to be a near-constant source of mild disruption.
"Excuse me, Mr. Xaio-Long? I was wondering if you could look these designs over quickly. I'm pretty confident in them, but I want to make sure I haven't missed anything." Pyrrha requested as she handed her scroll over to Taiyang, who immediately began examining them with an experienced eye. There were a few moments where Pyrrha got a bit concerned when he'd frown or look a bit unsure over parts of the design, but they seemed to pass before he handed them back.
"Well, It's certainly… unorthodox, but I don't see anything that would ruin it. I think you're good to go." Taiyang replied. Pyrrha beamed as she thanked Taiyang and went back upstairs to doublecheck the specs she had written down for her new gear. It would be a long forging process and she didn't want to make it even longer for herself by having errors doing the process.
Meanwhile, far away in a dark domain…
Mercury and Emerald very rarely knew what to expect from meetings with Salem. That wasn't saying much (or really anything) since they'd only been to two meetings before this. The first one was when Cinder had recruited them to Salem's cause, so that they could be introduced to the rest of Salem's… council seemed to be the closest word that Emerald could think of. They'd also been given their first instructions as subordinates of Cinder directly, and Salem by proxy; to hunt down the Fall Maiden so that Cinder could take that power for herself. The second one was to receive a mixture of praise and scolding from Salem regarding their failure to acquire all of the Fall Maiden's power, though it wasn't a total failure. After that, they'd made their way to Vale to begin preparations to bring down Beacon Tower and track down the Fall Maiden to take the remainder of the power that yet lingered within her.
However, neither of those times had they actually been to Salem's domain. And needless to say, it had left an impression. Watching still partially unformed Grimm beginning to drag their bodies out of the pits with that dark, tar-like substance was horrifying, yet strangely captivating. At the moment, it was mostly Beowolves that were emerging from the pits, but they'd seen Creeps, Boarbatusks, even a solitary King Taijitu emerge from the gunk.
A snapping of fingers was enough to draw their attention back to the meeting at hand. Immediately, Emerald and Mercury returned to the side of Cinder, who did not look very happy. She rarely did in the company of Doctor Arthur Watts, who was currently sitting across from Cinder. Emerald and Mercury didn't like him either. His constant prods and belittling of Cinder and themselves had quickly grown grating within the very limited amount of time that they'd interacted with him, with Mercury have to be held back on more than one occasion by Emerald.
"Yes, please do keep your… posse in check." Watts sniped at them. Emerald used her arm to cut off Mercury as he made to march over to Watts. They weren't really sure how he so easily got under their skin, though Mercury's theory was the moustache.
Still, the managed to tune out Watts' jabs this time, since they indicated that he didn't know the full story of what was going on. Namely, just who in the name of the Gods Cinder had been fighting in Ozpin's old office. Even if he had been nowhere near top shape, Cinder had confirmed that it was indeed the same individual who had singlehandedly annihilated the vast, vast majority of the Grimm that had managed to enter the city. No doubt that Watts had heard of the existence of this… anomaly, but their presence at the Fall? All indication was that he didn't know. And Cinder had opted to withhold on informing him of that, since Watts clearly hadn't bothered to learn all the facts, only fixating on Cinder's failure to secure total and absolute victory; the consequences of that failure being evident on her face. The glass cover fitted over her now empty eye-socket wasn't enough to hide the full extent of her scars wrought by that girl. There was more extensive damage, but it was concealed by Cinder's new wardrobe.
Cinder now wore a long, dark red dress with one long, wide sleeve hiding her left arm. The edges of the collar and the opening for the right arm were gold-colored, and the upper chest and left sleeve were decorated with golden designs. The right side of her dress was open from the hip down with two gold-colored straps made up of interwoven ropes connecting the front half to the back half of her thigh. Under the dress, she wore black pantyhose. On the right hip, the dress had carried over an accessory from her old dress; a black rhombus-shaped gem set in a gold-colored metal of the same shape, with feathers of varying shades of blue extending from the bottom of it. On her right arm, she wore a long, gray glove, the top of which has a gold-colored metal ring with curvy branching extensions going up her arm. Her right ear had a new, ring-shaped earring higher up than the dangling black gem earring.
"If I were you, I'd hunt her down… Find her, and then… Well, she took your eye…"
Cinder and her cohorts turned to their right to see one Tyrian Callows, Salem's assassin. Though the more operative word would be hunting dog. The man was deranged and constantly giggling while obsessing over his next murder, unless he was obsessing over Salem. Or both. It was usually both.
Cinder made to respond, but whatever had happened during that fight had screwed up her voice something fierce, so she was left only able to whisper her words to Emerald, who would relay them for her. However, as she began doing just that, and Watts predictably went for another jab, the door creaked slowly open and Salem herself walked slowly into the room, her red eyes with black sclera slowly surveying them all.
Salem's current attire consisted of a very long, short-sleeved black robe that obscured her feet and partially dragged across the ground, complete with a long shawl emblazoned with three interconnected, maroon-colored vertical elliptic sigils resembling a trio of overseeing eyes above a series of maroon-colored diamond emblems. She also wore a ring resembling an insect on her right index finger.
Everyone immediately rose to attention as Salem slowly walked to her place at the head of the table before she paused, her back facing to those assembled.
"Watts." She named the moustachioed man, who suddenly became nervous.
"You find such malignance necessary?" Salem questioned before she motioned for everyone to be seated.
"I apologize ma'am. I'm not particularly fond of failure." Watts explained, though Cinder knew he wasn't sorry in the slightest. Not really. He was only sorry that Salem had called him on it.
"Then I see no reason for your cruelty towards young Cinder. She has become our Fall Maiden, destroyed Beacon Tower and most importantly, killed dear Ozpin. So, I'm curious; to what failure are you referring?" Salem questioned as she took her own seat.
"Well, the girl with the silver eyes." Watts stated, which immediately had Cinder wanting to raise her hackles, but she restrained herself.
"Yes. We've dealt with their kind before." The voice of Hazel Reinhart suddenly cut in. The giant of a man was something of an enforcer for Salem, despite his distaste for needless bloodshed. Whenever he was sent out as a representative, he always took the path with the least blood spilled. That wasn't to say he wasn't above spilling blood himself when he felt the situation called for it. He could be ferocious in combat, should he decided to get his hands dirty.
"How is a novice was able to best one of us?" Hazel questioned. If Cinder hadn't been having voice issues at the moment, she would have had to bite her tongue to not retort. Besides, it seemed that Hazel was also out of the loop. As frustrated she was with how that fight had ended, she couldn't wait to see the looks on their faces when Salem revealed the whole scope of the Fall to them.
"I agree. Even without her new powers, it should have been effortless to…" Watts started, only for Salem to interject.
"It is because of the Maiden's power." Salem stated, causing Cinder to glance up at her master with a hint of surprise.
"Make no mistake, Cinder. You hold the key to our victory. But your newfound strength brings with it a crippling weakness. Which is why you will remain by my side while we continue your treatment." Salem informed her. She turned and glared at the table they were all seated at.
"I might also add, doctor Watts, that you seem to have missed something critical in regard to Cinder's apparent failure to seize absolute victory. I don't hold you accountable, Hazel, since you were informed by Watts. You, doctor, do not have such a luxury." Salem told Watts, who shrank back in his seat a little bit. Tyrian giggled a bit at the cowed doctor, while Hazel just grunted a bit.
"So, allow me to illuminate you into some of the recent happenings in the world of Remnant. Specifically, an urban myth that has cropped up in the faunus community, regarding a certain 'Red Warrior', who has been appearing all across Remnant." Salem began. Cinder allowed herself the briefest smirk. At least she got the satisfaction of watching Watts' smugness melt away from disbelief.
"So the story goes that the Red Warrior appears to defend faunus from the humans who would do them harm, wreathed in an ethereal red flame. While there is minimal evidence of this, with two of the three most prominent sightings being foiled faunus trafficking rings, the single greatest piece of evidence lies in the foiling of an attempt to release my hordes into Vale. This supposed 'Red Warrior' appeared in the city from thin air and proceeded to destroy every Grimm in the city in a matter of minutes at most, all while using a most peculiar energy." Salem told them. Cinder knew about the third encounter, having been one of three people in the room to have witnessed it firsthand.
Salem raised her hand and tossed an orb of blood-red energy into the air, which formed into a dark cloud. From within it, bits and pieces of footage of the Red Warrior's show at Vale appeared within the black fog, causing Watts to slump back, Hazel's eyes to widen with surprise, and Tyrian to fall into a sitting position from his previous position of kneeling on the chair, his face one of abject shock. The images capped off with the giant energy beam erupting from the Red Warrior's palms that erased a group of flying Grimm from existence.
"Now, you may be wondering why I bring this up now. Well, as it happens, the Red Warrior was at Beacon that fateful night, when Cinder brought low Ozpin and claimed the last of the Maiden's power for herself. He was wounded, incredibly so in fact, but he still fought Cinder in single combat and nearly bested her, had she not thought swiftly. While I do not believe that this Red Warrior is gone, it would be remiss of us to not acknowledge Cinder's accomplishment." Salem concluded. Watts glared at Cinder before he turned to Salem.
"Do we perhaps have any identification on this Red Warrior? If they are a threat to our plans, I think we should get on top of… dealing with them as soon as possible." Watts inquired. Salem frowned a bit.
"While we do know what he really looks like, we don't have any official information on him, as if there is nothing to be found. It's as if one day he simply fell from the sky." Salem replied. Cinder frowned a bit at the tone that Salem used at the end of that statement. It was a tone that she reserved for when she knew something that the others didn't. Then Cinder's eyes widened a bit. Could she be serious about the 'falling from the sky'?
"Either way, the warrior has vanished, so it's time for us to return to the tasks at hand. Watts, you are to take Cinder's place and meet with our informant in Mistral." Salem instructed the doctor, who grinned beneath his moustache while Cinder glared at him.
"Gladly" The doctor acknowledged.
"Tyrian, you are to continue your hunt for the Spring Maiden." Salem told her assassin, who giggled a bit at the prospect.
"Gladly…" He muttered through the giggles.
"And Hazel, I'm sending you to the leader of the White Fang. Adam Taurus has arranged the meeting. The boy continues to prove loyal. Ensure that Sienna Khan feels the same." Salem instructed Hazel, who merely glanced up from the table before returning his stair to the same spot on the table.
"As you wish." He said simply. It was around this time that Cinder gestured to Emerald, who hurried to her superior's side and leaned over so that Cinder could convey her message.
"Speak, child." Salem said simply, gesturing to Emerald once Cinder had finished speaking.
"She wants to know… What about the girl?" Emerald told Salem, leading to a scoff from Watts.
"What about her? Seems to me like this is Cinder's problem, not ours." Watts jabbed, leading Cinder to slam her fist on the table in a show of frustration.
"That's Enough." Salem uttered as she raised her hand, immediately quelling the conflict.
"Tyrian?" Salem asked her attack dog, who giggled a bit at being addressed.
"Yes, my lady?" Tyrian asked with glee.
"Spring can wait. Find the girl that did this to Cinder…" Salem started, causing Cinder to start acting like a giddy schoolgirl.
"… and bring her to me." Salem finished, at which point Tyrian immediately began to pout, though Salem didn't pay it mind. He was already back to his half-lidded smirk in a matter of moments.
"Thanks to your efforts, Beacon has fallen. And Haven, is next." Salem stated with conviction. Too much had been set in motion now. They couldn't be stopped. Certainly not by a handful of children.
Even the Red Warrior was becoming less of a worry. She'd made a… discovery, recently. One that could prove key to ending that particular nuisance once and for all.
Gula had a problem.
Well, he had a few problems, ranging from his frustration with his wardrobe, Taiyang's incessant yelling and nagging the moment they went a little too overboard in a training session, Taiyang's nagging about his appetite, the apathetic stares he'd occasionally get from Yang on the very rare occasion that he saw her, the list went on.
However, the top of that list of issues was something that kept arising during the training sessions. Namely, when he and Amber would use mock-spars as part of lessons. Gula had been forced to cut them short more and more recently since he kept running into a problem. Namely, whenever he was go onto the offensive, he'd find himself slipping a bit in terms of control. He remembered bits and pieces of his lunatic fight with Aspera, and the ending of his fight with the GTO. He'd suddenly undergone a massive surge in strength, but also fallen into an unbridled rage that left him mostly just unleashing as much power as he could to destroy an opponent. He remembered the sensations and the way he 'slipped' when that happened, and he could feel it coming on more than once during the mock spars with Amber, hence why he'd opted to cut the mock spars short.
Which was a shame, since they were also good judges of progress, and Amber had certainly made progress. Her flying wasn't shaky in the slightest, she could move incredibly quickly in the air, her senses were sharper, and she'd mastered energy sensing to the point that she could find three mice living underneath the front porch of the Rose Xiao-Long residence. She was struggling a little with energy waves, which Gula believed was more a psychological issue than it was an issue of talent or practice. She didn't have any issue with simple energy blasts or volleys, but waves were something she was specifically struggling with. They were by far the most offensive application of life energy, being an expression of pure force, and that just wasn't who Amber was, mission to destroy Cinder aside.
Of course, that didn't matter if he lost control during a spar, went ballistic and turned all of Patch into a smoking crater.
He needed to figure out what was going on and get a handle on it. He couldn't afford to lose control like that at random. Plus, if he could figure out how to control himself during one of these 'episodes' he could be looking at a very useful tool in battles where he would be otherwise outmatched. He doubted he would have beaten Aspera without it. He'd need that kind of power when she came back, and he didn't know how much time there was until that happened.
Currently, Gula was meditating outside the house, a fair distance into the woods. Amber and Pyrrha were currently at Signal, forging their new weapons, a process that could take quite a bit of time, so he was making the most of the solitude.
There was another thing he needed to consider. Namely, that they were wasting time at the house. Amber was more than strong enough to make the journey to the village and more importantly, to the gravity machine. Gula intended to make the most out of it now. He had a half-way adequate sparring partner now and the gravity training would do her good. Plus, he could spend off days recovering and training up the kids in the town. Once they were strong enough, then he'd take them to the gravity machine.
Assuming another distraction didn't crop up. Those tended to happen with irritating consistency ever since he decided to go visit Vale.
"Now I wonder how different things would have been if I hadn't gone on out to travel." Gula muttered to himself. A lot of things would have been different. He'd probably never have met anyone at Beacon, never had Ozpin poking around his origins, the Breach could have been very different for all he knew. Amber and many others could be dead.
However, there wasn't any more time for his musings. He could sense two energy signatures approaching the cabin, which were obviously Pyrrha and Amber returning from Signal. Gula floated into the air and flew back to the cabin to see the two of them idly chatting while they approached the house. He could see Amber's new weapon in her right hand, propped against her shoulder. It was a mostly black staff with intricate bronze and copper patterning inlaid around the center and both ends of the weapon. Plus, there was its telescoping abilities. However, Pyrrha's new gear was extremely eye-catching and quite the departure from her previous gear.
She was now clad head to toe in thick bronze armor that consisted of several large overlapping plates of triangular armor whose edges gleamed and showed that they were incredibly sharp. There was an extra large amount of triangular plates concentrated on her back, almost too much. However, when Gula tuned in with his energy sensing, he realized that Pyrrha was using her Polarity Semblance to ease the load, though not completely negating it. Clutched in her hand was a weapon that shared a few similarities to Ruby's Crescent Rose, in that it was designed for high powered projectiles at long ranges, but instead of a scythe blade there was a much more sensible spear at the end.
"Well, it seems you've been busy! Mind telling me about it?" Gula called out as he touched down. Pyrrha was grinning widely.
"Well, I needed a more stationary fighting style, and I need to capitalize on every advantage I have, so I came up with this." Pyrrha explained before she planted her spear in the ground. Gula sensed an uptake in Aura activity from her before he noticed that the triangular armor plates suddenly detached from Pyrrha's armor and began floating in the air around her before they reoriented themselves into the form of a massive shield in front of her before they split and shot towards a pile of lumber. The plates sheared their way through the logs with ease before returning to orbit around Pyrrha. Gula was grinning like an idiot as he watched it all. Pyrrha had risen to the challenge magnificently.
"Okay, that's definitely gonna make some poor sap soil themselves. Any other tricks?" Gula asked. Pyrrha beamed.
"Oh, one or two." She replied before she directed a handful of plates down to the ground, where they interlocked together before she stepped onto the platform. Evidently, her feet were magnetized to the platform and she was now flying around on the metal plates. It wasn't terribly fast flying, but it was nonetheless impressive for someone without energy manipulation training.
"You really have thought of everything, haven't you?" Gula asked as Pyrrha carefully stepped off the platform.
"Well, I wouldn't say I've got it down perfect yet. It's pretty tiring to fly for even that small amount of time with all the weight I have with this armor. Still, it's only a matter of training and practice. Plus, I got some help with designing the boots on my armor. They use a special support system to minimize the amount of strain I put on my foot, allowing me to get in more physical exertion before I need to stop." Pyrrha explained. Amber rapped her knuckles on the pauldrons of the armor.
"She went all out on this set. Plus, she was even able to get into the air without the platform. Apparently it takes more concentration though." Amber commented. Gula eyed the armor.
"Well, I gotta say that of the many things I was half-expecting, this was not one of them. I don't know how much training you'll need to go through before you're ready, but you're definitely on the right track. Oh, and just imagine what your team is gonna say when they see this." Gula stated. Pyrrha nodded with a smile, but a steely gaze of determination. Gula had to admire her for her perseverance through this all. However, he had one lingering question.
"Hunters typically name their weapons, right? Does… all this have a name?" He asked. Pyrrha nodded.
"I didn't have a name until the end, but I have a good one. I call 'all this' as you refer to it, as Phalanx." Pyrrha informed them. Gula stopped and considered it for a moment.
"Phalanx Pyrrha… Now that's a good name and title."
Well, that's where we're ending it for today! And oh BOY is this a good time to end it!
Creativity: That's right! As of this writing, we are precisely twenty six minutes away from Christmas Day!
Author: And the chapter number of twenty five corresponds to December twenty fifth! It's almost as if it's destiny…
So, this was my big idea for Pyrrha: her new Phalanx armor. I can sort of get while people won't like this, but I think it's good and it lets her overcome her injury without just throwing in a robot limb. Plus, the ranged slicing stuff is kind of an homage to Penny; a way for Pyrrha to honor the girl she was tricked into killing.
Creativity: Also, Pyrrha's new spear isn't exactly like Crescent Rose, but it's similar enough. Also, we couldn't think of a good name for it. We initially thought of calling it Gungnir, but that's Norse and Norse is Nora's thing. If anyone has any suggestions for a good name for Pyrrha's new spear, let us know!
Well, there isn't much else to say here. Thank you all for reading, please review, hope to see you in Discord, and… of course… HAPPY HOLIDAYS!