Once again, thanks to all of you who've reviewed!
Anon1: I'm happy to hear I've kept you hooked! And, funny you should mention Lee x Neo... I think you'll enjoy the next actual chapter. First scene (which is completely written at this point!) in particular ^_^
But you (and everyone else) are gonna have to wait just a little bit longer; I'm making these interludes a tradition, and that means two of them after every two 'episodes' (La Vida Loca, Revenant, etc).
Anyway, here's the first one!
-Cerulean Sorbeltz
Interlude 3
Challenger Approaching
M: +9 D: +0
The Mistral Regional Tournament, was, to put it lightly, the second biggest sporting event on Remnant, only the biennial Vytal Festival's combat tournament topping it for viewership. But unlike the Vytal Festival, which was restricted to current students of Atlas, Beacon, Haven, and Shade Combat Academies, the Mistral Regional Tournament was open to all challengers, so long as their Auras were unlocked. This, coupled with the substantial prize money offered to the first through third place contestants (in both the actual tournament and the three official Qualifying Tournaments) meant that, if one were skilled enough, they could easily achieve both fame and fortune. This, of course, lent itself to creating a vast field of contestants. This is where the official qualifier tournaments came in handy, separating the creme de la creme from the chaff.
The narrator frowned; that last though had been very uncharitable, and, had she voiced it aloud, her parents and various tutors would have scolded her for being impolite... But, impoliteness aside, it was still true. Hundreds registered to compete each year... In a single elimination tournament with an even 256 competitors (ensuring no byes), a competitor would have to fight through eight separate rounds to make it to and win the championship... And the tournament itself would have 255 individual matches.
The narrator adopted a bemused smile, and revised her example from 256 competitors down to 32, bringing the required number of rounds down to 5, which was the number of rounds in the actual tournament, which held one round per day. In certain other circumstances, five rounds in five days, or even spread out over seven, would be both reasonable and sustainable. Combat, however, tended to be exhausting on Aura, and considering that, aside from Ring Out, Aura Break was pretty much the only lose-condition under tournament rules, it was common for even the winner of a bout to need a full night's rest to restore their Aura to full, or close to it; anybody who has ever participated in a competitive tournament of any sort should know that it's almost guaranteed that they'll have less energy at the beginning of the final round than they would have at the beginning of the first round, with the discrepancy only growing greater as you increase the number of rounds between the first and last. Thus, the Tournament organizers split the tournament up over two weekends, with the first three rounds being held on a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, with the semi-final, third place, and final rounds being held the following weekend, in that order. Two consecutive weekends was an acceptable time commitment for a tournament fighter when a payout wasn't guaranteed... But three? Five? Maybe even six?
The narrator shuddered in horror. Not only would it be exhausting, but the audience wouldn't find the bouts nearly as exciting. But the field of competitors still had to be reduced to that magic number of 32; thus, the qualifiers. Two each for the cities of Windpath and Kuchinashi, and three for Mistral itself, with the top 4 competitors of each moving on to the main tournament in Mistral. That, of course, only accounted for 28 out of the 32 slots, and would likely drive one to wonder why the organizers didn't simply hold an eighth qualifier. The answer to that: simply making it to the semi-finals during the main tournament automatically qualified a contestant for next year's tournament.
Our narrator smiled; that had been her method for qualifying for this year's tournament. But that hadn't stopped her from choosing to attend Kuchinashi's second qualifier to scout out the potential competition. Her parents hadn't seen the point in doing so, having pointed out that she could simply purchase recordings of the advancee's fights and watch them during rest periods; her time would thus be better spent training. The girl had riposted by pointing out that, while a useful educational tool, recordings didn't evoke quite the same level of excitement that witnessing the bouts in person did; add that her trainers had agreed that personally scouting the competition would allow her to get a better sense of what to expect, and thus retain her title, and her parent's had finally agreed, leading the fourteen-year-old champion to where she was now, watching the third fight of the more interesting fighters she'd observed thus far.
Pyrrha, for it was indeed -the- Pyrrha Nikos, the youngest and reigning champion of thr Mistral Region Combat Tournament, was paying rapt attention to both fighters with a calm smile on her face. The first fighter, a male in his early to mid twenties and possessing average looks (despite his arms and shoulders, completely bare, being much more muscular than average [the champion didn't even flush, having noted this in a purely clinical manner]), was wielding a chain mace and heater shield/revolver to good effect; his mien was calm, his demeanor poised, his form adequate. And unlike many fighters, his fighting style made good use of his Semblance (he created focused explosions upon impact), -without- being wholly reliant upon it. Currently, he held the chain just above the spiked ball, and was turning a slow circle in the exact center of the ring, shield held in a neutral guard and facing the enemy.
Pyrrha would have liked to fight him; he would certainly provide a challenge worthy of the champion's maximum effort. However, it would have to wait until next year, perhaps, for the champion could already see that he was going to lose, before the bout had even started.
Had Pyrrha shared that opinion with one of the other people spectating that particular match, and had she not been the current champion, she likely would have been called crazy; after all, the man's opponent was a kid, only a year older than she was. Dark of skin, black of hair, and green of eye. And despite the varying strength of Auras and an endless possibility of Semblances making physical appearance a semi-reliable judge at best, he looked like he'd fit right in with a high school boxing club, though he wouldn't quite be in the heavyweight division. He'd certainly fit in at Sanctum though, possessing a sturdy yet lithe build beneath a blue bolero jacket and green shirt. More interesting, however, was the layer of belts between the two, which, along with the belts over his black pants, crisscrossed his entire body and were attached to both a fan at the small of his back and a pair of boxy sheaths at his thighs. And the weapons that went in the sheaths were a pair of katar/pistols, currently held low, as was his entire body, resembling a predator poised to pounce.
One might have assumed that Pyrrha drew her conclusion simply from their current postures and positioning within the ring; Pyrrha would have simply pointed out the confident smirk on the younger competitor's visage. And when asked what could possibly have the boy smirking, she'd reply that he was aware of and completely able to deal with his opponent's full capabilities.
It was his own fault, Pyrrha mused as the katar wielder initiated the exchange. Except to call it an exchange would imply that both parties had lost something. The teenager had dashed forward, right hand pulled back and left shoulder ducked just far enough forward to telegraph a leaping thrust.
The veteran took the bait, taking half a step back and spinning to aim a vicious backhanded swing at where boy's ribs would be at the apex of his leap, even as he raised his shield to deflect the thrust to the side should he miss.
It never came. In an impressive display of control, the teenager had initiated the lunge, but managed to come to a full stop before his feet left the ground, allowing the flail to pass just in front of his nose. Momentum unimpeded, and wholly unexpected, the older man was pulled just slightly off balance for the briefest of instants... But at such level of competition, that instant was more than enough to decide the fight. As soon as the flail passed, the katar wielder had stepped forward and performed a backflip, catching the bottom of his opponent's shield on the way up and pulling it out of position. And considering it was heavy compared to the teenager's entire loadout, and the chain mace was completely useless as a defensive implement? He was wide open for the spinning snap kick which caught him in the solar plexus and propelled him straight out of the ring.
The teenager adopted a faux-surprised expression, complete with hand hovering over his mouth.
Was she wrong to let out such a delighted laugh?
"And the winner is Caerulean Enfield, defeating Onyx Hughes to move on to the quarterfinals!"
No, Pyrrha decided, she most definitely would not feel guilty for cheering the results of this match. While she supposed the defeated flailman must have currently been experiencing humiliation at the flashy manner of his defeat, there was no denying that it had been a fairly decent display of showmanship. Which, at the end of the day, was what the audience cared about, which meant that the competitors had to care about it, at least to an extent; the audience wouldn't care for a boring show, and if the audiences (and sponsors) didn't pay, then the organizers wouldn't offer as lucrative a prize, which meant not quite as many fighters would be driven to seek it. Which would have been a real shame to Pyrrha, for while the prize money was nice, it was the competition itself that she felt was worth living for.
To that end, she'd make sure to keep an eye open for Caerulean Enfield in Mistral this summer.
Anybody who can tell me what character I stole that move from gets to name an OC for the tournament! (HINT: The character is from one of KOEI's Warriors games)
