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Chapter 15: Training Day
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"You ready?" Delsin asked.
"I guess," Eugene answered.
"Well alright. Let's get started!" Delsin shouted.
The two of them raised their hands and summoned one Digital Longsword.
Alex walked forward. He did one last check of the arena to make sure everything was in order, then checked the spectator seating to make sure Teams RWBY and JNPR were both seated back far enough in case things got…explosive. Again.
It happened a lot.
"Ok, one last run through of the rules, then we'll get underway," he began.
He pulled out his Scroll to double check the rules as Ozpin had written them.
"This is to be melee combat training, in preparation for a melee combat evaluation to be held in three days time. As such, in this practice match, there are to be no long-range attacks, maneuvers, or moves. There are to be no summonings or transformations, with the exception of summoning weapons in hand and in hand only, or changing the form of weapons in hand already. Any violation of these rules will result in immediate disqualification.
"Additionally, if at any point I determine that either participant has taken enough damage such as to render them unfit for battle, I can and will call the match off.
"As neither party in this match can be disarmed permanently, the match will end when either participant's Aura level falls into the red level, either participant is sent out of the arena, or either participant finds themselves in a position where under normal circumstances would result in a fatal blow.
"Do you understand these rules as I have read them to you?" Alex asked.
"Yep," Delsin said.
"Yes I do," Eugene said.
With a touch of Speed and a few Glyphs, Alex back-flipped out of the arena and into the judge's box.
"Well then, begin!"
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Oddly enough, the person who made the first move was Eugene.
He charged forward and brought his blade down in a chopping motion. Delsin caught the blow with a backhanded upward swipe to his left. Then, imitating Weiss, he used that force to spin himself around. He thinned out his blade to a more Rapier-like width, then thrust it forward.
The blow landed square in Eugene's chest, and while his Aura kept him from harm, he was still knocked back a bit. Melee combat wasn't exactly his strong-suit, and Delsin had been getting a lot of practice lately.
But he had a few tricks of his own.
As Delsin closed in, Eugene held his arm in a defensive posture. As Delsin brought his blade down, Eugene's body flared blue with Video power.
Delsin's blade clanged against Eugene and shattered.
The young Conduit, clever as he was, had shrouded himself in armor made of his own blue power. In fact, Delsin recognized the template he'd used from the time he'd played Skyrim. It was Dragonscale Armor, one of the best armor types in the game.
Delsin quickly jumped backward and summoned another sword. Then he called to Alex.
"Hey, he made something other than a weapon! Doesn't that mean he broke the rules?" he yelled.
Alex thought for a moment.
"I'll allow it as a handicap. You're a lot better at this than he is," he answered, "But be careful Eugene, any further and I will disqualify you."
"Got it," Eugene answered with a smirk.
"I call hacks!" Delsin cried.
Eugene almost bust out laughing but managed to get it down to a small chuckle. Unfortunately for him, Delsin took advantage of his momentary distraction. He summoned a new weapon, a Digital Spear, and with a bit of Pyrrha's style mixed in, started on his attack. He wasn't great with a spear, but he'd learned a bit here and there.
Using the small blade of his spear, he thrust into the chink in Eugene's armor where the breastplate met the leggings. Eugene countered by stepping back out of reach, though he miscalculated the spear's length. His Aura absorbed the impact, but once again he was pushed back a bit further.
Eugene summoned a Digital Greataxe, ready to start fighting in earnest. He held his ax to his side and swiped with it, almost like it was a baseball bat. Delsin tried to block, but the swing shattered his spear into pixels. Eugene dismissed the ax and summoned a huge hammer in its place. Then, carrying on the momentum, he spun and swung the hammer in an upward arc, smashing Delsin in the chest.
Or rather, he tried to. Once again, he misjudged the length and swung at open air. With his side now wide open, Delsin returned the favor and summoned his own Digital Hammer. Nora actually got up and cheered when she saw it because his hammer was a near-perfect mimicry of her own Magnhild. He swung the hammer and slammed it into Eugene's side, shattering his armor's breastplate and sending him flying into a wall.
When he crashed into the wall, Eugene caught a glimpse of the combat scoreboard. Delsin's Aura was at ninety, but his was down to forty. He was almost certain he was going to lose, but if he was, he was going to take him down a peg while he was doing it. He managed to get his feet under him and spring-board off the wall. As he approached the apex of his jump, he detonated his armor like he'd seen in Mass Effect. The resulting flash wasn't enough to blind Delsin, or even enough to make him look away. But it was enough to give disguise what he was doing.
Delsin didn't notice until it was almost too late. In his brief moment of invisibility, Eugene had targeted him with his own Bloodthirsty Blades, and with just how powerful Eugene was, there were easily triple the number of swords Delsin could have made. For a moment, Delsin just stared in slack-jawed amazement. Then the gravity of the situation hit him.
Delsin switched to his Concrete power, then Concrete Dashed forwards. As he ran forward, the first few swords nailed him in the chest, blasting apart the concrete armor around him. But, Delsin recovered and resumed his Dash. This time when the next few swords came in range, he slipped past one, then spun and gripped the hilt of the same sword he just dodged.
As he continued with the spin, he used his sword and smashed it into the next one, shattering it into pixels. Then he kept doing it. Over and over, he sliced through the oncoming wave of blades. He missed a few times, and his Aura level dropped all the way down to twenty-five, but he did it. When all of the blades were gone, Delsin jumped into the air, using his Video thrusters to propel himself into the air just enough. Eugene tried to dodge, but as Alex had said, Delsin had gotten a whole lot better. Delsin summoned back his original Digital Longsword. With both hands, he brought the sword down right onto Eugene's shoulder.
Delsin had blunted the blade, but with that swipe, Eugene plummeted and his Aura fell all the way to the single digits. He hit the ground just as the buzzer sounded, declaring Delsin the victor.
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"Damn Eugene, you almost had me there," Delsin said, helping his friend up off the ground.
"Nah, you had it handled," Eugene countered, "Besides, I only nearly beat you cuz I cheated, and you still beat me. You really have gotten better here, and not just with your powers."
"Thanks, man. You're not too bad yourself. A little more practice and you should be all set to pass your Combat Eval."
"Just remember, in that fight, you can't break the rules like you did here," Alex said as both he and their spectators jumped down from the seats.
"I know," Eugene said, reverting to a bit of his old shyness.
"And remember, that's only part of it. You still have to catch up in all of the classes you'll be staring," Blake said.
"I know," Eugene replied, hanging his head ever so slightly.
"Yeah. C'mon, we should get you to the library. You need to start studying," Pyrrha said.
"Let's go!" Ruby exclaimed in her usual cheery tone.
All three teams quickly exited the arena. On the way out, Team CFVY came up to them in a hurry.
"Did we miss it?" Coco asked sadly.
"Yeah, you did," Yang said.
"Aww, but I made popcorn," Yatsuhashi commented, holding up a big bag of the stuff.
"Who won?" Velvet asked, ignoring Yatsuhashi's plight.
"Who do you think?" Delsin asked, his usual grin on his face.
Velvet smiled.
"If you still wanna join us, we're heading to the library so Eugene can get some other studying in," Delsin said.
Coco looked at him like he was an idiot.
"Did you seriously just ask us to come to the library so we could study together... in the middle of a school vacation?" she asked in a patronizing tone.
"No, I said we were going there so Eugene could study. We are free to fuck around and do whatever," he replied.
Everybody but Weiss and Eugene smiled.
"So long as you don't disturb us, I don't care what you do," the Ice Queen said.
Delsin turned, and Weiss didn't see him smile. A tingle ran down Eugene's spine.
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"You activated my trap card!" Yang shouted.
"What?!" Nora exclaimed dramatically.
"With my partner's Mountain Wall trap card active, your invading army is stuck for the next three turns. Eat that Vacuo Scum!" Ruby shouted playfully.
Delsin lightly banged the table with his fist.
"No! Dammit, they're almost done with what they need to conquer the world!" he said, only slightly faking his anger, "Not this time! I respond by activating my Airship Fleet's special ability!"
"What?!" Ruby screamed.
"Can he do that?!" Yang asked.
Alex didn't even look up from his book to respond.
"Is the Vacuo unit within the Airship's range of movement?" he asked
"Lemme check... Yep," Yang said.
"Then yes."
"Damn."
"Alright!" Delsin shouted, adding a fist-pump for emphasis.
"That means that we can take one unit and make it immune to terrain based traps for as long as it stays within range of our ship," Velvet said proudly.
"So, with our raider troops unit now free to bypass your defenses thanks to some help from our Atlesian allies, we are free to begin our Assault on Vale proper," Ren said calmly, a smile growing on his face.
"NO-hohoho!" Ruby cried dramatically.
"How could you do such a thing?!" Yang asked.
Delsin merely leaned back in his chair, a smile on his face. He held out a fist to Nora and got a fist bump.
"Would you guys please keep it down!" Weiss shouted.
"Yeah, it's me and Yatsu's turn now!" Coco said, intentionally misinterpreting Weiss's anger.
Weiss growled but caught Eugene chuckling. Eugene felt her gaze burning a hole in his head and immediately clammed up and buried his face back in his books.
"Really though, if you could be a little quieter, I would appreciate it," Pyrrha interjected, Jaune covering his ears and waiting for the yelling to stop.
"Sorry, Pyrrha. We'll try and keep it down so you two can study," Yatsuhashi said, grinning.
"What is wrong with you people?!" Weiss shouted.
Everyone ignored her, but everyone was smiling. Even Blake, though no one could tell since her face was hidden behind her book. Delsin reached into the bowl of popcorn on the table and shoved a handful of it into his mouth.
After a couple more hours of play with no one winning, and more than a few Ice Queen meltdowns, Eugene threw his book down.
"Dammit! I am so bored!" he cried.
Luckily for him, Weiss wasn't there at the moment, because she would've killed him if she'd heard him.
"You ok there Eugene?" Delsin asked.
"I'm ok, but if I have to read another research paper where all they do is hypothesize about theoretical outcomes of probable scenarios that may or may not occur sometime in the possible future, I will set this room on fire."
"You do that and I will kill you," Blake said tersely, her cat ears pointing down in anger.
Everyone believed her.
"So what do you wanna do then kid? We could probably fit you onto the Vale side since they're kinda getting their butts handed to them," Coco said.
"Hey!" Ruby said.
"Nah, I got bored with strategy games when I was twelve," Eugene said.
"Sooooo, last week?" Yang said.
Almost the entire table broke into a chorus of "OOOH"'s at that.
"Very funny," Eugene replied, rolling his eyes.
"Seriously though, what do you wanna do?" Delsin asked.
Eugene thought for a moment. Then he smiled.
"Movie night?" he suggested.
Delsin choked, though not from shock. A piece of popcorn went down the wrong way. When he recovered, he smiled.
"For real?" he asked.
"It's been what, three months? We're way overdue."
"Movie night?" Jaune asked.
"It's a thing we did back home. I can make computer copies of movies I've seen so we can watch them whenever," Eugene explained.
"Plus he's seen, like, every movie ever so we never have to watch the same one twice. Unless we want to," Delsin continued.
"That sounds interesting," Ren said.
Yatsu nodded.
"Ok, all in favor of the super-special-awesome movie night?" Nora asked, raising a hand.
All of them shot up.
"Alright," Eugene said with a grin, "Meet me in our dorm in twenty minutes,"
"Great, I'll make more popcorn," Yatsu said.
They all got up to leave, Yang taking a picture of the board so they could start again some other time. They packed the box and headed out. Weiss was walking in when they were on their way out. She sighed and smiled.
"Finally giving us a break from your noise?" she asked, somewhat rhetorically.
"Nope," Delsin said, walking right past her.
They all walked past her. Both Ruby and Velvet turned and were about to speak, but Yang and Coco respectively cut them off and dragged them forward, small grins on their faces. Weiss took a look at the space they had been borrowing. She shrugged and went over to the table and resumed her studies. Exactly seventeen seconds passed and she threw her book down She might have been studious, but even she had her limits.
After making sure no one was around, she said, "Screw it," and left.
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"So what do you guys want?" Eugene asked, "Comedy? Action? Chic-Flic?"
He said the last one as a joke, but if the looks the women in the room gave him could kill, he would have been crucified. He chuckled to himself a bit but held up his hands in mock surrender.
"Seriously though, what?" he pressed.
"Action, definitely," Coco said.
"Yeah, but not too bloody," Yang said, acting as big sister again.
"Maybe a bit of romance here or there," Velvet said quietly.
Eugene smiled.
"Actually, I think I have the perfect movie."
He placed his hand on the TV by the window. A small stream of pixels flowed into it, and the movie player function launched.
"Ladies and gentleman, may I present to you, the 1993 classic starring Sylvester Stalone, Sandra Bullock, and Wesley Snipes."
He pressed play.
"May I present Demolition Man."
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Over the next hour, as they watched the movie, Eugene looked over the crowd that was crammed into the room. (Seriously, fourteen people in a room designed for four? It was a bit of a hassle for them all to find room.) As he saw the smiles that lit up everyone's faces as they watched, his heart melted a bit. For a few moments all of the pain that he had been through in not just the past few months, but almost the entirety of his life, vanished.
In those brief moments, he felt happy.
"I could get used to this," he thought.
CHAPTER END
Yeah, this one was kinda short, but not every part of a story has big moments. Sometimes, you just need to stop and appreciate the little things.
Just a bit of housekeeping, then you can all go on your merry way.
First, as the holiday's approach and my family comes in from out of town, my free time is evaporating. As such, I will probably not be able to update for almost the entire month of December. I will definitely have at least one update for you guys on Christmas Day if I don't keep to my schedule, but just don't freak out if all of a sudden it's Tuesday and you haven't found a new chapter posted. This story is not ending anytime soon.
Anyway, since we just passed Thanksgiving here in the USA, I just wanted to let you guys know that I truly am thankful for you guys. My faithful readers. Just knowing that you are out there has actually helped me in more ways than you'll ever know.
Anyway, I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving. See you next time.
